Report Linking Fluoride to Lower IQ in Children Made Public After CDC, HHS Tried to Block It
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | March 16, 2023
The National Toxicology Program (NTP) on Wednesday released a draft report linking prenatal and childhood fluoride exposure to reduced IQ in children, after public health officials tried for almost a year to block its publication.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) initially blocked the NTP from releasing the report, according to emails obtained via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
But a court order stemming from a lawsuit filed by Food and Water Watch against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) forced the report’s release this week.
The NTP, an interagency program run by HHS that researches and reports on environmental toxins, conducted a six-year systematic review to assess scientific studies on fluoride exposure and potential neurodevelopmental and cognitive health effects in humans.
The report, containing a monograph and a meta-analysis, went through two rounds of peer review by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Comments from reviewers and HHS and NTP’s responses also were included in the report released Wednesday.
According to its website, the NTP “removed the hazardous classification of fluoride” in response to comments in the peer-review process. Yet, the report states:
“Our meta-analysis confirms results of previous meta-analyses and extends them by including newer, more precise studies with individual-level exposure measures.
“The data support a consistent inverse association between fluoride exposure and children’s IQ …
“The results were robust to stratifications by risk of bias, gender, age group, outcome assessment, study location, exposure timing, and exposure type (including both drinking water and urinary fluoride).”
“These findings fly in the face of the empty, unscientific claims U.S. health officials have propagated for years, namely that water fluoridation is safe and beneficial,” said Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Children’s Health Defense chairman and chief litigation counsel. “It’s past time to eliminate this neurotoxin from our water supply.”
The controversial report will play a key role in determining the outcome of a lawsuit brought in 2017 by several nonprofits against the EPA to end fluoridation of drinking water, plaintiffs’ attorney Michael Connett told The Defender.
“We had to fight hard to have this report even made public,” Connett said. “They [CDC and HHS] buried this. If they had gotten their way, this report would have never even seen the light of day,” Connett said.
Since the trial began in 2020, U.S. District Judge Edward Chen has been waiting for the NTP to complete a systematic review of fluoride’s neurotoxicity before ruling on the case.
Groups like the American Dental Association publicly pressured the NTP to “exclude any neurotoxin claims” from the reports.
Connett said during the trial, the EPA repeatedly claimed that the plaintiffs’ allegations about toxicity could not be verified because there was no “systematic review.”
The documents released Wednesday fill that gap.
Connett said:
“So now what do we have? We have a systematic review by one of the pioneering, leading, most authoritative research groups on toxicology in the world.
“They just completed a systematic review that took them six years to complete, so if that’s not enough to demonstrate a hazard under the toxic substances control act, then how would any citizen group ever be able to meet the standard?”
The findings: fluoride and lowered IQ in children
According to the NTP report:
“The current bodies of experimental animal studies and human mechanistic evidence do not provide clarity on the association between fluoride exposure and cognitive or neurodevelopmental human health effects.”
Yet, the report’s summary contradicts this statement by summarizing the evidence informing this conclusion, stating that nearly all studies examined for this literature review found evidence of cognitive or developmental issues associated with fluoride.
According to the report, 8 of the 9 “high-quality studies examining cognitive or neurodevelopmental outcomes reported associations with fluoride exposure.”
Of the 19 high-quality studies assessing the association between fluoride and IQ in children, 18 reported an association between higher fluoride exposure and lower IQ in children. Forty-six of the 53 low-quality studies also found evidence of that association.
The meta-analysis also states:
“The body of evidence from studies on adults is also limited and provides low confidence that fluoride exposure is associated with adverse effects on adult cognition. There is, however, a large body of evidence on IQ effects in children.”
The monograph and meta-analysis found that fluoride exposure at levels equivalent to 1.5 mg/L is associated with lower IQ in children. The abstract concludes:
“This review finds, with moderate confidence, that higher fluoride exposure (e.g., represented by populations whose total fluoride exposure approximates or exceeds the World Health Organization Guidelines for Drinking-water Quality of 1.5 mg/L of fluoride) is consistently associated with lower IQ in children.”
Levels of fluoride found in drinking water in the U.S. are typically 0.7 mg/L, which is lower than the 1.5 mg/L levels found to be neurotoxic by the reports.
On that basis, HHS’ review of the reports recommended the NTP revise its assessment such that, “all conclusory statements in this document should be explicit that any findings from the included studies only apply to water fluoride concentrations above 1.5 mg/L.”
The NTP responded:
“We do not agree with this comment. Our assessment considers fluoride exposures from all sources, not just water.
As discussed in the pre-publication 2022 NTP Monograph, because fluoride is also found in certain foods, dental products, some pharmaceuticals, and other sources, individual behaviors are likely an important determinant of actual exposures.”
Rick North, former CEO of the American Cancer Society’s Oregon division and Fluoride Action Network board member told The Defender that “people consume large amounts of fluoride through tea and other drinks and processed foods made with fluoridated water, not to mention pesticide ingestion and fluoride from air pollution.”
He also said that people’s fluoride exposure can depend on how much water they drink.
“Think about it,” North said. “Your level of risk depends upon, incredibly, how thirsty you are. That’s how absurd the entire premise of water fluoridation is,” he said.
The NTP confirmed that people exposed to levels of fluoride lower than 1.5 mg/L in the water system could have high levels of fluoride in their systems. It stated:
“Even in the optimally fluoridated cities [fluoridated at 0.7 mg/L] in Canada studied by Green et al. (2019), individual exposure levels, as documented by repeated urinary measurements, suggest widely varying total exposures from water combined with fluoride from other sources.”
It added, “our moderate confidence conclusion is primarily based on studies with total fluoride exposure that approximates or exceeds what is generally associated with consumption of optimally fluoridated water [0.7 mg/L] in the United States.”
“We have stressed in our monograph that our conclusions apply to total fluoride exposures rather than to exposures exclusively through drinking water.”
“What the NTP is pointing to here is that in some communities, where the dose of fluoride in the water is 0.7 mg/L, the NTP has found levels of fluoride found to be associated with lower IQ,” Connett told The Defender.
Also, different people have different risk levels, he said. Pregnant women and bottle-fed babies, for example, are some of the populations at highest risk.
On this point, the NTP responded to a different HHS critique, writing, “We have no basis on which to state that our findings are not relevant to some children or pregnant people in the United States.”
“The margin of safety here just doesn’t exist — it is precariously small,” Connett said. He added that the lawsuit is “basically a risk assessment of fluoride.”
Under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which is the law at stake in the lawsuit, the EPA carries out risk assessments for potential toxins.
To do a risk assessment, the EPA first identifies a hazard and determines at what dose — what level of human exposure — that hazard harms human health.
Then the agency determines in a given case whether the margin between the existing hazard levels and the human exposure levels is unacceptably close, which would make a toxin pose a risk to human health.
Connett said that in EPA’s previous risk assessments for other chemicals, such as methylene chloride or bromopropane, evaluated according to the 2020 risk evaluation method that guides this case, the agency found the hazard level exceeds the human exposure level by much higher margins — “usually in a range of ten to 20 times higher,” yet it has deemed those chemicals to present an unreasonable risk to human health.
In other words, the substances were found to be toxic to humans at levels significantly higher than what people may be exposed to in regular use, yet the EPA determined them to be risks.
When it makes that determination, the EPA must then take steps to mitigate the risk.
That can also be the finding in this case. According to a pre-trial document, both sides in the case agreed to the “undisputed fact” that the “EPA does not require that human exposure levels exceed a known adverse effect level to make an unreasonable risk determination under TSCA.”
The NTP documents also raised flags about the implications of seemingly small neurotoxic effects:
“Research on other neurotoxicants has shown that subtle shifts in IQ at the population level can have a profound impact on the number of people who fall within the high and low ranges of the population’s IQ distribution.
“For example, a 5-point decrease in a population’s IQ would nearly double the number of people classified as intellectually disabled.”
Top HHS and CDC officials tried to ‘water down’ and block the report
In 2016, a group of six nonprofit organizations and several individuals petitioned the EPA to end fluoridation of drinking water in the U.S. based on evidence of health risks associated with fluoride, namely neurotoxicity.
The EPA rejected the petition.
In response, Food and Water Watch, Fluoride Action Network and others sued the EPA in 2017, seeking an end to water fluoridation.
The plaintiffs argued that water fluoridation violates the EPA’s Toxic Substances Control Act and that fluoride is neurotoxic and lowers children’s IQ.
They based their initial claims on dozens of studies and reviews demonstrating fluoride’s neurotoxicity. Studies have also linked fluoride to a variety of other health risks in both children and adults, and evidence shows it to be an endocrine disruptor.
The EPA denied water fluoridation causes harm.
A seven-day trial took place in federal court in San Francisco in June 2020, but Judge Chen put the proceedings on hold pending the release of NTP’s systematic review of research available on the neurotoxic effects of fluoride.
The report, slated for release in May 2022, was delayed several times and sent for several rounds of peer review.
“The people on the [NTP] committee were experts in their fields who put years into this study, going back and forth with one external review after another,” North said. “You couldn’t ask for more peer review than what it already had. There were constant attempts to delay it, to water it down.”
In late October 2022, Judge Chen ended the stay on the NTP review, ruling that the parties involved could view the NTP review in its unpublished form to better inform his final decision.
However, due to concerns from the EPA, he also ruled the report could not be made public unless the NTP released it.
In December 2022, the plaintiffs filed several exhibits with Judge Chen, including a redacted version of the NTP’s assessment of fluoride’s neurotoxicity and internal emails between the CDC and the NTP obtained through FOIA demonstrating that HHS blocked the release of the long-delayed review, the plaintiffs argued.
The documents showed that on May 11, NTP notified the agencies that it was going to release the report on May 18, but the CDC opposed the release.
Emails also indicated that HHS Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine was going to “get involved,” and, “the May 18 release date for [the monograph] is almost certainly not going to happen,” the Defender reported.
Connett said:
“It was only because we were tipped off by someone with knowledge on the inside that something was amiss that we went and did extensive FOIA requests and we were able to get documents showing that the NTP scientists considered this report to be complete and ready for publication last May, May of 2022.”
North said it was clear the agencies were blocking the release of the report, which was ready for publication.
“This was a clear case of stonewalling,” North said. “The National Toxicology Program, after over six years of research and numerous outside peer reviews, had completed its state-of-the-science report.”
Connett added:
“We have emails showing that Levine is the one who put it on hold. Rachel Levine said not to publish this report at this time. Then we got the FOIA emails showing that and NTP said they may not publish this [the report] at all. They may not publish it in final form but we did get them to agree to at least post a draft report. They will consider it a draft report.”
On January 20, Judge Chen denied the EPA’s request to add another six-month period to the stay he lifted in his October ruling.
The monograph and meta-analysis released yesterday on the NTP’s website are both labeled “draft.”
“Unfortunately, fluoridation promoters and high-level government officials have continued to label it a draft,” North said. “It wasn’t.”
Experts associated with the lawsuit against the EPA will now analyze and interpret the report in future hearings and then Judge Chen will rule.
The next hearing date is scheduled for April 11, 2023. At that time, the judge will set a date for the next phase of the trial.
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.
Why Doctors Push COVID-19 Vaccination so Hard
By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH | Courageous Discourse | December 7, 2022
Patients commonly ask me why their other doctors push COVID-19 vaccination so hard still to this day with alarming safety statistics, loss of efficacy, and now a complete lack of human trial data with the bivalent boosters?
The answer may come by following a money trail from HHS and CDC called “COVID-19 Community Corps” that early in 2021 made undisclosed individual payments to hundreds of organizations to promote mass vaccination. There were notable medical groups including the American Medical Association, American Association of Family Physicians, American Association of Nurse Practitioners, American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Association of Pediatrics, and the American Medical Student Association.
More investigation is likely to reveal that federal money received was temporally linked to e-mail blasts, town hall meetings, and many other activities pushing mass vaccination.
Could COVID-19 Community Corps money to the AMA have been the reason why the AMA launched its campaign to “abolish” the use of ivermectin in 2021 so the public would be panicked into taking more shots?
How could the pediatric associations take federal money before the clinical trials for their patients were completed or the vaccines approved via EUA?
Did they promote the vaccines to pediatricians before clinical trial results were known?
Finally, how could federal dollars flow to gynecologists/obstetricians when pregnant women and those of childbearing potential where excluded from randomized trials reported just a few months before the HHS initiative?
These broad acts of public bribery, corruption, and vaccine racketeering worked to put millions of lives danger as we learned about the risks of COVID-19 vaccination in 2021.
As we sit here today, the CDC VAERS system through November 25, 2022, is reporting 15,508 US deaths after COVID-19 vaccination, 22% occurred within 96 hours of the shot. There have been 15,505 Americans disabled, 9266 with heart damage, and 356,269 office visits, urgent care encounters, or hospitalizations attributed to vaccine side effects.
Never again can we allow our public health agencies use unchecked financial power to promote any medication or vaccine to healthcare providers. Corruption and indoctrination are deadly.
Biden’s HHS and CDC Paid Screen Writers and Comedians To Mock the Unvaccinated
By Baxter Dmitry | NEWS PUNCH | October 8, 2022
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have been exposed running the most disturbing and elaborate propaganda campaign in living memory. Screen writers, comedians, influencers and church leaders, among others, were recruited and paid to promote Covid-19 vaccines to the masses, while ridiculing and shaming those who refuse the jab.
Judicial Watch has nailed it yet again, suing HHS to acquire a treasure trove of documents that reveal the world’s most exhaustive and heavily funded propaganda campaign to try to convince the oblivious masses to be injected with an experimental mRNA concoction.
“Judicial Watch Uncovers Biden Administration Propaganda Plan to Push COVID Vaccine,” reads the Judicial Watch press release: Judicial Watch announced today that it received 249 pages of records from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) detailing the extensive media plans for a propaganda campaign to push the COVID-19 vaccine. One document in the released records was entitled, “PEC (Public Education Campaign) Plan April 19 – May 31 2021” and featured all the following bullet points and more:
- Vaccine engagement package to all entertainment talent and management agencies
- Vaccine engagement package to all media companies and show producers
- Outreach to major culture event producers
- Produce HHS question-and-answer videos featuring local Black doctors discussing the vaccines, how they work, and why the public should get vaccinated
- Request that Tom Brady create a video with his parents encouraging vaccination
- Create custom partnerships with the social media platforms with algorithms to hit the audience
- Launch Hollywood comedy writers video content
- Work with YouTube on an original special about vaccinations targeted to young people
- Work with Instagram to produce a series about vaccines for @Instagram (the largest social media account in the world, 387 million followers)
- Request major TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram influences to create videos of themselves being vaccinated
- Request a vaccination special on Christian Broadcast Network featur[ing] Evangelical leaders
- Request that the major live TV entertainment shows feature hosts being vaccinated on air (ex: the hosts of The Voice)
- Request that the TV morning and daytime talk shows feature special vaccination reunion moments with everyday Americans
- Convene an editorial meeting with the publishers of Catholic newspapers and newsletters across the country
- Place a trusted messenger on the Joe Rogan Show and Barstool Sports to promote vaccination
- Work with the NFL, NASCAR, MLB, CMA to request they create content with their talent and release through their broadcast and social channels
As Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton stated, “These records show a disturbing and massive campaign by the Biden administration to propagandize and politicize the controversial COVID vaccine. It seems as if the entire entertainment industry was an agent for the government!”
CONFIRMED: HHS and CDC paid comedians and screen writers to mock the unvaccinated
These documents confirm what many of us have long suspected: That HHS and CDC paid stand-up comedians to mock the unvaccinated in their comedy routines. Screen writers and production companies were also bribed to push vaccine propaganda in their episodes, and social media influencers were paid off to pimp the untested jabs.
Part of the Covid-19 stimulus push included a cool $1 billion to the CDC for propaganda payoffs and bribes. They used this money to flood tech platforms, Hollywood writers and influencers with dark money, and in return they had to sell their soul by promoting the mRNA jabs.
Hollywood has always been in on the depopulation agenda
This was all taxpayer money, used to brainwash Americans with a monstrous, coordinated vaccine propaganda campaign coordinated by HHS and the CDC.
At the same time, Big Tech targeted anyone who disagreed with the propaganda, banning them from platforms and destroying their reputations. All because they dared to take a stand against the propaganda.
The media was in on it the whole time, of course, and they refuse to report on this bombshell HHS document even now. They’ve been complicit the entire time. Watch:
Fauci’s Red Guards: Lawsuit Reveals Vast Federal Censorship Army
By Michael P Senger | The New Normal | September 2, 2022
One aspect of dictatorships that citizens of democratic nations often find puzzling is how the population can be convinced to support such dystopian policies. How do they get people to run those concentration camps? How do they find people to take food from starving villagers? How can they get so many people to support policies that, to any outsider, are so needlessly destructive, cruel, and dumb?
The answer lies in forced preference falsification. When those who speak up in principled opposition to a dictator’s policies are punished and forced into silence, those with similar opinions are forced into silence as well, or even forced to pretend they support policies in which they do not actually believe. Emboldened by this facade of unanimity, supporters of the regime’s policies, or even those who did not previously have strong opinions, become convinced that the regime’s policies are just and good—regardless of what those policies actually are—and that those critical of them are even more deserving of punishment.
One of history’s great masters of forced preference falsification was Chairman Mao Zedong. As László Ladány recalled, Mao’s decades-long campaign to remold the people of China in his own image began as soon as he took power after the Chinese Civil War.
By the fall of 1951, 80 percent of all Chinese had had to take part in mass accusation meetings, or to watch organized lynchings and public executions. These grim liturgies followed set patterns that once more were reminiscent of gangland practices: during these proceedings, rhetorical questions were addressed to the crowd, which, in turn, had to roar its approval in unison—the purpose of the exercise being to ensure collective participation in the murder of innocent victims; the latter were selected not on the basis of what they had done, but of who they were, or sometimes for no better reason than the need to meet the quota of capital executions which had been arbitrarily set beforehand by the Party authorities. From that time on, every two or three years, a new “campaign” would be launched, with its usual accompaniment of mass accusations, “struggle meetings,” self-accusations, and public executions… Remolding the minds, “brainwashing” as it is usually called, is a chief instrument of Chinese communism, and the technique goes as far back as the early consolidation of Mao’s rule in Yan’an.
This decades-long campaign of forced preference falsification reached its apex during the Cultural Revolution, in which Mao deputized radical youths across China, called Red Guards, to purge all vestiges of capitalism and traditional society and impose Mao Zedong Thought as China’s dominant ideology. Red Guards attacked anyone they perceived as Mao’s enemies, burned books, persecuted intellectuals, and engaged in the systematic destruction of their country’s own history, demolishing China’s relics en masse.
Through this method of forced preference falsification, any mass of people can be made to support virtually any policy, no matter how destructive or inimical to the interests of the people. Avoiding this spiral of preference falsification is therefore why freedom of speech is such a central tenet of the Enlightenment, and why it is given such primacy in the First Amendment of the US Constitution. No regime in American history has ever previously had the power to force preference falsification by systematically and clandestinely silencing those critical of its policies.
Until now. As it turns out, an astonishing new release of discovery documents in Missouri v. Biden—in which NCLA Legal is representing plaintiffs including Jay Bhattacharya, Martin Kulldorff, and Aaron Kheriaty against the Biden administration for violations of free speech during Covid—reveal a vast federal censorship army, with more than 50 federal officials across at least 11 federal agencies having secretly coordinated with social media companies to censor private speech.
Secretary Mayorkas of DHS commented that the federal Government’s efforts to police private speech on social media are occurring “across the federal enterprise.” It turns out that this statement is true, on a scale beyond what Plaintiffs could ever have anticipated. The limited discovery produced so far provides a tantalizing snapshot into a massive, sprawling federal “Censorship Enterprise,” which includes dozens of federal officials across at least eleven federal agencies and components identified so far, who communicate with social-media platforms about misinformation, disinformation, and the suppression of private speech on social media—all with the intent and effect of pressuring social-media platforms to censor and suppress private speech that federal officials disfavor.
The scale of this federal censorship enterprise appears to be far beyond what anyone imagined, involving even senior White House officials. The government is protecting Anthony Fauci and other high level officials by refusing to reveal documents related to their involvement.
The discovery provided so far demonstrates that this Censorship Enterprise is extremely broad, including officials in the White House, HHS, DHS, CISA, the CDC, NIAID, and the Office of the Surgeon General; and evidently other agencies as well, such as the Census Bureau, the FDA, the FBI, the State Department, the Treasury Department, and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. And it rises to the highest levels of the U.S. Government, including numerous White House officials… In their initial response to interrogatories, Defendants initially identified forty-five federal officials at DHS, CISA, the CDC, NIAID, and the Office of the Surgeon General (all within only two federal agencies, DHS and HHS), who communicate with social-media platforms about misinformation and censorship.
Federal officials are coordinating to censor private speech across all major social media platforms.
The third-party social-media platforms, moreover, have revealed that more federal agencies are involved. Meta, for example, has disclosed that at least 32 federal officials—including senior officials at the FDA, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, and the White House—have communicated with Meta about content moderation on its platforms, many of whom were not disclosed in response to Plaintiffs’ interrogatories to Defendants. YouTube disclosed eleven federal officials engaged in such communications, including officials at the Census Bureau and the White House, many of whom were also not disclosed by Defendants. Twitter disclosed nine federal officials, including senior officials at the State Department who were not previously disclosed by Defendants.
Federal officials are granted privileged status by social media companies for the purpose of censoring speech on their platforms, and officials hold weekly meetings on what to censor.
These federal bureaucrats are deeply embedded in a joint enterprise with social-media companies to procure the censorship of social-media speech. Officials at HHS routinely flag content for censorship, for example, by organizing weekly “Be On The Lookout” meetings to flag disfavored content, sending lengthy lists of examples of disfavored posts to be censored, serving as privileged “fact checkers” whom social-media platforms consult about censoring private speech, and receiving detailed reports from social-media companies about so-called “misinformation” and “disinformation” activities online, among others.
Social media companies have even set up secret, privileged channels to give federal officials expedited means to censor content on their platforms.
For example, Facebook trained CDC and Census Bureau officials on how to use a “Facebook misinfo reporting channel.” Twitter offered federal officials a privileged channel for flagging misinformation through a “Partner Support Portal.” YouTube has disclosed that it granted “trusted flagger” status to Census Bureau officials, which allows privileged and expedited consideration of their claims that content should be censored.
Many suspected that some coordination between social media companies and the federal government was occurring, but the breadth, depth, and coordination of this apparatus is far beyond what virtually anyone imagined. And the scale of this censorship apparatus raises troubling questions.
How could so many federal officials be convinced to engage in the clandestine censorship of opposition to tin-pot public health policies from China which have killed tens of thousands of young Americans and—let’s be honest—were never really that popular to begin with? The answer, I believe, is that high-level White House officials such as Anthony Fauci must have been simultaneously threatening social media companies if they did not comply with federal censorship demands, while also threatening entire federal bureaucracies if they did not toe the Party line.
By simultaneously threatening both the federal bureaucracy and social media companies, a handful of high-level officials could effectively transform the federal government into a sprawling censorship army reminiscent of Mao’s Red Guards, silencing any opposition to tin-pot public health policies with increasing detachment and certitude as this systematic silencing falsely convinced them that the regime’s policies were just and good. A few of these federal employees must have eventually let slip to the Republicans that this jawboning was taking place, which appears to have been how this suit began.
In plaintiff Aaron Kheriaty’s words:
Hyperbole and exaggeration have been common features on both sides of covid policy disputes. But I can say with all soberness and circumspection (and you, kind readers, will correct me if I am wrong here): this evidence suggests we are uncovering the most serious, coordinated, and large-scale violation of First Amendment free speech rights by the federal government’s executive branch in US history.
Michael P Senger is an attorney and author of Snake Oil: How Xi Jinping Shut Down the World.
Senators demand NIH, HHS preserve all related documents, communications, promise ‘full-throated investigation’ of Fauci
By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D. | The Defender | August 24, 2022
Two U.S. senators on Tuesday — the day after Dr. Anthony Fauci announced plans to leave his government posts in December — formally requested the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) preserve all documents and communications related to Fauci.
Fauci on Monday said he will retire as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and as chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden in December to pursue “the next chapter” of his career.
In a letter to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) demanded Becerra “immediately confirm” that HHS is preserving all records related to Fauci and Dr. Francis Collins, who was director of the NIH from August 2009 to December 2021.
“This request applies to all documents, records, memoranda, research, correspondence, or other communication or any portion thereof relevant to any involvement of Dr. Fauci or Dr. Collins,” the letter stated.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), in a letter to Lawrence Tabak, D.D.S., Ph.D., acting director of the NIH, asked Tabak to “ensure the preservation of all documents and communications within Dr. Fauci’s possession related to his tenure at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).”
Marshall stressed that it is “imperative” that all HHS workers are made aware of their “legal responsibilities to collect, retain, and preserve all documents, communications, and other records in accordance with federal law.”
He also reminded Tabak of his obligation, as the head of HHS, to ensure the preservation of all records and that any employee “who conceals, destroys, or attempts to conceal or destroy a federal record may be subject to fine and imprisonment for up to three years.”
Marshall pointed out that HHS previously refused to provide information to Congress:
“HHS and component agencies, including NIH in particular, continue to obstruct numerous congressional investigations through refusal to provide responsive information.
“In addition to withholding information from Congress, private parties note that NIH refuses to comply with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests until forced to do so by court order.”
Marshall went on to list “recent egregious examples” of NIH’s failure to meet record-keeping requirements and said that “even one” such example “should instigate immediate oversight action by HHS.”
Marshall’s letter outlined four “notable recent concerns” with NIH’s record-keeping, including past accusations that NIH destroyed records, potential conflicts of interest within the HHS Office of Inspector General, NIH’s practice of “self-policing” and NIH’s failure to ensure required reporting of clinical trial results.
‘Fauci’s resignation will not prevent full-throated investigation into origins of pandemic’ — Rand Paul
Paul, in his letter to Tabak, also emphasized the need to preserve NIH documents for investigation purposes.
Paul wrote:
“This information is critical to ensure that Congress has access to information necessary to conduct proper oversight regarding events that took place during Dr. Fauci’s tenure with the agency.
“Specifically, I request you preserve all records, e-mail, electronic documents, and data created by or shared with Dr. Fauci during his tenure at NIH that relate to COVID-19 including, but not limited to, NIAID-funded coronavirus research.”
In an email today, Paul told The Defender :
“Dr. Fauci misled the American people on public health guidance throughout the pandemic, lied to Congress under oath, and funneled tax dollars to fund dangerous research in communist China.
“The American people deserve transparency and accountability from the NIH regarding the COVID-19 pandemic regardless of Dr. Fauci’s future employment plans.”
On Monday, Paul tweeted, “Fauci’s resignation will not prevent a full-throated investigation into the origins of the pandemic. He will be asked to testify under oath regarding any discussions he participated in concerning the lab leak.”
For more than a year, Paul has advocated for a thorough investigation into the origins of COVID-19 and pushed for a criminal investigation of Fauci, whose NIAID research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China Paul suggested may have been involved in creating the virus.
Following up on a threat he made in mid-July of 2021, Rand sent an official criminal referral on Fauci to the U.S. Department of Justice on July 26, 2021.
Paul asked Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate Fauci for allegedly lying to Congress when he said the NIH “has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
The week before he sent the official criminal referral, Paul asked Fauci if he wanted to retract the statement he made to Congress during a May 11 hearing. Paul said, “Dr. Fauci, knowing that it is a crime to lie to Congress, do you wish to retract your statement of May 11, where you claimed the NIH never funded gain-of-function research and move on?”
Fauci replied he would not retract the statement and was adamant he never lied before Congress.
However, Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson said on June 2, 2021, that evidence showed Fauci was “implicated in the very pandemic he had been charged with fighting.”
Emails obtained by BuzzFeed via the Freedom of Information Act show “Fauci supported the grotesque and dangerous experiments that appeared to have made COVID possible,” Carlson said.
The emails, which date back to the early winter of 2020, show Fauci was worried the public would think COVID-19 originated at the Wuhan lab. Why?
“Possibly because Tony Fauci knew perfectly well he had funded gain-of-function experiments at that very same laboratory,” Carlson said.
The emails showed Fauci and other top virologists shared an article from ZeroHedge suggesting COVID-19 was a man-made bioweapon. Despite it being a “plausible explanation,” said Carlson, ZeroHedge was banned from social media.
Carlson said:
“Until recently, you were not allowed to suggest that COVID might be man-made. Why couldn’t you suggest that? The fact checkers wouldn’t allow it. Why wouldn’t they? Because Tony Fauci assured the tech monopolies that the coronavirus could not have been manmade. And so the tech monopolies shut down the topic.”
NIAID has, for years, provided grants to the EcoHealth Alliance and others to conduct gain-of-function research on coronaviruses, as The Defender previously reported.
In March 2021, the Wuhan lab deleted mentions of its collaboration with the NIAID/NIH and other American research partners from its website. It also deleted descriptions of gain-of-function experiments on the SARS virus, according to Dr. Joseph Mercola.
“The NIH/NIAID has funded GOF [gain-of-function] research to the tune of at least $41.7 million,” Mercola said. “Up until 2014, this research was conducted by Ralph Baric at the University of North Carolina.”
After 2014, when federal funding of gain-of-function research was banned, the research was funneled to the Wuhan lab via the EcoHealth Alliance.
Mercola added:
“In August 2020, the NIAID announced a five-year, $82-million investment in a new global network of Centers for Research in Emerging Infectious Diseases that will conduct GOF experiments to ‘determine what genetic or other changes make [animal] pathogens capable of infecting humans.’”
Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D., is an independent journalist and researcher based in Fairfield, Iowa.
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.
Download for Free: Robert F. Kennedy’s New Book — ‘A Letter to Liberals’
The CDC Failed, So Spin It Off and Make It More Powerful?
BY JEFFREY A. TUCKER | BROWNSTONE INSTITUTE | AUGUST 17, 2022
The failure of the CDC to manage Covid-19 was baked in from the first moments of its response. A government agency was never going to mitigate much less get rid of this sort of pathogen. This is because the virus never cared a whit about prestige degrees, job descriptions, big budgets, high-end connections, media agitprop, or polls. It went on its merry way, hit everyone, and immune systems adapted as they always have done.
The great experiment was an enormous flop.
The costs of the experiment we know: it is the catastrophe that Donald Henderson predicted it would be in 2006.
Thus does it make sense that the present overlords of the agency have admitted at least partially to have made some errors. The question is what were these errors. From the latest news concerning some impending shakeup, I see no evidence of any serious rethinking of the crazed and cockamamie lockdown orders it issued from March 2020 onward. Not even preposterous mandates like plexiglass at retail counters, two years of school closures, “six feet of distance,” one-way grocery aisles, band members in bubbles, mask mandates, and limits on how many people you can have in your home have prompted remorse.
Instead, every indication is that the CDC believes the real problem was that it did not have a high-enough budget and enough power. Plenty of lawmakers are willing to go along – not that anyone is asking them. Therefore, its tremendous pandemic powers need to be tweaked and invested mainly in a division known as the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, or ASPR.
Says The Washington Post :
The Biden administration is reorganizing the federal health department [HHS] to create an independent division that would lead the nation’s pandemic response, amid frustrations with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Joy!
The new head of this high-level division (same level as FDA/CDC) is Dawn O’Connell who has a background in literature (Vanderbilt) and law (Tulane), not science or medicine. She is a political appointee who took the reins as Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services for Preparedness and Response, as confirmed by the Senate in 2021. She is now elated to report that her division will be elevated to become just as important as the CDC and the FDA.
Here is her memo to the staff:
ASPR Team:
As you know firsthand, ASPR is at the forefront of many of HHS’s and the Biden-Harris Administration’s top priorities. Whether your work involves strengthening our core preparedness and response capabilities, tackling new and emerging challenges, or providing essential support services to the team, please know that the work that you do matters and that it is making a big difference.
In recognition of the tremendous value this team brings to the Department and the American people – and due to the increasing size and scope of what we do – I asked Secretary Becerra to consider making us an Operating Division and I am pleased to report that Secretary Becerra has made the critically important decision to elevate our team from a Staff Division to an Operating Division (OpDiv)!
This change allows ASPR to mobilize a coordinated national response more quickly and stably during future disasters and emergencies while equipping us with greater hiring and contracting capabilities. As an OpDiv, we are now in the same category as other large HHS teams with core operational responsibilities such as CDC, NIH, FDA, CMS, and ACF. This change is an important next step for our organization which has continued to grow and evolve since its creation in 2006 – the pace of which has quickened over the past year. This change is also a recognition of the good work you all have been and continue to do on behalf of the American People…
Along with this reclassification, moving forward we will be known as the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR). The adjustment to our name signals our elevation to an OpDiv, while maintaining the equity and brand recognition we have built with key internal and external stakeholders, particularly over the course of the pandemic.
Thus must we ask: what the heck is going on here? The Biden administration has no idea. Indeed the Washington Post reports that “some senior Biden administration officials said they were unaware of the plan to reorganize the department, which was approved by HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra and has been held close by his deputies.”
This point is crucial. This is how the administrative state works. It cares nothing for the elected officials who come and go. It moves on its own, fueled by money baked into the budgets and with power hardly anyone dares to challenge. There is never any accountability. There is only one path forward: more power. Elections be damned.
The most important part of the memo here is the idea of mobilizing a “coordinated national response.” It drove these people utterly bonkers that during the pandemic, several states went their own way. South Dakota never shut down. Georgia opened a month after the shutdowns. Florida and Texas were next. Finally all the states with Republican governors opened while most states with Democratic governors remained closed to some degree.
The empirical results are incredibly obvious. The open states performed as well and often better on disease demographics. Meanwhile their economies did not suffer nearly as much. The kids stayed in school. The churches functioned. There were live musical performances. The museums, libraries, and playgrounds opened. People are less traumatized.
The migration of people from blue to red tells the whole story. Masses of people fled the lockdown states for the open states.
A “coordinated national response” would make such federalist solutions impossible. Forget the 9th and 10th Amendments. These agencies and these people care nothing for them, nor actual science which would encourage a plethora of experiments in the management of a pathogen. These bureaucrats in Washington think they have all the answers, and they demand complete compliance.
Meanwhile, the CDC itself is being reorganized. But don’t be fooled by any appearance of contrition. They still have a legal appeal in process that would put a mask back on your face when traveling. The new agency to which some of its pandemic responsibilities will be transferred will have a 1,000-person staff to start, people paid the big bucks to sit around coming up with new ways to whip up disease panic and start another crackdown.
A better solution would be to abolish the CDC. States can handle all its responsibilities. It did not even exist until 1947. Its purpose was mosquito control, spraying a now-banned chemical (DDT) everywhere. These days we handle that by going to Home Depot.
The CDC as an agency grew out of the 1944 Public Health Services Act that permitted nationally ordered quarantines for the first time. The legislative history of that thing remains a mystery to me. Regardless, it is nowhere justified in the US Constitution. This act needs to go too. So too all the federal agencies to which it gave rise. This is the only real solution.
Certainly creating a new agency is not the answer. And note that ASPR has its roots in 2006 as an outgrowth of the Bush administration’s obsessive panic over bioterrorism. It was also the first year that anyone imagined that lockdowns could be an appropriate path for any free society. It was the year that “social distancing” was invented by a cabal of computer scientists with zero experience in infectious disease.
These fanatics need to be out of power completely, and the regulations, laws, and agencies that enabled them to ruin the country and its freedoms must be ended. This is what any responsive government in a modern society would do. It would see failure and call it and then do something about it. It certainly would not go in this new direction and reward the disease planners with more power and money!
We must learn real lessons and act on them.
Jeffrey A. Tucker is Founder and President of the Brownstone Institute and the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press and ten books in 5 languages, most recently Liberty or Lockdown. He is also the editor of The Best of Mises. He writes a daily column on economics at The Epoch Times, and speaks widely on topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture.
U.S. Orders 2.5 Million More Monkeypox Vaccine Doses, as CDC Looks to Expand Vaccine for Kids
By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D. | The Defender | July 1, 2022
The Biden administration today said it ordered 2.5 million more doses of Bavarian Nordic’s Jynneos monkeypox vaccine, bringing the total vaccine doses to be delivered in 2022 and 2023 to more than 4 million.
The news followed Tuesday’s announcement of the first phase of the U.S. government’s “national monkey vaccine strategy,” which will expand testing capabilities and make Bavarian Nordic’s Jynneos vaccines readily available to anyone exposed to the virus.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said the government’s “enhanced” nationwide strategy “will vaccinate and protect those at-risk of monkeypox,” as well as provide guidance to communities on how to respond to outbreaks.
“We are focused on making sure the public and healthcare providers are aware of the risks posed by monkeypox and that there are steps they can take — through seeking testing, vaccines and treatments — to stay healthy and stop the spread,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
As part of the strategy, the CDC and HHS began shipping tests to five major laboratory companies across the country: Aegis Science, Labcorp, Mayo Clinic Laboratories, Quest Diagnostics and Sonic Healthcare.
The government, which for months has been buying more Jynneos doses to add to the national stockpile, is now distributing the vaccine. It’s currently making available 296,000 doses and expects to roll out 750,000 doses over the summer, with an additional 500,000 doses produced and released in the fall — for a total of 1.6 million doses this year.
The Jynneos vaccine is licensed for use in adults and is considered safer than Emergent BioSolutions Inc.’s ACAM2000 smallpox vaccine, which also can be used against monkeypox, the HHS said.
The vaccine will be made available to individuals “with confirmed and presumed monkeypox exposures,” said the HHS.
“This includes those who had close physical contact with someone diagnosed with monkeypox, those who know their sexual partner was diagnosed with monkeypox, and men who have sex with men who have recently had multiple sex partners in a venue where there was known to be monkeypox or in an area where monkeypox is spreading.”
Health officials seeking to expand use of monkeypox vaccine for kids, despite lack of safety data
U.S. health officials also are seeking to expand use of the monkeypox vaccine for children, Bloomberg reported.
The CDC is developing a protocol aimed at allowing use of the Jynneos vaccine in children “should cases in children occur,” Kristen Nordlund, a CDC spokesperson, said in an email to Bloomberg.
“I’m concerned about sustained transmission because it would suggest that the virus is establishing itself, and it could move into high-risk groups, including children, the immunocompromised, and pregnant women,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a Wednesday press briefing.
“We’re starting to see this with several children already infected,” he added.
There have been 350 cases so far of monkeypox in the U.S. — all adults — according to the CDC. The agency confirmed 5,115 cases worldwide.
The WHO confirmed two cases in children in the U.K. and said Wednesday it is following up on reports of cases in children in Spain and France.
No safety trials have been done in children for the Jynneos vaccine as of yet, partly because clinical research involving participants under the age of 18 must pose no more than “minimal risk” to children, which can be difficult for vaccine manufacturers to argue.
Commenting on the CDC’s actions, Dr. Meryl Nass, a member of the Children’s Health Defense scientific advisory committee, told The Defender, “It’s kind of extraordinary that they want to vaccinate everyone in the country before knowing what the safety issues are.”
Nass, an internist and biological warfare epidemiologist, said, “We don’t actually know” if the Jynneos vaccine prevents monkeypox in humans because it was developed as a smallpox vaccine, and prevention studies have been conducted using only animals.
“It is hard to believe that the [U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)] gave this vaccine a license when you read the FDA reviewers’ comments in their own report,” Nass wrote in her June 23 substack newsletter.
“They could not test the vaccine for efficacy against smallpox because there is no smallpox, nor against monkeypox, because the disease is so rare,” Nass wrote. “So the FDA relied on neutralizing antibody titers.”
At the same time, the FDA admitted there is no established correlate of protection, Nass said.
“This means that there is no evidence that the titers represent actual immunity to infection,” Nass wrote. “So FDA relied on animal studies to simply guess the vaccine might be effective in humans.”
According to the FDA, the effectiveness of Jynneos for the prevention of monkeypox is “inferred from the antibody responses in the smallpox clinical study participants and from studies in non-human primates that showed protection of animals vaccinated with Jynneos who were exposed to the monkeypox virus.”
Jynneos, a replication-deficient live Vaccinia virus vaccine, was licensed in the U.S. in 2019, by the FDA for use in individuals 18 and over considered to be at high risk for smallpox or monkeypox.
In 2021, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) voted to recommend Jynneos as a safer alternative to the ACAM2000 vaccine because of ACAM2000’s propensity to cause serious adverse effects, including myocarditis and pericarditis — i.e., inflammation of the heart.
However, Nass noted, Jynneos also was linked to heart inflammation, according to the FDA licensure review of the Jynneos smallpox-monkeypox vaccine which reported:
“Up to 18.4% of subjects in 2 studies developed post-vaccination elevation of troponin [a cardiac muscle enzyme signifying cardiac damage]. However, all of these troponin elevations were asymptomatic and without a clinically associated event or other sign of myopericarditis.”
These higher levels of troponin were not studied further, and the reviewers admitted they did not know if the Jynneos vaccine caused myocarditis, Nass said.
The Jynneos manufacturers said they would conduct an “observational, post-marketing study” in which they would “collect data on cardiac events that occur and are assessed as a routine part of medical care.”
But myocarditis — particularly asymptomatic forms of myocarditis that lack outer signs of the condition — could fly under the radar of the “routine part of medical care,” noted Nass.
The manufacturers would need to test for heightened troponin levels — something that is not typically done in “routine” check-ups.
The authors of a 2015 study reported evidence of heart injury following vaccination in a sample of 1,445 individuals who received a smallpox or trivalent influenza vaccine.
They found that chest pain, shortness of breath and/or palpitations occurred in 10.6% of those who received the smallpox vaccine SPX-vaccinees and 2.6% of those who received the trivalent influenza vaccine within 30 days of immunization.
Additionally, the study authors reported levels more than double the upper limit of troponin — a protein that flags cardiac injury — in 31 of the individuals who received the smallpox vaccine.
“Passive surveillance significantly underestimates the true incidence of myocarditis/pericarditis after smallpox immunization,” they concluded.
The authors added:
“Evidence of subclinical transient cardiac muscle injury post-vaccine immunization is a finding that requires further study to include long-term outcomes surveillance. Active safety surveillance is needed to identify adverse events that are not well understood or previously recognized.”
Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D., is an independent journalist and researcher based in Fairfield, Iowa.
© 2022 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.
Senator Klobuchar refuses to answer whether “misinformation” bill will ban saying “there are only two sexes”
By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | April 8, 2022
During her appearance at the “Disinformation and Erosion of Democracy” conference, Senator Amy Klobuchar refused to answer a question about whether her Health Misinformation Act would result in the statement “there are only two sexes, male and female” being banned from Big Tech platforms.
Klobuchar’s bill was introduced in July 2021 and would reduce the scope of the civil liability immunity online platforms receive under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act if passed.
Currently, Section 230 gives online platforms and other “interactive computer services” immunity from civil liability if they act in “good faith” to restrict access to content that they or their users deem to be “obscene” or “objectionable.” Klobuchar’s bill would remove this immunity for platforms that use algorithms to promote “health misinformation” that’s “related to an existing public health emergency, as declared by the Secretary of Health and Human Services.”
At the Disinformation and Erosion of Democracy conference, Evita Duffy, co-founder and managing editor of The Chicago Thinker, pressed Klobuchar on how health misinformation would be defined under this bill.
“If I were to say that there are only two sexes, male and female, would that be considered misinformation that you think should be banned speech on social media platforms?” Duffy said.
Klobuchar responded by refusing to address the question.
“I’m not going to get into what misinformation,” Klobuchar said.
Klobuchar continued by insisting that the bill applies specifically to “vaccine misinformation” in a “public health crisis.”
While Klobuchar claimed that the bill is limited to so-called vaccine misinformation, the Health Misinformation Act’s proposal to amend Section 230 doesn’t actually mention vaccine misinformation. Instead, it proposes that providers of online platforms should be “treated as the publisher or speaker of health misinformation… if the provider promotes that health misinformation through an algorithm.”
Additionally, health misinformation isn’t defined in the bill; the power to define this pivotal term is handed over to the Secretary of Health and Human Services who will consult with “the heads of other relevant federal agencies and outside experts” when coming up with the definition.
The bill didn’t have the support of a single Republican when it was announced. Center-left tech policy activism group Chamber of Progress also warned that Democrats would “regret” the bill and that it would “turn future Republican Presidents into the speech police.”
Surgeon General, HHS Violated First Amendment by Directing Twitter to Censor COVID ‘Misinformation’: Lawsuit
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | March 29, 2022
A civil rights group is suing the U.S. surgeon general and the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on behalf of three men who allege the government violated the First Amendment by directing Twitter to censor them for spreading COVID “misinformation.”
The New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) on March 24 filed a complaint against Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy and HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, Columbus Division.
NCLA describes itself as “a nonpartisan, nonprofit civil rights group founded by prominent legal scholar Philip Hamburger to protect constitutional freedoms from violations by the Administrative State.”
According to the complaint, between May 2021 and December 2021, Twitter temporarily or permanently suspended the accounts of the three plaintiffs — Mark Changizi, Daniel Kotzin and Michael P. Senger.
The lawsuit states:
“Mark Changizi, Daniel Kotzin, and Michael Senger each had or have Twitter accounts with tens of thousands of followers or more.
“Their Twitter platforms provided them with a social network, and an outlet to express their views, to hear the views of others, and to engage with detractors and fans alike.”
Twitter permanently suspended Senger’s account. Senger is a San Francisco-based attorney who was openly critical of COVID-related policies and of what he called “pro-lockdown propaganda” from China.
Twitter only temporarily suspended the accounts of Changizi and Kotzin. Visitors to the Twitter account belonging to Changizi, a well-known theoretical cognitive scientist, now see a warning stating “Caution: This profile may include potentially sensitive content.”
Kotzin’s Twitter account is active as of this writing, despite prior suspensions. A stay-at-home father, Kotzin is married to Jennifer Sey, the former president of Levi’s who recently stepped down from her position, alleging Levi’s executives bullied her after she spoke out against some COVID-related policies.
The lawsuit alleges the suspensions of the three men’s accounts are a result of the policies against “misinformation” announced by the surgeon general and HHS.
The lawsuit states:
“Outrageously, the U.S. surgeon general and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have directed social media platforms including Twitter to censor alleged ‘misinformation’ about Covid-19.
“The speech ban has included information the Government later conceded was true but that conflicted with the Government’s messaging on Covid-19 at the time.”
As reported earlier this month by The Defender, the Biden administration and Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, recently made statements contradicting earlier official statements and public pronouncements regarding COVID policies.
The lawsuit provides a timeline of federal government “intimidation tactics” aimed at stifling so-called “misinformation” about COVID on social media:
“On March 3, the surgeon general demanded that the tech companies turn over information about individuals who spread such ‘misinformation,’ a clear intimidation tactic that HHS has labeled a ‘Request for Information’ (RFI).
“Adding insult to injury, on March 3, the surgeon general issued his RFI, demanding that technology platforms turn over ‘information about sources of Covid-19 misinformation’ to the Government by May 2, 2022.
“In response to Government pressure, Twitter has permanently banned Mr. Senger, and temporarily suspended Mr. Changizi and Mr. Kotzin.”
According to the RFI, social media companies must submit such information posted on their platforms dating back to January 2020.
The complaint alleges Murthy and Becerra lack the statutory authority to issue such a request to private social media platforms.
The Defender previously reported on attempts by the federal government to combat alleged “misinformation.”
As stated in the RFI:
“Health misinformation — health information that is false, inaccurate, or misleading according to the best available evidence at the time — has been a challenge during public health emergencies before, including persistent rumors about HIV/AIDS that have undermined efforts to reduce infection rates in the U.S. and during the Ebola epidemic.
“But the speed, scale, and sophistication with which misinformation has been spread during the COVID-19 pandemic has been unprecedented.
“Recent research shows that most Americans believe or are unsure of at least one COVID-19 vaccine falsehood.”
The RFI outlines social media’s purported contribution to the spread of such “misinformation,” and the role such platforms can play in future pandemics:
“The digital information environment is a phenomenon that requires further research and study to better prepare for future public health emergencies. This RFI seeks to understand both the impact of health misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic and the unique role that technology and social media platforms play in the dissemination of critical health information during a public health emergency.
“The inputs from stakeholders will help inform future pandemic response in the context of an evolving digital information environment.”
According to the lawsuit, this RFI comes as part of a broader White House effort to stop the spread of “health misinformation” dating back to spring 2021, threatening Big Tech with antitrust proceedings over their enormous market share if companies did not provide the requested information to the government:
“In May 2021, the White House began a coordinated and escalating public campaign to stop the flow of purported “health misinformation” related to Covid-19.
“In a May 5, 2021 press briefing, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki stated that the President believed social media platforms have a responsibility to censor health ‘misinformation’ related to Covid-19 vaccinations, that by not doing so they were responsible for American deaths, and that the President believed ‘antitrust’ programs were in order to effectuate this end.
“In other words, if tech companies refused to censor, they would face antitrust investigations—or worse.”
The surgeon general and HHS later joined these efforts, according to the lawsuit:
“By July, the surgeon general and HHS ratcheted up the pressure by issuing an advisory on the subject, commanding technology platforms to collect data on the ‘spread and impact of misinformation’ and ‘prioritize early detection of misinformation ‘super-spreaders’ and repeat offenders” by ‘impos[ing] clear consequences for accounts that repeatedly violate platform policies’.”
It was during this period that Twitter banned or suspended the three plaintiffs.
Commenting on the lawsuit, Senger said:
“It’s difficult to overstate the federal government’s cynicism in pretending to respect the First Amendment rights of American citizens while explicitly working with a company whose CEO says it ‘is not to be bound by the First Amendment’ in silencing American citizens on the most widely-used platform for political discourse.”
According to the NCLA, the censorship advocated by Murthy and HHS strikes at the heart of what the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was designed to protect — free speech, especially political speech, much of which has since been vindicated and proven accurate.
“[B]y instrumentalizing tech companies, including Twitter — through pressure, coercion, and threats — to censor viewpoints that the federal executive has deemed ‘misinformation,’ the surgeon general has turned Twitter’s censorship into state action,” the NCLA said.
The nonprofit said the government’s policy of “pressuring Twitter and other tech companies to censor the Plaintiffs” should be halted immediately, adding:
“The surgeon general does not have the authority to issue this demand. The statute only gives him the authority to implement measures to stem spread of communicable disease. The statute cannot reasonably be interpreted to allow him to order tech companies to censor individuals with whom he disagrees on COVID policy, or to demand that Twitter hand over information about such account holders without a warrant based on probable cause.
“Demanding social media platforms, including Twitter, to turn over information about users that the Government deems problematic constitutes a warrantless search in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.”
Civil rights attorney, writer and activist Jenin Younes, litigation counsel for this case, said, “The surgeon general apparently believes he can do whatever he wishes, even going so far as to commandeer technology companies to stifle the perspectives of those who differ from the government on COVID policies.”
Younes said Congress did not give Murthy the authority to “coerce social media platforms into censoring the voices of those with whom he disagrees,” and in fact, it could not have given him this power.
“The surgeon general’s demand has turned Twitter’s censorship into government action,” Younes said. “Thus, this viewpoint-based suppression of speech violates our clients’ First Amendment rights to free speech.”
Mark Chenoweth, NCLA executive director and general counsel, said:
“Surgeon General Murthy’s RFI is really a Request for Intimidation. HHS is a serial violator when it comes to abusing its statutory power.
“Incredibly, HHS is relying on the exact same statute to issue the RFI here that it relied on the past two years to justify its unlawful nationwide eviction moratorium.
“The Supreme Court finally shot down the illegal moratorium. NCLA hopes lower courts are quicker to act on this latest unconstitutional outrage.”
Incidents of social media censorship stemming from purported COVID-related “misinformation” have been plentiful over the past two years.
For instance, last year, Twitter banned former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson for publishing “COVID misinformation,” leading him to file a federal lawsuit against the platform.
The NCLA lawsuit does not directly target Twitter, instead, it goes after HHS and the surgeon general for strongly encouraging — or indirectly mandating — censorship policies on the part of social media platforms.
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., is an independent journalist and researcher based in Athens, Greece.
© 2022 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.
Feds Secretly Paid Media to Promote COVID Shots
By Megan Redshaw | The Defender | March 9, 2022
The Biden administration made direct payments to nearly all major corporate media outlets to deploy a $1 billion taxpayer-funded outreach campaign designed to push only positive coverage about COVID-19 vaccines and to censor any negative coverage.
Media outlets across the nation failed to disclose the federal government as the source of ads in news reports promoting the shots to their audiences.
According to a Freedom of Information Request filed by The Blaze, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) purchased advertising from major news outlets including ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox News, CNN and MSNBC.
HHS also ran media blitzes in major media publications including The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, New York Post, BuzzFeed News, Newsmax and hundreds of local TV stations and newspapers across the nation.
In addition to paying news outlets to push the vaccines, the federal government bought ads on TV, radio, in print and on social media as part of a “comprehensive media campaign,” HHS documents show.
The ad campaigns were timed in conjunction with the increased availability of COVID vaccines. They featured “influencers” and “experts,” including Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical advisor to the White House and director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
In March 2021, Facebook announced a social media plan to “help get people vaccinated,” and worked with the Biden administration and U.S. health agencies to suppress what it called “COVID misinformation.”
BuzzFeed News advised everyone age 65 or older, people with health conditions that put them at high risk of severe illness from COVID, healthcare workers and those at high risk of exposure to the virus to get vaccine boosters, in accordance with guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Other publications, including the Los Angeles Times, featured advice from experts on how readers could convince “vaccine-hesitant people” to change their minds.
The Washington Post presented “the pro-vaccine messages people want to hear.”
Newsmax said COVID vaccines have “been demonstrated to be safe and effective” and “encouraged citizens, especially those at risk, to get immunized.”
Yet, the latest data from the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System shows 1,151,450 reports of adverse events from all age groups following COVID vaccines, including 24,827 deaths since Dec. 14, 2020.
Numerous scientists and public health experts have questioned the safety and efficacy of COVID vaccines, as well as the data underlying the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s authorization of the shots.
The media rarely covered negative news stories about COVID vaccines, and some have labeled anyone who questions the shots “science denialists” or “conspiracy theorists.”
“These outlets were collectively responsible for publishing countless articles and video segments regarding the vaccine that were nearly uniformly positive about the vaccine in terms of both its efficacy and safety,” The Blaze reported.
Congress appropriates $1 billion tax dollars to ‘strengthen vaccine confidence’
In March 2021, Congress appropriated $1 billion U.S. tax dollars for the Secretary of Health and Human Services to spend on activities to “strengthen vaccine confidence in the United States,” with $3 billion set aside for the CDC to fund “support and outreach efforts” in states through community-based organizations and trusted leaders.
HHS’s public education efforts were co-chaired by U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, former National Institutes of Health director Dr. Francis Collins, Fauci, Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, and CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky — with Vice President Kamala Harris leading the effort from the White House.
Federal law allows HHS, acting through the CDC and other agencies, to award contracts to public and private entities to “carry out a national, evidence-based campaign to increase awareness and knowledge of the safety and effectiveness of vaccines for the prevention and control of diseases, combat misinformation about vaccines and disseminate scientific and evidence-based vaccine-related information, with the goal of increasing rates of vaccination across all ages … to reduce and eliminate vaccine-preventable diseases.”
HHS did not immediately respond to The Blaze when asked if the agency used taxpayer dollars to pay for people to be interviewed, or for a PR firm to place experts and celebrities in interviews with news outlets.
The Blaze also reached out to several news organizations whose editorial boards claimed “firewall policies” preventing advertisers from influencing news coverage, but which nevertheless took money from HHS for targeted ads.
“Advertisers pay for space to share their messages, as was the case here, and those ads are clearly labeled as such,” Shani George, vice president of communications for The Washington Post, said in a statement. “The newsroom is completely independent from the advertising department.”
Although The Washington Post may have several departments, they’re all under the authority of the same CEO and key executive team.
A spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Times said their “newsroom operates independently from advertising.”
Former Newsmax anchor confirms network paid to promote only positive coverage
According to Desert News, Emerald Robinson, an independent journalist who previously served as the chief White House correspondent for Newsmax and One America News, said she was contacted by a whistleblower inside Newsmax who confirmed the news organization’s executives agreed to take money from HHS under the Biden administration to push only positive coverage of COVID vaccines.
Robinson was also contacted by top Newsmax executives in 2021, and told to stop any negative coverage of the COVID shots as “it was problematic.”
Robinson said she was warned multiple times by executives and was told by PR experts who worked with Newsmax that medical experts or doctors likely to say negative things about COVID vaccines would not be booked as guests.
Robinson was reportedly fired by Newsmax after tweeting “conspiracy theories” about COVID vaccines and was later banned from Twitter for “repeatedly violating the platforms’ rules on COVID-19 misinformation.”
Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy in an op-ed applauded Biden for his vaccine efforts.
Ruddy wrote:
“At Newsmax, we have strongly advocated for the public to be vaccinated. The many medical experts who have appeared on our network have been near-unanimous in support of the vaccine. I myself have gotten the Pfizer vaccine. There’s no question in my mind, countless lives would have been saved if the vaccine was available earlier.”
In other examples cited by The Blaze, “fear-based vaccine ads” from HHS featuring “survivor” stories from COVID patients who were hospitalized in intensive care units were covered by CNN and discussed on ABC’s “The View” last October.
HHS ads on YouTube featuring celebrities like Sir Michael Caine and Sir Elton John garnered millions of views.
As The Defender reported in September, a group of people injured by COVID vaccines reached out to the media to tell their stories, only to be told by news agencies they could not cover COVID vaccine injuries.
Kristi Dobbs, 40, was injured by Pfizer’s COVID vaccine. Dobbs spent months pleading with U.S. health agencies to research the neurological injuries she and others are experiencing in hopes of finding a treatment.
Dobbs said she and others who developed neurological injuries after getting a COVID vaccine shared their experiences with a reporter, in hope of raising awareness about their experiences.
Dobbs said she and others knew they needed to tell their stories, without causing “vaccine hesitancy,” to protect others from the same fate — so members of the group started writing and calling anyone who would listen, including reporters, news agencies and members of Congress.
Dobbs said they tried the best they could as simple Americans to reach out to those who would hear their stories. Finally, a reporter from a small media company was willing to do a story. Dobbs and others from the group participated in a 2-hour and 40-minute interview.
“The story never went anywhere,” Dobbs said. She said the reporter told them a “higher up” at Pfizer made a call to the station and pressured staff there into not covering any other stories about vaccine adverse reactions.
As previously reported by The Defender, the same investment firms with financial interests in Pfizer also hold large ownership stakes of corporate media outlets.
In addition, Pfizer has contracts with the federal government, which has spent billions of American tax dollars both buying COVID vaccines and promoting only positive coverage to the public.
Liberty Counsel founder and Chairman Mat Staver told Desert News, “People have been injured and died as a result of the most extensive propaganda campaign in U.S. history and it was paid for with our taxpayer dollars.”
COVID vaccines are not safe or effective, but the American public has been given propaganda by the Biden administration instead of truth from the news media, Staver said.
“The consequence is that many people have needlessly suffered as a result of the censorship and propaganda.”
Megan Redshaw is a freelance reporter for The Defender. She has a background in political science, a law degree and extensive training in natural health.
© 2022 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.
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From the Archives
American media distortion on Palestine
By Alison Weir | MEMO | May 1, 2013
… We have conducted a number of statistical studies on this issue and found that US media were covering Israeli deaths in far greater detail than they were covering those of Palestinians.
For example, the New York Times was reporting on Israeli children’s deaths at a rate seven times greater than they were covering Palestinian children’s deaths; this didn’t even include the far larger number of words and amount of personal information given about Israeli victims compared to Palestinians. We also found that primetime network news programmes were covering Israeli children’s deaths at rates up to 14 times greater than the coverage given to Palestinians.
I discovered a system of reporting from the region in which a violent conflict between an officially “Jewish state” and the Muslims and Christians it had dispossessed (and was in the process of dispossessing further) was being covered most of the time by journalists with legal, familial or emotional ties to Israel. A great many are Israeli citizens (though this is almost never disclosed) or married to Israelis, their children also being Israeli.
I discovered that the Associated Press control bureau for the region, from which virtually all news reports that appear in US newspapers were transmitted, was located in Israel and was staffed almost entirely by Israeli and Jewish journalists (many of whom had served in the Israeli military).
I learned that the son of the New York Times bureau chief was serving in the Israeli military while his father was reporting on the conflict. In fact, I discovered that it was common for journalists in the region reporting for American media to have close personal ties to the Israeli military; that at least one staff member had been serving in the Israeli military even as he was reporting for the NY Times ; that US News & World Report’s senior foreign correspondent, who had covered and written about the Middle East for more than 40 years, had a son serving in the Israeli army during the time he was reporting there; that Middle East “pundit” Jeffrey Goldberg, whose commentary pervades both the print and broadcast media, is an Israeli citizen who served in the Israeli military.
I learned that CNN anchorman Wolf Blitzer lived in Israel for many years, at one point travelled around the US as the “voice of Israel” and had worked for an Israel lobby publication.
I learned that Time magazine’s bureau chief was an Israeli citizen, and that NPR’s long-time correspondent from the region had an Israeli husband who had served in the military and may be an Israeli citizen herself.
I also discovered that this pattern of Israel-centrism went beyond the regional reporting. In fact, the regional filtering of the news may not even be the most significant factor in the broken media reporting on this issue that Americans receive.
Within US-based journalism per se I discovered patterns of Israel-centrism that were deeply troubling. In some cases I personally experienced the intentional suppression of information on Palestine. Following are a few examples. … Read full article
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