CDC’s New ‘Wild to Mild’ Ad Campaign Hypes Flu Vaccines for Kids, Pregnant Women
John-Michael Dumais | The Defender | September 8, 2023
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) this week launched a new “Wild to Mild” ad campaign to “tame skepticism about flu vaccines,” CNN Health reported.
The campaign, which will run on the radio and social media platforms starting this week, targets pregnant women and parents of young children “because vaccination rates are down in both of those high-risk groups,” said CNN.
Experts who spoke with The Defender, however, questioned the efficacy of flu vaccines and cautioned about their potential harms.
The CDC ads feature cute animal images, including one that depicts a tiger (“a ferocious animal”) and a kitten (“something that’s not scary”) designed to promote the idea that the flu vaccine, rather than preventing influenza altogether, will inhibit severe symptoms and yield a milder course of the illness.
The CNN article cited CDC data showing flu vaccination rates for pregnant women are down more than 16% since 2019 and 7% for children under 18. “That means more than 3.7 million people were unprotected during pregnancy over the past winter” along with “an estimated 32 million children,” CNN reported.
Erin Burns, M.A., associate director for communications for the Influenza Division at the CDC, told CNN the progress made to vaccinate pregnant women after the 2009 H1N1 pandemic has been “completely wiped out in the years since COVID-19.”
Focus groups run by the CDC showed that “most of the pregnant women had no intention of getting a flu vaccine and no awareness of the benefits it could bring them or their baby,” Burns said.
Dr. William Schaffner, infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University and a member of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, told CNN that “something was amiss” if doctors were not adequately informing pregnant women about the risks of the flu.
“Women who get influenza who are pregnant may have rates of complication that rival that of senior citizens,” Schaffner said, adding “They [doctors] have to get these messages out to women who come to them right now.”
Burns said mothers in focus groups found it “extremely motivating” when health educators explained that antibodies induced by flu shots could transfer to their babies and protect them after birth.
While seniors tend to understand their higher risk from the flu and therefore keep up with their shots, moms need more nudging, CNN reported.
Ad campaign tempers expectations about respiratory vaccines
According to CNN, Burns said the CDC felt cautious about claiming flu vaccines could attenuate illness, but since deepening its vaccine surveillance network, it found “strong and growing evidence” that the vaccine could “blunt a bout with the flu” and reduce doctor visits.
Schaffner said comparing the effectiveness of the flu vaccine to vaccines designed to eradicate diseases like measles, polio and whooping cough confuses people about what flu shots can do.
“With these respiratory viruses,” he said, “the vaccines aren’t very good at preventing milder disease. [But] we have to say … ‘here’s the benefit.’”
According to the CDC, all flu vaccines for the 2023-2024 season will be quadrivalent (i.e., targeting four different strains).
“Most will be thimerosal-free or thimerosal-reduced vaccines (91%), and about 21% of flu vaccines will be egg-free,” states the CDC website.
Hundreds of peer-reviewed studies show that thimerosal is a developmental neurotoxin.
The CDC is recommending the flu and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, vaccines this fall for everyone, and also the COVID-19 vaccine or booster for people 6 months and older.
‘Basically, it does not work’
The CDC states that flu vaccine effectiveness can vary, citing studies over the past 10 years showing between 19% and 54% effectiveness. The major factors influencing vaccine effectiveness are a person’s age and health and how well the vaccines match the circulating virus strains.
Dr. Meryl Nass told The Defender the CDC claims that flu shots reduce flu severity “cannot be relied on” when the shots “fail to work to prevent infection.”
Nass pointed to four studies the CDC uses to support its new contention that flu shots reduce flu severity even if they do not prevent flu. “All four published studies have CDC authors, so the CDC cites itself to make this claim.”
Two of the papers, published in the journal Vaccine in 2018 and 2021, said Nass, start by acknowledging that the effect of influenza vaccination on influenza severity remains uncertain.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, former head of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, in a paper published in January with co-authors Dr. David M. Morens and Jeffery K. Taubenberger, M.D., Ph.D., said that vaccines for respiratory diseases are “decidedly suboptimal” and that new types of vaccines need to be developed.
“’Wild to Mild’ is a propaganda strategy to throw up against the facts,” Nass said, “that efficacy is often poor, that flu shots have never been shown to prevent deaths and that even Fauci has now admitted this.”
Commenting on the campaign, Dr. Peter McCullough told The Defender, “In the last several years the estimated vaccine efficacy of the influenza vaccine was statistically insignificant. Basically, it does not work.”
‘No data’ on safety of flu shots for pregnant women and their babies
According to Nass, in the past flu shots were not approved for pregnancy.
“They used to be labeled ‘Category C,’ which meant ‘no data in pregnancy,’” she said. “That system of specifying the pregnancy risk was junked to make way for verbiage instead.”
As an example of this “verbiage,” Nass referred to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) risk summary for the flu vaccine FLULAVAL, which states:
“All pregnancies have a risk of birth defect, loss, or other adverse outcomes. In the U.S. general population, the estimated background risk of major birth defects and miscarriage in clinically recognized pregnancies is 2% to 4% and 15% to 20%, respectively.
“There are insufficient data on FLULAVAL in pregnant women to inform vaccine-associated risks.”
The flu vaccines’ effect on lactation also is unknown, according to Nass. “Despite CDC recommending use in pregnancy for well over 10 years, they just have not looked,” she said.
According to the FDA, “Data are not available to assess the effects of FLULAVAL on the breastfed infant or on milk production/excretion.”
Brian Hooker, Ph.D., senior director of science and research at Children’s Health Defense and co-author of “Vax-Unvax: Let the Science Speak,” reviewed a 2021 study published in JAMA Network on flu vaccination during pregnancy.
The retrospective cohort study reviewed live births in Nova Scotia, Canada, from 2010-2014, with a follow-up in 2016. The authors concluded that “maternal influenza vaccination during pregnancy was not significantly associated with an increased risk of adverse early childhood health outcomes.” But, according to Hooker, the study failed to consider several key points.
The first shortcoming was that diagnoses considered in the study were based on emergency visits and hospitalizations only, not outpatient settings such as practitioner offices, where most diagnoses are made.
To support his criticism of this diagnostic bias, Hooker noted the study found only 1.1% cases of asthma while for the overall Canadian population, the asthma rate was 9.5%.
The study also inaccurately reported on the rates of ear infections in unvaccinated versus vaccinated groups, with the latter experiencing significantly higher rates.
The study showed a significant association between lower respiratory infection in babies for mothers vaccinated in the third trimester versus unvaccinated mothers, but “these results were summarily ignored by the study authors,” Hooker said.
Finally, the study’s “control diagnosis,” which it defined as “all-cause injuries,” showed a significantly higher incidence for children whose mothers were vaccinated, which, Hooker said, “casts a shadow of doubt on any conclusions made from this study.”
Hooker expressed concern that physicians would use the study to provide a “false assurance of safety” to pregnant women considering the flu vaccine.
Nass said the majority of claims filed and compensated in the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP) — which has paid out over $4 billion to date — are for injuries from the flu vaccine.
NVICP is part of the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act. It was passed to exempt vaccine manufacturers from product liability, based on the legal principle that vaccines are “unavoidably unsafe” products.
John-Michael Dumais is a news editor for The Defender. He has been a writer and community organizer on a variety of issues, including the death penalty, war, health freedom and all things related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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.
5th Circuit Upholds Injunction Against Government Censorship
We got a big win Friday in Missouri v. Biden: Appellate Court Forbids White House, CDC, Surgeon General, and FBI from Censoring Americans Online
By Aaron Kheriaty, MD | Human Flourishing | September 10, 2023
Here’s my five-minute summary and reaction to the appellate court’s decision on Friday upholding the central provisions in our injunction against the government. (I’ll post the full interview soon when it’s available.)
The unanimous three-judge panel ruled: “The White House, the Surgeon General, the CDC, and the FBI likely coerced or significantly encouraged social-media platforms to moderate content, rendering those decisions state actions. In doing so, the officials likely violated the First Amendment.” The appeals court thereby confirmed that for last several years, our Federal government has been systematically violating the highest law of the land—the United States Constitution—by censoring the protected speech of hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans tens of millions of times. News of the ruling was front page above-the-fold yesterday in The New York Times and The Washington Post, suggesting that the legacy media cannot ignore this issue any longer.
Not all the defendants in the suit were enjoined by the appellate court’s decision, which focused on the White House, the Surgeon General, the CDC, and the FBI. This is not, however, an indication that the other agencies named as defendants, such as CISA, are free to engage in censorship of protected speech. It simply means that at this early stage of limited discovery the appellate court did not think we have presented sufficient evidence to meet the very high legal bar required for a preliminary injunction. Although the injunction focuses on four agencies, the entire federal government is now on notice: any future communications between government officials and big tech are subject to subpoena and scrutiny in our case. If those come from any of the four enjoined agencies, those officials may now be subject not only to civil liabilities but to criminal penalties as well.
The ruling also confirmed that not only coercion but even “significant encouragement” by government officials to modify content is a form of unconstitutional censorship. The judges ruled that evidence we presented demonstrated both coercion and significant encouragement.
Contextualizing the scope of the violations of constitutional rights in our case, the judges noted that there are virtually no prior free speech cases of this scope and magnitude: “The Supreme Court has rarely been faced with a coordinated campaign of this magnitude orchestrated by federal officials that jeopardized a fundamental aspect of American life. Therefore, the district court was correct in its assessment—’unrelenting pressure’ from certain government officials likely ‘had the intended result of suppressing millions of protected free speech postings by American citizens.’ We see no error or abuse of discretion in that finding.”
The CIA’s Continued Secrecy on Chile and JFK
By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | September 8, 2023
On August 31, the Nation magazine published an article entitled “Chile: The Secrets the US Government Continues to Hide,” which details the CIA’s continued steadfast insistence on keeping its records secret that relate to the agency’s 1970-1973 efforts to bring regime change to Chile.
The CIA’s continued secrecy, of course, brings to mind the agency’s equally steadfast insistence on keeping its JFK-assassination related records secret into perpetuity.
The CIA, needless to say, cites the two magic words — “national security” — to justify its continued secrecy in both events.
I suggest that two other words are the real reason for the CIA’s continued secrecy in both events: “criminal cover-up.”
After all, the JFK assassination took place 60 years ago and the Chilean coup took place 50 years ago. The notion that the release of CIA assassination-related and coup-related records would threaten “national security,” no matter what definition is used for that ridiculous, meaningless term, is laughable to the extreme.
Actually, the Chilean coup bears a relationship to the JFK assassination. That’s because the national-security establishment’s mindset toward its regime-change operation in Chile reflected its mindset toward its regime-change operation in Dallas. My hunch is that those still-secret records relating to Chile would provide further circumstantial evidence pointing toward the reasons for the operation in Dallas.
In 1970, Chilean voters delivered a plurality of vote to Salvador Allende in the presidential election. Since Allende had not received a majority of votes, the election was thrown into the hands of the Chilean congress.
U.S. officials deemed Allende a grave threat to U.S. national security, on two grounds: that he was a socialist but, more important, that he was befriending the communist world, including Cuba and the Soviet Union, something that Kennedy had done as well in his famous Peace Speech at American University a few months before he was assassinated.
The CIA embarked on a campaign of bribing the members of the Chilean congress to vote against Allende (which, of course, is somewhat ironic given the fierce U.S. reaction to supposed Russian involvement in U.S. elections).
At the same time, the U.S. national-security establishment made plans for a Chilean military takeover. What’s interesting is that the CIA did not assassinate Allende. Instead, it convinced the Chilean national-security establishment that Allende posed a grave threat to Chilean national security and, therefore, that the Chilean national-security establishment had a moral duty to violently prevent Allende from assuming the presidency.
That’s a very important and very revealing point, one that undoubtedly comes across loud and clear in those still-secret CIA records relating to the Chile coup. The point reveals the U.S. national-security establishment’s conviction that it had the moral duty to violently remove JFK from power in order to protect America from a president whose policies, they concluded, posed a grave risk to “national security.” (See FFF’s book JFK’s War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated by Douglas Horne.)
Much to the chagrin of the U.S. national-security establishment, however, the commanding general of Chile’s armed forces, Gen. Rene Schneider, opposed the idea of a coup. His position was that the Chilean constitution did not permit a coup as a way to remove a democratically elected president from office. He said that Chileans would have to wait until the next election.
Therefore, the CIA simply orchestrated a violent kidnapping of Schneider which left him dead from gunshot wounds on the streets of Santiago. Ironically, the CIA’s kidnapping and assassination of this innocent man boomeranged because the Chilean congress, faced with tremendous anger over Schneider’s murder among the Chilean citizenry, rejected the CIA’s bribes and installed Allende into power.
Three years later, however, the U.S. national-security establishment prevailed in its efforts and helped military strongman Gen. Augusto Pinochet violently take over the reins of power. By the end of the war between the executive and national-security branches of the government, Allende was dead, just as Kennedy was ten years before.
With the full support of the Pentagon and the CIA, Pinochet’s henchmen rounded up some 60,000 innocent people and proceeded to torture and/or rape most of them. They also killed or disappeared around 3,000 of them.
Orlando Letelier
Among those rounded up was Orlando Letelier, a highly respected man who had served in the Allende administration as ambassador to the United States, minister of foreign affairs, minister of the interior, and minister of defense. After being tortured in captivity, world pressure forced Pinochet to release him.
Letelier moved to Washington, D.C., where he joined a leftist think tank and began lobbying against the Pinochet regime. Pinochet and his national-security establishment deemed Letelier to be a grave threat to Chilean “national security.”
On September 21, 1976, Letelier was killed by a car bomb on the streets of Washington, D.C., along with his young assistant Ronni Moffitt.
It was determined that Pinochet’s secret Gestapo-like internal police force, which was called DINA and which worked with the CIA, had orchestrated and carried out the Letelier assassination. Among those convicted of the crime was a DINA agent named Michael Townley, who was a U.S. citizen.
As part of what was clearly a sweetheart deal, Townley pled guilty in U.S. District Court as part of a plea bargain with U.S. officials. Get this: He was sentenced to only ten years in jail for what amounted to the cold-blooded murder of two innocent people. To put that in perspective, compare it to the 22-year jail sentence that a U.S. District Judge recently meted out to a man convicted of simply participating in the January 6 protests. Townley was also given immunity from prosecution in Chile for another national-security assassination in which he had allegedly been involved.
But that’s not all. After serving only 62 months in jail, get this: He was admitted into the federal witness protection program! That meant that the feds gave him a secret identity and let him live a normal life somewhere in the world.
The Letelier assassination has always been blamed on Pinochet. Is it possible that the CIA, working with DINA, was also embroiled in that assassination, on grounds of “national security”? My hunch is that those records relating to Chile that the CIA steadfastly continues to keep secret would help provide an answer to that question, which, needless to say, would be a good reason for wanting them to kept secret.
Approaching 35,000 Incremental Homicides and Traffic Fatalities in 2020-2022 Compared to 2018-19 Baseline Average
BY STEVE SAILER • UNZ REVIEW • SEPTEMBER 9, 2023
A friend asked how many incremental deaths have there been due to the Floyd Effect? 3,000?
Nah, it’s more like 36,000 according to a simplistic methodology that takes CDC death counts for homicides and motor vehicle accidents for the years 2020-2022 and compares them them to how many there would have been if the average of 2018-19 had been maintained for the first three years of the 2020s. I come up with 2020 to 2022 having seen 36,042 additional Deaths of Exuberance (killings and car crashes) than if the death toll had stayed at the same annual rate as in 2018-2019.
That’s a pretty big number.
These 36,000 incremental deaths are divided pretty equally into extra homicides and extra traffic fatalities. And they are are about equally split into incremental black deaths and incremental all other deaths.
| The Floyd Effect | ||||||
| Homicide Deaths | ||||||
| Year | Period | Total | Black | White | Hispanic | Asian |
| 2018 | Pre | 18,830 | 9,469 | 5,460 | 3,045 | 263 |
| 2019 | Pre | 19,141 | 9,951 | 5,176 | 3,122 | 292 |
| 2020 | Post | 24,576 | 13,493 | 6,143 | 3,920 | 289 |
| 2021 | Post | 26,031 | 14,313 | 6,215 | 4,453 | 313 |
| 2022 | Post | 24,830 | 13,225 | 5,975 | 4,480 | 310 |
| Total 2018-19 | 37,971 | 19,420 | 10,636 | 6,167 | 555 | |
| Total 2020-22 | 75,437 | 41,031 | 18,333 | 12,853 | 912 | |
| Avg 2018-19 | 18,986 | 9,710 | 5,318 | 3,084 | 278 | |
| Avg 2020-22 | 25,146 | 13,677 | 6,111 | 4,284 | 304 | |
| Incr in Avg Deaths / Year | 6,160 | 3,967 | 793 | 1,201 | 27 | |
| % Incr in Avg | 32% | 41% | 15% | 39% | 10% | |
| Incremental Deaths 2020-22 vs. 2018-19 Avg | 18,481 | 11,901 | 2,379 | 3,603 | 80 | |
| Share of Incremental | 64% | 13% | 19% | 0% | ||
|
Motor Vehicle Accident Deaths |
||||||
| Year | Period | Total | Black | White | Hispanic | Asian |
| 2018 | Pre | 39,404 | 6,140 | 25,095 | 6,123 | 837 |
| 2019 | Pre | 39,107 | 6,196 | 24,770 | 6,165 | 824 |
| 2020 | Post | 42,339 | 7,882 | 25,402 | 7,059 | 790 |
| 2021 | Post | 46,980 | 8,583 | 27,805 | 8,143 | 932 |
| 2022 | Post | 46,009 | 7,815 | 27,234 | 8,422 | 979 |
| Total 2018-19 | 78,511 | 12,336 | 49,865 | 12,288 | 1,661 | |
| Total 2020-22 | 135,328 | 24,280 | 80,441 | 23,624 | 2,701 | |
| Avg 2018-19 | 39,256 | 6,168 | 24,933 | 6,144 | 831 | |
| Avg 2020-22 | 45,109 | 8,093 | 26,814 | 7,875 | 900 | |
| Incr in Avg Deaths / Year | 5,854 | 1,925 | 1,881 | 1,731 | 70 | |
| % Incr in Avg | 15% | 31% | 8% | 28% | 8% | |
| Incremental Deaths 2020-22 vs. 2018-19 Avg | 17,562 | 5,776 | 5,644 | 5,192 | 210 | |
| Share of Incremental | 33% | 32% | 30% | 1% | ||
| Homicide + Road Deaths | ||||||
| Year | Period | Total | Black | White | Hispanic | Asian |
| 2018 | Pre | 58,234 | 15,609 | 30,555 | 9,168 | 1,100 |
| 2019 | Pre | 58,248 | 16,147 | 29,946 | 9,287 | 1,116 |
| 2020 | Post | 66,915 | 21,375 | 31,545 | 10,979 | 1,079 |
| 2021 | Post | 73,011 | 22,896 | 34,020 | 12,596 | 1,245 |
| 2022 | Post | 70,839 | 21,040 | 33,209 | 12,902 | 1,289 |
| Total 2018-19 | 116,482 | 31,756 | 60,501 | 18,455 | 2,216 | |
| Total 2020-22 | 210,765 | 65,311 | 98,774 | 36,477 | 3,613 | |
| Avg 2018-19 | 58,241 | 15,878 | 30,251 | 9,228 | 1,108 | |
| Avg 2020-22 | 70,255 | 21,770 | 32,925 | 12,159 | 1,204 | |
| Incr in Avg Deaths / Year | 12,014 | 5,892 | 2,674 | 2,932 | 96 | |
| % Incr in Avg | 21% | 37% | 9% | 32% | 9% | |
| Incremental Deaths 2020-22 vs. 2018-19 Avg | 36,042 | 17,677 | 8,023 | 8,795 | 289 | |
| Share of Incremental | 49% | 22% | 24% | 1% |
Yes, it would have been simpler to just compare 2020-22 to the three years 2017-19, but the CDC made a methodological change between 2017 and 2018 in going from four races to six races (splitting Pacific Islanders out from Asians and adding “multiracial). So I just used the CDC’s data from 2018 onward to make an apples to apples comparison of 2020-22 to 2018-19.
Second, I didn’t bother adjusting for the modest population change during these years.
Third, the Floyd Effect didn’t begin on January 1, 2020, like I assume, but on May 25, 2020. Motor vehicle accident deaths weren’t up much in 2020 compared to previous years before Floyd Day. But black homicide deaths, after falling quite a bit in 2018 with the end of the Ferguson Effect under the Sessions Justice Department, began to creep upward again partway through 2019 and were rising in early 2020 before covid and also during early covid, before exploding in the last week of May during the first of the Mostly Peaceful Protests.
But graphing weekly data of black deaths, there’s no doubt that the Floyd Effect is closely linked to the demise of George Floyd and the subsequent cultural revolution. As you may recall, the “racial reckoning” was in all the papers at the time.
So, the fairest estimate of incremental deaths due to the Floyd Effect in 2020-2022 might be “approaching 35,000.” The Floyd Effect is no doubt continuing to pile up more incremental deaths in 2023, although homicides appear to be dropping (but are still well above the 2018-2019 rate).
Approaching 35,000 is quite a few deaths, especially among fairly young people with a lot of life expectancy left. It’s very similar to American deaths in the Korean War of 36,516, and more than five times the total deaths in the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars combined.
[Note: In CDC data, “homicides” refer to homicide victimizations not homicide perpetrations.]
Breast Cancer in Women Under 50 on the Rise — Could Cellphones Play a Role?
By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D. | The Defender | September 6, 2023
Early-onset breast cancer is on the rise in younger women in the U.S., according to two new peer-reviewed studies, leading some experts to wonder if cellphone use could be at least partially to blame.
The authors of an Aug. 16 study in JAMA Network Open looked at the health data from 2010 to 2019 of more than half a million people in the U.S. under 50 who reported having some kind of early-onset cancer.
They concluded breast cancer in 2019 had the highest incidence rate, with 12,649 new cases reported that year.
Meanwhile, the authors of a study published Sept. 5 in BMJ Oncology looked at worldwide cancer trends from 1990-2019. Breast cancer was responsible for the largest number of cases and associated deaths among younger people, with rates of 13.7 cases and 3.5 deaths per 100,000 people, they said.
Devra Davis, Ph.D., MPH, a toxicologist and epidemiologist who for more than 40 years has studied trends in cancer and who published more than 200 peer-reviewed articles, said she found the reports “very troubling.”
Davis is the president of Environmental Health Trust (EHT), a scientific research and education nonprofit, and founding director of the Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology of the U.S. National Research Council at the National Academy of Sciences.
She told The Defender, “A trend in cancer cannot prove what is causing it. The trend is simply a fact. So the fact is that cancer among younger Americans, particularly women, is on the rise.”
Indeed, the American Cancer Society in 2022 estimated there were 47,550 cases of breast cancer in U.S. women younger than 50.
“But,” Davis added, “there’s clear compelling evidence that electromagnetic fields [EMFs] accelerate the growth of breast cancer cells.”
EMFs can accelerate growth of breast cancer cells
“We have known for nearly 30 years that EMFs can accelerate the growth of MCF-7 breast cancer cells,” Davis said. “There’s no debate about that.”
According to Davis, MCF-7 is an estrogen receptor-positive cancer cell that has been cultured for many years and is used as a standard assay in the laboratory.
Davis said prior research showed radiofrequency (RF) radiation emitted by cellphones moves easily through fat and fluid — “and the breast is nothing but fat and fluid,” she said.
Additionally, a 2020 peer-reviewed study found that excessive smartphone use “significantly increased” the risk of breast cancer, with those using cellphones for more than 4.5 minutes before bedtime having a 5.27-fold increased risk of breast cancer compared to those using a smartphone for less time.
The study authors said:
“To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to find that excessive smartphone use significantly increased the risk of breast cancer, particularly for participants with a smartphone addiction, who maintained a close distance between the breasts and smartphone, and who had the habit of smartphone use before bedtime.”
Staring at a cellphone screen before bedtime can also suppress the natural release of melatonin, a hormone that plays a role in sleep.
Melatonin appears to protect against breast cancer, Davis said. “We know this most especially from studies of blind women because blind women naturally have very high levels of melatonin and they have half the rate of breast cancer of sighted women,” she said.
Some research, however, suggests more thorough studies must be done before the link between melatonin and decreased risk of breast cancer can be proven.
Davis and several co-authors in February 2023 published a review of the latest science on pediatric health, EMFs and RF radiation in which they noted that RF radiation can act like an endocrine disruptor:
“It appears that non-ionizing RFR has all the classic hallmarks of endocrine disruptors that affect reproduction, development of the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis (HPG) and alter normal male and female reproductive endpoints.”
According to Davis, endocrine disruptors can cause “a host of biological consequences, including breast cancer.”
EHT in 2020 collaborated with the Massachusetts Breast Cancer Coalition to create an educational module for K-12 schools on the health impacts of daily RF radiation exposure and ways to reduce one’s exposure, Davis said.
‘We’re going to see a whole cluster of young people with breast cancer’
According to Davis, there have been at least five case reports of women developing breast cancer tumors where they routinely kept their cellphones in their bras.
One of the case report’s authors, Dr. John West, is a former breast surgeon who more than a decade ago predicted there would be an uptick in breast cancer cases.
West told CBS News in Nov. 2012, “If there is a risk and we don’t find out about it for five or ten years from now, we’re going to see a whole cluster of young people with breast cancer.”
West and his co-authors in 2013 published their case report of four women who carried their smartphones in their bras for up to 10 hours a day for several years, and who “developed tumors in areas of their breasts immediately underlying the phones.”
“These cases,” West and his co-authors said, “raise awareness of the lack of safety data of prolonged direct contact with cellular phones.”
In 2016, West wrote a book about breast cancer prevention, “Prevent, Survive, Thrive: Every Woman’s Guide to Optimal Breast Care,” with a chapter entitled, “Your Bra: A No-Phone Zone.”
That same year, Dr. Otis W. Brawley, the ACS’ former chief medical officer, highlighted the potential link between cellphone radiation and cancer in a May 27, 2016, press release citing the National Toxicology Program (NTP) multi-year $30 million study showing “clear evidence” that RF radiation is associated with cancer and DNA damage. He said:
“For years, the understanding of the potential risk of radiation from cell phones has been hampered by a lack of good science. This report from the National Toxicology Program (NTP) is good science.”
Brawley said the NTP’s report “marks a paradigm shift in our understanding of radiation and cancer risk.”
But the “paradigm shift” Brawley referenced never took hold after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2020 dismissed the NTP study.
According to Davis, the FDA’s rejection of the NTP study was “deeply flawed” and “deeply hypocritical.”
The FDA in 1999 requested the NTP study cellphone radiation, she said. FDA officials were intimately involved in reviewing the study design plans.
“Then when the results came out and some people didn’t like it, the FDA began to trash talk their own study,” Davis said.
To this date, the FDA still claims there is not enough scientific evidence to link cellphone use to health problems, including cancer.
Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer worldwide, excluding non-melanoma skin cancer, with 2.26 million cases in 2020 noted by the World Health Organization.
Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D., is a reporter and researcher for The Defender based in Fairfield, Iowa. She holds a Ph.D. in Communication Studies from the University of Texas at Austin (2021), and a master’s degree in communication and leadership from Gonzaga University (2015). Her scholarship has been published in Health Communication. She has taught at various academic institutions in the United States and is fluent in Spanish.
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.
World is ‘laughing at’ the US – Alaska governor
© AFP / Mandel Ngan
RT | September 9, 2023
The US government’s decision to cancel oil and gas drilling licenses and forbid further drilling will “hobble” the country’s economy and makes no sense except to advance the green agenda, Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy has declared.
President Joe Biden’s administration on Wednesday canceled seven ten-year oil and gas drilling licenses granted to the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority (AIDEA) by former President Donald Trump. Biden’s Department of the Interior followed up this decision by issuing a proposal to forbid future leases on more than 40% of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska.
Biden said that these two measures “will help preserve our Arctic lands and wildlife,” adding on Saturday that he would “continue to take bold action to meet the urgency of the climate crisis and to protect our lands and waters for generations to come.”
Speaking to Fox News on Thursday, Dunleavy said that “this makes absolutely no sense from any perspective unless your goal is to drive up the cost of oil and gas so much that it makes certain renewables cheaper.”
Dunleavy, a Republican, claimed that Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, and Iran are “laughing” at Biden’s energy policy.
“They’re laughing together at the United States of America,” the governor said. “I can’t find anywhere in, really the history of nation-states or empires, where they worked at hobbling themselves to such a degree that’s happening currently with this administration. So 2024 can’t come soon enough for most of us.”
Gasoline prices have soared under Biden, reaching a record average high of just over $5 per gallon last June, up from around $2 when the president took office.
Prices began to rise when Biden signed an executive order in January 2021 banning new oil and gas licenses on federal land, and spiked as the conflict in Ukraine rocked global energy markets. Ahead of last year’s midterm elections, Biden attempted to stabilize gasoline prices by draining the US’ strategic petroleum reserve, and by unsuccessfully lobbying the Saudi-led Organization of Petroleum Exporting States to cut production.
The AIDEA argues that Biden has no legal right to rescind existing drilling licenses and told Fox News that it intends to challenge the decision in court.
Dr. Pierre Kory: New York Times Guide to Fall Vaccine Shots Is ‘Disinformation’
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | September 6, 2023
The New York Times on Sept. 1 published a “guide to fall vaccine shots,” which included recommending the general public get COVID-19, flu and RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) vaccines, and infants 6 months and older receive COVID-19 shots this fall.
Written by Times senior writer David Leonhardt, the guide warns about rising COVID-19 cases and the approaching flu season, before offering, “The good news is that there are vaccines and treatments that reduce risks from all major viruses likely to circulate this season.”
According to the Times, “This year, we should take a broader approach,” rather than “obsess over COVID.”
Peter Hotez, M.D., Ph.D., dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine — described by the Times as a “vaccine expert” — echoed that appeal. “It’s not only COVID you have to think about,” he said.
Hotez, Nirav Shah, M.D., J.D., principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and other public health officials and experts quoted by the Times recommended Americans prepare for the upcoming fall and winter by getting the trio of COVID-19, flu and RSV vaccines.
None of these experts, however, addressed any of the potential safety risks posed by these vaccines.
Medical and public health experts who spoke with The Defender took a different view and questioned the Times’ guide, citing concerns about the safety and efficacy of vaccines for respiratory illnesses.
“Vaccines against respiratory illnesses have failed miserably,” said cardiologist Peter McCullough M.D., MPH. “America is wary of vaccines at this point, wanting to get on with life free of menacing vaccines, and are willing to seek early treatment, which is always the best way to handle infections, vaccinated or not.”
Pediatrician Dr. Liz Mumper, president and CEO of the Rimland Center for Integrative Medicine, told The Defender, “There have been no studies examining the effects of giving RSV vaccine, flu vaccine and COVID vaccine at the same time.”
“If you follow the advice in The New York Times article,” Mumper said, “be aware that your child will be part of post-marketing experimentation.”
Times still pushing vaccine propaganda
According to the Times, “The best defenses against COVID haven’t changed: vaccines and post-infection treatments,” which are “especially important for vulnerable people, like the elderly and immunocompromised.”
The federal government is “on track” to approve updated COVID-19 shots, designed to combat recent variants, in mid-September, the Times reported. Once they are available, “all adults should consider getting a booster shot.”
“COVID can still be nasty even if it doesn’t put you in the hospital,” the Times states. “A booster shot will reduce its potency.”
Hotez resurrected a claim heard often during 2021 and 2022, telling the Times, “Overwhelmingly, those who are being hospitalized are unvaccinated or undervaccinated.”
Experts who spoke with The Defender disagreed.
Harvey Risch, M.D., Ph.D., professor emeritus and senior research scientist in epidemiology (chronic diseases) at the Yale School of Public Health, citing data from U.K. Public Health, said, “All-cause deaths ages 18+ are disproportionately among vaccinated people, whether one, two or three doses, compared to unvaccinated people.”
“The statistic quoted by Dr. Hotez is false,” Risch said.
Brian Hooker, Ph.D., senior director of science and research for Children’s Health Defense (CHD) said, “The new booster simply hasn’t been tested to affirm any assertion of protection. The original trials on children were laughable as they looked at antibody titers rather than actual disease prevention.”
McCullough told The Defender, “The COVID-19 vaccines have been a safety debacle with record cases of myocarditis, blood clots, stroke, and all-cause mortality.”
Despite the injury and mortality reports and the Times’ admission that the risk of COVID-19 to young children is “very low,” Shah nonetheless recommended children as young as 6 months of age get the COVID-19 booster shots this fall.
“Do you want to see your grandpa … [and] grandma?” Shah asked in the Times. “Are you really sure you’re not going to give COVID to them?”
Experts who spoke with The Defender refuted Shah’s advice.
Dr. Pierre Kory, president and chief medical officer of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), said “There is no medical justification for a healthy 6-month-old or older child to be vaccinated for COVID-19,” adding:
“There is so little data available on the safety of the COVID-19 vaccine in children that to give blanket recommendations like Shah is doing creates an unnecessary risk to children’s health.
“We simply do not know enough about the COVID-19 vaccines to make such broad recommendations. Additionally, COVID-19 is highly treatable in children and poses very little risk to a healthy child.”
Mumper told The Defender, “Any official who advocates that children take a vaccine to protect grandparents has not read the medical literature carefully.” She said, “After doing a deep dive on the risks and benefits of COVID vaccines in children, I remain steadfastly opposed to their use in healthy children,” adding:
“Any immunity from COVID shots is short-lived and follows a period of immune suppression. Very worrisome adverse events like inflammation of the heart, triggering autoimmunity, interfering with autonomic functions and reproductive toxicity are well described in the medical literature.”
Not all countries following suit
Some countries began limiting COVID-19 vaccination for children last year. In April 2022, Denmark ended its blanket COVID-19 vaccination recommendation, including for children.
Now, Denmark recommends “booster-vaccination” only for people “aged 50 years and above and selected target groups.”
Earlier in 2022, public health authorities in Sweden and Norway opted not to recommend COVID-19 vaccines for children between the ages of 5 and 11.
Sweden now recommends COVID-19 vaccination only for those 50 and above (18 and above for high-risk groups), while Norway is still only recommending COVID-19 vaccines for those 65 and older (and as young as 5 for high-risk groups).
In March of this year, the World Health Organization (WHO) said healthy children and adolescents ages 6 months to 17 years have a “low disease burden” and are therefore low priority for vaccination.
In June, Australian public health officials said Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine is “no longer available” for children under 12, and in January, U.K. public health authorities ended their booster program for those under 50.
COVID vaccine recommendations ‘not science, not medicine, not public health’
Dr. Meryl Nass, an internist and member of CHD’s scientific advisory committee, told The Defender that while public health authorities and the media continue to recommend COVID-19 vaccines, none of them have been fully licensed in the U.S., as all such vaccines are available under Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) only.
In May 2022, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said that COVID-19 vaccines for kids under 6 would not have to meet the agency’s 50% efficacy threshold required to obtain an EUA.
CDC data released in September 2022 showed that more than 55% of children between 6 months and 2 years old had a “systemic reaction” after their first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna COVID-19 vaccines.
“The CDC, criminally, claims the (authorized) vaccines are ‘safe and effective,’” Nass said, adding:
“That is a term of art that is only allowed to be used for licensed vaccines and drugs. No licensed COVID-19 vaccine is available in the U.S. Public health is supposed to balance benefit and risk.
“This is not science. Not medicine. Not public health.”
Flu vaccines have demonstrated ‘declining efficacy’
According to the Times, “The most immediate step worth considering involves R.S.V.” On Sept. 5, the CDC issued a health advisory warning of rising RSV cases in parts of the U.S., particularly among children and babies.
Last month, the CDC signed off on the first-ever monoclonal antibody vaccine Beyfortus for the prevention of RSV, for babies up to 8 months old.
Also last month, the FDA approved an RSV vaccine for pregnant women, despite concerns raised by some medical experts about premature births identified during clinical trials. In May, the FDA approved Pfizer’s Abrysvo and GlaxoSmithKline’s Arexvy RSV vaccines for people 60 and older.
The Times quoted Ashish Jha, M.D., MPH, former White House COVID-19 adviser and now dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health, who said, “If you’re 60 or over, you don’t want to get into November without having an RSV vaccine.”
And though there is no RSV vaccine approved for administration to children, the Times said that “parents may want to ask their pediatrician” about monoclonal antibody treatment for children under 8 months of age.
According to Hooker, “the RSV vaccine given to pregnant women could not even make a 20% threshold for protection (as specified by the FDA) against lower respiratory RSV infection.”
Supporting the push for the flu vaccine, the Times and experts such as Jha said, “The flu officially kills about 35,000 Americans in a typical year,” but “the flu’s toll would be lower if more people got a vaccine shot,” noting that “In recent years, less than half of Americans have done so.”
Jha added, “We underestimate the impact that respiratory viruses have on our population. The flu can knock people out for weeks, even younger people.” Jha pointed out that flu can make heart attacks and strokes more common as well.
Kory, however, told The Defender that the COVID-19 vaccines have made people more susceptible to other respiratory illnesses, like the flu and RSV:
“In my practice, we treat many vaccine-injured patients who are now more susceptible to the flu, RSV and many other viruses. The COVID vaccines cause many to present as if they have an autoimmune disease and now respond with more severe symptoms to common viruses like the flu.”
Risch, meanwhile, said, “Traditional flu vaccines are considered to be safe for most people” and may be a “reasonable” option for them, but “this should be discussed with one’s healthcare provider.”
“The flu vaccines seem to have had declining benefit over the last 10-15 years, to the point now that they may confer only a 30% benefit,” Risch added.
And according to Hooker, “The flu shot is also notoriously bad at protection against the flu and there are very few data regarding this season’s flu shot efficacy.”
‘Ludicrous’ public health messaging
Shah’s recommendation that children as young as 6 months get a COVID-19 shot this fall follows in a long line of questionable advice and claims disseminated by public health officials, some of which were later contradicted.
In a May 2021 MSNBC interview, Dr. Anthony Fauci, then-head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID), said:
“Although you don’t like to see breakthroughs, the fact is, this is one of the encouraging aspects about the efficacy of the vaccine. It protect you completely against infection. If you do get infected, the chances are that you’re going to be without symptoms, and the chances are very likely that you’ll not be able to transmit it to other people.”
Fauci’s statements, however, failed to account for the many examples of breakthrough infections with severe symptoms and hospitalization.
After years of official “safe and effective” claims, in YouTube’s new “medical misinformation” policy introduced Aug. 15, “Claims that any vaccine is a guaranteed prevention method for COVID-19” are prohibited. Fauci’s videos from 2021, notably, are still up on YouTube.
In April 2020, Fauci said that remdesivir will become the “standard of care” for treating COVID-19. But numerous victims of COVID-19 hospital protocols prescribed by the CDC have come forward in recent months claiming that remdesivir was administered without permission of the patients or their families and contributed to further injury or death.
Similarly, former CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said in March 2021 “Our data from the CDC today suggests … that vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don’t get sick … can’t transmit it to others.” She doubled down on these statements during a House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic hearing in June, asserting that her statement “was generally accurate.”
Hooker said these statements were “obviously patently false, as the vaccines distributed in the U.S. at that time [in 2021] were not tested for transmission and there was evidence of ‘breakthrough’ infections even in the clinical trials.”
“This obviates any protection to ‘Grandma and Grandpa’ through children getting vaccinated against COVID-19,” Hooker added.
Also in 2021, Walensky recommended wearing pantyhose over a mask to ensure a tight fit.
Nass called such public health messaging “ludicrous,” noting that Walensky’s pantyhose recommendation “quickly disappeared” because it “had connotations the CDC was not willing to deal with.”
Kory criticized the Times’ fall vaccine guide, characterizing it as an example of “disinformation.”
“The New York Times is carrying the disinformation that continues to come from the CDC and other government health agencies,” he said. “This is one of the reasons that the public continues to lose trust in the media and our government.”
As a result, public health officials “create a mockery of how medical and scientific evidence is used to inform patient care decisions and public health policy,” Kory said.
Other experts who spoke with The Defender suggested taking vitamins to boost one’s immune system, rather than a series of vaccinations.
“For the immune system to defend against respiratory viruses, all people should take daily vitamin D to achieve blood levels of 50 or greater,” Risch said. “This is typically 5,000 units per day for a 150-lb person, but can be adjusted up or down according to body weight.”
“Serious RSV infections generally occur only in the youngest young and the oldest old. People in these categories should discuss this with their doctors,” he added.
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”
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.
US Carries Out ICBM Test Amid Tensions with North Korea and Russia
By Connor Freeman | The Libertarian Institute | September 6, 2023
The US Air Force and Space Force jointly launched an unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) on Wednesday, amidst increased tensions with Pyongyang and Moscow. Air Force Global Strike Command carried out the test firing from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
“These test launches demonstrate the readiness of [US] nuclear forces and provide confidence in the lethality and effectiveness of the nation’s nuclear deterrent,” said Space Launch Delta 30 vice commander Col. Bryan Titus.
A day earlier, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan threatened Pyongyang over a potentially upcoming meeting between Kim Jong Un, the supreme leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), and Russian President Vladimir Putin. “[This] is not going to reflect well on North Korea and they will pay a price for this in the international community,” Sullivan said.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby claimed “arms negotiations” between the two nations are “actively advancing.” Although, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov explained that he cannot confirm the leaders’ rumored meeting as there is “nothing to say.” The US has already pledged $113 billion backing Kiev in its proxy war with Moscow.
The latest US miliary aid package for Kiev includes depleted uranium tank ammunition which is radioactive and toxic, it has been linked to cancer as well as birth defects where it has been used such as during the Iraq War. Largely as a result of Washington actively undermining diplomacy and ruling out peace talks or ceasefires, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has warned humanity has never been closer to a nuclear holocaust.
Former Defense Intelligence Agency officer Rebekah Koffler told Fox News Digital that “Washington is signaling to Moscow that it’s nuclear deterrent is combat ready should Putin decide to resort to nuclear warfare whether on the battlefield in Ukraine or outside of it… the risk of unintentional escalation due to misinterpretation of each other’s intentions is now heightened.”
Last Friday, Moscow put its nuclear Sarmat missile on “combat duty.” In 2022, Putin remarked that the advanced ICBM will “reliably ensure the security of Russia from external threats and make those, who in the heat of aggressive rhetoric try to threaten our country, think twice.”
Since 2022, massive joint US-South Korean live fire war games have resumed and, in response, the DPRK has launched more than 100 missiles. Last week, hours after the US flew bombers in separate joint air drills with Tokyo and Seoul, North Korea test fired two short-range “tactical” ballistic missiles.
During the Joe Biden administration, tensions have soared on the Korean peninsula as a result of Washington’s myriad war games which have seen the White House deploy armed Reaper drones, nuclear capable bombers, and aircraft carriers. In July, a US nuclear-armed submarine docked in South Korea for the first time since 1981.
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Are There 50,000 ‘Israeli-born’ Individuals Living in the UK?
By Professor David Miller | August 18, 2026
Recent disclosures by the Zionist regime show that some 2,069 British nationals were serving in the IDF as of March 2025, according to Freedom of Information (FoI) requests submitted to the occupation forces (1,686 dual British-Israeli, plus 383 multinational). We cannot tell from the figures how many of these were already settler colonists and intend to stay in the colony, and how many will return or have returned to the UK. Presumably, those returning to the UK will number far fewer than 2,000, since many are known to have become permanently residents of the colony.
Additionally, the IDF figures only provide a snapshot, and do not tell us how many have served in the Jewish supremacist military either before or after March 2025. One way into the question of how many genocidaires are living in Britain is to ask how many current British residents were born in the Zionist colony. There is data on that, as we shall see. … continue
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