State Covid Propaganda Destroyed Public’s Ability to Consent to Vaccines – Chairman of UK Council for Psychotherapy
BY DR CHRISTIAN BUCKLAND | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | APRIL 28, 2023
There follows an open letter from Dr. Christian Buckland, Chairman of the Board of the U.K. Council for Psychotherapy, to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak condemning the “use of unethical psychological techniques and behavioural science on the unknowing and non-consenting U.K. public”. Among numerous harms are that the use of techniques to increase fear, shame and guilt “materially undermined, if not removed, the U.K. population’s ability to give valid informed consent to taking a COVID-19 vaccine”.
April 28th 2023
Dear Prime Minister,
I am the Chairman of the Board of the U.K. Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP), one of the UK’s foremost psychological governing bodies. However, I write this open letter in my own capacity. I believe I have a professional obligation to write to you in an attempt to protect the public from any further harm caused by the unethical application of psychological research and practice.
I unreservedly condemn the U.K. Government’s use of unethical psychological techniques intended to elicit feelings of fear, shame and guilt, under the guise of behavioural science and insights which were designed to change the public’s behaviour without their knowledge and conscious participation. It is now clear that in 2020 the U.K. Government deliberately chose to artificially inflate the level of fear within the U.K. population by exaggerating the risk factors of COVID-19, and concomitantly downplaying the protective factors. We also witnessed the Government’s promotion of social disapproval and guilt messaging. These techniques were embedded into a multi-channel, co-ordinated public health campaign designed to change the public’s behaviour without their knowledge. Moreover, in tandem with the mainstream media, the Government also proactively suppressed, censored and ostracised any healthcare professional or scientist who suggested alternative responses to COIVD-19, or who simply questioned the messaging and measures being implemented by the Government.
Evidence of the recommendation of using unethical psychological techniques to gain behavioural change
The Government document titled ‘Options for increasing adherence to social distancing measures’ was written for the Government by the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B) which is a subgroup of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE).
The premise of the document was to provide options for changing the behaviour of the U.K. public without their knowledge. A passage within this document states: “A substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened”. It makes certain recommendations including:
- “The perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard hitting emotional messaging”
- “Coercion”
- “Social disapproval”
The recommendations made by SPI-B included ones intended to elicit feelings of fear, shame and guilt. Psychological practitioners know that deliberately trying to frighten someone into change with erroneous or exaggerated information can easily cause long-term psychological damage. We also know that using social disapproval can create splits and divisions within society, and that inducing feelings of guilt can elevate the risk of suicide.
SPI-B also included a simple risk assessment matrix which acknowledges that the “spill over effects” of using media to increase the sense of personal threat and of using social disapproval “could be negative”. There is also a statement demonstrating there was a conversation regarding the spill over effects, although this does not appear to be fully documented. The risk factors and ethics of using fear, shame, guilt and coercion would almost certainly have been known to the members of SPI-B because several members were British Psychological Society (BPS) registered chartered psychologists. In an interview with one of the members of SPI-B, BPS registered educational psychologist Dr. Gavin Morgan, he refers to the use of fear by his SPI-B colleagues and says (as relayed by Laura Dodsworth, in A State of Fear pp. 262,263):
“Clearly using fear as a means of control is not ethical. What you do as a psychologist is co-construction. Using fear smacks of totalitarianism. It’s not an ethical stance for any modern government.” … Was it unethical to use fear, I asked? “Well I didn’t suggest we use fear.” But your colleagues did. What do you think of that? He paused. “Oh God.” Another reluctant pause. “It’s not ethical,” he said.
Like Dr. Morgan, any BPS registered psychologists within SPI-B would or should have recognised that recommending the Government uses fear as a means of controlling the public breached their professional code of ethics and conduct. An urgent investigation is required both by the U.K. Government and the BPS. Two specific points of the British Psychological Society Code of Ethics and Conduct (2021) that may have been broken are (with my emphasis):
3.3 Responsibility. Because of their acknowledged expertise, members of the Society often enjoy professional autonomy; responsibility is an essential element of autonomy. Members must accept appropriate responsibility for what is within their power, control or management. Awareness of responsibility ensures that the trust of others is not abused, the power of influence is properly managed and that duty towards others is always paramount. Statement of values: Members value their responsibilities to persons and peoples, to the general public, and to the profession and science of psychology, including the avoidance of harm and the prevention of misuse or abuse of their contribution to society. In applying these values, psychologists should consider:
- Professional accountability;
- Responsible use of their knowledge and skills;
- Respect for the welfare of humans, non-humans and the living world;
- Potentially competing duties.
3.4 Integrity. Acting with integrity includes being honest, truthful, accurate and consistent in one’s actions, words, decisions, methods and outcomes. It requires setting self-interest to one side and being objective and open to challenge in one’s behaviour in a professional context. Statement of values: Members value honesty, probity, accuracy, clarity and fairness in their interactions with all persons and peoples, and seek to promote integrity in all facets of their scientific and professional endeavours”.
Evidence that psychological techniques to induce fear, shame, guilt and coercion were used on the U.K. public
The SPI-B document in question demonstrates that the options of eliciting feelings of fear, shame, guilt and the use of coercion was recommended to the U.K. Government. There is evidence that those options were indeed subsequently deployed on the U.K. population.
In August 2022, you stated:
In every brief, we tried to say: let’s stop the ‘fear narrative’. It was always wrong from the beginning. I constantly said it was wrong… It was wrong to scare people like that.
Additionally, leaked WhatsApp messages from the former Health Minister at the time, Matt Hancock, published in the Daily Telegraph in March 2023, confirm that fear and guilt were used:
Hancock: We frighten the pants of everyone with the new strain. But the complications with that Brexit is taking the top line
Poole: Yep that’s what will get proper bahviour (sic) change
Hancock: When do we deploy the new variant …
Case: Ramping up messaging – the fear/guilt factor vital
The above are just two examples where senior Government Ministers recognised that fear and guilt was used as drivers for behavioural change of the UK population without their knowledge.
The existing literature
It is important to acknowledge that the above-mentioned psychological techniques were used on the U.K. population without their knowledge or consent, and that this in direct contradiction of long-established and carefully considered behavioural science advice which made clear that, in theory and practice, the consent of the public is paramount. According to a 2010 Institute for Government report:
The use of MINDSPACE (or other ‘nudge’ type policy tools) may require careful handling – in essence, the public need to give permission and help shape how such tools are used. (p10)
Continuing, the report states:
Policy-makers wishing to use these tools summarised in MINDSPACE need the approval of the public to do so. (p74)
Further literature supports that permission from the public is essential. David Halpern wrote in 2015:
If there is one great risk to the application of behavioural insights in policy, it is that the thread of public permission wears too thin. If governments, or indeed communities or companies, wish to use behavioural insights, they must seek and maintain the permission of the public to do so. (p365)
As there was no approval obtained, the options recommended and deployed were not in alignment with the principles of behavioural science.
It is important to highlight that the same kinds of techniques were used on children in relation to mask wearing, social distancing and vaccine uptake, with many techniques continuing into 2022. These techniques violated UNICEF’s recommendations from its ethical toolkit for behavioural science projects directed at children. The tool-kit states:
A core idea underlying the applied behavioural science approach is that interventions should not restrict choice and should transparently communicate project goals. When designing an intervention, practitioners should determine how transparent it will be to those affected by it. They should ensure that children and parents can easily opt out, and should design feedback mechanisms so that children and their parents can voice concerns, see the outcomes of their objections, and hold decision-makers to account.
The behavioural science literature also indicates a potential link between the misuse of behavioural psychology and an increased risk of suicide, stemming from an All Party Parliamentary Group Report on the Morse Review into the Loan Charge in 2020. One of the recommendations within the report demands:
An independent assessment and a suspension of HMRC’s use of behavioural psychology / behavioural insights, in light of the ongoing suicide risk to those impacted by the Loan Charge.
The literature highlights that approval from the public must be sought and maintained. Additionally, all behavioural science projects directed at children must have effective feedback mechanisms and methods of opting out, with decision makers able to be held accountable. There are also existing potential concerns that behavioural science may increase suicide levels. These important ethical aspects and safety signals appear to have been ignored. The lessons of history warn us that in times of existential crisis, whether real or only perceived, our ethics are at risk of being abandoned, and psychological knowledge can become misused by governments:
Under some historical conditions or circumstances and contexts, psychologists and psychological knowledge were in danger of being abused by political powers, largely for clandestine purposes, such as conducting torture or the persecution of political opponents. (Maercker A, Guski-Leinwand S, 2018)
It is of grave concern that the actions of the U.K. Government during the Covid era potentially fit into the category of abusing psychological knowledge and being absent of ethics, thus require serious investigation.
The impact of psychological pressure on informed consent
For the sake of brevity, I will not reiterate the multiple concerns already documented by others surrounding the consequences of the Government’s actions around lockdown, hospital discharges, school closures and mask mandates. I do, however, wish to highlight one extremely serious consequence that I believe has occurred as a direct result of the use of unethical psychological techniques and behavioural insights on the unknowing public: by adopting the techniques used, the Government significantly and materially undermined, if not removed, the U.K. population’s ability to give valid informed consent to taking a COVID-19 vaccine.
According to Public Health England:
Consent must be obtained before starting any treatment or physical investigation or before providing personal care for a patient. This includes the administration of all vaccines.
Also,
It is a legal and ethical principle that valid consent must be obtained before starting personal care, treatment or investigations.
Also,
For consent to immunisation to the (sic) valid, it must be given freely, voluntarily and without coercion by an appropriately informed person who has the mental capacity to consent to the administration of the vaccines in question.
From the above, it is clear that for medical consent to be valid it must be given without coercion. The Encyclopedia Britannica defines coercion as:
The threat or use of punitive measures against states, groups or individuals in order for them to undertake or desist from specified actions. In addition to the threat of or limited use of force (or both), coercion may entail economic sanctions, psychological pressures, and social ostracism.
The psychological techniques used by the U.K. Government fall under that definition of coercion. If follows that according to Public Health England’s statements and for the general public at least, consent to immunisation was invalidated by the behaviour of the U.K. Government. It is also important to highlight that there have been serious injuries and death directly linked to the COVID-19 vaccine. Many of those injured or who have died would not have taken a vaccine if they had not been psychologically pressured, feared being ostracised socially and were given accurate information.
The removal of the general population’s ability to give informed medical consent is of the gravest concern, and a severe and dangerous consequence of using behavioural insights and psychological techniques on an unknowing public.
Conclusion
The need to hold tightly to professional ethics, in particular to the ethical principle of informed consent, is not just an ‘academic’ issue. It is a matter of practical and fundamental importance to responsible government.
According to David Halpern, “Behavioural insights, like any other form of knowledge, can be used for good or bad” (p348). It is my opinion that the use of behavioural insights and psychological techniques designed to elicit feelings of fear, shame and guilt utilised by the U.K. Government since March 2020 has been unethical. The consequences are still unravelling but they appear to include serious damage to trust in government and its agencies, the NHS and the medical and scientific professions.
I propose that there be an immediate cessation of the use of all behavioural science techniques designed to elicit feelings of fear, shame and guilt used by the Government pending an urgent, open and independent inquiry. This inquiry should also have as an objective the re-establishment of ethical frameworks necessary to protect the public and to provide accountability. I would welcome a discussion on this most important of matters.
Most respectfully
Dr. Christian Buckland
Doctor of Psychology in Psychotherapy and Counselling
Is It Time for Unemployed Tucker Carlson to Enter the U.S. Political Fray?
By Robert Bridge | Strategic Culture Foundation | April 27, 2023
This week, Fox News axed without warning or explanation its highest-rated talk show host, Tucker Carlson. Tragic as that may be for his legion of listeners, Carlson now has a chance to not only question America, but to change it.
It looks as though the establishment – the Deep State, the Swamp, the Nursing Home for Octogenarian Ice Cream Lovers, call it what you will – has finally found a way to eliminate Tucker Carlson and his heretical views once and for all.
Just days after Fox News’ nearly billion-dollar settlement with Dominion Voting Systems over election-fraud allegations, Carlson was handed his walking papers. Here we have yet another case of a corporation inexplicably killing the goose that lays golden eggs. A bit like the Bud Light transgender advertisement, mega-corporations don’t willfully torpedo their bottom line without very good reason. For the left, the sacrifice was made on behalf of increasingly entrenched woke principles; on the right, the sacrifice was made to ouster a man who endangered American foreign policy, domestic policy, and everything in between.
Thus, the most likely explanation for Carlson’s termination is that he was making the wrong people, including his boss, Rupert Murdoch, very uncomfortable, and not just over rigged election claims. After all, many other personalities from the right-wing channel, like Sean Hannity and Linda Ingraham, also suggested in no uncertain terms that it was impossible that Joe Biden, an historically unlikable figure who mostly campaigned from his basement amid the Covid epidemic, could have attracted more votes than any other presidential candidate in U.S. history. Yet it was Carlson who got the boot, and that should come as no surprise.
For many years, Tucker Carlson, 53, remained a great enigma inside of the murky underworld of the U.S. mainstream media. While many of his colleagues were forced to wander aimlessly and sheepishly around a heavily patrolled, corporate-owned reservation, Carlson seemed to have been granted special privileges to freely speak his mind about the most taboo topics – from the sweeping Covid crackdowns to the blank-check policy for the Ukrainian “destroyer” Vladimir Zelensky. These outbursts of fierce criticism, far detached from the carefully crafted ideology of the establishment, allowed Carlson’s opponents to portray him somewhere between controlled opposition and a full-blown conspiracy theorist. Yet these attacks on his character did nothing to diminish his popularity in the eyes of the public.
It seems that Carlson’s popularity stems from the fact that audiences can see that this guy is the real deal. Although not perfect – who is? – he comes across as an honest and straight-shooting observer of the U.S. cultural and political scene, and totally fearless in calling out bullshit, even when it happens to be his own bullshit. In a recent interview, Carlson had harsh words not only for his odious trade, but for himself as well.
Looking back on his career, Carlson called the mainstream media a “control apparatus,” a disturbing conclusion that he made “only late in life.”
“They are working for a small group of people who actually run the world. They’re their servants, their Praetorian Guard, and we should treat them with the maximum contempt,” he said, while admitting to his own naïve assumptions early in his career.
“Not only are [the media] part of the problem, but I spent most of my life being part of the problem – defending the Iraq War, I actually did that!’
So in keeping with this article’s main thesis, that Carlson should now consider a political run, it must be noted that here is a man who can admit he was wrong. Very few journalists, not to mention politicians, have such strength, which so many view today as an actual weakness.
The second quality that sets Carlson apart from the pack is his courage, another essential attribute for a political career.
Back in 2020, following the death of George Floyd during an attempted arrest by a white cop, and the consequential street violence that erupted coast-to-coast, the former Fox host said what so many people were thinking, yet lacked the courage to articulate.
Carlson dared to say that the rioting and looting that destroyed thousands of homes and businesses during the BLM protests was “definitely not about black lives.” He went on to say that it was necessary to tell the truth when confronted by “the mob,” otherwise “they will crush you.”
Whenever it is suggested that Tucker Carlson possesses the personal qualifications to be a fine politician, the canned response is that he merely recites words on a teleprompter, not unlike so many other has-been politicians today. Yet just days before he was unceremoniously discharged from Fox News, Carlson gave an address to the Heritage Foundation on the occasion of the conservative organization’s 50th anniversary. Carlson’s oratory could have been a political stump speech, as it touched upon the greatest fears of the political right, and that is the power of wokeism to fundamentally alter, if not destroy, the United States.
Without once resorting to prepared notes or a teleprompter, Carlson spelled out with refreshing articulation – a political quality in short supply these days – the dangers facing the nation.
“I’m not calling for religious war,” Carlson began, “I’m merely calling for an acknowledgement of what we’re watching… I’m just noting what’s super obvious, like those of us who are in our mid-fifties are caught in the past in the way that we think about this. [The Left] doesn’t want a debate. Those ideas won’t produce outcomes that any rational person would want under any circumstances. Those are manifestations of some larger force acting upon us.”
Probably the very same “larger force” that was responsible for Carlson’s current unemployment status.
Ironically, Carlson’s very last guest on his eponymous show, aside from a pizza delivery guy who helped police make an arrest, was the vaccine skeptic Bobby Kennedy, who just last week launched his 2024 campaign for the Democratic nomination for president.
Here is what Kennedy had to say about Carlson’s firing:
“Fox fires @TuckerCarlson five days after he crosses the red line by acknowledging that the TV networks pushed a deadly and ineffective vaccine to please their Pharma advertisers. Carlson’s breathtakingly courageous April 19 monologue broke TV’s two biggest rules: Tucker told the truth about how greedy Pharma advertisers controlled TV news content and he lambasted obsequious newscasters for promoting jabs they knew to be lethal and worthless.”
Now if Kennedy were smart, which he certainly is, he’d be talking to Carlson right now about a possible joint run to unseat the Biden regime. Personally, I don’t see how it could possibly fail.
Event 201 Webpage Goes Missing
A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words
The Naked Emperor’s Newsletter | April 26, 2023
Event 201 – A high-level pandemic exercise held by The Johns Hopkins Center for Security in partnership with the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The exercise began on 18 October 2019, months before the Covid pandemic started and the very same day the World Military Games began in Wuhan.
The website for the event has been available to view all the way through the pandemic but for some reason it has now been taken down. If you click on the web address, all you get is this:
But you can always view the archived version here.
Pfizer Gave Millions to ‘Independent’ Groups to Push COVID Vaccine Mandates
Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | April 26, 2023
Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer in 2021 made numerous grants to medical associations, consumer groups and civil rights organizations for the purpose of creating the appearance of widespread support for COVID-19 vaccine mandates, investigative journalist Lee Fang reported.
As the vaccine mandates rolled out in 2021, Pfizer stayed quiet on the question of mandates — but public health groups, patient advocacy groups, doctors’ associations, community groups and others, along with the Biden administration, actively advocated for vaccine mandates as a key measure to protect public health.
New disclosures from Pfizer, posted by Fang on his Substack, show that many of these same groups were taking money from Pfizer while they promoted the idea that the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines were “safe and effective,” despite a lack of scientific data to back those claims.
Prominent groups on the extensive list of those who took Pfizer funding while pushing the mandates included the Chicago Urban League, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the National Consumers League, The Immunization Partnership, the American Pharmacists Association, the American College of Preventive Medicine, the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy, the American Society for Clinical Pathology and the American College of Emergency Physicians.
Many groups did not disclose their ties to Pfizer.
“[These groups] set the nature of the debate,” Fang told comedian and political commentator Russell Brand on a recent episode of “Stay Free.” “They appear in the news media, they create events and they create a discourse that looks authentic, that looks organic, but it benefits the bottom line of their benefactors, of companies like Pfizer.”
Fang said many of these organizations, particularly civil rights organizations like the Chicago Urban League or the National Consumers League — which actually has a Pfizer lobbyist on its board — have powerful influence precisely because of their independent status.
When these groups speak out, Fang said:
“It affects how regulators see these issues and how the public sees them. When they see these third-party groups that have some credibility — these are famous organizations that are known for standing up for the public interest.
“When they say ‘hey these mandates are a good idea for the American public,’ it seems genuine.
“But they aren’t disclosing the Pfizer money, which is a relevant factor when you are talking about a policy that compels Americans to take this product.”
After the COVID-19 vaccines became widely available in early 2021, vaccine mandates followed in different forms across the country.
At the federal level, the U.S. Department of Defense mandated vaccines for military personnel, and the Biden administration mandated vaccines for federal contractors and for all employers with 100 employees or more — the latter was struck down in federal court.
Universities mandated vaccination for students and staff, and many public and private employers across the country mandated vaccination for their employees.
Several school districts across the country planned to mandate vaccination for children to attend school, but most of those plans have since been rolled back.
Those who instituted mandates justified them by asserting that mass vaccination — and only mass vaccination — would “stop the spread” of COVID-19.
But it has since been revealed that in March 2021, when Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky publicly and unequivocally stated on MSNBC that vaccinated people would not get sick, there was no evidence to support her statement.
In fact, the CDC had to walk back the statement a few days later.
Biden also falsely claimed that the vaccinated would not get infected — in July 2021, just before COVID-19 vaccine mandates went into effect.
The vaccine makers have since acknowledged they never tested whether the vaccines would stop transmission, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reported that vaccinated people in both Pfizer and Moderna’s clinical trials contracted the virus.
Big Pharma’s big reach
Pfizer isn’t the only actor in Big Pharma that quietly funds third parties to do its work.
Fang told The Defender that “Many pharmaceutical firms covertly shape public opinion and regulations through the use of front groups and financial relationships with community organizations.”
For example, Purdue Pharma covertly funded third-party advocacy groups to encourage looser criteria for prescribing its highly addictive opioid painkillers, he reported.
As for Pfizer, Fang said, third-party funding is just one of the many strategies the drugmaker deployed to drive COVID-19 policymaking.
“Pfizer flexed its lobbying muscles around many COVID-19 policies, including efforts to curb drug-pricing initiatives and a bid to prevent the creation of generic COVID medications,” he said, adding, “The vaccine mandate debate is yet another example of Pfizer’s reach into public policy.”
Big Pharma — along with the Biden administration and its intermediaries — also lobbied to suppress those who questioned the vaccine program.
Pfizer BioNTech and Moderna pressured Twitter and other social media platforms to set moderation rules that would flag purported COVID-19-related “misinformation,” as part of the effort to drive the national conversation about the COVID-19 vaccines, Fang reported as part of the “Twitter files.”
“Pharma is unique in the raw amount of money they spend to control the entire public sector on regulatory, on policy, on everything in terms of how it affects medicine as it is practiced in the United States,” Fang said.
The pharmaceutical and health products lobby is one of the biggest industry lobbies. According to OpenSecrets.org, last year alone the industry spent $372 million lobbying Congress and federal agencies, outspending every other industry — and each year it increases its spending.
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla is on the board of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the top individual lobbying spender in the industry, which spent $29.2 million last year. Pfizer itself spent more than any other drug company.
The industry also spends massive amounts of money on advertising. Pfizer alone spent nearly $2.8 billion on advertising for all of its products in 2022.
The COVID-19 vaccines netted $37.8 billion for Pfizer in 2022, up from $36.7 billion in 2021. The company’s overall earnings hit a record $100 billion.
Big Pharma and the CDC did similar work to promote mandates and vaccination
There is a “revolving door” between pharma industry lobbyists and the government — nearly 65% of lobbyists formerly worked for the government.
And the strategies used to build support for Big Pharma’s products are some of the same strategies used by federal government agencies like the CDC.
Since 2021 — the same time Pfizer started funding community groups — the CDC has doled out hundreds of millions of dollars in grants for the creation of “culturally tailored” pro-vaccine materials and for training “influential messengers” to promote COVID-19 and flu vaccines to communities of color in every state across the country.
For those grants, the CDC sought out community organizations that would communicate the CDC’s message without the CDC’s trademark, so the messages would appear to come organically from within local communities rather than from the government, particularly among communities of color.
In another case, the CDC hired a public relations firm to write what looked like news articles but were actually ad placements created to persuade parents of young children and elderly people — with a focus on Spanish speakers — to get vaccinated.
Both Pfizer and the CDC used their funding to target black and Latino communities that had lower vaccination rates. In one case, they both funded the same organization — the National Hispanic Medical Association (NHMA).
According to Fang, the organization worked with a public relations firm called Culture ONE World to distribute “press releases and media placements” that “called on employers of essential workers to mandate COVID-19 vaccines.”
Fang also wrote that the NHMA also signed joint statements lobbying in favor of Biden’s vaccine mandate and that “it received $30,000 from BIO [Biotechnology Innovation Organization], a vaccine industry lobby group that represents Pfizer and Moderna, IRS filings show.”
The Defender found that NHMA received $2,070,000 in two annual grants so far for their “Vacunas! Si Se Puede, Immunization Campaign for Hispanics” program, which later became “We Can Do This,” to create culturally tailored content to be circulated throughout Latino communities.
American Academy of Pediatrics received multiple grants from Pfizer in 2021
The AAP also appeared on Fang’s list of notable organizations that received direct Pfizer funding.
“The American Academy of Pediatrics was one of the most visible organizations working to build public support for vaccine mandates. The organization received multiple, specialized grants from Pfizer in 2021.
“Pfizer also provided grants to individual state chapters of the AAP earmarked for lobbying on vaccine policy. The Ohio AAP chapter, for instance, lobbied the Ohio legislature against bills to curb coercive COVID-19 vaccine policies, while receiving an ‘immunization legislation’ advocacy grant from Pfizer.”
Beyond its COVID-19 vaccine mandate work, the organization also was a public advocate for COVID-19 vaccines for children. Its then-president, UCLA professor Moira Szilagyi, M.D., Ph.D., publicly advocated, on media outlets such as CNN, for vaccinating children.
The organization, “dedicated to the health of all children,” previously issued policy guidance to its members stating that it is an “acceptable option to pediatric care clinicians to dismiss families who refuse vaccines.”
And in June 2022, the AAP issued a press release applauding the CDC’s recommendation of “safe, effective COVID-19 vaccines” for babies as young as 6 months old, despite concerns raised — by the FDA vaccine advisory commission, among many others — regarding a lack of clinical data for the vaccines in children.
In addition to the Pfizer funding, the AAP receives much of its funding directly from the CDC, raising questions about the organization’s ability to act independently, particularly with respect to vaccine recommendations, BMJ editor Peter Doshi wrote in 2017.
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
FDA chief spruiks misinformation while vowing to fight misinformation
BY MARYANNE DEMASI, PHD | APRIL 25, 2023
Robert Califf, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is hell bent on ridding the internet of misinformation.
In a series of public appearances, Califf has claimed that “misinformation is now our leading cause of death.”
When I asked the FDA for evidence to support his claim, the agency drew a blank, admitting that Califf’s statement “cannot be proven.”
Califf has since made attempts to tweak his public statement.
This week, CBS News reporter Alexander Tin pressed him for an explanation, to which Califf replied, “I want to modify my statement. And I’ll keep working on this, to try to get it right. I would say I actually believe it is the leading cause of premature death…”
Jessica Adams, an expert in drug regulatory affairs said, “It’s ironic. Califf is spreading misinformation about the leading cause of premature death in the US, while promoting the need to counter misinformation.”
“It’s unbelievable for him to make these assertions with no scientific backing,” she added.
Adams said it’s not the FDA’s job to police medical misinformation online.
“The FDA should be assessing drug approvals, overseeing post-marketing studies and ensuring product labels are up to date – not promoting vaccines and antivirals as if it’s the marketing arm of the drug industry,” said Adams.
The FDA sent me its website providing Califf’s reasoning for why he believes misinformation is the leading cause of premature death. It states:
“Most of the COVID-19 deaths since vaccines and antivirals became available were preventable if people had gotten updated on their vaccination status and, if high risk and infected, had they been treated with an authorized antiviral.”
“He’s failed to cite any sources to substantiate his claims and Califf keeps saying that it is just his ‘belief’…Are we supposed to just accept that?” said Adams, criticising his “obsession” over the boosters.
“It’s as if the FDA thinks that people don’t want the vaccines because they are misinformed, when it might just be that they are not persuaded by the data,” she added.
Adams also said the FDA is misinforming the public by “over-inflating” the benefit of the more recent bivalent vaccines.
“They’re now promoting the bivalent boosters which are based on much less data than the original [monovalent] vaccines and authorised on the basis of antibodies, which is not a fully validated correlate of protection,” said Adams.
This is not the first time the FDA has made misleading scientific claims to the public.
In August 2021, the FDA attempted to dissuade people from using ivermectin as an off-label, early treatment for COVID-19 by suggesting it was a livestock drug. The agency tweeted “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.”
But critics were quick to condemn the misinformation by pointing out that ivermectin is not only a medicine used to deworm livestock, it is also FDA-approved for parasitic treatment in humans.
Califf also spread misinformation in a Nov 2022 tweet which stated, “preliminary epidemiological findings point to the distinct possibility of the bivalent vaccines and antivirals reducing risk of long Covid.”
Vinay Prasad, Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and a practicing Haematologist Oncologist at San Francisco General Hospital wrote a scathing criticism of the tweet.
“For bivalent vaccines, he’s making things up. There are no relevant clinical data in human beings for bivalent vaccines, certainly not for the end points of long covid symptoms. Ergo that claim is 100% false; essentially a lie,” wrote Prasad.
“For antivirals, such as Paxlovid, this endpoint has not been assessed in randomized control trials. There are some poorly done observational studies that conflate ICD-10 codes with long covid symptoms and make bold, unsupported claims, but there is no robust evidence,” he added.
Traditionally, the FDA has regulated health misinformation to protect consumers from misbranded and adulterated products, but this new proposed “misinformation oversight” seems to extend to overseeing any online health-related issue.
“The FDA has always maintained that it does not want to regulate the practice of medicine, but lately it’s behaving as if it’s the Surgeon General – America’s doctor – making drug recommendations and promoting vaccines,” said Adams.
If the FDA wants to curb the spread of misinformation, it should start by looking at its own behaviour.
Despite the criticism, Califf remains defiant. Recently, he boasted to a crowd of journalists that he is “relatively impervious to critique.”
Perhaps, that’s where he is going wrong.
Tucker Carlson: It is hard to believe this is happening
FOX NEWS | April 19, 2023
‘Who Is Telling the Truth?’ Tucker Carlson Calls Out ‘Corrupt’ Media and Politicians
By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D. | The Defender | April 26, 2023
Last week, before he left Fox News, Tucker Carlson delivered a commentary on corrupt media, corrupt politicians and “truth-telling.”
According to Carlson, the question to ask when assessing public figures isn’t, “Who is corrupt?” — because there are “too many to count.”
“The question is, Who is telling the truth?” Carlson said. “There are not many of those.”
Carlson singled out Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Children Health Defense’s chairman-on-leave who is seeking the Democratic nomination for U.S. president, as one of the few truth-telling public figures.
“It’s nice to have a truth-teller around,” Carlson said. “It’s helpful because suddenly the stakes are very high.” He added:
“Kennedy knew early that the COVID vaccines were both ineffective and potentially dangerous, and he said so in public to the extent he was allowed.
“Science has since proven Robert F. Kennedy Jr. right — unequivocally right. But Kennedy was not rewarded for this. He was vilified. He was censored.”
Carlson — who later on his show interviewed Kennedy — said mainstream media channels other than Fox News “maligned” Kennedy for his skepticism of the COVID-19 products.
“The other channels took hundreds of millions of dollars from Big Pharma companies and then they shilled for their sketchy products on the air — and as they did that, they maligned anyone who was skeptical of those products,” he said.
Carlson pointed out that Kennedy and his father, Robert F. Kennedy — who sought the U.S. presidency 55 years ago — said things “you weren’t supposed to say” and were “hated” by some for their honesty.
For instance, Kennedy Sr. spoke out against the Vietnam War because “he believed — with a lot of evidence — that it was not helping the United States in any way,” Carlson said.
Similarly, Carlson showed his viewers a clip from Kennedy Jr.’s 2024 Democratic presidential campaign announcement speech, in which Kennedy said the U.S. government’s involvement in Ukraine appears to be “prolonging” the war rather than “shortening” it.
Carlson also showed clips from mainstream media outlets’ coverage of Kennedy’s April 19 announcement, in which news commentators called him “extreme” and “dangerous.”
“Notice,” Carlson said, “not there, not anywhere is a point-by-point rebuttal of his [Kennedy’s] actual points.”
“They never engage him on the actual facts. They can’t — they would lose. Instead, they impugn his character,” he said.
Now that Kennedy is Biden’s leading primary opponent, Carlson said, the media’s message to him is, “shut up — you’re not allowed to talk.”
Carlson said he did not find Kennedy to be “extreme,” but instead “rational and calm and well deliberated.”
“He [Kennedy Jr.] is deeply insightful and — above all else — he is honest, no matter what you think of the substance of what he says,” Carlson added.
More vaccines and fake meat to appease the biotech monster
By Guy Hatchard | TCW Defending Freedom | April 26, 2023
Science Minister George Freeman has announced a record £52billion investment in public research and development over the next three years. That is £775 for every man, woman and child in Britain. So what are they spending your money on? You probably guessed it: the first grants under the scheme are being made to produce more biotech vaccines and industrial quantities of fake meat.
Freeman announced that traditional agriculture is inadequate to the task of feeding the world. Accordingly, the newly funded Cellular Agriculture Manufacturing Hub will spearhead the development of processes to produce key food groups such as proteins sustainably and cost-effectively to feed a growing global population.
The Hub will undertake ‘upstream engagement with a wide range of stakeholders including consumers, food producers and retailers to promote transformational food development’. Translation: very soon the government will be rewriting our dinner menus.
According to Professor Marianne Ellis of the University of Bath, who will benefit from the first funding award, ‘This would enable production of foodstuffs and the vast array of co-products that are the same as traditional products produced in a system similar to brewing.’
Bearing in mind that no specific processes have yet been developed or their products tasted, the claim of similarity with traditional food and the analogy with the brewing of beer stumbles at the first hurdle. In fact what is being proposed is biotechnology on an industrial scale using processes which are already known to be energy-hungry, risk-intensive and subject to genetic contamination.
In my book Your DNA Diet, I discuss research illustrating the value of natural food based on DNA to maintain our health. We have enjoyed a co-evolutionary relationship with these foods for millions of years. Genetically processed foods will not have this same relationship. Industrial production of such foods will also change the relationship of consumers with producers, placing food supply in the hands of giant corporations.
The second recipient of government research largesse will be the Future Vaccines Manufacturing Hub led by Professor Dame Sarah Gilbert at Oxford University and Professor Martina Micheletti at University College London. This group is a follow-on from the Oxford University-AstraZeneca collaboration which gave us a Covid vaccine that is no longer used around the world possibly because of the danger of adverse effects.
The Vaccine Hub intends ‘to make it possible to undertake mass programmes of non-invasive vaccination’. For your reference, non-invasive delivery systems currently under development include oral and nasal vaccines, and vaccines built into foods.
The Vaccine Hub will develop cellular-level technologies. As we have noted previously, the basis of life as we know it is the cell. Genetically altering cellular processes is inherently mutagenic and undermines the very basis of biostability and health.
The press release from UK Research and Innovation announcing these new grants is headlined: ‘Vaccine and food manufacturing hubs will save lives and cut carbon’. It makes ample use of phrases designed to sound reassuring such as ‘Food production revolutionised’, ’A hub for health and life’, and so on. The release also reassures us that Covid vaccines have been ‘game-changing’ – they certainly have, but not in the way originally intended. The current high level of excess deaths in the UK and elsewhere, disproportionately affecting those in receipt of Covid vaccines, tells its own story.
The hubs are each associated with a long list of private-sector partners from the biotechnology industry. To facilitate the commercialisation of biotech products, the UK government is loosening the regulations requiring the public to be informed about what they are eating. The Genetic Technology Act, which passed into law last Thursday, ‘removes plants and animals produced through precision breeding technologies from regulatory requirements applicable in England to the environmental release and marketing of GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms)’.
The key change here is merely semantic: genetic manipulation is now described as a ‘precise’ process and will thereby escape regulation and labelling. Watch Dr Michael Antoniou of King’s College London discuss the dangers of gene crop deregulation in the new Act.
New UK policies appear to be at least in part a response to the huge pressure exerted by scientists, academic institutions and biotech firms on the government to continue the massive level of funding they enjoyed during the pandemic. All this is being undertaken in the absence of any credible official evaluation of the impact, advisability, cost and safety of pandemic policies. It is of note that independent evaluations such as this paper are pointing to huge mistakes, which the new grants appear poised to repeat. A form of madness has gripped our politicians as they rush ahead without bothering to inform themselves of potential dire consequences.
NZ MAN FACING JAIL TIME FOR PEACEFUL PROTEST
The Highwire with Del Bigtree | April 20, 2023
When New Zealand Civil liberties activist, Billy Te Kahika, was arrested in 2021 at a peaceful freedom rally in Auckland, he had no idea the legal battle he would face. Currently out on appeal, hear about the shocking 4 month jail sentence he’s facing for simply organizing a peaceful protest.
I’m Filing Suit Against Keith Ellison and the Board of Medical Practice
Dr. Scott Jensen | April 19, 2023
Government regulatory agencies are not weapons to be used against political opponents. Dr. Jensen is preparing a lawsuit to vindicate the rights of physicians and other health care professionals, cosmetologists, and anyone else who recognizes this grave threat to free speech and the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution.
SUPPORT OUR LAWSUIT: https://www.givesendgo.com/scottjensen
The purpose of the suit will be twofold: First, to aid the courts in further drawing the line between protected speech and professional conduct subject to regulation. Second, we will hold accountable those responsible for the outrageous weaponization of government against Dr. Jensen and countless other professionals with the courage to speak out against censors and regulators run amok.
After being an outspoken voice during the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Jensen had his medical license threatened 5 times by political activists who leveraged Minnesota’s Board of Medical Practice against him. These attacks on speech continued throughout his campaign for Governor of the State of Minnesota.
Others around the country lost their livelihoods and had their professional careers threatened because of similar government overreach. Their freedom to speak freely and question authority was crushed and their recourse was oftentimes nonexistent. We are pursuing this lawsuit to vindicate Dr. Scott Jensen and to set a precedent so that ALL healthcare professionals and beyond will have free speech protections.
Broken Trust
Can the relationship with state healthcare ever be repaired?
Health Advisory & Recovery Team | April 21, 2023
For many people, the words ‘trust the experts’ now invoke a sort of pavlovian horror response. This trope serves as a visceral reminder of 3 years’ constant gaslighting for daring to question the narrative, the relentless stream of celebrity medics repeating the ‘safe and effective’ mantra and the bullying and coercion to take a ‘vaccine’ that millions of people didn’t feel they needed or wanted. It had all the hallmarks of an abusive relationship. Core medical ethical principles were destroyed, the weaknesses of protocolised top-down healthcare delivery were exposed and of course there was direct harm to individuals. Is it any wonder that a great many of the British public never want to hear the words ‘our NHS’ ever again, cringing as they remember the weekly clapping ritual.
An inclination to throw the baby out with the bathwater is now a strong instinct for many who feel completely let down. If the relationship with state healthcare stands any chance of being repaired, harms enacted in recent years need to be properly acknowledged and people’s concerns carefully listened to. The uncomfortable question as to whether the NHS can function in its current incarnation should be aired. For a lot of people a ‘great reset’ of the medical profession would be a necessary condition of return. Indeed, many medics wonder if they can remain in a system that is clearly failing those it is supposed to serve.
As one doctor with decades of experience laments:
“If I continue to practise conveyor belt and recipe book medicine under the current system, the benefit is only to the Medical Business Model; hospitals, laboratories, diagnostic centres and the pharmaceutical industry all benefit in a model designed to keep the patient sick.”
Another consultant doctor reflecting on the past few years, had the following comments:
“The most odious revelation to me was when early on the directive came forth forbidding doctors, on pain of GMC punishment, to use their own initiative to treat a Covid patient with any other substance, drug, or agent whatsoever than that which was approved officially (of course at this point there was nothing in that category), save only for using it in an officially approved Clinical Trial. I felt utterly betrayed as a doctor. The whole essence of the doctor-patient relationship was abruptly abolished. We were now in the CMO-patient relationship. My role was merely to be a minor minion box-ticking algorithm slave. No clinical discretion. No discussion along the principles of best interest of the patient with informed consent. Oh no, that’s old hat! I saw the moral authority and overshadowing support of the entire medical establishment wither up like Jonah’s gourd.”
Multiple articles are now appearing reporting that morale for those working within the NHS is at an all-time low.1,2,3 One can only imagine that bearing witness to some of the most inhumane policies in NHS history for 3 years straight has not helped. Add to this the long hours on low pay, with increasingly limited time to spend with patients due to unmanageable waiting lists, and you have a perfect recipe for abysmal job satisfaction. Do we really want those in charge of our healthcare decisions to be forced to work under these conditions?
So now to the question of trusting medical advice that has been co-opted, protocolised and politicised, not to mention censored and distorted by financial interests. The UKHSA is supposed to be the government gatekeeper that is ‘responsible for protecting every member of every community from the impact of infectious diseases’. Just yesterday the agency was still urging people on Twitter to go and get their first and second covid vaccine. This is now so ludicrously at odds with the available evidence that any sane member of the public should conclude that the regulatory system in the UK is officially broken. It is worth taking the time to read the comments under the tweet to see that the public’s natural survival instincts seem to have well and truly kicked in. This random selection suggests the UKHSA may need to read the room:
If you tuned in to the Twitter Space on Sunday ‘Are mRNA injections causing cancers?’ hosted by Dr Kat Lindley and Neil Oliver, you would have heard a heated exchange between consultant orthopaedic surgeon Dr Ahmad Malik and London-based oncology professor, Angus Dalgleish. Dr Malik wanted to get to the bottom of why Professor Dalgleish felt moved to write an article advocating for young people to take the covid vaccine in July 2021 entitled:
What every young person who fears the jab MUST be told: Vaccine expert ANGUS DALGLEISH dismantles beliefs that have seen rates stall among the 18-30s
Well that seems like a pretty clear message. Get the damned vaccine.
Given his background in vaccine research, Prof Dalgleish would have been very clear that long-term safety data is not an optional extra when injecting young people or pregnant women. When questioned, Prof Dalgleish revealed that he did not actually write the article himself. There was a phone interview with a Daily Mail journalist, which he described as ‘bullying’ and the article was an entirely perverted representation of that call. Nonetheless, his name appears alongside the article with the effect that the message therein appears to come from a distinguished professor of medicine.
Professor Dalgleish dramatically revised his position on covid injections after his son suffered acute myocarditis following the shots. Whilst it is obviously a good thing that he was courageous and open-minded enough to change his stance, it is very worrying that he is still an outlier. One can count on one hand the working medics willing to speak out on this issue. And it begs the question, what if Professor Dalgleish’s son hadn’t been injured? Would there have been more advertorials in the Daily Mail with his name alongside? Why are journalists ‘bullying’ through a particular narrative on medical matters? This rather suggests they have a particular agenda. As one Dr Roger Hodkinson, an eminent Cambridge educated pathologist says, “when politics plays medicine, that’s a very dangerous game.” Notably Dr Hodkinson is now only available to view on Bitchute, having been deplatformed from the more mainstream channels such as YouTube. More media censorship of highly qualified counter-narrative voices.
Working for a monopoly such as the NHS, with a mortgage and a family to feed, one might well find medical ethics end up somewhere below personal financial obligations. This is regrettable but understandable. Medics are human beings. Perhaps it is the fault of an increasingly secular society that somehow medics have been elevated to demi-gods and as a result their word is often deemed infallible. However, many more people now realise that this is simply not the case. If this disordered power dynamic is to be realigned, certain conditions need to be met:
- A genuine admission that mistakes were made. Not that ‘The Science™’ changed. It did not change and millions of people who resisted the military grade psy-op are fully aware of this;
- An overhaul of medical training so that clinicians do not feel afraid to speak out when they see something is wrong, and in fact should be encouraged to do so;
- The gaslighting must stop altogether. Those who have suffered injury or trauma need to be given proper air time and have their concerns addressed. They also need to be properly and fairly compensated.
- Open and unfettered discussions need to take place, allowing medics to speak freely about what has happened during the past 3 years, identifying with honesty and integrity what must not be repeated.
Taxpayers spend in excess of £220 billion per annum on the NHS. Weekly excess deaths are presently consistently way above average, whereas after a period of high mortality in the frail and elderly it should be well below normal levels. The public (and indeed the staff) deserve better. If this is impossible, perhaps the entire system needs to be completely reimagined.
Footnotes
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From the Archives
Wartime internment camps in Australia
National Archives of Australia
World War I
During World War I, for security reasons the Australian Government pursued a comprehensive internment policy against enemy aliens living in Australia.
Initially only those born in countries at war with Australia were classed as enemy aliens, but later this was expanded to include people of enemy nations who were naturalised British subjects, Australian-born descendants of migrants born in enemy nations and others who were thought to pose a threat to Australia’s security.
Australia interned almost 7,000 people during World War I, of whom about 4,500 were enemy aliens and British nationals of German ancestry already resident in Australia.
Records of World War I internment camps
World War II
During World War II, Australian authorities established internment camps for three reasons – to prevent residents from assisting Australia’s enemies, to appease public opinion and to house overseas internees sent to Australia for the duration of the war.
Unlike World War I, the initial aim of internment during the later conflict was to identify and intern those who posed a particular threat to the safety or defence of the country. As the war progressed, however, this policy changed and Japanese residents were interned en masse. In the later years of the war, Germans and Italians were also interned on the basis of nationality, particularly those living in the north of Australia. In all, just over 20 per cent of all Italians resident in Australia were interned. … continue
Blog Roll
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