Stuart Jeanne Bramhall's Blog: The Most Revolutionary Act , page 656

Frontline Doctors Stand Up to Authoritarian Public Health Officials

Max Borders

American Institute of Economic Research

Imagine you’re a doctor. You go into work every day for long hours and figure out how to treat Covid. You are saving lives and doing so patient by patient. Each patient has individual needs that sometimes require custom care, but you know early treatment works.

Suddenly, faraway bureaucrats demand that you abandon your best practices and fall into line around their grand plan. Suddenly your patients can’t get what you prescribe. Media apparatchiks diminish, invalidate or mock everything you’ve learned and are doing.

And all of it is being carried out in the name of “science.”

The Physicians’ Rebellion

More than 10,000 physicians and medical scientists have signed onto a Declaration that accuses public health authorities of, well, doing it wrong–and to devastating effect.

“WHEREAS, public policy makers have chosen to force a “one size fits all” treatment strategy, resulting in needless illness and death, rather than upholding fundamental concepts of the individualized, personalized approach to patient care which is proven to be safe and more effective;”

The Declaration goes on to assert that “thousands of physicians are being prevented from providing treatment to their patients, as a result of barriers put up by pharmacies, hospitals, and public health agencies” and that “These policies may actually constitute crimes against humanity.”

Local Knowledge

Such statements might strike non-physicians as hyperbolic. But consider that many of these doctors, such as Dr. Brian Tyson have each saved thousands of lives through early intervention and best practices developed in the field through trial-and-error, observation, and active communication among peers.

“We started seeing inflammation, so we used anti-inflammatories,” Dr. Tyson explains.

“We saw blood clots, so we used anticoagulants. We saw patients having trouble breathing, so we used asthma medications… It wasn’t just one drug. It was the art of what we see and how those patients responded to what we gave them.”

Despite treating more than 6,000 patients, Tyson can count the patients he’s lost to Covid on three fingers. And yet non-practicing officials are interfering with the work of doctors like Tyson.

The physicians and medical scientists who have signed the Declaration are also frustrated with the authoritarian measures supported by career bureaucrats such as Anthony Fauci. Indeed as more information trickles out, more and more observers suspect Fauci approved funding for dangerous research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and then colluded with the bioethically disturbed Peter Daszak to propagate the unlikely “natural origins” theory.

Barriers to Treatment

Public health authorities have erected huge barriers to early treatment by:

Putting pressure on major pharmacies not to fill essential prescriptions,Putting pressure on insurers not to cover proven therapies, andPutting pressure on Big Tech giants to censor and suppress eminent physicians such as cardiologist Peter A. McCullough, who has expressed concerns about vaccinating children.

Declaration signatories include physicians who figured out how to successfully reduce the death toll while public health authorities dithered and delayed their grand plan to roll out mRNA vaccines for everyone — including, apparently, low-risk populations.

All the doctors agree that greater access to early treatment could have saved thousands of lives–and could save thousands more. The Declaration suggests that public health authorities are trying to steamroll over clinical practitioners when these camps should complement each other.

“We are in a pandemic of undertreatment,” said intensive care specialist Pierre Kory, M.D., winner of the British Medical Association’s President’s Choice Award.

“Everything else that we’ve discovered, everything that’s in our protocols is because we have used good clinical sense, lots of experience, and we’ve used trial and error using our best judgments of risks and benefits.”

Clinicians or “Experts?”

Why should anyone trust thousands of doctors and medical researchers over public health authorities and other so-called experts trotted out in media campaigns?

Physicians figured out how to save lives and control Covid by talking to each other and developing best practices.Physicians have more local knowledge and more direct experience with real patients.Physicians are not as beholden to pharmaceutical companies as public health authorities, particularly as these authorities have gone as far as mandating pharma products for millions.Physicians have learned to scale up their practices, including telemedicine, to avoid ‘hospital overwhelm.’Physicians have learned that early treatment and natural immunity is an effective way to reduce the dangers of a pandemic whose virus was probably funded by… public health authorities.

It’s no wonder these doctors are in open rebellion against authoritarian public health bodies who seek to implement monolithic mass behavioral control in place of a dynamic multi-pronged approach that includes clinical best practices.

[…]Via https://www.aier.org/article/frontline-doctors-stand-up-to-authoritarian-public-health-officials/

How much do we REALLY know about the background of Facebook ‘whistleblower’ Frances Haugen?

 © Getty Images / By Tom Williams; (inset) © Wikipedia

By Kit Klarenberg

RT

Before we take Frances Haugen’s testimony at face value, it would be useful to know more about her career history – in particular her time working alongside former elite US spies in Facebook’s Threat Intelligence division.

Ever since Haugen testified to the Senate, the media and social media have been abuzz with praise for the Facebook “whistleblower”, endlessly repeating her words and allegations without critique, and enthusiastically endorsing her proposals for greater surveillance, censorship and control of social media and the internet more widely by the US government.

Haugen, who offered ostensible first-hand testimony about her time working for and with Facebook’s counterterrorism and counterespionage teams, has almost universally been taken at face value by journalists, pundits, politicians, and average citizens. Some have nonetheless been surprised to learn that Facebook maintains dedicated units of that kind at all.

Many would likely be similarly shocked to learn that these units form part of the social network giant’s Threat Intelligence division, which is staffed by former Pentagon, CIA and NSA spies.

Little information on the division can be found on the web, although its strategy is known to be led by Ben Nimmo, a former NATO propagandist and alumnus of Integrity Initiative, a secret UK Foreign Office information warfare operation itself staffed by military intelligence veterans.

A paywalled report by elite industry outlet Intelligence Online nonetheless names David Agranovich, ex-Pentagon analyst and intelligence director for the White House National Security Council; Nathaniel Gleicher, former Council cybersecurity chief and Justice Department senior counsel for computer crime and intellectual property; and Mike Torrey, previously NSA and CIA cyber analyst, as occupying senior positions in Threat Intelligence.

Agranovich and Torrey were key authors of Facebook’s State of Influence Operations 2017-2020 report, published in May. The document repeatedly alleged that China, Iran and Russia sought to weaponize the social network for malign purposes. Western cyber warfare operations known to target social media, such as the British Army’s 77th Brigade and Washington’s Operation Earnest Voice, were unmentioned, which is entirely unsurprising when one considers who wrote it.

Job listings for positions in Threat Intelligence make abundantly clear that an extensive espionage background is mandatory for all employees. An ad for an analyst role, posted mere days before Haugen testified to the Senate, states “5+ years of experience working in intelligence (either government or private sector), international geopolitical, cybersecurity, or human rights functions,” and “experience prioritizing tasks, projects, and analytical or investigative needs…with minimal direction or oversight” are absolute “minimum qualifications” for anyone wishing to apply.

A university qualification in “computer science, information systems, intelligence studies [or] cybersecurity,” and “regional knowledge and/or language skills, especially East or Southeast Asia,” are listed as “preferred qualifications”, the latter indicating precisely where the unit’s crosshairs are, and aren’t, trained.

It’s somewhat puzzling, then, that Haugen came to work for this elite, spy-dominated unit. While an extensive clean-up of her web history was conducted prior to going public, her still-extant LinkedIn profile – which somewhat amazingly reveals she helped found dating app Hinge, and served as its Chief Technical Officer – makes no mention of any experience remotely relevant to counterespionage.

Incongruously, though, the listing for Haugen’s Facebook role, unlike all other entries on her CV, offers no details on her responsibilities or achievements, and only the vague job title of ‘Product Manager’. Then again, a cumulative seven years spent at Google may have been sufficient to impress her recruiters.

The search engine monopoly’s own origins trace back to a US intelligence program in the 1990s, under which academics were financed to create a system whereby vast quantities of data on private citizens could be monitored, collected and stored, and individual users identified and tracked.

Throughout the search engine’s development, company cofounder Sergey Brin met regularly with research and development representatives of defense contractors and the CIA – one has since recalled how he would “rush in on roller blades, give his presentation and rush out.” Moreover, Pentagon, CIA and NSA contracts have been absolutely pivotal to transforming Google and other tech giants from small start-ups, literally operating from basements, into the global behemoths they are today.

Still, the composition of Threat Intelligence raises serious questions about Haugen’s narrative – first and foremost, how can Facebook be said to not be doing enough to act against alleged foreign-borne threats? It’s somewhat inconceivable that the best intelligence veterans money can buy, who have a clear and demonstrable bias against Western state-mandated “enemy” countries, are asleep at the wheel.

At the very least, it’s indisputably a strange situation indeed when an individual spends two and a half years in extremely close quarters with former high-ranking spies with an avowed focus on China, Iran and Russia, then very publicly declares that the US government needs greater censorship and surveillance powers – which the very agencies from which her co-workers hail have similarly demanded for years – in order to battle the threat to democracy posed by these countries.

[…]

Via https://www.rt.com/op-ed/536872-background-facebook-whistleblower-haugen/

COVID THEATER: Turns out Biden’s vaccine mandate for employers was a bluff; no idea when or if OSHA will ever issue rule

 

Dr Eddy Betterman

Earlier in September, Joe Biden took to national television to rail at unvaccinated Americans and blame them for the lingering COVID-19 pandemic.

He talked about how he and others were getting “frustrated” with people who dared to take Democrats at their word when they claimed that it’s ‘their body, their choice’ regarding abortion (‘women’s health’) decisions.

Suddenly though, that excuse wasn’t good enough for the Coronavirus vaccine; Americans refusing the jab were called “anti-vaxxers” (not freedom lovers) and the excuse was made that abortion isn’t deadly contagious (though it is deadly for the unborn child).

“Many of us are frustrated with the nearly 80 million Americans who are still not vaccinated, even though the vaccine is safe, effective, and free,” Biden said during his Sept. 9 address.

“This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated. And it’s caused by the fact that despite America having an unprecedented and successful vaccination program, despite the fact that for almost five months free vaccines have been available in 80,000 different locations, we still have nearly 80 million Americans who have failed to get the shot,” he added, directly — and falsely — blaming new infections on unvaccinated people (though even vaccinated Americans have been coming down with new infections as well).

Biden then went on to drop a bomb: He said his government would mandate that employers with more than 100 on staff would be required to force them to get the jab or else face a massive fine.

“I’m announcing that the Department of Labor is developing an emergency rule to require all employers with 100 or more employees, that together employ over 80 million workers, to ensure their workforces are fully vaccinated or show a negative test at least once a week,” he proclaimed.

“The bottom line: We’re going to protect vaccinated workers from unvaccinated co-workers. We’re going to reduce the spread of COVID-19 by increasing the share of the workforce that is vaccinated in businesses all across America,” Biden added, noting that large American corporations were already implementing the requirement on their own.

Subsequent reporting noted that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a division of the Labor Department focused on employee safety, was responsible for issuing the rule. However, a new report suggests that the rule is not forthcoming and in fact, may never be issued at all.

That was the impression left by White House press secretary Jen Psaki just this week in response to a reporter who noted that OSHA had not even begun the process of issuing a rule:

“Folks, this looks like a complete con job, pushed by the Biden administration to provide cover for corporations to create a mandate on their own. Meaning the intent of the announcement was to create momentum for increased vaccinations, while the Biden regime never did or does intend to use OSHA as a national enforcement mechanism,” The Conservative Treehouse reported.

“There are three elements: (1) Federal worker mandate; (2) Federal contractor mandate; and the big controversial one, (3) a national worker mandate for companies with over 100 employees,” the site continued, noting that three weeks later, nothing has been offered up or is forthcoming.

[…]

Via https://dreddymd.com/2021/10/08/turns-out-bidens-vaccine-mandate-for-employers-was-a-bluff/

76% of Vermont’s September Covid-19 deaths are vax breakthroughs

By Guy Page

Vermont Daily Chronicle

Just eight of the 33 Vermonters who died of  Covid-19 in September were unvaccinated, the Vermont Department of Heath said Wednesday.

Health Department spokesperson Ben Truman said most of the vaccine  ‘breakthrough’ Covid-19 fatalities were elderly. Because they were among the first vaccinated, Vermont’s elderly “have had more time to potentially become a vaccine breakthrough case,” he said.

Expressed in percentages, 76% of Vermont Covid-19 fatalities were breakthrough cases. As of Tuesday, 88 percent of all eligible Vermonters (age 12 and over) had been vaccinated with at least one shot.

At Tuesday’s press conference, the Department of Health September mortality statistics did not show a vaccinated/unvaccinated breakdown. Despite recent emphatic references by Gov. Phil Scott and Health Department Commissioner Mark Levine to a “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” the per capita rate of vaccinated breakthrough deaths has risen in recent weeks.

Vermont Daily Chronicle asked Health Department spokesman Ben Truman Tuesday for a vaxxed/unvaxxed breakdown of the 33 September deaths. The full text of his email appears below:

“Eight of the 33 deaths in September were not vaccinated.

Fully Vaccinated Countries Had Highest Number of New COVID Cases, Study Shows

By  Megan Redshaw

The authors of a study published Sept. 30, in the European Journal of Epidemiology Vaccines said the sole reliance on vaccination as a primary strategy to mitigate COVID-19 and its adverse consequences “needs to be re-examined.”

A study published Sept. 30, in the peer-reviewed European Journal of Epidemiology Vaccines found “no discernible relationship” between the percentage of population fully vaccinated and new COVID cases.

In fact, the study found the most fully vaccinated nations had the highest number of new COVID cases, based on the researchers’ analysis of emerging data during a seven-day period in September.

The authors said the sole reliance on vaccination as a primary strategy to mitigate COVID-19 and its adverse consequences “needs to be re-examined,” especially considering the Delta (B.1.617.2) variant and the likelihood of future variants.

They wrote:

“Other pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions may need to be put in place alongside increasing vaccination rates. Such course correction, especially with regards to the policy narrative, becomes paramount with emerging scientific evidence on real-world effectiveness of the vaccines.”

As part of the study, researchers investigated the relationship between the percentage of population fully vaccinated and new COVID cases across 68 countries and 2,947 U.S. counties that had second dose vaccine, and available COVID case data.

For seven days preceding Sept. 3, researchers computed COVID cases per one million people for each country, as well as the percentage of population that was fully vaccinated.

Relationship between cases per 1 million people (last 7 days) and percentage of population fully vaccinated across 68 countries as of September 3, 2021

Notably, Israel with more than 60% of its population fully vaccinated, had the highest COVID cases per 1 million people during the seven-day period.

Iceland and Portugal, with more than 75% of their populations fully vaccinated, had more COVID cases per 1 million people than countries such as Vietnam and South Africa, where only about 10% of the population is fully vaccinated.

Across U.S. counties, the median new COVID cases per 100,000 people during the seven-day period was similar across the categories of percentage of population fully vaccinated.

Percentage of counties that experienced an increase of cases between two consecutive 7-day time periods by percentage of population fully vaccinated across 2947 counties as of September 2, 2021

The researchers found a substantial county variation in new COVID cases within categories of percentage of population fully vaccinated. There also appeared to be no significant signaling of COVID cases decreasing in counties where a higher percentages of the population was fully vaccinated.

Of the top five counties with the highest percentage of population fully vaccinated (99.9% – 84.3%), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) identified four as “high” transmission counties.

Three of the four counties classified as “high” transmission had fully vaccinated rates of 90% or higher. Conversely, of the 57 counties classified as “low” transmission by the CDC, 15 had fully vaccinated rates of 20% or lower.

The findings also showed no discernible association between COVID cases and fully vaccinated rates when a one-month lag was considered, to account for the 14-day period it takes for a vaccine to be considered effective.

The authors suggested a correction to the policy narrative is warranted, as increasing vaccination rates is not enough. “Such course correction, especially with regards to the policy narrative, becomes paramount with emerging scientific evidence on real-world effectiveness of the vaccines,” they wrote.

The authors cited data from the Ministry of Health in Israel showing the effectiveness of two doses of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine against preventing SARS-CoV-2 infection was reported to be 39% — substantially lower than the reported trial efficacy of 96%.

[…]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/fully-vaccinated-countries-highest-number-new-covid-cases/

Dr. Richard Urso: End the Pandemic with Early Treatment

Why are patients deliberately being denied access to early treatment?

Science Matters

https://rumble.com/embed/vktlqs/?pub=4

Drug Inventor Urso: Are We Underutilizing Early Treatment?

We cannot use a one-size fits all approach to fighting Covid

Dr. Richard Urso is a scientist, sole inventor of an FDA-approved wound healing drug, and the Former Director of Orbital Oncology at MD Anderson Cancer Center. He believes we cannot use a one-size-fits-all approach to fighting Covid.

“We are not going to vaccinate our way out of this,” he said. “There’s no reason to not use anti-inflammatories against inflammatory disease. I used steroids in March and people were saying, ‘Why are you using steroids for inflammatory for this viral disease?’ And I said, ‘Because it’s not a viral disease.’”

Urso says mass lockdowns and waiting for a vaccine never made a lot of sense to him. He calls for a multi-pronged strategy includes targeted vaccination programs, but also early treatment and prevention measures.

“Early treatment should have been part…

View original post 967 more words

Led by Blacks, NYC Rises Up Against Mandatory COVID-19 Vaccines

by Brian Shilhavy
Editor, Health Impact News

As mandatory COVID-19 vaccine mandates took effect this week in New York City, many teachers and others suddenly found themselves out of work as the Supreme Court refused to step in and stop the mandates last week.

Teachers, educators and many others took to the streets of New York this week to protest, led by Blacks. Less than 30% of the Blacks in New York City have given in to mandatory shots, and Hispanics are close behind in their refusal to obey government mandates for COVID-19 shots.

Angela Stanton-King, the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, and a former NBA #1 draft pick were among those who took to the streets of New York this week to protest and warn others about the abuse of civil rights with New York’s mandatory vaccination mandates.

Many of the protesters in NYC carried flags of Australia, showing their solidarity with their Aussie brothers and sisters who are suffering the most under tyranny right now.

[…]

Via https://healthimpactnews.com/2021/led-by-blacks-nyc-rises-up-against-mandatory-covid-19-vaccines/

The Rolling Stones: Hidden History

Days of Rage: The Rolling Stones’ Road to Altamount

Directed by Tom O’Dell (2019)

Film Review

This documentary is about the riot at Altamount Speedway that ended the 1969 Rolling Stones tour.

The filmmakers describe the Rolling Stones as the first anti-establishment rock band. Unlike other sixties groups (eg the Beatles), they focused on on rhythm and blues when most rock and roll was trying to conceal its Black origins. Mick Jagger, who sang in a black American accent, wore a sweatshirt instead of a suit in his 1964 US TV appearance. Incorporating themes highly critical of the Vietnam War and capitalist institutions into their music, the Stones deliberately branded themselves as rebels during one of the most turbulent decades of the 20th century.

During their 1965 US tour, Grateful Dead members (with known intelligence connections)* introduced the Stones (and the Beatles) to LSD. The latter was legal in the US until 1966.

In 1967, British police arrested Mick Jagger and a Keith Richards after finding hash in an ashtray and a handful of prescription amphetamines after a party.** Jagger was sentenced to three months in prison and Richards to a year. Although court appearances kept the Stones from touring for several years, all charges were dismissed on appeal.

1967 was the year of the Summer of Love, centered in San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury district, where young people openly smoked marijuana, took LSD and handed out flowers to strangers. A growing psychedelic rock scene reflected these attitudes, with San Francisco challenging Los Angeles for the first time as the pop music capital.

A year later, however, pop music’s emphasis on love and peace changed radically with the explosion of the anti-Vietnam War movement on college campuses, the assassination of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy and the inner city riots.

In the spirit of Woodstock,*** the Stones gave a free concert at Altamont Speedway during their November 1969 US tour. Because the site was chosen only two days before the event (after San Francisco withdrew consent to use Golden Gate Park), there was virtually no plan to provide food, water, toilets, medical services or security for 300,000 attendees.

The Grateful Dead recruited the Oakland Hells Angels to provide front-of-stage security. As John Potash describes in his 2015 book Drugs as Weapons Against Us, “‘someone’ supplied the Angels with amphetamine-laced LSD for the event.”

Potash further states

“Dealers of acid and other drugs hawked their wares to concertgoers, as had been the the case at New York’s Woodstock fest. Filmmakers at the festival captured many incidents of the Hell’s Angels clubbing anyone who tried to get near the state or cameramen trying to take pictures of their bloody bludgeoning.”

The Grateful Dead refused to perform after the violent beatings began.

According to Potash, 18 year-old Meredith Hunter climbed on stage and pointed a gun at Jagger as he was performing. Although two Angels thwarted Hunter (by stabbing and killing him), Drugs as Weapons Against US accuses the Angels of two additional murder attempts against Jagger.

Hunter’s death was one of four at the concert.

*According to John Potash in Drugs as Weapons Against Us, several Grateful Dead members collaborated closely with CIA assets Timothy O’Leary and Ken Kesey to promote LSD use among 1960s rock stars: see https://stuartbramhall.wordpress.com/2016/09/08/how-the-cia-used-lsd-to-destroy-the-new-left/

**Again according to Potash, British police conducted regular stops and searches of Jagger and Richards between 1967 and 1969. On at least one occasion they planted drugs in Jagger’s car. Potash also cites extensive evidence that British intelligence deliberately murdered Rolling Stones founder and leader Brian Jones in 1969 (when he “accidentally” drowned in a swimming pool).

***Woodstock was an infamous free three-day rock concert (in August 1969) in upstate New York. Featuring 32 major rock artists, it attracted 400,000 people. The film can be viewed free on Kanopy.

https://pukeariki.kanopy.com/video/days-rage-rolling-stones-road-altamont

Spreading Vaccine ‘Misinformation’ Puts Medical License at Risk, U.S. Boards Tell Physicians

By  Peter Doshi

Three U.S. medical certifying boards have warned doctors they risk losing their certification and license if they spread COVID vaccine misinformation, but the boards offered no clear definition of “misinformation.”

Three U.S. medical certifying boards have warned doctors that they risk losing their certification and license if they spread COVID vaccine misinformation.

Internists, family doctors and pediatricians received an email on Sept. 9 that quoted a warning from the Federation of State Medical Boards in July which read:

“Providing misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine contradicts physicians’ ethical and professional responsibilities, and therefore may subject a physician to disciplinary actions, including suspension or revocation of their medical licence.”

Richard Baron, president and chief executive of the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM), told The BMJ that the move was an attempt to establish a standard of care.

“As standard setting organizations, we thought it was important to be on record, in a public way, to make clear that putting out flagrant misinformation is unethical and dangerous during a pandemic.” Baron said that the statement has been well received — “4 to 1 positive.”

But community physicians contacted by The BMJ thought differently.

“When I got that email I thought I’d better not put anything on social media about vaccines,” said Shveta Raju, a community physician in the Atlanta, Georgia, area, who has treated COVID patients and led the vaccination effort at her outpatient clinic.

“The email was sent more as a veiled threat to keep doctors on the official, established narrative, and that’s what I find chilling,” said a pediatrician who pseudonymously blogs under the name Elizabeth Bennett.

“Pandemic or no, there is a problem with having an ill-defined concept of misinformation that’s tied to public health messaging that hasn’t been consistent. How are physicians supposed to figure out what is misinformation when public health messaging swings so wildly?” Bennett asked.

Undefined offense

Baron said that the statement was also intended to signal the certifying boards’ support for physicians “trying to do the right thing.”

“We wanted to support that group and say ‘hey, we do have a standard of care here and you are doing the right thing when you uphold it,’” he said.

Raju responded, “If that was their intent, they should have defined misinformation. By leaving it undefined, the message was that we can’t talk about this at all.” She said that physicians are, by and large, a conservative group. “If they’re not sure what can be deemed misinformation, physicians would rather be quiet.”

Bennett concurred: “The thing I find most alarming is that they don’t define misinformation, but if they strip you of your board certification, you would lose your means of earning a living.”

Doctors spreading misinformation?

Official and social media company efforts to target “vaccine misinformation” predate the pandemic. But the new statement from ABIM, the American Board of Family Medicine, and the American Board of Pediatrics is one of several recent statements putting doctors in the spotlight for the first time.

In Canada, warnings about physician information began earlier, when in April the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario declared that physicians “have a professional responsibility not to communicate anti-vaccine, anti-masking, anti-distancing, and anti-lockdown statements or promote unsupported, unproven treatments for COVID-19.”

The Canadian statement triggered an outcry, leading to a clarification that the statement was “not intended to stifle a healthy public debate about how best to address aspects of the pandemic.”

But concerns continued. In June, a Canadian member of parliament held a press conference on censorship of Canadian clinicians and scientists. YouTube removed the video of the meeting.

The BMJ asked ABIM about the size of the problem of board certified physicians spreading misinformation. “We don’t have a sense of numbers of physicians spreading misinformation,” Baron said. “We’re at the beginning.” He believed it was only a “small number of doctors.”

The medical boards opted to send the statement to all doctors, he said, because focusing on just the offending individuals would “miss the impact they’re having because of how much their voices are being amplified.”

As an example of “unprofessional or unethical behaviour,” Baron cited the case of a Florida doctor offering medical exemptions from mask wearing for $50 (£37; €43).

Personalized medicine — or one-size-fits-all?

The BMJ asked whether physicians expressing doubt about the need for booster doses or vaccination of patients with natural immunity — two matters that have been the subject of debate and changing official guidance — would qualify as misinformation.

“I don’t think we have concerns with doctors wrestling with areas where the science is unclear,” Baron said, “but there is no debate about whether people should get a primary vaccination series.”

Raju worries about the impact on personalized care. “The job of physicians is to take guidelines and apply them to the patient in front of them.” But now “physicians are basically being told that when it comes to COVID vaccines it’s one-size-fits-all.”

[…]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/vaccine-misinformation-medical-license-u-s-boards-warn-physicians/

Think the FDA Is Looking Out for Your Health? History Tells a Different Story.

By  Children’s Health Defense Team

Consumer watchdog groups accuse the FDA of having evolved from a “hard-charging tiger of an agency” a century ago, to a “pliant pussycat” today.

Regulatory agencies, says Encyclopedia Britannica, are a uniquely American institution. Though conceptualized as mere advisory bodies at the time of their emergence in the late 19th century, federal regulatory agencies have since acquired comprehensive legislative powers and even quasi-judicial powers — exercising “social control through rulemaking” with “almost no supervision by other branches of government.”

As legal scholars tamely explain, “unique pressures and influences … invariably push [regulators’] actions, and their decisions on policy questions, in a direction favored by regulated firms.”

This phenomenon, known as regulatory capture, has become the norm — not least because lucrative “revolving door” jobs generally await tractable regulators once they exit their government posts.

In the crowded field of captured agencies, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is one of the standouts. FDA gets 45% of its budget from the pharmaceutical industry, and fast-tracks more than 50% of the drugs it approves.

Consumer watchdog groups accuse the FDA of having evolved from a “hard-charging tiger of an agency” a century ago, to a “pliant pussycat” today.

FDA states that drug recalls are initiated either “by FDA request” or “on a company’s own initiative.” According to the consumer website Drugwatch, however, FDA “can only recommend” but not force a recall.

Vaccine recalls, too, are “almost always initiated voluntarily by the vaccine manufacturer.” In 1976, public outcry forced the government to pull the plug on a dangerous swine flu vaccine after just 10 weeks, but only after 40 million Americans had received it.

Although manufacturers do withdraw dangerous drugs, vaccines and consumer products from the market from time to time (sometimes after FDA has obligingly looked the other way for decades), many observers believe such recalls represent the tip of the iceberg — a placatory bone thrown to persuade the public that the nation has a functional oversight system.

Is the FDA at least scrupulous about which drugs and vaccines it lets out of the starting gate?

As a long line of drug fiascoes suggests, the clear answer is no — experimental COVID vaccines are the latest example.

The still timely tale of thalidomide

Thalidomide never received FDA approval, but the saga illustrates how, even 60 years ago, the FDA had already cast its lot with industry.

[…]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/fda-regulatory-capture-revolving-door-jobs/