Regular readers might have noticed that my output lately hasn’t been as…prolific…as in the past. You’d think that, with my spending more time at home than I have in a long time due to the restrictions put in place in Michigan to slow the spread of COVID-19 that I’d be a blogging fiend, even more so than usual, but oddly enough I’ve been less productive in that area than in the past. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because all the topics that catch my eye are COVID-19-related and just too damned depressing. Fun topics, silly types of pseudoscience, just don’t seem worth spending much effort on. On the other hand, maybe it would help my mood and productivity to do a post every now and then on something like Bach flower remedies. This is not that day, however, because I just got the opportunity to rectify an oversight that dates back to the very beginning of this blog, my never having discussed in depth an antivaxxer named Judy Mikovits.
This opportunity comes in the form of a “trailer” to a “full length documentary” called Plandemic, which is being previewed by the release of a “series of vignettes,” the first of which was released yesterday. (26 minutes is a hell of a vignette! How long is the completed documentary? Ten hours?) From the name, you can tell that this is going to be a conspiracyfest of a “documentary,” arguing that the current COVID-19 pandemic was somehow planned. We’ll get to that shortly. First, here’s where the oversight rectification comes in. This first segment is about Judy Mikovits, someone I should have written about years and years ago, but somehow have never discussed on this blog. When you hear her story, you’ll see why I was shocked to realize that Mikovits has only been briefly mentioned a couple of times on this blog. Now, as is the case with a lot of cranks and antivaxxers, Mikovits is grifting on the COVID-19 conspiracy bandwagon.
Here’s the trailer, which includes the video.
The blurb for this movie is just plain bonkers:
Humanity is imprisoned by a killer pandemic. People are being arrested for surfing in the ocean and meditating in nature. Nations are collapsing. Hungry citizens are rioting for food. The media has generated so much confusion and fear that people are begging for salvation in a syringe. Billionaire patent owners are pushing for globally mandated vaccines. Anyone who refuses to be injected with experimental poisons will be prohibited from travel, education and work. No, this is not a synopsis for a new horror movie. This is our current reality.
No, people are being arrested for overcrowding and refusing to social distance sufficiently. As yet, I haven’t seen any nations collapsing due to COVID-19, although it’s certainly possible that this could happen if an unstable nation is sufficiently stressed. As for the “billionaire patent owners,” one wonders to whom the filmmaker is referring, one does. (OK, you likely know that it’s Bill Gates, whose advocacy for public health and vaccines have made him one of the most reviled people in existence to the tinfoil hat conspiracy crowd, particularly the antivaccine contingent. Basically, to them, he’s a sweater-wearing Darth Vader, Lord Sauron, and Voldemort all rolled up into one, except that he’s working behind the scenes like Frank Underwood in the first couple of seasons of House of Cards before he became President to enslave us all with vaccines and pharmaceuticals.)
The movie boldly paddles up the river of pseudoscience and deeper into tinfoil hat conspiracy territory:
In the early 1900s, America’s first Billionaire, John D. Rockefeller bought a German pharmaceutical company that would later assist Hitler to implement his eugenics-based vision by manufacturing chemicals and poisons for war. Rockefeller wanted to eliminate the competitors of Western medicine, so he submitted a report to Congress declaring that there were too many doctors and medical schools in America, and that all natural healing modalities were unscientific quackery. Rockefeller called for the standardization of medical education, whereby only his organization be allowed to grant medical school licenses in the US. And so began the practice of immune suppressive, synthetic and toxic drugs. Once people had become dependent on this new system and the addictive drugs it provided, the system switched to a paid program, creating lifelong customers for the Rockefellers. Currently, medical error is the third leading cause of death in the US. Rockefeller’s secret weapon to success was the strategy known as, “problem-reaction-solution.” Create a problem, escalate fear, then offer a pre-planned solution. Sound familiar?
Flash forward to 2020…
They named it COVID19. Our leaders of world health predicted millions would die. The National Guard was deployed. Makeshift hospitals were erected to care for a massive overflow of patients. Mass graves were dug. Terrifying news reports had people everywhere seeking shelter to avoid contact. The plan was unfolding with diabolical precision, but the masters of the Pandemic underestimated one thing… the people. Medical professionals and every-day citizens are sharing critical information online. The overlords of big tech have ordered all dissenting voices to be silenced and banned, but they are too late. The slumbering masses are awake and aware that something is not right. Quarantine has provided the missing element: time. Suddenly, our overworked citizenry has ample time to research and investigate for themselves. Once you see, you can’t unsee.
I’ll give the filmmaker credit for…imagination…for going all the way back to John D. Rockefeller as the origin of the evil plot that has now culminated a century later in the COVID-19 pandemic. At this point, as an aside, I can’t resist mentioning that medical error is not the third leading cause of death. Not even close. That’s a myth that just won’t die. (It’s my duty to point that out any time someone parrots that idiocy.)
I do love that last paragraph, though. It is exactly why people are prone to conspiracy theories. A good conspiracy theory turns the believer into a hero, a warrior with secret knowledge that none of the other ignorant “sheeple” know, against powerful forces arrayed against him. A good conspiracy theory almost always has a part at the end in which the “people” (in this case, the people believing the conspiracy theory) “wake up” and see what is being “suppressed” by the powerful forces seeking to keep them ignorant. Conspiracy theories like this both make the believer feel special and brave for having secret knowledge and fighting to make it public, but also provide an explanation for bad things happening in the world. Yes, the conspiracy theory in Plandemic is utterly ridiculous to those of us who know science, medicine, and history, but most people don’t know the relevant science, medicine, and history. To them, it sounds plausible.
Judy Mikovits as portrayed by Mikki Willis
We now get to Judy Mikovits, who is portrayed in the clip above as just the sort of brave maverick scientist and truth teller that every good conspiracy theory needs, a woman with hidden knowledge who’s fighting dark powerful forces seeking to “silence her.” The sad thing is, at one time she was a decent scientist, unlike some other legitimate scientists turned antivaccine cranks, like Christopher Shaw, Christopher Exley, Jeffrey Lyons-Weiler, and Andrew Wakefield, who were almost certainly never very good scientists even before they turned into cranks.
Before I delve into the clip and Judy Mikovits’ story, I had to look into the filmmaker. Oddly enough, I didn’t see his name, Mikki Willis, on the Plandemic website, although a bunch of YouTube videos showed up at the end of the trailer featuring him. A quick Google search revealed that Willis is a filmmaker who founded Elevate, a film company that supposedly does “transformative media.” (Conspiracy theory movies are transformative, albeit not in a good way, I guess. Just look at VAXXED. I’m getting a distinctly Del Bigtree vibe.) Willis is also grandiose:
September 11th, 2001 marked a turning point in Mikki Willis’ life and career. Having been inside the twin towers just hours before they fell, he helped to organize a group of civilians who remained at Ground Zero for 3 days to aid in the search and rescue efforts. It was atop the rubble of the World Trade Center that the vision for the Elevate was born.
Hmmm. I wonder if this is where Willis’ penchant for conspiracy theories was born. A perusal of his filmography on IMDb reveals a definite penchant for woo, though, with a film called The Rub of Attraction about The Secret, Ten Seconds to Midnight (which appears to be about the end of the world in 2012 foretold by the Mayan calendar), and The Shadow Effect, featuring Deepak Chopra, Marianne Williamson, James Van Praugh, and Mark Victor Hansen.
Back to the trailer.
Right from the very beginning, Mikovits is introduced as a great scientist (“one of the most accomplished scientists of her generation”) who was demonized and exiled from the world of science by big pharma and the dogmatic gatekeepers of science after having reported something that “they” didn’t want you to know about. (A “blockbuster article in the journal Science” that supposedly found that the “common use of animal and fetal tissue were unleashing devastating plagues of chronic diseases.” I’ll get into the details a bit in a moment.) It’s a nauseatingly familiar exaggerated narrative, complete with ominous music and an oh-so-serious voiceover, as Mikovits is shown walking and talking with Willis. The voiceover intones, “For exposing their deadly secrets, the minions of big pharma waged war on Dr. Mikovits, destroying her name, career, and personal life.” (Seriously, that was so over-the-top that I actually laughed when I heard it, and I was only less than a minute into the video.)
The voiceover continues:
Now, as the fate of nations hangs in the balance, Dr. Mikovits is naming names and in the plague of corruption that places all human life in danger.
The reality is, as you will see, quite different.
Dr. Judy Mikovits’ pre-conspiracy career
First, let’s look at Dr. Mikovits’ pre-crank scientific career. Let’s just say that her background has been…embellished. Wikipedia notes that in her early career, after having been awarded a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry with a specialization in biology at the University of Virginia in 1980, Mikovits went to the National Cancer Institute in 1980, where she worked as a researcher in the laboratory of Francis “Frank” Ruscetti, developing purification methods for interferon-alpha. (For those of you who disingenuously object to the use of Wikipedia for anything, note that this is only a starting point, and I examined many of the primary sources linked to in the article and used them whenever possible.)
Mikovits also briefly worked at Upjohn Pharmaceuticals in Kalamazoo, MI to develop production methods to ensure biological materials manufactured using human blood products were free of contamination from HIV-1. Given that she only had a Bachelor degree, that tells me she worked as a technician in Dr. Ruscetti’s laboratory. She did, however, ultimately get a PhD in a joint program in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at George Washington University in 1992, with her PhD thesis being entitled Negative Regulation of HIV Expression in Monocytes. I note that Mikovits and her admirers often claim that her doctoral thesis “changed the treatment of HIV-AIDS” but have struggled to find evidence that this was so or that her thesis was such a “game changer.” Quite simply, she worked in Dr. Ruscetti’s laboratory, did some good work, but was never a “brilliant” scientist, much less “”one of the most accomplished scientists of her generation.” She has 34 publications in PubMed, for which she’s first author only on eight and corresponding author on only four, only one of them from her time at the NIH.
This archived entry in the Wayback Machine from 1998 describes her thusly:
Dr. Mikovits obtained her Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from George Washington University. Her doctoral research focused on HIV-1 latency under the direction of Francis Ruscetti. Dr. Mikovits performed postdoctoral work on the molecular genetics of HTLV-1 under David Derse at the National Cancer Institute-FCRDC.
The mechanisms by which human retroviruses alter the function of the immune system and other host responses resulting in pathogenesis are not well understood. The current focus of our studies is to define viral and cellular factors involved in pathogenesis. Specifically, we have examined viral and cellular factors involved in regulating HIV infectivity and expression, cell death and mechanisms of immune dysfunction. In this regard, we and others have shown that HIV-1 expression in monocytes and helper T lymphocytes can be silenced and that this latency can be overcome by both immune activation and hypomethylation. Studies of SIV and HIV infection in the lymph nodes indicate that the capacity of the host to control viral load is predictive of disease progression. The importance of latent reservoirs is underscored by recent studies showing patients in which plasma virus is reduced to undetectable levels following highly active triple drug antiretroviral therapy, however soon after cessation of therapy high viral titers are again detected, suggesting long lived reservoirs of latent virus exist. Therefore, we have focused our efforts on examining infectivity of HIV-1 and HTLV-1 and defining cytokines and other cellular mechanisms involved in maintaining a balance between human retroviral expression and latency.
Those of you who know what all that means can see that she did what looks like some good work. Those of you who know how science works will also know that that, as of 1998, Mikovits had never become independent. She was not a principal investigator. she was doing work in a principal investigator’s lab supervised by that PI. As far as I can tell, she was never an independent researcher at the NIH. In fact, she left in 2001 to get married and take a job at a biotech startup, EpiGenX Pharmaceuticals, working on developing anticancer drugs.
The descent into conspiracy mongering begins
There’s a New York Times article from 2009 that picks up the story of Judy Mikovits by describing the findings that Mikovits published. At the time, she was the research director for the Whittemore-Peterson Institute for Neuro-Immune Disease, a nonprofit in Reno, NV founded recently by the parents of a young woman who has the syndrome, Andrea Whittemore-Goad, in 2006. It’s interesting to note how Mikovits was recruited by Harvey and Annette Whittemore to become the director of their institute:
She and her husband had the means, the knowledge and the connections. They are real estate developers and part owners of a gas company and an energy drink, and they hold interests in other businesses. Mr. Whittemore is also a lawyer and a lobbyist. Starting in the fall of 2004, they put $5 million of their own money into setting up an institute at the University of Nevada’s medical school. They also persuaded the governor and State Legislature to commit $10 million for a new building that would house the institute’s researchers and a clinic, as well as scientists from the university and the Nevada Cancer Institute. The research began in 2006, and a clinic for patients is scheduled to open in about a year.
Rather than just doling out money to far-flung researchers, the Whittemores wanted to employ their own scientists who would be devoted full time to the cause. In the spring of 2006, they met Dr. Judy A. Mikovits, a virus expert who had spent 22 years working at the National Cancer Institute. She had left the institute in 2001 to get married and move to California, where she went to work for a drug development company that failed. She was tending bar at a yacht club when a patron said her constant talk about viruses reminded him of someone he knew in Nevada. That person was a friend of Annette Whittemore’s. Dr. Mikovits soon found herself at a conference on chronic fatigue syndrome.
I find it rather…interesting…that the Whittemores recruited a scientist who hadn’t worked in the field for five years and who was working on cancer therapies at a small drug development firm and tending bar at the time to direct an institute into which they were pouring millions of dollars. This is particularly true to me given that chronic fatigue syndrome is a condition whose cause has long eluded scientists to the point where some question whether it’s a real diagnosis for a single syndrome. To be successful in cracking a problem whose answer has eluded scientists for decades requires an excellent scientist. Picking someone like Mikovits hardly seemed like a good recipe for success! Of course, that is the problem with private institutes run by wealthy philanthropists. If the philanthropists are fixated on one idea, they’ll hire people and fund research looking for evidence to support that idea. Mikovits had one tool, a hammer (in this case, her study of viruses for two decades), and so every problem (in this case chronic fatigue syndrome) was a nail. Reading between the lines, I get the feeling that the Whittemores were taken with the idea that CFS was caused by a virus, leading to the hiring of Mikovits.
In any event, after meeting Dr. Daniel L. Peterson, who described how some of his chronic fatigue syndrome patients developed a rare form of lymphoma, an observation that led Mikovits to conclude that it must be a retrovirus causing CFS. The result:
Dr. Mikovits began connecting the dots almost immediately. She knew that some patients with chronic fatigue syndrome, and some men with prostate cancer, had a certain enzyme deficiency. And she also knew that tissue samples from men with prostate cancer had been found to harbor a retrovirus called XMRV, for xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus. She began working part time with the institute, and by the fall of 2006, the Whittemores had hired her as research director. One of her first projects was to look for XMRV in blood samples from people with chronic fatigue syndrome and from healthy control subjects.
Many of the samples from syndrome patients 68 of 101, or 67 percent were infected, she and her colleagues reported in Science. Only 3.7 percent of the healthy controls carried the virus. XMRV, the scientists suggested, may cause or at least contribute to chronic fatigue syndrome. Further tests found the virus in 90 of the 101, Dr. Mikovits said.
XMRV is a mouse retrovirus, but “xenotropic” is applied because it can replicate in the cells of other animals. A spoiler alert right here is in order. Mikovits’ paper was ultimately retracted two years later, but at the time it was published in Science and breathlessly reported in articles in the mainstream media like the NYT article I’ve been quoting from and this other article.
How did the retraction occur? First, there were a number of criticisms of Mikovits’ methods, which were poorly described, and three independent studies trying to replicate her results failed to find evidence of XMRV in either healthy controls or CFS patients. A nine-center study was begun to try to confirm the preliminary results of Mikovits’ study. Coded replicate samples of blood from 15 subjects previously reported to be XMRV–positive (14 with CFS) and from 15 healthy donors previously determined to be negative for the viruses were distributed in a blinded fashion to nine laboratories, which performed assays designed to detect XMRV nucleic acid, virus replication, and antibody. The results were disappointing. Only two labs reported evidence of the virus, but replicate sample results disagreed and there was no difference in detection between CFS subjects and negative controls without CFS. Science published and editorial expression of concern, noting:
Since then, at least 10 studies conducted by other investigators and published elsewhere have reported a failure to detect XMRV in independent populations of CFS patients. In this issue, we are publishing two Reports that strongly support the growing view that the association between XMRV and CFS described by Lombardi et al. likely reflects contamination of laboratories and research reagents with the virus. In one Report, “Recombinant origin of the retrovirus XMRV” (2), T. Paprotka et al. trace the ancestry of XMRV and provide evidence that the virus originated when two mouse leukemia viruses underwent recombination during experimental passage of a human prostate tumor xenograft in mice in the 1990s. A combination of sequencing, phylogenetic, and probability analyses lead Paprotka et al. to conclude that laboratory contamination with XMRV produced by a cell line (22Rv1) derived from these early xenograft experiments is the most likely explanation for detection of the virus in patient samples. In the other Report, “No evidence of murine-like gammaretroviruses in CFS patients previously identified as XMRV-infected” (3), K. Knox et al. examined blood samples from 61 CFS patients from the same medical practice that had provided patient samples to Lombardi et al. Comprehensive assays by Knox et al. for viral nucleic acids, infectious virus, and virus-specific antibodies revealed no evidence of XMRV in any of the samples.
In other words, XMRV is almost certainly the result of a recombination event in the 1990s in different prostate cancer cell lines grown in immunodeficient mice. Mikovits almost certainly based her conclusion on her detection of a laboratory contaminant.
There’s more, though. Here’s an excerpt from the retraction notice:
In addition, there is evidence of poor quality control in a number of specific experiments in the Report. Figure 1, table S1, and fig. S2 have been retracted by the authors (3). In response to concerns expressed about Fig. 2C [summarized in (4)], the authors acknowledged to Science that they omitted important information from the legend of this figure panel. Specifically, they failed to indicate that the CFS patient–derived peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) shown in Fig. 2C had been treated with azacytidine as well as phytohemagglutinin and interleukin-2. This was in contrast to the CFS samples shown in Figs. 2A and 2B, which had not been treated with azacytidine.
Why is this important? Azacytidine is a chemical that activates retroviruses, which means that the CFS-derived cells were treated with a chemical to bring out their retroviruses while the control cells were not. That’s scientific fraud, as far as I’m concerned.
That’s the end of the story from a scientific standpoint, but only the beginning of the story of the conspiracy theory. I also note that the antivaccine movement jumped on the XMRV story when antivax propagandist (at the time) David Kirby linked XMRV to autism in an evidence-free speculative article published shortly after Mikovits’ paper in 2009, Is Autism Associated with a Viral Infection? (now deleted but preserved, thanks to the almighty Wayback Machine). In it, Mikovits speculated:
“On that note, if I might speculate a little bit,” she said, “This might even explain why vaccines would lead to autism in some children, because these viruses live and divide and grow in lymphocytes — the immune response cells, the B and the T cells. So when you give a vaccine, you send your B and T cells in your immune system into overdrive. That’s its job. Well, if you are harboring one virus, and you replicate it a whole bunch, you’ve now broken the balance between the immune response and the virus. So you have had the underlying virus, and then amplified it with that vaccine, and then set off the disease, such that your immune system could no longer control other infections, and created an immune deficiency.”
So there you have it – a possible explanation of regressive autism in a significant number of cases associated with immune system deregulation triggered by vaccination.
So Mikovits was antivaccine even back then.
A conspiracy theory is born
Early on in her interview for Plandemic, Mikovits describes being arrested and portrays it as a false arrest with no warrant and no search warrant for her house (there were warrants), carried out for no reason other than to silence her. Naturally, Willis leads with that part of the story, and, given the background I’ve related, you’re probably asking: What the heck is that all about? Unsurprisingly, after Mikovits’ Science paper was retracted, she was fired, although, oddly enough, for matter unrelated to her retracted paper. Then this happened:
A little more than 1 month after firing Mikovits, the Whittemore Peterson Institute for Neuro-Immune Disease (WPI) on 4 November filed suit against its former research director. According to WPI, after Mikovits was terminated on 29 September, she wrongfully removed laboratory notebooks and kept other proprietary information on her laptop and in flash drives and in a personal e-mail account. WPI, a nonprofit organization that’s based on the campus of the University of Nevada, Reno, also won a temporary restraining order that forbids Mikovits from “destroying, deleting, or altering” any of the related files or data.
Mikovits attorney, Lois Hart, said her client cannot speak to the media about the case, but she strongly denies any wrongdoing. In an e-mail to ScienceInsider, Hart stressed that “Dr. Mikovits’ integrity goes to the bone.”
Basically, the Whittemore-Peterson Institute reported that a number of Mikovits’ lab notebooks were found to be missing after she had been terminated, pointing out that she had the only key to the locked desk in which they were stored. (Her contract stipulated that lab notebooks and data had to remain with the institute if she ever left her job, a near-universal clause in such employment contracts with corporations and nonprofits doing research.) Mikovits’s attorney countered that several people had keys to her office and laboratory, although, conspicuously, I never saw any mention of anyone else having a key to the desk. A few days later, Mikovits was arrested for theft. Ultimately, criminal charges were dismissed. Complicating matter was the fact that the judge initially overseeing the civil case had received campaign donations from WPI co-founder Harvey Whittemore, who himself has been criminally charged with making illegal campaign contributions to a federal official.
Conveniently, Willis and Mikovits leave out some key information. For instance, a research assistant named Max Pfost, who was also rooming in Mikovits’ home, provided a sworn affidavit detailing his complicity in stealing the notebooks and delivering them to Dr. Mikovits. This affidavit was the basis for the warrants to search her home and arrest her. It’s worth reading in full. Basically, he stated that Mikovits instructed him to retrieve the notebooks and drives and that he did. Another researcher named Amanda McKenzie also provided a sworn affidavit in which she attests that Mikovits asked her to remove laboratory samples and other materials and deliver them to one of her co-authors but that she declined.
Also, contrary to Mikovits’ claim in Plandemic that she was arrested without warrant, jailed without charges, there were warrants issued by the University of Nevada at Reno Police Department on November 17, 2011. Dr. Mikovits was arrested at her home on November 18, 2011 and charged with two felonies: (1) possession of stolen property and (2) unlawful taking of computer data, equipment, supplies, or other computer related property. She was held without bail for 5 days while awaiting arraignment and a hearing on extradition to Nevada on felony charges after the laboratory notebooks, computer, and other items belonging to WPI were recovered from her home following the search. Criminal charges were later dismissed without prejudice pending the outcome of the civil trial against Dr. Mikovits for losses related to the stolen notebooks.
That’s a very different story than the one told in Plandemic! Even so, thus was born a conspiracy theory, one that Mikovits has been milking for all it’s worth since at least 2011. Now, with the COVID-19 pandemic in full swing, Mikovits has found a new (and lucrative) road to prominence, after having posted a video three weeks ago saying that we don’t need a coronavirus vaccine, after having gotten involved in the “Fire Fauci campaign” after claiming that Dr. Fauci had sabotaged her XMRV research:
Also:
In the same video, Mikovits rejected the notion of wearing a mask, since, she claimed, the coronavirus is actually secretly caused by a bad strain of flu shot that was circulating between 2013 and 2015. Masks will help “activate” the virus and reinfect a mask-wearer over and over, she claimed.
“Wearing a mask will kill more people than—this virus is not coughed through the air from healthy people, who are almost certainly immune, as they’ve almost certainly been infected over the last four or five years,” Mikovits said.
(NOTE ADDED 5/8/2020: Ironically, in a video full of COVID-19 misinformation, it was the ridiculous claim that wearing a mask will kill more people than the virus that got the Plandemic video yanked from YouTube and Facebook.)
Amusingly, that bit about the flu vaccine was so nonsensical that even David Kirby, an antivaccine propagandist whose mention is a real blast from the past on this blog, saw through it and posted this on Facebook:
With this background, Mikovits’ claims in the Plandemic video start to make more sense as a persecution complex and misinformation based on conspiracy theories. Also, as she’s selling her new book, Plague of Corruption: Restoring Faith in the Promise of Science, and this video is a perfect advertisement for it. You can tell just how far into tinfoil hat territory this book must plunge by the fact that she co-wrote it with Kent Heckenlively, a man known for Walter Mitty-like fantasies of heroic action against evil purveyors of vaccines, and that the book’s foreword was written by antivaccine leader Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who has been promoting the book and her conspiracy theory about Anthony Fauci on his Children’s Health Defense website.
She fits right in, too. After Willis notes that “apparently their attempt to silence you has failed” and asks how she can have the “confidence” to “name names” and “call out these dark forces” without fearing for her life, her response tells me how far down the rabbit hole she’s gone:
Because if we don’t stop this now, we can not only forget our republic and our freedom, but we can forget humanity because we’ll be killed by this agenda.
I laughed out loud again.
At this point, Mikovits weaves a conspiracy theory in which Dr. Fauci ordered a coverup of her results, claiming that “everyone was paid off” with “millions of dollars of funding” from Anthony Fauci through the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID). Her story is that Dr. Fauci called Dr. Ruscetti’s laboratory when he was out of the country and demanded that she give him a copy of the paper Dr. Ruscetti had just submitted documenting the detection of HIV in the saliva and blood of AIDS patients from Luc Montagnier’s group in France. It was a confirmatory study. She then claimed that Fauci screamed at her to give him the paper. Why would Fauci do that? She claims that Fauci had been working with Robert Gallo and that he held up the publication of Ruscetti’s paper for several months to allow Robert Gallo to publish his own paper.
As you might imagine, the story sounds very fishy. First of all, there were telephones back then. Making a trans-Atlantic phone call was a possibility! Yes, international calls were expensive in the 1980s, but people made them, especially for the government and corporations. There’s no reason why Fauci couldn’t have called Ruscetti, particularly given Mikovits claim that it was several weeks before he came back from overseas, to have Dr. Fauci browbeat him into giving it to him. There was even mail. So, why did Fauci supposedly do this, colluding with Robert Gallo and Robert Redfield, who’s now the Director of the CDC? Money and patents, of course! And, of course, Mikovits brings in Bill Gates, with his advocacy of vaccines, because antivax grifters gonna grift.
Mikovits’ story doesn’t make sense from a timeline perspective, either. While it is true that Robert Gallo falsely took credit for discovering the AIDS virus in 1984, when the virus had actually been discovered at the Pasteur Institute in 1983, and it was those samples Gallo had been testing. It’s also true that Gallo worked with Mikovits’ boss Dr. Ruscetti to make some major discoveries in the field of retroviruses in the 1980, the same year that Mikovits graduated from college and took a job at the National Cancer Institute in Frank Ruscetti’s lab.
As Zachariah Wiedeman asks about Mikovits’ story:
Are we to believe that somehow, fresh out of college, sometime between 1980 and 1983 she [Mikovits] was at the forefront of groundbreaking work to isolate and confirm HIV, and that she actually discovered it, then Gallo stole the credit from her, but he also simultaneously stole the credit from the Pasteur Institute where he obtained his sample, that he didn’t actually have, because Mikovits had it. What, the what??
Also, at the time, Dr. Fauci was Chief of the Laboratory of Immunoregulation at the National Institute of Health. (He wasn’t appointed director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease until 1984.) Just from Dr. Fauci’s role at the NIH during the time period, Mikovits’ story makes no sense. It defies plausibility that Dr. Fauci would even ask a laboratory technician, fresh out of college, for her boss’ unpublished manuscript, much less that he would browbeat her and yell at her when she “bravely” refused. It’s highly unlikely that Mikovits even had access to the manuscript!
Towards the middle of the video, Willis asks Mikovits if she’s antivaccine, which, of course, she denies, because of course she does. (Nearly all antivaxxers deny that they’re antivax.) After characterizing vaccines as an “immune therapy,” she then goes on to buying into the conspiracy that SARS-CoV-2 (the coronavirus that causes COVID-19) was “manipulated and studied” in a laboratory and then escaped. She then makes the utterly nonsensical claim that if SARS-CoV-2 had evolved naturally it would have taken 800 years. (Seriously, she’s a virologist?) Her difference is that she claims that the virus must have been released somehow between Fort Detrick and the Wuhan laboratory. She even claimed that in 1999 she worked at Fort Detrick in order to “teach Ebola how to infect human cells,” further claiming that Ebola couldn’t infect human cells until it had been “taught” how to do it. Apparently Ebola came from a lab too. (Never mind that Ebola was first reported in humans in 1976.)
Indeed, the amount of nonsense, misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy mongering in Mikovits’ response to questions is truly epic. She likens COVID-19 infection to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which is even more nonsensical. She agrees with the conspiracy theory that doctors are being pushed to misclassify deaths due to other causes as due to COVID-19. Willis even included a clip of Dr. Dan Erickson making that claim. You might recall that he and Dr. Artin Massihi made a misinformation-laden video claiming that COVID-19 prevalence was so much higher than estimated and using that estimate to claim that COVID-19 is actually five times less lethal than seasonal flu, a claim that shows up later in Plandemic as well. I emphasize that, in reality, the case and death count from COVID-19 is grossly underestimated. Why the pressure? Because government reimbursement is higher for a diagnosis of COVID-19, apparently.
Basically, all the common conspiracy theories about COVID-19 make an appearance, including the claim that it was the flu vaccine that got it started, but with a spin. Mikovits claims that Italy was hit so hard because the virus for the flu vaccine it used was grown in dog cells and dog cells have a lot of coronavirus, the claim that David Kirby mocked in the Facebook post I quoted above. She also cites the bogus claim that the flu vaccine increases your chance of getting COVID-19 by 36%. It doesn’t. Unsurprisingly, hydroxychloroquine makes an appearance, too, because of course it does. Like so many hydroxychloroquine conspiracy theorists do, Willis and Mikovits portray the drug as a powerful treatment for COVID-19 that “they” don’t want you to know about, even though hydroxychloroquine probably doesn’t work. Mikovits is all-in with conspiracy theories about it, though.
Mark and Chris Hoofnagle coined a term “crank magnetism,” in which a person who believes in one form of pseudoscience or one conspiracy theory will tend to believe in multiple pseudoscientific beliefs and conspiracy theories. When, late in the video, Mikovits asks why we’re closing beaches because there are “healing microbes in the sand,” I had to stop. There’s just so much idiocy I can tolerate. I’ll give Mikovits credit, though. She some how instinctively knew just how to make her story go viral by latching on to the right wing campaign to smear Dr. Fauci. As a result, her book is currently #1 on Amazon.
Sadly, as Judy Mikovits demonstrates, the COVID-19 pandemic is drawing cranks and conspiracy theorists like it moths to a light. Chief among them are antivax grifters like Judy Mikovits. She’s so wrong she’s not even wrong, and she’s gone full conspiracy theorist, taking advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to be reborn as a COVID-19 crank, grifting with her book and a “doctor education” company. Sadly, she’s not alone.
NOTE: This post was updated and revised on May 8, 2020. Also, a followup post discussing what Mikki Willis left out of Plandemic about Judy Mikovits’ even wilder conspiracy theories is here, for your edification.
1,072 replies on “Judy Mikovits in Plandemic: An antivax conspiracy theorist becomes a COVID-19 grifter”
You’re full of shit!
One notes that you haven’t pointed out a single error in fact, science, or logic in my post.?
One must note that you are obviously highly biased having worked in Big Pharma funded facilities for most of your medical career. Additionally, as noted in your Wikipedia bio, you are and have been an “outspoken skeptic, and a critic of alternative medicine and the anti-vaccination movement.”
Additionally, you are the managing editor of the website “Science-Based Medicine” which also is a “source of information about medical controversies and alternative medicine.” https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/ whose latest article attempts to make the case that the MMR vaccine with toxic adjuvants like aluminum and mediums like diploid human tissue (aborted baby parts medium used to culture the active virus used in the vaccine).
Basically, you are an anti-alternative medical professor who has devoted his career to carrying water for the pharmaceutical and modern medical complex which siphons off over $3 Trillion annually in the U.S. alone from the American public with pretty pathetic results when all is said and done. (A war on cancer that is still going with the primitive big three offerings – carcinogenic chemotherapy (so toxic a spill requires a hazmat suit to clean up), carcinogenic radiation therapy and the surgical removal of localized cancer (a symptom-based approach which often results in the spread because the cause has not been addressed, only the symptom).
Additionally, your criticisms are simply repeats of the industry attacks on Dr. Mikovits after she refused to back off of her finding that the XMRV retrovirus was associated with ME/CFS more commonly known as chronic fatigue syndrome through pulverized mouse brains used to cultivate vaccines such as the mercury-preserved (thimerosal)polio vaccine where CFS first arose in the 1930’s at LA County General Hospital.
Of course, the industry is going to drum up attacks on Dr. Mikovits when she brings up any potentially critical information about vaccines because they potentially threaten a cash cow that feeds them and indirectly yourself as well.
After all, it took you a very short time to come out with an article attacking Dr. Mikovits, an expected response from someone who attacks any opinion, alternative, or information contrary to the approved medical/pharmaceutical complex approved narrative.
People are seeing through the modern medical mirage in increasing numbers and obviously biased blogs like yours are helping to further that awareness. Thank you for your kind contributions. Keep up the good work.
Here is an error. at least according to John Hopkins.
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/study_suggests_medical_errors_now_third_leading_cause_of_death_in_the_us
I addressed that very study in explicit detail in one of the links I referenced in saying that claim is bullshit.?
what is your opinion about this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8o_hRJrpCg&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR0XP-I0fqRIysQH1RZuKsxvzjyZ1ecXrfWUITQxna620N10Hioo5G9qVHo
Utterly unhinged. That’s my impression.
????????
“to make the case that the MMR vaccine with toxic adjuvants like aluminum”
Repeated for greater hilarity. “Terry” thinks that the MMR vaccine contains adjuvants. I swear, aggressive stupidity serves as a virtue signal in antivax circles.
Kyle: “John Hopkins.”
Seriously? You cannot even get the name of that university right.
Pro-tip for the newbies on this site: if you decide you must tell Orac about something, first go to the of the page and hit the “Search and Explore” link on the left side of your screen. Then put in the appropriate term in the “Search” box.
Actually click on the results and read. Do not bother us with old boring arguments we have heard over and over and over again. Thank you.
Orac has been active for two decades, so he and his minions have seen it all. Most of you are bringing up old and tired claims that have been addressed multiple times.
Could you try to be original? So, really, try to be relevant. Bring us actual evidence by qualified reputable researchers. Until then, you are just humor points.
Other than the fact that she literally says in the documentary that she is not anti-vaccine… Keep sucking that big pharma dick.
I lived in the same town as Ft Detrick many years ago and even worked there as a janitor for a summer (at NIH). There were always conspiracy theories about it. My favorite was that they had grown a six foot chicken!
@Terry
So what you’re saying is the blinking box is a real MD who treats patients so that they live years, maybe decades longer than they would otherwise, and you’re some troll on the internet.
Yeah, we can agree on that.
“I CAn’T TelL You How YOuR wROng BUt YOur WronG!
“Grifters gonna grift” 😉
Brilliant takedown, Orac. Thank you so much.
actually you glossed over a lot of things. Im not a fan of this lady but there are good points in the film and certainly some things that should be questioned too.. Follow the money….you don’t seem to think $$ has anything to do with motives in science. shame on you….very incomplete review…
And yet you don’t bother to mention one thing I “glossed over.”?
Are you aware that Mercury, which is in many vaccines (fact), is the second most toxic substance on the periodic table(fact)?
Hey Gorski,
You probably read and study the Babylonian Talmud don’t you?
A very racist and supremist book in my assesment, that explicitly instructs Jews to lie to non-Jews.
Of course, no one would be able to prove that you don’t practice Talmudic Judaism because of the Talmud’s instructions.
Just in case you do believe in it and in the oral Law, I suggest you read
Sefer Yehoshua (the book of Joshua) chapter 8 verse 35:
“There was not a word of all that Moses commanded, which Joshua read not before all the congregation of Israel, with the women, and the little ones, and the strangers that were conversant among them.”
Please also send this information to your Jewish buddy (Dr. Redfield) at the CDC as he might also find it usefull.
——————————–
Gorski Name Meaning
Polish (Górski) and Jewish (eastern Ashkenazic): habitational name for someone from any of numerous places called Góra, Górka, or Górki, from góra ‘mountain’, ‘hill’.
Source: Dictionary of American Family Names ©2013, Oxford University Press
Similar surnames: Borski, Gorecki, Gurski, Zagorski, Wolski, Molski, Gorka, Gorsky
Oh, goody. The antisemites have come out.
Oh, and I was raised Roman Catholic.?
Neither of your facts are actually true, Mike.
Nice try though.
@ FuckYourFeelings
“Keep sucking that big pharma dick.”
I think that’s a moment for a bit of french poetry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1_OPtNyCqc
Long past are the time where you could take a naïve young girl and make her sing a song about oral sex whose metaphor the young singer does not fully grasp… One of my favourites.
I’ll keep stroking. Do not worry…
I have a legitimate question: I am hearing from nurses that patients ARE being labeled as COVID even without a positive COVID test or even a check of the lungs/other symptoms. I understand that doesn’t mean they’re NOT a COVID patient, but it seems concerning none-the-less, the possibility that the numbers may not be reflecting reality, or worse, that there could be a financial motive for over-representing the case total. Can you share why you believe the case/death toll is underreported & why hospitals don’t stand to benefit financially from overdiagnosing COVID, or if you’ve already written this, point me in the direction of that article? I’m sincerely asking, just trying to educate myself.
The way the numbers are not reflecting reality is that COVID-19 is grossly underdiagnosed because not everyone with symptoms is tested and there are a lot of people out there dying of COVID-19-like illness who are never tested and never given a diagnosis of COVID-19. The excess death rates in March are strong evidence that a lot of people are dying of COVID-19 who are never diagnosed with COVID-19. No, the problem is not misclassification of some patient deaths as COVID-19 when they died of something else. That probably happens, but the numbers are FAR dwarfed by the number of deaths from what was almost certainly COVID-19 even though the patients were never diagnosed with COVID-19. I wouldn’t be surprised if the true number of people who’ve died of COVID-19 is 50-100% higher than the official numbers.
❤
You are such a boob. Seriously. How on earth do you have time to legitimately care for your female patients – you spend every waking hour feeding your narcissistic personality disorder.
The error is you came into this sun next with an already subjective view. So let’s ask questions, Does Fauci have any patents as claim in this film?
So I got a flu shot in September 2019, I was fine the day of getting the vaccine not sick at all the very next day I woke up with sore throat, coughing, shortness of breath it was so bad I couldn’t walk a few feet with out stopping to catch my breathe, so I went to the doctor got tested for flu just to make sure I hadn’t contracted before my flu shot it was negative, tested for strep it was negative also! I ended up going to the doctor 3 times in 27 days because I was so sick! Nothing they gave me helped at all! I was doing albuterol treatments every four hours!!!!Its just weird how bad I got the day after my flu shot so I wonder now if there wasn’t something in that shot that made me so sick! I have gotten a flu shot every year with no complications but this year they gave me the self pay shot what ever that is because they were talking about which one to give me since I paid out of pocket until they seen if my insurance would cover it! My 3 children got a different one then me because they had insurance that paid for the flu shot so strange! I think its also strange they have different Flu Vaccines for different methods of payment!!!
Would love to see a rebuttal to Terry’s comment.
Half of what you’re laughing at is verifiable. You had me convinced until you started making fun of the details in the movie storyline. I’m too busy looking at reputable sources to point out all the errors, but there IS a German company called Bauer that developed chemicals for World War II concentration camps. I thought everyone knew that -that’s not conspiracy theorist but you act like it is. Rockefeller is heavily involved in the morphing of medical schools starting in the early 1900s. A lot of what you are laughing out is verifiable, so you’re losing your audience unless they’re a bunch of frat boy lunkheads. Harhar those crazy people that look a little further into things…
Yep, someone has been arrested from not social distancing. Error 1. You make a lot of assumptions in this piece. Error 2. I can start shredding through them if you like but these aren’t facts. This is an opinion piece that anyone else could of done and came to a different conclusion. Pot meet kettle.
Did you express concern about the price beforehand? Maybe you wound up with the trivalent rather than the quad.
Do you know more about HIV research than her? Do you know more about retroviruses and research than her?
Why is anyone that questions safety and efficacy of the constantly growing number of vaccines (over 70 now) is called “Rabid” antivaxxer? On one argument you claim that outsider philanthropics have no business getting involved, but what is Gates considered? The fact is the shield is starting to fade. As a surgeon, you should do your job as best you can. You think that you can puff your chest as a MD! And instantly have credibility, but you don’t. People don’t believe that anymore. You claim that a few of those researchers “weren’t very good anyway”. What research are you published in? You’re beloved experts were wrong. Study some Dr Zhengli and tell us what you deduce.
I guarantee that I know more about vaccines than she does, and I guarantee that I understand enough molecular biology to know the basic mistakes she made in her Science paper.?
How about “After characterizing vaccines as an “immune therapy,” she then goes on to buying into the conspiracy that SARS-CoV-2 (the coronavirus that causes COVID-19) was “manipulated and studied” in a laboratory and then escaped. ” Vaccines are considered a type of immunotherapy, and there is more and more evidence the virus was being manipulated in labs and spread from there, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Or “She agrees with the conspiracy theory that doctors are being pushed to misclassify deaths due to other causes as due to COVID-19.” I know doctors are being pressured to classify deaths as COVID-19, it also is not a “conspiracy theory.”
Yes, it is a conspiracy theory. If anything, deaths from COVID-19 have been grossly underestimated, perhaps by as much as one half.?
A friend begged me to watch this. I got as far as “800 years” but that made me laugh so hard I stopped watching. Who hears that and still thinks she’s legit? Apparently, my formerly sane friend.
One question that has always puzzled me. Why do provaxxers care so much about antivaxxers? If vaccines work than why are they so adamant that everyone get vaccinated?
G-d, you dingbats are lazy. Let’s see:
Assignee: No
Applicant: One of four, assignee HHS (9,193,790)
Inventor: Effectively four: (9,896,509, 9,441,041, 9,193,790) [one of four]; 7,368,114 [one of three]; 6,911,527 [one of four]; (6,548,055,6,190,656, 5,696,079) [one of three]. All belong to HHS/Department of Health.
So, the answer is twofold: (1) No, and (2) do your own fucking homework.
What counts as a Covid-19 death? https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvss/vsrg/vsrg03-508.pdf
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31607599/ She lied about the results of this project concerning respiratory virus interference among Dept. of Defence personnel. The conclusion was that the flu vaccine did not cause it. She said they determined it did. Just that would cause me not to believe anything else she says.
Indeed. I wrote about this last month…
https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2020/03/31/coronavirus-viral-interference/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31607599/ She lied about the results of this project concerning respiratory virus interference among Dept. of Defence personnel. The conclusion was that the flu vaccine did not cause it. She said they determined it did. Just that would cause me not to believe anything else she says.
You should be embarrassed for dredging up this bit of stupidity, Todd. It’s at the level of things at the back of the fridge that have turned into mycological experiments these days.
Todd: “If vaccines work than why are they so adamant that everyone get vaccinated?”
Do tell us how to protect babies under a year old from measles, mumps and chicken pox. How do you protect babies who are too young to get the vaccines
I ask as a mother who had to take are of a six month old with chicken pox a year before the varicella vaccine was available. That experience makes me think that full grown adults who thinks should suffer that pain are sadistic child haters.
Prove me wrong with PubMed indexed studies by reputable qualified researcher. No lawyers, computer scientists, econ professors, geologists, and journalists are allowed.
Terry, you say, “One must note that you are obviously highly biased having worked in Big Pharma funded facilities for most of your medical career.”
Mikovits did much “worse” than that. She literally worked for Big Pharma. Directly. As an employee. She worked at UpJohn Pharmaceuticals.
So you ought to discredit her on the basis of her Pharma bias. But you won’t because it’s not about Pharma associations producing biases in people like a virus infection, it’s about you taking sides and trying to discredit the side you don’t like.
Oh, the Johns Hopkins claim of modern medicine as the 3rd leading cause of death is now “bullshit” according to the highly cultured doctor reverting to guttersnipe terms.
I guess when Johns Hopkins puts out the statistics about COVID mortality that is not “bullshit”, However, when they own up to the fact that you ivory towered doctors are killing patients with your toxic mix of synthetic chemicals that cause massive amounts of side effects, easily validated by browsing through any 6″ or so thick PDR (Physicians Desk Reference), they are wrong.
Cherry picking are we? How convenient.
As far as the testing goes. That too is b.s. it seems.
The widespread diagnostic test for the virus in a patient, the PCR, is riddled with irreparable flaws. It spits out false-positives, because the test reacts to the presence of irrelevant germs that have nothing to do with a purported COVID.
Most importantly the test has never been vetted, in the real world, for its claimed ability to detect whether a patient is ill or is going to become ill.
According to the CDC 2019-Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel https://bit.ly/2L8NV9I
“Positive results are indicative of active infection with 2019-nCoV but do not rule out bacterial infection or co-infection with other viruses. The agent detected may not be the definite cause of disease.
Negative results do not preclude 2019-nCoV infection and should not be used as the sole basis for treatment or other patient management decisions.”
Translation: A positive test doesn’t guarantee that the COVID virus is causing infection at all. Then again, maybe the COVID virus is not be in the patient’s body either.
From the World Health Organization (WHO): “Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) technical guidance: Laboratory testing for 2019-nCoV in humans” https://bit.ly/3cidWiS
“Several assays that detect the 2019-nCoV have been and are currently under development, both in-house and commercially. Some assays may detect only the novel virus [COVID] and some may also detect other strains (e.g. SARS-CoV) that are genetically similar.”
Translation: Some PCR tests register positive for types of coronavirus that have nothing to do with COVID—including plain old coronas that cause nothing more than a cold.
As far as the “assays that detect the 2019-nCOV that are currently under development. Yeah, just a few.
For a test that is supposed to be so definitive and accurate, there sure are a great many firms in development of testing for the diagnosis of COVID-19
Actually, 633 of them the diagnostic pipeline at the time of this post as a matter of fact. https://bit.ly/3clw4Za
If the testing on this is so definitive, why are 633 companies still developing testing for it?
Possibly because they still have not effectively isolated the virus and still don’t know what exactly it is that they are looking for.
Or could it be that it is extremely difficult to detect this SARS-CoV-2 virus because it is easily defeated by the immune system? (Note: SARS-CoV-2 virus. Hmmm…thought this was something so novel we have not seen it before? When then is it so similar to the SARS virus that it is called SARS-CoV-2 then? That would indicate that it is similar in nature to a virus we are well aware of so similar to a known virus that it is labeled as -2.
Gee, maybe not so novel after all huh? No more novel than any other mutated SARS virus which is quite common with RNA viruses like this SARS-CoV-2 virus btw. All RNA viruses mutate regularly which is why these virus vaccines are so ineffective, their target changes so quickly.
Or possibly that it is so immensely difficult to test an individual for a specific virus when the samples are always contaminated with all kinds of germs including bacteria, other viral strains and other DNA/RNA bearing tissues?
But what do the manufacturers say about the COVID diagnostic test? How about this gem from Creative Diagnostics, a popular test manufacturer:
This product is intended for the detection of 2019-Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV). The detection result of this product is only for clinical reference, and it should not be used as the only evidence for clinical diagnosis and treatment. https://bit.ly/2KnJ4kP
In other words: Don’t use the test result alone to diagnose infection or disease.
Pretty confident about their testing huh?
Perhaps that is why the CDC includes “probable cases” in their statistical counts:
What is a COVID-19 probable case?
A probable case or death is defined by
Meeting clinical criteria AND epidemiologic evidence with no confirmatory laboratory testing performed for COVID-19; or
Meeting presumptive laboratory evidence AND either clinical criteria OR epidemiologic evidence; or Meeting vital records criteria with no confirmatory laboratory testing performed for COVID-19. https://bit.ly/3bdziMV
Translation: You don’t even have to have “confirmatory laboratory testing performed” in order for the case to be considered a COVID-19 case.
I guess that could be helpful to the hospitals who have had their cash cows of elective surgery eliminated (80% of many hospitals incomes) and are losing money now.
They could just drop a medicare patient into the “probable COVID-19 category” and go from a standard Medicare admit of $4,600 to a COVID admit billable for $13,000 now. About a 3X billable increase.
And heck, if they can get them on a ventilator with a COVID diagnosis, the Medicare admit jumps to $39,000, over an 8-fold increase!
I guess its a conspiracy theory to imagine that hospitals losing money due to the contraction of their scheduled surgery income would begin to amazingly turn up more COVID cases and put some of these people with respiratory issues on ventilators as well.
Yeah…might not have anything to do with increasing revenues I guess since we know that ALL hospitals and doctors operate with full integrity and complete concern for ALL patients.
Uh, interested in a bridge in Brooklyn real cheap?
But hey, it’s all just b.s. right doc?
Obviously, you didn’t click on the links I included in which I explain in detail why that Johns Hopkins estimate of one third of deaths being due to medical error is bullshit.
As for the rest. Wow. Gish gallop much? So much misinformation…
Silly crank. Johns Hopkins did not claim that modern medicine is the third leading cause of death. A single Johns Hopkins faculty member named Marty Makary claimed that medical error is the third leading cause of death in the US based on truly innumerate cherry picking of studies. (He didn’t do a study on his own. He just misinterpreted other people’s studies and wrote what was essentially an op-ed about it.
https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2016/05/16/do-medical-errors-really-kill-a-quarter-of-a-million-people-a-year-in-the-us/
It never ceases to amuse me how cranks conflate the publication that they like by a single faculty member of a university as having been done by the university. It’s a transparent ploy to make make it seem as though the conclusions of that faculty member carry the endorsement of his university. It’s an exaggerated appeal to authority.
There wouldn’t be any financial (grant) reason for you to write this blog, would there?
https://www.ageofautism.com/2010/06/david-gorskis-financial-pharma-ties-what-he-didnt-tell-you.html
Aw, you are such a naive child. One of the biggest tools used by the anti-science crowd like Age of Autism is that they lie quite freely. Those who actually do science cannot. Because their results are reviewed and checked for accuracy.
Something you will never see on AoA.
If you had done just a bit more of digging, you would have been able to find Orac’s corrections of the claims by the anti-vaccine activist.
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/in-which-i-am-once-again-in-the-crosshairs-of-age-of-autisms-pharma-shill-machine-gun/
Like Jack Bauer? “Lunkheads,” Indeed
… and completely screw them up? Then again, I rather suspect the only thing you were looking into was your navel.
Best Mothers Day present ever was visiting this site & seeing the outcry against the vaccine narrative. As the mom to one child dead & another permanently disabled from vaccines; I thank you.
Orca & minions; has it ever occurred to you that maybe doctors and scientists are not ‘turning anti vaccine’ but actually discovering something that you haven’t yet? Do you realize this ‘turning’ is a one way street? No ‘anti vax ‘ scientists ever turn pro vax, do they?
Despite the hits to their career, they can’t be bought out to advocate for vaccines ever again. So sad it took a global pandemic to do this but it is done. The reign of terror; the vaccine narrative, is starting to crumble.
Thank you God, for allowing this to happen in my lifetime. Happy Mothers Day in Heaven, mom. You were right the whole time & if I would have listened to you, Jessie would be alive & Luke would not be disabled.
The day (early 1990s) my mom came home from the lab & plopped down a huge folder of documents & said “WE HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THE VACCINES “, I will never forget. My mom was a hero; fired for refusing to lie about vaccine death.
LOOK at the science again. The truth is in the science. Not the epidemiological nonsense that couldn’t correlate gravity to a falling object… The etiological science. Look at the history. If you don’t want to go back to Nazi Germany at least go back to SV40.
Science that has an agenda may as well be science fiction. Science that runs counter to the human experience is doomed. There is a problem with the vaccines.
A. The fact that the post was shared in a conspiracy theory site and a lot of believers came to comment isn’t actually an indication that the number of conspiracy theorists or anti-vaccine activists in the world changed. It is an indication of where the post was shared.
B. To remind you, you lost a baby to SIDS – potentially in part because you deprived her of oxygen. A horrible tragedy, but not related to vaccines. You also have an autistic child, and are autistic yourself – also not related to vaccines.
You would do well to find a way to help yourself without fighting against vaccines that prevent disease based on untrue claim. I hope you find it.
@Orac
Bill Gates models for Covid19 have been dumped . Anthony Fauci has been exposed as a fraud.
A YouTube video by Rashid Buttar? That’s your idea of proof?
????????
I remember when Rashid Buttar was selling a transdermal cream as a cure for autism. I called it “Buttar Cream.” Some people are just gullible.
Best comeback ever. I must remember this for future use. BTW Attorney Whittemore was financially invested in a therapy for the XMRV retrovirus according to a documentary I watched a few years ago. I have pondered which came first, the therapy or the illness? After all, he did hire a bartender as his research director. One who obviously craved the limelight and obviously would go to extremes to be in it.
I agree with Orac!!!!! I bet its probably been tried, to sit down live with an tin foil theorist and make them give evidence for every single claim they make, but I bet they all just responded like this CS person in the end lmaooooo. Yes, CS, but if i reciprocated and said you are full of s*** too, I bet you would say something along the line of “shut up! how do you know!”. My response would be: “I dont. What I do know is that I just showed you your own stupidity. Now look in a mirror and facepalm.”
If you’re not full of shit, you probably need a GI doctor.
Hahahaha omg so funny hahahahahaha full of shit and g.i. doctor omg so so so funny Great zinger. Please go on the comedy circuit. Lol. Holy shit that is so funny! Hahahahahahahaha. You are doing humanity a disservice if you do not end up on stage!
Care to explain why Mikovits isn’t a woo-sodden crank with a dubious connection to what any of us with a scientific education might see as reality?
Mikovitz was on the team that originally isolated HIV from saliva for one thing and her plagiarized work was later used to help a deceitful Gallo win co-Nobel. Even his own industry sanctioned him for unethical behaviour. She has more decades of achievement than this little dick ‘Dr’ will ever have. As this monkey misogynist so stereotypically labels Mikovitz as ‘crazy’. He’d never dare pull that smear on a male virologist.
Mikovitz vs DicklessDogg is actually a case of
Genuine intelligence & integrity vs a tired, caustic attention whore Big Pharma clown vamping as a hip, with-it “physician” who is just another tool of the MSM with cheap bells & whistles to score celeb status. Too bad his music is as boring as his intellect. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz get a new job.
Oh?
To stay on the topic of the discovery of HIV, check Luc Montagnier on this blog.
Orac did dare.
Your*. Dumbass.
Contraction: You are. fucktarded moran (I mean, ‘my fellow inbred alabamians’ showing collective rage because they can’t get their dog groomed). MAGA! YEA!
Oh. You wanted to be that guy? Imma gonna be that guy
Tiff- there are different strands of the same vaccine. Depending on which insurance or how you pay for the vaccine. My daughters pediatrician informed me of this back in ‘92.
The person who wrote this article knows nothing about science or medicine. I have several degrees, including a degree in Biochemistry, and the writer of this article said nothing to discredit Dr Judy or her opinions. It was a long winded jealous rant that was a very ineffective attempt to convince people to accept the official covid 19 narrative, which very few do. Even the left is waking up now. The left are generally more brainwashed and question authority less, but now everyone of every political stripe is starting to see how truly absurd this “deadly pandemic” is.
The writer of this rant is completely ignorant, or a paid operative to manufacture misinformation.
My MD and PhD say otherwise.???♂️
The author is an MD/Ph.D.
If you link to your biography, we can all look at your degrees, but they likely matter a lot less than the fact that you have not pointed to anything incorrect in this article.
And really, preventing a dangerous disease isn’t a political issue. We should all want it.
I think you are right. Every sentence sounds biased as hell, crammed full of “maybes” and “could he’s”. He is right about one thing – smells fishy. Why doesn’t he just interview all these doctors he “debunks”?
Because it would be a waste of time.?
Agreed. There are a lot of hard-working people, investigative journalists, healthcare workers that speak out in fear, reputable degrees people with a variety of educational and Work experience backgrounds that are asking good questions right now. This doctor seems to just disparage and point and laugh and I’m not quite sure why but it’s not to help us out as citizens that could use some reliable information with all the confusion with the virus going on.
Dorothy, I have to ask, how can you possibly be a credible RN, I mean if you don’t believe in evidence based care, as clearly you do not, how can you practice evidenced based care.
Crank nurses are just as cranky as crank Dr’s and a plague on our profession imo
Dude, so she’s part of a conspiracy, but you don’t believe in conspiracies? So which conspiracy should I believe? Seems that you simply believe and trust the elites and powerful. I’m suspicious of you now. You seem to lack some critical thinking skills. You are appealing to authority, consensus, etc. So many weak ass angles here. No in depth response to her claims, just saying they’re “crazy.” And then throwing around terms like “persecution complex”
Yeah, she was thrown in jail you idiot. She was literally persecuted. You think she imagine that? LMAO. You must be an idiot or something.
Judy Mikovits in Plandemic: An antivax conspiracy theorist becomes a COVID-19 grifter
This is the title of this article which in itself is misleading. The interviewer clearly asks Mikovits if she is an anti-vaxer , her answer is NO
One more time for one more fool:
Mikovits promoted the idea that vaccines cause autism. (They don’t.) She has given talks at numerous antivaccine conferences. She’s claimed that retroviruses from fetal cells used to grow vaccine strain viruses are responsible for chronic fatigue syndrome and a raft of chronic diseases. She claims IN THE TRAILER that SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) spread as a result of contaminated flu vaccine. She buys into every major antivaccine conspiracy theory I can think of off the top of my head. The co-author of her book she’s promoting is Kent Heckenlively, a co-founder of one of the most influential antivaccine blogs out there (Age of Autism) and a rabid antivaxxer who fantasizes about a tribunal to punish all those who promoted vaccination; that is, when he isn’t fantasizing that he is Aragorn leading the forces of the West in one last stand against the evil Dark Lord Sauron, using that fantasy as a metaphor for his fight against big pharma and the vaccine establishment. The foreword to her book was written by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., one of the top leaders of the antivaccine movement.
In other words, Mikovits is antivaccine af.
You must be the sort of person who thinks the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) is a democracy.?
She was ‘prosecuted’, not ‘persecuted’. Prosecution occurred when she committed theft. Really not fodder for a martyr complex or any conspiracy theory.
Pointing out that multiple independent labs failed to replicate her famous study is not an “appeal to authority.” It’s a scientific fact.
@Bill
Interviewer : Are you an axe murderer?
Axe Murderer : NO
Interviewer : Great! Case closed. You can go home now.
The guy that said you are “a tired, caustic attention whore Big Pharma clown vamping as a hip, with-it “physician” who is just another tool of the MSM with cheap bells & whistles to score celeb status,” really did not deserve the dignity of a reply.
He was wrong– you do not seem tired at all.
But I think the angry Hep C Tranny style of communication may be laying it on a bit too think for the purpose. You won’t be writing for Scrubs, right? So why bother? I mean– Bruce Jenner is already the Biggest winner.
I’d say calm down. Address the hard parts, skip the Buddy Hackett-Don Rickles– cruely “Ironic” hood rat nickname stuff. Or not… zzz.
To all the “new” little brown shirts in the internet world who have closed their minds, criticizing outside the box thinking and defending the status quo of research/publishing world.
Right now 5 companies own over 50% of the research publishing industry. (in some fields like medicine/medical research that number is closer to 70% and have profit margins approaching 40% (that is almost illegal drug dealers profit margins ). These 5 companies control what gets promoted, what gets talked about and basically what you are to think. Anyone remember when the experts in the field of hormone replacement were promoting estrogen replacement, not just in menopausal women and all other points of view were suppressed aka: not published ? 20 years later and thousands of women later who developed all kinds of cancers suffered and died, because of the prevailing research.
Just keep in mind there is peer reviewed published research that claims up to 70% of researchers have “fudged” data or know someone that did.”How Many Scientists Fabricate and Falsify Research? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Survey Data”
I hate to rain on your parade but read this quote.
“Overall, the journal’s use of reviewers exclusively from within the field to review articles created for and by other practitioners in the field greatly reduces its value as a scientific publications.
It is striking, however, that these courts devote little attention to the sufficiency of these journal’s peer review process or to the issues stemming from a review process dominated by financially and professionally interested practitioners”
Now that was from a US District Court ruling this year. Keep in mind that statement was made by a liberal, Obama appoint Judge not some right wing nut job.
This thinking will be coming to you in the future, if you want to keep believe the “consensus” of science it doesn’t bother me, just don’t demand I believe it as well.
Hey man, Orac doesn’t come down to where you work and slap all the dicks out of your mouth.
Oh no…science debunked my tin-foil hat world and now I’m melting down……
That’s no loss. The tin can be recycled. The rest can be composted.
Why does the video of pandemic keep getting removed? Hmmm….
Because as of late, social media platforms are making a more concerted effort to stop the spread of demonstrably false or highly misleading information. So it’s removal is very much about it’s how bogus it is and not further evidence of a whacked-out conspiracy.
It’s obvious the Globalist Elite own 96% of the world’s media and will try to censor anyone who tells the truth about their evil schemes. Just like their doing with the documentary’s “Out of Shadows & “HOAXED”
But people are on to thier lies and we ain’t having it anymore.
Here’s Youtube’s explanation — “A YouTube spokesperson said the company removes “content that includes medically unsubstantiated diagnostic advice for covid-19,” which includes the “Plandemic” video. A representative for Facebook said, “Suggesting that wearing a mask can make you sick could lead to imminent harm, so we’re removing the video.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/…/plandemic-youtube…/
Copyright infringement is a major issue here–the film uses many video clips without permission.
I think if you filter through half her misinformation and half your ego we might get the truth. Yes she’s absolutely right about Fauci and Bill Gates. Yeah she is trying to portray her arrest as something it’s not but you’re also trying to downplay a lot of what is going on. Real doctors wouldn’t be going on actual news sites and telling people they are getting paid more to falsify numbers. YouTube wouldn’t come out and say if you merely suggest that people take vitamin c and zinc we are going to take your video down because it goes against the WHO recommendations. There’s more out there. Johns Hopkins wouldn’t say medical misdiagnosis kills 250,000 people a year making it the third highest cause of death after cancer and heart disease if it weren’t true. But you’ll just spew your feelings and whatever ?♀️
I have a question for anyone who found this video persuasive: ok, so you don’t believe “The Official Version”. I don’t have any real problem with that on its face: everybody should be skeptical and ask for proof. But here’s my question: why is anything that goes against “The Official Version” automatically true for that reason alone, and anyone who criticizes a video like this a “sheep” or “asleep” or else part of “The Conspiracy to Suppress the Truth”? What if the video is just bad and cringe like this one is? Why don’t you deploy the same skepticism about videos like this that you do against “The Official Version”? It’s like you barred the front door against a sheep only to leave the back door open for the wolf to enter.
Have you listened to the conspiracy theories that are floating around about coronavirus? They contradict each other, so they can’t all be true. But people seem to have no problem believing ones that contradict each other at the same time. I mean, the virus can’t both be fake or hyped to give cover for the government to steal your liberties and at the same time be a bioweapon released by a Chinese lab by Bill Gates or whatever to depopulate the world, right? Those can’t both be true. Why would you create a bioweapon that doesn’t work? But people seem to be able to believe both these things at once without theirs heads exploding. I don’t get it. How do you decide which brand of nonsense you’re going to believe?
It’s like some people are so desperate not to get fooled that they guarantee they’ll get fooled by believing every wrong thing at once, not because it’s true, but only because it contradicts “The Official Version”. Thinking like that doesn’t make you “awake”, it makes you a gullible rube.
Applause!
You are applying critical thinking skills that these people claim to have but clearly do not.
🙂
Well said, and hopefully in simple enough terms that those that need it most can comprehend it
why is anything that goes against “The Official Version” automatically true for that reason alone,
Because the official version is the result of actual science and doesn’t need scare quotes.
Its known as crankmagnatism
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Crank_magnetism
Keep up the good work exposing these fruitcakes
Wow, great comment. I wonder if anyone has done a functional MRI study looking at this. Could be a good idea……..
IMHO this is about JM’s message: dangerous viruses can be (and on occasions are) distributed via vaccines.. BigPharma doesn’t like that message? so they should.. Hence, what about very well and admitted (accidental?) occurrence at vaccine manufacturer lab: ” Officials are trying to get to the bottom of how vaccine manufacturer Baxter International Inc. made “experimental virus material” based on a human flu strain but contaminated with the H5N1 avian flu virus and then distributed it to an Austrian company. Release of a mixture of live H5N1 and H3N2 viruses – if that indeed happened – could have resulted in dire consequences. That company, Avir Green Hills Biotechnology, then disseminated the supposed H3N2 virus product to subcontractors in the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Germany. Authorities in the four European countries are looking into the incident, and their efforts are being closely watched by the World Health Organization and the European Centre for Disease Control. If someone exposed to the mixture had been co-infected with H5N1 and H3N2, the person could have served as an incubator for a hybrid virus able to transmit easily to and among people. That mixing process, called reassortment, is one of two ways pandemic viruses are created.”
Claims made without evidence can be safely dismissed without evidence.
In short: we have no reason to believe you.
It seems that this is about JM’s message: dangerous viruses can be (and on occasions are) distributed via vaccines.. BigPharma doesn’t like that message? so they should.. Hence, what about very well and admitted (accidental?) occurrence at vaccine manufacturer lab: ” Officials are trying to get to the bottom of how in 2009 vaccine manufacturer Baxter International Inc. made “experimental virus material” based on a human flu strain but contaminated with the H5N1 avian flu virus and then distributed it to an Austrian company. Release of a mixture of live H5N1 and H3N2 viruses – if that indeed happened – could have resulted in dire consequences. That company, Avir Green Hills Biotechnology, then disseminated the supposed H3N2 virus product to subcontractors in the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Germany. Authorities in the four European countries are looking into the incident, and their efforts are being closely watched by the World Health Organization and the European Centre for Disease Control. If someone exposed to the mixture had been co-infected with H5N1 and H3N2, the person could have served as an incubator for a hybrid virus able to transmit easily to and among people. That mixing process, called reassortment, is one of two ways pandemic viruses are created.”
You already said that.
You didn’t need to post the same 11-year-old excerpt twice. In any event,
The excerpt (full article here has fuck-all to with vaccines, rendering your invocation of it to another passage to the already overcrowded Incompetence Zone.
erm.. no he’s not. have you noticed he shows proofs of everything he says instead of opening his mouth and letting his belly rumble?
Well I’d like to have viewed the video myself but it was taken down and so to argue that she is fake or whatever does NO GOOD because I’m not allowed to see what she has written or tried to share so as far as I know maybe your just a fake from your first few criticisms of her I was already put off…
https://www.bitchute.com/video/WLXbKNZyNpHo/
Terry @ 5:12 min
One beautiful and on the mark reply. It was a joy reading it.
You hit a home-run there !!!!
His real name, David Gorski! The doctor that makes millions off of cancer victims. He claims he is bipartisan another one of his lies. This is all just his opinion. Another Trump hater trying to debunk the lies about Covid.
Millions? I wish! Really, where’s that filthy lucre? I’m taking a (hopefully) temporary 20% pay cut for May and could really use the money. That could go to as high as 50% in July if things don’t turn around. So, really, I could use the money. I’d start looking for another job, except that, thanks to COVID-19, there really aren’t any open jobs right now in my field in a place where I’d want to live. It doesn’t help that I’m in the latter half of my career. Don’t get me wrong. I have enough savings that I can ride this out as long as it doesn’t go on for too long, but to paint me as flush with millions of dollars just makes me laugh. ???♂️
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/education/2020/05/01/wayne-state-finances-coronavirus/3065005001/
Wow. Just when I think people couldn’t possibly be more ignorant. If I had cancer, I know who’d I trust to take care of me (and it sure as hell wouldn’t be anyone like Miskowitz).
“His real name, David Gorski!”
Do you think you’ve discovered some deep dark secret?
lmfao, bruh, he has his name on this blog.
congrats, you have shown that you can read.
Money, Penny, is not what this is about.
I cannot judge the first part, but the second part – debunking lies – seems a worthy endeavor.
It’s also agreeing that Mikovits is indeed full of lies.
Or do you think “debunk” means something else than “reveal/correct/show the falsity of”?
Maybe you’ll grow up some day, little guy.
That is so easy to say, and so hard to prove.
I pray for you because when the people rise up they will come for you…and they WILL come for you and your blatant lies… they will watch you die a slow agonizing death. I can see it happening. It seems FAIR to me. Dr Judy is a brilliant doctor who has put her life and reputation on the line and withstood the slings and arrows of Tony Fauci, WHO, CDC and FDA and tiny peckered internet trolls like you for humanity. You and your pitiful anemic lies cannot touch her light. You also slandered my friend Mikki Willis. You cannot refute the science so you have to take down the messenger. You should be ashamed of yourself. Did the reptilians take over your soul like Gates? Maybe you never had one to begin with. It’s getting fun. :)) Peace, rainbows and unicorns. PS If only you had a bigger manhood we wouldn’t behaving this conversation. People who are shining their like Dr Judy don’t have time to put others down…
Pitiful, just pitiful.
“Dr Judy is a brilliant doctor…”
Only if you are a microbe. A human… not so much.
Wait! Are you actually a microbial alien? Is that why you love Mikovits so much?
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Thanks, Orac, for consolidating the entire Mikovits saga in one place.
Heckenlively has been writing hyperbolically about her genius for the past several weeks at the Bolen Report. I believe that they have co-authored two books already, Plague and Plague of Corruption– such creativity for title choice!
It causes me to wonder, do any of these grifters earn reasonable amounts of money from these woo masterpieces? I mean, SRSLY, even if they get 5%, they’d need to sell a lot of books to make more than small change.
That only leaves one conclusion: It’s not about the money, it’s about something more important. The truth.
Agreed. There is no way Mikovits would put herself out there Jailed and probably her life in danger now, here the hate in this Doc’s speech, for the money. She has a 45 year history/reputation as a highly regarded virologist/researcher. She used to make vaccines. This doctors postulation that we can shove her in an anti-vaccine crazy group and ignore her is not helping anyone out to figure out why so many children have neurological problems and why we cannot get straight answers about this virus as our civil rights are stripped away
If you read the article properly you’d realise that they are not interested in the truth, at least not in any objective sense that rational people would recognise.
She has a 45 year history/reputation as a highly regarded virologist/researcher.
Tell us more of Mikovits’ virological breakthroughs in 1975.
Thanks Connor. That was funny.
Bwhahahah. The “truth”. For your lot is should be spelled “TH3 TROOF”
I had missed that Heckenlively was over at PatTimmy’s place. Mostly because I can’t stand the web page formatting. I have wondered where Kent had got to. He seems to have some falling out with AoA, perhaps they are insufficiently nutty for him.
My guess the bigger dollars are to be made from the speaking engagements, although I don’t know how much Autism ONE pays. The self-published books are a means to an end.
@ Chris P:
Right. I doubt that they make much money off of book sales but they may have speakers’ fees and Mikovits is paid as an expert witness.( although I doubt that “expert” and “witness” mean the same in her vocabulary as they do in my own )
In addition, many anti-vaxxers have websites/ organisations where they sell products ( supplements, T- shirts), have adverts, access ( memberships) or raise funds as charities.
Kennedy earns an income in this way as do B. Loe Fischer, Kim Rossi and other anti-vaxxers like Del BIgtree, the TMs.
I think a lot of people came to this article in hope that their fear of something more sinister than the virus itself would be pacified. Well, you achieved in finding a well-spoken expert in the medical field to extinguish the flames of your worry and put your mind back into the semi-numb state it finds comfortable. I have a feeling though, deep down, most of you know that your initial intuition is correct, like it is concerning most situations in life. Unfortunately, for the brave and the cowardly alike, the hard truth can be very difficult to accept as it requires sacrifice, change, and a readiness to face the unknown. Perhaps we can all agree that Mikovits’ past is riddled with some strange events and decisions that cause her whsitleblowing to be approached skeptically. Does that mean that she is necessarily lying? Orac’s article spends significantly more word space attacking her credibility than is does debunking this “conspiracy theory”. He casually dismisses the $13,000 to $39,000 Medicare payout for doctors who rule cause of death by Covid-19 or use ventilators on patients who may not even need it as if it is a throwaway fact. That fact ALONE should shake the foundation of a critical thinker. Why is Medicare giving five figure bonuses to doctors who comply with these guidelines? Because if the mortality rate of the virus is high enough, people will cling to the hope of new vaccinations and big pharma will make multi-billions of dollars at the expense of human life. The reality of it is sickening, and to see cowardly “experts” such as Orac throw flowery jargon around to bedazzle and mislead those seeking the truth is a terrible deed. If money is indeed the root of all evil, just keep following the stem and you’ll end up at the truth.
Here here. Well put Connor.
Whatever’s going on, the truth will prevail, and goodness knows it needs to.
Political and corporate lies, deception and corruption runs rampant around the globe and cannot be denied. Our so-called leaders are not fit for purpose and, while there are good people in these domains, we have to accept that greed and hubris knows no bounds and the current situation should make us all dust off our intuition and be aware of changes that don’t feel right.
There’s a lot bubbling up to the surface at the moment. Let’s take a step back and feel into what we’re seeing and hearing i.e. civil liberties removed, freedom of speech eroding (Mikovits and other videos taken down), 5G roll out without independent robust science to evaluate health risk, mandatory vaccination recommended on the back of unreliable COVID19 figures.
There can’t be many people who believe the mainstream media is a reliable source of truth so we do need to be aware of big changes happening, for whoever reason. Being attuned to the actuality of our experience (gut feeling if you like) makes us better able to respond, should the need arise, rather than reacting through conditioned, habitual ways of thinking.
And most important of all, keep breathing in the good things in life too. It’s still an amazing gift and if we truly wish to leave the world in a better place than we found it, we need to find a way to link up, one and all, and follow that intention.
Have a great day.
Connor
I Agree
Sigh. YouTube isn’t obligated to give you or anyone freedom of speech.
I sincerely doubt individual doctors are being paid 13k to 39k per Covid death. I suggest you re-read your original source. You also forget that America ain’t the only f#£king country in the world.
Medicare payouts are higher for patients that need ventilators. This price was set by legislation, the CARES Act, signed by President Trump to help offset all the money lost by hospitals having less business, less elective procedures And more uninsured people needing COVID19 treatment.
Agreed. He glosses by the payout for covid diagnosis. Won’t address it
Um, wrong.
That shaking is more likely the rocks banging together in your head.
Good grief where did you learn medical billing from? First, doctors in hospitals aren’t’ receiving “bonuses”. The payment made for services area based on the diagnosis and goes to the hospital or provider if private practice. If you go to the hospital for the flu versus cardiac arrest, the payment is different (also geographic region and other factors). I’m not sure if you’ve been paying attention but its more expensive to treat someone with SARS-CoV-2 versus something else since there is no approved treatment. If you stay on a vent for 20 days, you would think it would cost more than one day.
Go to school, learn medical billing, then give a comment as to how medicare is paying for services.
OMG. Five figure bonuses to doctors who comply? My husband (on the frontlines of this) took a pay cut. Where did you find that fact? And putting patients on ventilators that may not need it? Seriously? You believe doctors are deliberately putting patients on ventilators to get a pay out? Or did you have another way of treating them that low and behold these hospitals (dealing with a virus they’ve never dealt with before and patients gasping for air) were avoiding so they could get this bag of cash. What a bunch of garbage. The Absolute worst case scenario is putting a patient on a vent. No healthcare provider in good conscience is going that route unnecessarily. But then again I should assume you do not think ED docs work in good conscience. Sigh. I hope you’ve never popped even a Tylenol or a Z-Pack in your anti-Pharma lifestyle. Anyways, be well. But do not stop by the hospital if you get sick. There won’t be anyone working there. They will all have retired with all of their new found money in pure elation that they don’t have to put up with this conspiracist crap anymore. The rabbit hole gets deeper everyday.
It is the *love* of money that is considered evil, money itself is neutral. In this world none of us can exist without money – many at the forefront of antivax and alternative health show a deep love of money judging by where and how they live, and I think can fairly be described as ‘evil’, or EVIL!!!! as many antivaxxers would write it.
Thank you for speaking out about the corruption going on in the field of big pharma . The corruption and evil has invaded every corner of our human lives. Medical & pharma, politics, financial world, reproduction, human trafficking of women & children, and much, much more. Greed and evil is permeating our very existence in life.
“Does that mean that she is necessarily lying?”
Yes it does. She has a long history of doing just that. Oh, and bartending. She did that too.
I’m sorry, but for those of us outside the USA where your “extra payments” etc aren’t anything actual thing, we are seeing similar statistics per capita. Are you suggesting that doctors are inflating the numbers to get extra money that also manages to miraculously keep the statistics consistent with other countries? Countries where there is no economic motive and a public funded health system?
He casually dismisses the $13,000 to $39,000 Medicare payout for doctors who rule cause of death by Covid-19 or use ventilators on patients who may not even need it as if it is a throwaway fact.
Looks like dipshit here is the first one to mention the “Covid bounty” fabrication while complaining that Orac is dismissing it.
So this is a conspiracy? She’s conspiring with others in order to make money? She’s lying. But wait, I thought you rational, sane people don’t believe in conspiracies.
I’m confused.
There is an origin to the term. The term conspiracy theory was created in 1967 by the CIA. To discourage people from challenging whatever government propaganda or narrative is put out. You can look this up all over the search engines. The term is used to dismiss or brush them off as crazy.
I did just that. The origin of the term is not what you say. For instance, the term dates back as far as the 1870s. As for the CIA document pointed to as the “smoking gun,” it only mentions the term once in passing and doesn’t bother to define it, which implies that it already had an accepted meaning in 1967. But thanks for playing.?
https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/03/16/did-the-cia-invent-the-term-conspiracy-theory/
It’s so nice to see that you are finally mercifully free from the ravages of intelligence. Congratulations!
Oh no LevelLOGIC. Conspiracies really do exist. However, you can recognise a ‘Conspiracy Theory’ by the way it is impossible to change people’s minds about them with fact or logic. If you can objectively critique an idea that agrees with your preconceptions and point out it’s weaknesses then you might not be fully in its grasp.
Just like we’re supposed to believe that Epstein killed himself. I must be a crazy conspiracy nut too
LOL@ LelelLogic
strawman much?
Confused is how they want to keep you, the ones who call conspiracy theorist : Crazy People
ORAC:
The CIA didn’t create the term “conspiracy theory” but they did weaponize it for the purposes of shutting down dissenting views regarding the JFK assassination and the Warren Commission.
Here’s CIA Document 1035-960:
https://archive.org/stream/CIADOC1035960/CIA%20DOC%201035-960_djvu.txt
Snopes? Seriously? That’s where you go to debunk anything that doesn’t fit the narrative of the establishment? Wittingly or not, you are definitely a shill for Big Pharma and the medical establishment in general. It would be fascinating to know who pays you to publish this BS.
Orac is actually to kind. Science
retraction is here :
DOI: 10.1126/science.334.6063.1636-a
“Specifically, they failed to indicate
that the CFS patient–derived
peripheral blood mononuclear cells
(PBMCs) shown in Fig. 2C had been
treated with azacytidine as well as
phytohemagglutinin and interleukin-2.
This was in contrast to the CFS
samples shown in Figs. 2A and 2B,
which had not been treated with
azacytidine.”
This means CFS patient cells were
treated with a drug that activate
retroviruses, and control group were
not.
I was unfamiliar with what azacytidine does. I’m not a virologist.
I followed this whole debacle at the time. The key element that led to the retraction (other than the fact that no-one could replicate the findings) was that Fig 2C mentioned above was not what it was purported to be. Judy Mikovits showed the same blot at a conference with completely different labels for the lanes. What she had failed to do was remove the labels from the original blot on the slide. An investigation showed that the patient lanes showing XMRV Gag signal were in fact samples treated with azacytidine, a compound that activates latent retroviruses in cells. Patient samples not treated were recorded as controls in the figure in the paper. This was not just a case of being mistaken, but one of clear research misconduct.
Azacytidine is a chemotherapy agent known as 5-Azacytidine. It induces hypomethylation.
You’re not anything but a con artist
And yet you can’t say what the “con” is…?
That sounds closer to intentional dishonesty than the sloppiness contamination would suggest.
People from work posting this video (I work at a hospital *cries in science*). Watched a few minutes of the 26 minute clip and saw the high notes but needed some background. Thanks for all your thorough digging and insight!
Even more “Yikes.”
Yes, and she might not have been able to resurge with this BS had the scientific community clearly called it misconduct. I feel like they handled her with kid gloves even though it is obvious to anyone who followed the XMRV debacle that her work wasn’t just sloppy, but intentionally fraudulent. Even now, the scientific community in general seem reluctant to state it plainly.
Yup. She treated CFS monocytes but not the controls with azacytidine to activate their retroviruses and didn’t say that in the paper. That alone is scientific fraud.
The part I am confused about is this
“Only two labs reported evidence of the virus, but replicate sample results disagreed and there was no difference in detection between CFS subjects and negative controls without CFS”k
It says only2 labs…to me 2 of 9 labs seems pretty statistically significant. And how are any labs detecting it if there is nothing present?
Is the contention here that the samples were contaminated at the source and then distributed? Or that testing methodology caused contamination?
If the term were even vaguely appropriate here, it would point in the opposite direction.
[…] non sapete chi è la ciarlatana anti-vax Judy Mikovits, Orac ne racconta la storia in occasione dell'uscita del film agiografico […]
Did you let Jacky go?
Cranks and their documentaries. Sigh. That’s not how science works.
I was down the rabbit hole on the recent “conference” that was covered in WaPo the other day. “Health Freedom” summit, with Wakefield, RFKJr, Bigtree, Mikovits, you know all the names. Anyway, I also noted that Wakefield is raising money from this for a new documentary too.
Nobody in professional scicomm (the ones that keep saying the skeptics and scientists are doing it wrong) has a plan to combat this kind of nonsense. They just wave their hands about better science education. They have no tools ot battle the front lines of bullshit.
Seriously, who does? I follow lots of people who are excellent critical thinkers and know their subject matter, but no one I know has the tools you speak of. Most still tied to information deficit model and often come across as hostile. What is a lay person like me to do?
Personally, I’m tryin’ real hard to be a shepherd, but can’t help but get pissed off at the weak sometimes.
Thank you, Orac, for the incredibly thorough debunking of this YouTube video. I’ve already had 2 fairly intelligent right wingers post this on FB and other friends ask me about it offline as they’re not sure what to believe. I’m doing my best to educate them and your post will certainly help.
So awesome, such a great great counter to this “documentary”. Thanks so much for this, my woefully underinformed niece saw the film and it really scared her, I was very glad to have this article to send to her. As I watched the film, there was so much that didn’t add up, but I try to keep an open mind. Once I heard about “healing microbes in the sand” I started laughing. That was really funny to me. Again, thanks for the article and the research that you did to go along with it. Hopefully, this conspiracy doesn’t become “a thing” and leaves as quickly as it arrived. There is so much real work to be done in the world that people don’t need their time wasted with nonsense.
I hope she took the time to read it William Hatfield. The ‘woefully uninformed’ of the day are not likely to have the time and patience to read the entire content of this piece as well as its highlighted links. Sociologists have determined that current technology has reduced the attention span of its users to mere minutes. Hence, if it doesn’t come in nice, neat, and succinct little package, it doesn’t compute.
Same! I hadn’t heard of this woman at all and so clicked on the video with an open mind and curiosity. I thought her story of being thrown in jail was horrifying and I couldn’t believe it.
But what she was saying got weirder and weirder and yeah, once she got to the part about the healing microbes in the sand I laughed out loud. She had me for a couple minutes there!
I looked up what happened with her arrest story and discovered that she was omitting details. In a case of “she-said, they-said”, where ONE of them has to be lying, it’s not a good look for her to not mention some things about the story to make her look like more of a victim. Like notice she doesn’t say how long she was jailed. Years? Months? Nope. Five days. She deliberately withheld that information from the clip.
She also had her theory on “why Italy was so hard hit” but says nothing on the U.S., whose numbers have skyrocketed beyond any other country’s in the world. Why didn’t she mention the U.S.?
Easy… she filmed this in mid March. Then it took a month and a half to get the video through post and out to be distributed. In that time, a lot has changed and it’s glaringly obvious from what she chooses to talk about in the video… and what she doesn’t talk about at all, because it hadn’t happened yet.
I can’t speak to any of the science, even her pseudo-science is better than mine. But I do pay attention when people talk, and this lady really gave it all away.
For people to call Dr. Mikovits’ analysis “conspiracy theory” is part of the effort to prevent an understanding of how the world works. “Conspiracy theory” has become the intellectual equivalent of a four-letter word: it’s something people say when they don’t want you to think about what’s really going on.
Pardon me?
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2007800
And, by using the new modeling that takes into account turbulence (think smoke ring puffs and such) instead of the old 1933 model that treated such droplets as falling in a ballistic fashion, it is essentially airborne.
(p.s. Is it just me or is the font now really this teensy weensy?)
Hey, Tim, just for future reference, it would be much more powerful when calling someone a “fucktarded moran” when correcting their English to actually spell moron correctly.
I take it that you are unfamiliar with this guy
*moran* is the accepted spelling amoungst more than 50% of the current viral influx of facebook karens. It will make it to Merriam and so will ‘yeet’.
Now go away or I will yeet insults at you a second time.
@ Tim
For some reason, I’m thinking of elderberries, and winds going in a general direction 🙂
@Athaic,
Quite.
OK, so I had to look up this expression way back when, but it was only recently that I witnessed it. I was looking for a 19.2 oz. can of Lagunitas or Dogfish Head, or something, which was a bargain at $1.79. It’s on the bottom shelf of the small cooler at the Jewel.
So, now, there’s a fellow on his knees to my right, wearing a yellow vest, loading cans into the cooler. Up comes a woman demanding to know where some sort of vodka seltzer was. He sensibly responded, “I don’t know, I’m from the distributor.” This did not sink in. “You should know!” “Ma’am, I don’t work here.”
Rinse, lather, repeat. She stomped off just long enough for me to grab a can of Bell’s Two-Hearted Ale, but it was not to last. She came back, read him the Riot Act, and told him that he should be ashamed of himself.
Lol, but; Did she not demand to see the manager? It is not a strick requirement of the definition — it has laxed up even more, lately.
I’d lean toward leaving that testimonial here:
https://old.reddit.com/r/IDontWorkHereLady/
Ohh, very much so whether she made the standard demand then and there or not!
https://old.reddit.com/r/EntitledKarens/
it does not really fit in with r/FuckYouKaren
“laxed up”
https://i.redd.it/vopklv5inh951.jpg
I doubt that she would have been able to return for more verbal abuse if she had; I’m on decent terms with something like two-thirds of the management structure (had a chit-chat with corporate guys floating around the other day, to boot), and I suspect none of them would have had much truck with tantrums.
Then again, what she wanted was in an end-cap two aisles over.
“Then again, what she wanted was in an end-cap two aisles over.”
New shit has come to light, man.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/07/poopy-projectiles-penguins-can-fling-their-feces-over-four-feet-study-finds/
Ohh. You could have diffused the situation by pointing that out to her. But, ohh no. You wanted to have that first voyeuristic karen experience all to your self.
This is now solidly in the realm of r/FuckYouKaren
I hope you are proud of yourself.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/caren-act-proposed-criminalize-discriminatory-911-calls-san/story?id=71675910
There is a little bit of a sad side. All throught history there have been non-karen Karens which were kind, loving, and totally hot.
I grew up with a slightly older girl named Karen — lived across the street. My baby sitter, my tickle torturer, took us trick’or’treating all over the city (one guy said “I think I’ll take the treat” and stole like 25 pounds of candy), and my ride to highschool– Once confided that a nose hair had grown all the way across and made an abscess. First time I ever heard the word diabetes or that it could cause blindness.
And a very very good friend of mine’s mother was named Karen. She used to cut my hair for free. MILF — liked Garry Shandling (My voice is not being electronically altered. Lovemaking with {I forget the name} blew out one of my vocal cords). And then there was the {redacted Karen}, and {redacted Karen}, and {redacted Karen with a husband named Daran}.
But, hey. 2 outta 5 good Karens ain’t bad.
https://www.tmz.com/2020/06/22/karen-baby-name-dying-breed-out-not-popular-meme-slang/
Sadly, it may be 150 years before any mom (save karens) lovingly names her daughter Karen.
I’m seeing a whole “school of ‘thought'” that masks are dangerous because of …carbon dioxide. Yep. These cloth masks capture too much CO2 and then you rebreathe all that dangerous gas. Seems like you’d have health workers falling out all over the place if that were true. People were wearing masks all day way before COVID and no one seemed to care back then.
I actually did have a perceived problem with my home made one from an Oreck vacuum cleaner bag when breathing too shallow. There was too much tidal volume in expansion and contraction of the bag.
The fix was to insert a long piece of tubing down into it so that it didn’t constrict airflow to the rest of the bag and then rolling it up. Most of the air passes out the sides of the pleated roll now.
But too much co2 in an N-95?? Talk about a tempest in a tiny tea cup but, and this is totally anecdotal, anything can happen:
https://people.com/human-interest/man-wearing-n95-mask-passes-out-while-driving-car-crashing-into-pole/
p.s. If one is alone in the vehicle, don’t bother because it will interfere with checking the gauges because you can’t look downward with only the eyes.
Exactly, my sister has been a surgical nurse for close to 10 years. She has NEVER mentioned her co-workers or herself getting sick from wearing a mask 8 to 12 hours a day. Her biggest complaint is being on her feet all day long without much of a break.
As if this grifter isn’t bad enough, now we have DOCTORS IN BLACK PlanDemic, global plan to take control of our lives, liberty, health & freedom to deal with.
How on earth do you figure that those whose opinions differ from the standard rhetoric regarding govt and public health/safety, are taking away your freedoms and trying to control you?
Ask yourself which side has more to gain? Dr Mikovits is literally risking her life to tell her story. She does not stand to gain wealth from this. If her testimony is false, then why delete the video along with all the other videos that are telling us that things are not what they appear to be? Why are so many “whistle-blowers turning up dead?
“Why are so many “whistle-blowers turning up dead?”
Such as?
If you’d read the article, you’d realize that your questions are answered there. Don’t just read the headline and go straight to the comments section to just ask a question.
@Valerie
the answer is VERY simple.
Giving out bullshit medical “advice” costs lives, lots of rthem in a pandemic.
Book sales and speaking fees but most importantly, validation that you aren’t as crazy as you in fact, are.
It really annoys me when grifters are whining about “The Deep State wants me dead!!” when they are, in fact, not dead.
It is a tremendous slur on my professional capability.
“The overlords of big tech have ordered all dissenting voices to be silenced and banned, but they are too late.”
Oh, those sloppy, inefficient overlords! I’ve always wondered how it is that gigantic conspiracies launched by all-powerful government agencies, pharmaceutical interests and their thousands (millions?) of captive scientists, funded by Bill Gates’ billions and other unlimited sources of cash, can be so easily exposed by a relative handful of truth-seeking amateurs on the Internet.
What also confuses me about Mikovits’ XMRV rants is why Big Pharma would be so against her. If XMRV and other retroviruses cause chronic fatigue syndrome and a zillion other chronic illnesses, Big Pharma could generate enormous revenue by marketing antiretroviral drugs to treat them. Something does not compute.
Mikovits is venturing into nuclear stupidity about Fauci and Covid-19 just as her latest book has been released. Think she’s hoping the publicity helps book sales?*
*Any day now, I expect Amazon to list “Plague of Corruption” as its top-selling title in immunology. Wait: as of a few minutes ago Amazon was listing the book as its #2 seller! (other books in the top 5 are “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” and “My First Learn-To Write Notebook”, which leads me to think that either Amazon’s algorithms are flawed, or authors are learning how to game the system).
>What also confuses me about Mikovits’ XMRV rants is why Big Pharma would be so against her.
Note that she’s also conceded that XMRV is not a human pathogen (almost).
There still are some gaps, but it seems to me that Mikovits say XMRV as her big opportunity to be the scientific superstar she always felt she should be. Even to the point of faking data. Somewhere along the way, she convinced herself that this was the cause of many diseases, not just prostate cancer and chronic fatigue. At this point she seems to have fallen in the woo hole.
Of course the exposure of her retrovirus as a laboratory contaminant and the subsequent exposure of her shady activities with data caused her world to come crashing down around her. In the usual way, that had to be somebody else’s fault and who better than the medical establishment and big pharma who were sceptical of her grand claim.
Having been finished as a real scientist, the pseudoscience grifting becomes an attractive niche. I guess if nothing else, it still lets you shine in front of an appreciative audience and play make believe at being the science superstar.
Mikovits has never really gelled with the anti-vaccine community, despite her appearances at Autism One and the patronage by Heckenlively. COVID-19 has turned up just in time for her and plays to her strengths. A virus causing a plague across the world obviously set loose by the nefarious Big Pharma.
“What also confuses me about Mikovits’ XMRV rants is why Big Pharma would be so against her. If XMRV and other retroviruses cause chronic fatigue syndrome and a zillion other chronic illnesses, Big Pharma could generate enormous revenue by marketing antiretroviral drugs to treat them. Something does not compute.”
Definitely doesn’t make ANY sense at all. And I thought I was the only person thinking that for the last 6-7 years or so, ever since her first wacko book came out. Good to know I’m not the only one…
[…] Judy Mikovits in Plandemic: An antivax conspiracy theorist becomes a COVID-19 grifter […]
OMG. Full conspiracy theorist. 🙂
That you cast dispersions on the filmmaker outs your agenda — not good enough to savage Mikovits, you must try to impune the character of Mikki — very snarky of you.
You state: You might recall that he and Dr. Artin Massihi made a misinformation-laden video claiming that COVID-19 prevalence was so much higher than estimated and using that estimate to claim that COVID-19 is actually five times less lethal than seasonal flu. I emphasize that, in reality, the case and death count from COVID-19 is grossly underestimated.
Do you intentionally conflate “Death Rate” with “Death Count” to make a false analogy or are you unaware that you did that? Having said that, do you agree with YouTube’s policy to pull any content that challenges what the WHO says? Are you supportive of that censorship?
>do you agree with YouTube’s policy to pull any content that challenges what the WHO says?
Where is that part of their policy stated?
I can answer this one …
YouTube’s CEO has said things similar to the claim made here, for example :
https://edition.cnn.com/videos/business/2020/04/19/inside-youtubes-numerous-policy-changes-during-the-pandemic.cnn
That said, they don’t go quite so far as “pulling any content that challenges what the WHO says”.
Missed this one the first time:
>That you cast dispersions on the filmmaker outs your agenda
Making rainbows?
Yes! Exactly! Questioned his credibility as soon as he referred to Dr. Mikovits an anti-vaxxer, which she clearly denies. Personal attacks are always telling. Exactly how they responded to Dr. Erickson. Also telling the way they so quickly dismiss the success of Hydroxychloroquine, Azithromycin, Zinc combo that several physicians have reported in early stages. Fair to say no clinical trial or peer review, but to dismiss those results, not just from US but other countries, is not science.
Dispersions? That word doesn’t mean what you think it means.
Pretty sure Ted Bundy clearly denied being a murderer, too
Um, yeah… science is about doing trials and peer review. Not “several physicians have reported.”
That’s basically the definition of what science is.
“referred to Dr. Mikovits an anti-vaxxer, which she clearly denies”
Kind of hard to accept that denial when she has spoken at antivax conferences & published at least one book that pushes an antivax message and is coauthored with an antivaxxer.
Casting “dispersions”?? Say it isn’t so!!! Ya’ll must be one of them thar Google doctors.
Aspersions.
“Cast dispersions”? The phrase is “cast aspersions” – look it up before you use it again.
No, he did not mix up death rate and death count – you misunderstood him.
Thank you AT for being one of the few people in these comments who aren’t brainwashed by the establishment and conventional narrative. The people who are for censorship are so misguided and ignorant it is hard to argue with them, if they are so confident in their arguments and information then why do they feel the need to have dissenting voices censored. Since when was abolishing free speech seen as a legitimate way to win an argument, since when has silencing the other side supported one’s claim to the truth?
No one in the alternative media/those who are going against the mainstream narrative are calling for the abolishment of free speech or for the propagators of the medical orthodoxy to be censored, why is that? Because we are all for freedom of speech, knowing that if there is true freedom of speech the truth has a chance to get out.
Lastly, anyone who has given alternative/holistic medicine, natural healing, homeopathy, etc a genuine shot has found much better results than they did listening to conventional medicine. With all our “advanced” medicine and pharmaceuticals the American population at large is shockingly unhealthy while those who engage in the various forms of alternative medicine while STAYING AWAY from modern medicine are always much healthier. On top of that taking herbs, homeopathic medicines, terrain medicine, etc does not result in horrific side effects, often death, like taking pharmaceuticals, opting for often unnecessary and invasive surgery, and treating only symptoms does. I for one have not vaccinated my 3 kids, stopped going to a conventional doctor like 8 years ago, and use natural remedies for the rare illness my family encounters and we are unusually healthy. My wife still insists on taking the kids to a regular pediatrician for their yearly wellness visits and every time they remark on how healthy my kids are, how they see their average patient several times a year while they have never seen my kids (the oldest is 10) for a sick visit. My daughter gets an ear infection, its better in a day with natural remedies, my wife gets mastitis, she is better in a day with natural remedies, I get a tooth infection, its better in a day with natural remedies. The last time I went to a doctor was 8 years ago with an ear infection, they gave me 3 different courses of antibiotics, none of which worked and only made me sicker, antivirals, steroids, it got so bad that I developed bells palsy, which they told me would last up to 6 months if not permanently. After 3 weeks of only getting worse I got fed up, stopped taking all my medications, used natural remedies and within 2 days was totally better, including my bells palsy. My ENT was shocked, said he had never seen bells palsy go away that quickly.
Wake up people, Big Pharma is about profits, not helping people.
Bach “Rescue Remedy” did jack shit for me (until I just drank the whole bottle for EtOH content; it’s not a good liqueur, either).
Would you like pictures of breast cancers treated in the fashion you suggest?
Having a history of tooth abscesses is not exactly a great recommendation for your approach.
Definitely stop going to any MDs then. Believe me they don’t want to see you either. Think of all the money you’ll save and you can sing all day about how dumb doctors are. Good luck with cancer, broken bones, diabetes, stroke or an MI.
“I get a tooth infection, its better in a day with natural remedies.”
I can believe that. The natural remedy is to tie one end of a strong string to the tooth and the other to a fast horse, then yell “giddyup!”
“anyone who has given alternative/holistic medicine, natural healing, homeopathy, etc a genuine shot has found much better results than they did listening to conventional medicine.”
That hasn’t been my experience. I had a friend with cancer who was so much of a conspiracy theorist that he went to Ireland and spent $23,000 for some “light therapy” that did no good instead of use conventional medicine. He died shortly afterward. Do you intend to use “alternative” remedies if someone in your family gets cancer?
You are talking about your family. I’m pretty sure we’ve never met. Therefore I would give equal credibility to anyone on the Internet that says the opposite. Including myself, I guess.
The only way to do this right is to look at large groups of people and control as well as we can for things like income and age, and then do careful statistical analysis to see if it’s possible that some people just were luckier than others.
In your case my immediate thought was that people who try natural remedies and end up worse than ever before stop taking natural remedies, stop listening to people who recommend them, and stop posting on blogs about their success.
Cameron dear, I don’t think Mikovits is doing this for the free drinks. She can get all she needs (and clearly has) moonlighting as a bartender…
Acupunture did nowt for me.
Antibiotics take about one to two weeks to work. That includes the time needed for the recovery by your body. Pathogen bacteria which managed to establish an infection don’t just disappear like that. Especially ear infections, those are tricky. Not many medications are efficiently reaching the ORL sphere.
So if the last course of antibiotics was the one which did the trick, of course you would be totally better 2 says after.
Not the first time someone get antibiotics, decide to switch to vitamin C or something, and suddenly find themselves better and cured.
Homeopathy? The only thing a properly prepared homeopathic solution can cure is dehydration. Homeopathy involves the dilution of an active ingredient until there is no detectable level of the ingredient in the solution. In other words the dose is the same as a similar volume of diluting liquid that never had anything added to it in the first place.
I’m not advocating for one side or the other. I have zero background in science/medicine. Just a lamen trying to inform myself on both sides of this argument.
However, one thing struck me as a contradiction to his own argument. When Orac writes about the Whittaker’s recruiting Mikovits: “ If the philanthropists are fixated on one idea, they’ll hire people and fund research looking for evidence to support that idea. ”
Wouldn’t this statement also serve to prove the conspiracy theorists’ claims to Bill Gates’ “sinister” agenda?
***Just as a side-note: the ad hominem attacks are highly unattractive from both sides of the argument. If we are going to call ourselves a Democratic society we should be able to entertain multiple aspects to an argument in a cool, respectful manner.
I’m sorry I can’t speak to the science in any credible way,( so much of the field jargon/vocabulary goes way over my head as a lamen). I’d love a more general explanation for us “google doctors” haha! (Or a ‘do-over’ for high-school to strive for a medical degree lol).
Much Love people.
Sorry, *Whittemore’s
(Auto-correct)
Not really. The Whittemores set up their own resesrch institute and maintained a level of control over its activities. The Gates offer research grants from their foundation to researchers at a whokke range of institutions.
You presumably mean laymen, or, more inclusively, lay people, but I thank you for introducing me to “lamen” which is a magical pendant or breastplate, worn as a necklace.
I hope that with further honest investigation you will see the differences between the Whittemore/Mikovits collaboration and Mr. Gates funding of vaccine research.
Actually I think you have a point about Gates but there is a ton of research on vaccines and not all of it comes from people with an agenda. We have statistical tools like funnel plots to detect sneaky studies, studies are replicated, published studies are peer reviewed by peers who know what to look for, and we have meta-analysis to look at multiple studies, and there are techniques there for looking more closely at why studies don’t agree.
Despite all this there is a consensus that there are still a lot of bad studies and that they influence the general public and even specialists who want to believe that they’ve figured out something no one else knows about. “Looking at both sides” is actually a really bad strategy when one side is walking the line between puffery and dishonesty.
The kicker though is that it’s the “natural” products industry that’s most guilty of this kind of shenanigans.
exactly…..if these people are the cranks you say they are then why censor them? If they are so wacky as you state then censorship shouldn’t be needed…it would be obvious enough for an idiot to just dismiss the “misinformation” outright….correct? And the complete dismal of monetary motives in science and medical is totally glossed over in this review…I have worked in healthcare for 24 years…trust me it exists more than you even know…..
Lay people don’t have the requisite background knowledge to recognize that people like Judy Mikovits are cranks.
Is “casting dispersions” at someone hanging something on a fishing line in hopes of getting said person to go away???
Asking for a friend
I was thinking more in terms of “reading them the Riot Act.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riot_Act
Although that was effectively ended here by the American Revolution, and has even been repealed in England.
AT – without an accurate death count, you can’t get an accurate death rate. If the deaths are undercounted significantly, it will artificially lower the apparent death rate. So the comment was correct and cogent.
This entire piece is just a bunch of contemptuous words, calls everything a conspiracy about 50 times, points out that she was a dissenting voice, and does very little to actually refute any of the claims Mikovits makes. This entire piece is useless and a waste of time for the reader.
It seems appropriate to use contemptuous words to describe contemptuous deeds.
“…does very little to actually refute any of the claims….”
Could you cite a couple of paragraphs that you feel demonstrate that claim?
“…calls everything a conspiracy about 50 times…”
What else should Orac call a conspiracy?
He’s not going to respond. Debate is never the goal for comments like that.
“This entire piece is useless and a waste of time for the reader.”
And yet a squad of defenders, ranging from the pseudointelligent to the completely inarticulate have swarmed here to drop their pearls of wisdom. I guess Judy is scared.
Indeed. They also appear to have launched a DDoS attack. I turned on Cloudflare’s “under attack mode,” and it’s amazing how the site is now loading and responsive again.
A DDOS attack is a criminal act, no matter by what path you hire a botnet or script dippy to do it. I don’t think they’re stupid enough to use their own info to buy the attack… but who knows.
she won’t be scared, ignorance is bliss
Well it is Full Moon.
Kinda crazy in here. Comment traffic is like 10-fold larger than usual and surprisingly Youtube level in quality. I came in wondering what the hell happened!
DDoS attack? Really? People must be flipping out under lock-down.
Just wondering if you’ve had a chance to see this article? It contradicts some of what you’ve said, for example, that after having gotten married, she was a bartender for 5yrs and how she met Annette Whittemore and Daniel Peterson, in addition to work and findings of other scientists. I’m of no importance or scientific background, but just wondering if I’m missing something here. Albeit, I do agree that she’s flaming the government conspiracy movement, and some of what she says seems far fetched.
https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/chasing-the-shadow-virus-chronic-fatigue-syndrome-and-xmrv
Where is the disconnect? I didn’t find a contradiction.
Also in the audience in Barcelona that day was Annette Whittemore, a rich, politically well-connected Nevada native. Her adult daughter had suffered from CFS since childhood and had been under Peterson’s care for many years. Whittemore and her husband, Harvey — a Reno attorney, real estate magnate, and former lobbyist whom local reporters called “the most powerful man in Nevada” — had been holding fund-raisers at their summer vacation mansion overlooking Lake Tahoe for some years to support research into their daughter’s illness.
They also had been lobbying the state legislature and U.S. Senator Harry Reid, a longtime friend, for government money to fund an institution at the University of Nevada in Reno dedicated to the study of CFS. In 2005 the state legislature approved a bill committing $12 million to get the $77 million construction project off the ground. (A variety of other sources, including the Whittemores themselves, would fund the rest.)
Plans were laid for a steel and glass-clad building on the UNR campus that would house, four years hence, the Whittemore Peterson Institute: a collection of labs, clinics, and the office of the president, Annette Whittemore.
Whittemore was impressed when Mikovits — first to the microphone to comment when Peterson finished — said, “I’m a cancer researcher. Number one, I look for viruses in cancer, and number two, this smells like a virus.” Whittemore invited Mikovits to Reno for a six-week stay that summer, during which Mikovits developed a bank of CFS patient tissues for further study. The many patients too weak to stand or walk, requiring wheelchairs or scooters or — to keep their balance — canes, made an impression. By summer’s end she had accepted an offer to become research director of the institute.
Kirsty- Even if that scene happened, it still doesn’t contradict what Orac wrote.
Thank you for taking the time to write this and to provide links. I am afraid the majority of people coming at you will not read.
thank you for writing sense! i jave shared this 🙂
In case you wondering, Mikovits’ anti-vaccine dumbassery goes deep. She actually was an “expert witness” (hold on, I’m laughing too hard to type) in an NVICP case recently. Dorit Rubinstein Reiss wrote all about it:
https://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepticalraptorblog.php/vaccines-cause-cancer-son-theresa-deisher/
I hope they didn’t pay her.
The Deisher case covered in full here: https://bit.ly/2W87164
Quite a bit more extensive and referenced than the simplistic and highly biased refutation cited above.
It’s pretty clear why you used a link shortener there. No bias from RFKJr, nosirree Bob.
Can you tell us where Bobby Kennedy, jr got his science/medical credentials? Now remember if you get hurt and require medical attention avoid the emergency department at the hospital and to run to your neighborhood attorney.
Why doesnt the Big Pharma Clown sic his pseudo-intellect on Bill Gates? What is HIS medical pedigree and expertise? Or is the hip-hop attention whore on his payroll too?
>What is HIS medical pedigree and expertise?
The Fail Train just keeps chugging down the track.
Gates knows who to hire, he does not do the research himself. RFK, jr… does not, he just makes stuff up.
(hoping this shows up in the right spot, the DDOS attack evidence that this upset folks and they can’t refute it with actual evidence)
That was not Mikovits’ only attempt to leech from the Vaccine Court system by the provision of Expert Witnessing. I refer you to this entertaining document,
https://ecf.cofc.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2012vv0378-175-0
in which Special Master Moran goes on at some length explaining why he rejected Judy’s own assessment of $350 / hour as reflecting the hourly value of her research and testimony, and reduced it to $250 and then down to $150 on account of lack of reputation or competence. Our old friend Clifford Shoemaker turns up on the same gravy-train.
Based on her reputation and bona fides, Ms. Mikovits’ credentials are simply not in the same league as experts who are paid $250 (or more) per hour. While this does not mean that Ms. Mikovits is incapable of providing expert testimony on specific topics, it does mean that she cannot expect to be paid the same hourly rate as those with much better reputations than she. Individuals with better reputations are, presumably, in far higher demand. Accordingly, based on the rate that the undersigned found reasonable for non-medically trained immunologists—$250 per hour—the undersigned makes an additional deduction of 40%. This deduction reflects Ms. Mikovits’ relative lack of reputability in the field compared to comparable experts. This results in a rate of $150 per hour for a non-medically trained immunologist of Ms. Mikovits’ reputation.
After Frank Ruscetti retired from NIH, he and Mikovits set up “MAR Consulting”. I am not sure entirely what consultancy work they provided, other than Expert Witnessing in failed Vaccine Court litigation, and presentations to VaccineOne scamfests.
“MAR Consulting” has submitted a number of reports in Vaccine Program cases, all signed by both Mr. Ruscetti and Ms. Mikovits but with Ms. Mikovits being the testifying witness in each case. Thus, it remains unclear the extent to which the opinions contained in the report reflect the analysis and conclusions of Mr. Ruscetti exclusively. The invoice for the work indicates that a small fraction of the work was performed by Mr. Ruscetti.
The MAR Website is no longer extant and I do not know if the company still exists.
Speaking of gravy trains, Cliff Shoemaker’s train has gone completely off the rails.
https://www.vsb.org/docs/Shoemaker-021020.pdf
Oh. My.
Oh dear.
Grifters have to grift it seems.
I wonder what happened to the $11 million he extracted from the vaccine courts?
https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/vaccine_court_is_profitable_for_some_lawyers_who_get_paid_win_or_lose
The rate cut for Mikovits was even greater than to $150 per hour. Near the end of that same court document there was a further cut for performance in that specific matter: “Based on the inferior quality of her work, the undersigned finds an additional 50% reduction of Ms. Mikovits’ rate appropriate. Ms. Mikovits’ work will be compensated at a rate of $75.00 per hour.”
@ Smut Clyde – well spotted, sir!
Gates knows who to hire. Unlike Kennedy who thinks he knows stuff when he does not.
Judy at IPAK:
Vaccine Components and Host Interactions: Genetics, Epigenetics, Antigenic Load and Compromised Immunity
“The one size fits all concept of western vaccination paradigms began when little or nothing was known about T cell and innate immunity. Moreover, only recently were microbiota considered active participants in the immune response. Dysregulation of crosstalk between the developing immune system and the brain is now realized to be central to neuroimmune disease pathogenesis. The data explosion from immunobiology research shows that immune related adverse events inform all vaccinology. Abandonment of the current archaic strategy for vaccinology and vaccine development is long overdue. High content technologies for genomics, epigenomics, transcriptomics, immune and microbiome profiling should be utilized for increased safety and efficacy. The elimination of toxins in vaccine components and identification of hosts with genetic and immune susceptibilities to vaccines are attainable. In this chapter, our focus is on predictive factors of response and toxicity of the host rather than on individual agents.”
Curiously, her chapter in the abortive 2017 volume “Controversies in Vaccine Safety” boasted the same title. Though that time, Frank Ruscetti was listed as co-author, and I am left wondering whether he was aware of this use of his name.
The editors, you will recall, were Shaw & Dwoskin & Lujan & Tomljenovic. Contributors included our old friend Vinu Arumugham, with a chapter on “Vaccine Induced Allergies”. To be published by Elsevier / Academic Press until they realised that however much it was subsidised by Dwoskin, it was not worth the damage to their reputation, and they cancelled publication at the last minute.
Smut Clyde — Is this in dispute? I am unclear to the reason for your posting this: “The one size fits all concept of western vaccination paradigms began when little or nothing was known about T cell and innate immunity. Moreover, only recently were microbiota considered active participants in the immune response. Dysregulation of crosstalk between the developing immune system and the brain is now realized to be central to neuroimmune disease pathogenesis. The data explosion from immunobiology research shows that immune related adverse events inform all vaccinology. Abandonment of the current archaic strategy for vaccinology and vaccine development is long overdue. High content technologies for genomics, epigenomics, transcriptomics, immune and microbiome profiling should be utilized for increased safety and efficacy. The elimination of toxins in vaccine components and identification of hosts with genetic and immune susceptibilities to vaccines are attainable.”
Yes.
The first lines are almost correct, if one accept her unstated claims that nothing changed in vaccine design since the early days of vaccination.
It may be just me, but its seems to me the methods in use today are a bit more sophisticated than that Jenner or Pasteur did.
The sentence about microbiota is correct, as this is a recent development.
The following sentences are just buzzwords, circular reasoning or unproven claims.
@Teresa: the sentence
“Dysregulation of crosstalk between the developing immune system and the brain is now realized to be central to neuroimmune disease pathogenesis. ”
seems to be code for “vaccines cause autism”.
I read the “theories” these conspiracy theorists spout, with their intricate, devious plots. I look at my own poor attempts at writing. And I just sigh, and wish I had their talent. But I have to admit even the great** Dan Brown can’t match what these people come up with.
**OK, not great. Successful, yes. But not so much with the great.
Dan Brown is a hoot! I love the way he breathlessly writes as he reveals common cultural knowledge as if he exposed the GREAT UNKNOWN! Hahah.
@ Alice Smith
Eh. On my side of the Atlantic, Umberto Eco and his Foucault’s pendulum novel are quite famous. If one wants to describe a conspiracy to hide an affair between Jesus and Maria-Magdalena, that’s my article of reference.
So then I, and then my mom, read the Da Vinci code, we just looked at one-another and said “Is that it?”
Blah blah blah. And, more blah blah blah. Vomit vomit vomit. I get I’ll reading ur trite trash.
@MartySnodgrass: “Blah blah blah. And, more blah blah blah. Vomit vomit vomit. I get I’ll reading ur trite trash.”
I was wondering who Acting President Trump’s speechwriter was.
And yet this video keeps getting removed over and over from YouTube. Hmmm…I wonder why?
Copywrong infringement?
What if the same uploaders are removing it to cause panic?
They’ll stop at nothing.
Yes.
But not a conspiracy theorist ???
lies, damn lies & statistics! so much mumbo jumbo from failed hacks trying (& succeeding) to make a buck from the scared, the angry & the vulnerable using pseudo science
Blah blah blah. And, more blah blah blah. Vomit vomit vomit. I get sick reading ur trite trash. Get a real job.
>Get a real job.
Lot of losers in the Who Is Orac game lately.
I am amazed on how many cannot access teh googles.
Um.
You would see that he has a pretty good job if you took five seconds to read his bio.
Am I behind the times? I can see ‘ur’ being shortened/text speak for ‘you are’ but surely not ‘your’ as well?
She sued WPI with a whistleblower lawsuit 5 years ago, representing herself, basically. She had a lawyer help her write it. In march of this year, the suit was finally tossed out of court because Judy sucked at filing paperwork, even with the judge cutting her some slack to get her shit together. Read it here:
https://retractionwatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/mikovits-complaint.pdf
Check Line 5 Page 2, point #7. This is where Mikovits says she co-authored a paper in 2011 asserting that the research behind the WPI subsidiary’s for-profit XMRV tests was faulty and contaminated, literally debunking her OWN research. The study in question that triggered the Science retraction: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21940862
She appears to like to have both sides of her bread buttered. She still, to this day, gets up at anti vaxxer conferences and continues to claim the original 2009 study on XMRV doesn’t just correlate to CFS, but to a swath of all sorts of disease and disorders, as the presenter Willis states within the first couple of minutes of the video.
She also claims in line 13 page 5 that it was the Whittemore’s who developed the test for XMRV based on her research, even though she’s listed as the co-inventor on several of the patents protecting the tests she helped developed based on the research she claims is flawed. Ok then!
https://patents.justia.com/inventor/judy-a-mikovits
A full and accurate account of Mikovits’ action-packed career would include her time as a supplements pimp and Lyme Doctor, peddling worthless scammy products for a multilevel-marketing company “Pharmanex / Nu-Skin”. Antioxidants and a “Biophotonic” prescription machine designed to tell suckers that they need to buy more Pharmanex antioxidants. Peddling them, more specifically, to treat Chronic Lyme Disease.
https://web.archive.org/web/20151017212644/http://www.mdjunction.com/forums/lyme-disease-support-forums/lyme-disease-activism/3624873-4712-lake-forest-cal-dr-mikovits-speaking-sg
Dr. Judy Mikovitz will be discussing about a new Bio-Energetic Test called Pharmenex BioPhotonic. This test can inform each patient what their levels of anti-oxidants are and their levels of Oxidative Stress, what they are deficient in and what to supplement with to return levels to normal ranges. This is cutting edge technology.
We are privileged to hear her speak and she will have this new technology with her. A nationally known LLMD, will be speaking on inflammation and ways to control the cytokine storms of these illnesses.
…
She is bringing the new FDA APPROVED scanner for measurements of anti oxidants…she is bring this with her to scan some people to show how it works…
That was before she reinvented herself as Persecuted Heretic to convince the antivaxxers that she was one of them.
NuSkin was pretty big back in the 90s. Their schtick was holding parties where they’d smear half of someone’s face with irritants then show off how the swelling obscured lines and wrinkles.
One must note that you are highly biased, having worked in Big Pharma funded facilities for most of your medical career. Additionally, as indicated in your Wikipedia bio, you are and have been an “outspoken skeptic, and a critic of alternative medicine and the anti-vaccination movement.”
Additionally, you are the managing editor of the website “Science-Based Medicine,” which also is a “source of information about medical controversies and alternative medicine.” https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/ whose latest article attempts to make the case that the MMR vaccine with toxic adjuvants like aluminum and mediums like diploid human tissue (aborted baby parts medium used to culture the active virus used in the vaccine).
You are an anti-alternative medical professor who has devoted his career to carrying water for the pharmaceutical and modern medical complex, which siphons off over $3 Trillion annually in the U.S. alone from the American public with pretty pathetic results when all is said and done. (A war on cancer that is still going with the first big three offerings:
carcinogenic chemotherapy (so toxic a spill requires a hazmat suit to clean up),
carcinogenic radiation therapy
the surgical removal of localized cancer (a symptom-based approach which often results in the spread because the cause was not addressed, only the symptom).
Additionally, your criticisms are simply repeats of the industry attacks on Dr. Mikovits. She refused to back off of her, finding that the XMRV retrovirus was associated with ME/CFS (chronic fatigue syndrome). Transmitted she and her fellow researcher discovered by pulverized mouse brains used to cultivate vaccines such as the mercury-preserved (thimerosal)polio vaccine where CFS first arose in the 1930s at LA County General Hospital.
Of course, the industry is going to drum up attacks on Dr. Mikovits when she brings up any potentially critical information about vaccines because they potentially threaten a cash cow that feeds them and indirectly yourself as well.
After all, it took you a short time to come out with an article attacking Dr. Mikovits, an expected response from someone who attacks any opinion, alternative, or information contrary to the approved medical/pharmaceutical complex accepted narrative.
People see through the modern medical mirage in increasing numbers, and biased blogs like yours are helping to further that awareness. Thank you for your kind contributions. Keep up the excellent work.
LOVE this callout!!
A collection of recycled ad hominem fallacies is a great callout?
You’re clearly way too easily impressed.
Critical thinking has never been a trait of anti-vaxxers. If they could do it adequately, rather than the joining the dots they are prone to, they would not be anti-vaxxers.
There are no aluminium adjuvants in the MMR vaccine.
Mikovits faked data in her paper https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2011/10/chronic-fatigue-syndrome-researcher-fired-amidst-new-controversy
She has refused to back down, but everyone else in science knows XMRV was a laboratory artifact and is not associated with any disease.
Pharmaceutical companies do not make much money out of vaccines. Usually, you give them once or a small number of times for a lifetime of protection from diseases. Pharmaceutical companies would make much more money out of drugs for treating the diseases.
Polio vaccines are grown in monkey kidney cells, not mouse brains.
You have managed to fill my anti-vaccine trope bingo card with this rant and I would like my prize now.
“Pharmaceutical companies do not make much money out of vaccines. Usually, you give them once or a small number of times for a lifetime of protection from diseases. Pharmaceutical companies would make much more money out of drugs for treating the diseases.”
People get the flu vaccine every year. That is a lot more then once or a small number of times.
Seriously, the influenza vaccine is the exception. Only because the influenza strains vary from year to year and keep changing.
You don’t get given polio vaccine more than once, mostly, MMRV vaccine more than twice and so on. It is not much of a business model to make sure your customers never have to come back.
There are no aluminium adjuvants in the MMR vaccine.
Yes, true I cited the wrong vaccine. However, there are plenty of other vaccines with aluminum (a known CNS toxin) to fill in the gap (including those approved by the CDC for administration to infants at ages as low as 2 months)
As noted by PubMed: Aluminum is an experimentally demonstrated neurotoxin and the most commonly used vaccine adjuvant. Despite almost 90 years of widespread use of aluminum adjuvants, medical science’s understanding about their mechanisms of action is still remarkably poor. There is also a concerning scarcity of data on toxicology and pharmacokinetics of these compounds. https://bit.ly/2LfavO5
There are three general types of aluminum-containing adjuvants:
Aluminum hydroxide
Aluminum phosphate
Potassium aluminum sulfate (often called “Alum”)
The US licensed vaccines for children that contain aluminum adjuvants are:
DTP (diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis vaccine)
DTaP (diphtheria-tetanus-acellular pertussis vaccine)
Some but not all Hib (Haemophilus influenzae type b) conjugate vaccines
Pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV)
Hepatitis B vaccines
All combination DTaP, Tdap, Hib, or Hepatitis B vaccines
Hepatitis A vaccines
Human Papillomavirus vaccine
Anthrax vaccine
Rabies vaccine https://bit.ly/3ciZyGW
According to the CDC’s lis of 2020 Recommended Vaccines for Infants and Children (birth through 6 years) https://bit.ly/35QsMLa
The following vaccines are recommended at the age of 2 months:
DTaP (diphtheria-tetanus-acellular pertussis vaccine) which contains aluminum hydroxide https://bit.ly/3ftADTn
Pneumococcal or PCV13 vaccine – which contains aluminum phosphate https://bit.ly/2SN5j8k
Hib – which contains amorphous aluminum hydroxyphosphate sulfate https://bit.ly/2zkq8Ry
IPV (polio vaccine) – which contains formaldehyde (A great ingredient to put into a developing baby’s body huh? Good preservative for cadavers too as well)
So, yeah, it may not be in the MMR vaccine. But heck by the time an infant gets to that vaccine at 12 months. They have already had a nice little dose of vaccines containing toxins such as heavy metal aluminum adjuvants with other helpful ingredients such as preservatives like formaldehyde for good measure.
Thanks for the correction though. You have added to my in the bag for Big Pharma saps list with your “rant” (Oh, please spare me the hyperbolic drama. Rant? A laughable description designed as an ad hominem put down. Duh!)
You have just been given your prize. My research and the links to the websites that validate all stated. Please feel free to fully enjoy your gift.
Mikovits faked her paper?
Yeah, a real credible source. A writer for Science Magazine. Hmmm…I wonder if there may be a bit of BigPharma bias mixed in there?
First of all, it was not her paper alone. She worked on the paper with Dr. Ruscetti at the Cleveland Clinic. The work was published in Science Magazine which is remarkably similar to the magazine your so-called critic works for.
Ruscetti bowed to the pressures and claimed mistakes. Mikovits did not. Ruscetti was retained. Mikovits was not. Any correlation in behavior and results there I wonder?
With regards to the polio vaccine noted, the vaccine was developed by Dr. Maurice Brodie in 1935 and was not cultivated on “monkey kidney cells”:
In 1935 Maurice Brodie, a research assistant at New York University, attempted to produce a polio vaccine, procured from virus in ground up monkey spinal cords, and killed by formaldehyde. Brodie first tested the vaccine on himself and several of his assistants. He then gave the vaccine to three thousand children. Many developed allergic reactions, but none of the children developed an immunity to polio. https://bit.ly/35JyI8q
The vaccine was procured from ground up monkey “spinal cords” and then killed with formaldehyde. It didn’t work btw after being given to 3,000 children. How surprising?
According to Mikovits the polio virus Brodie used was:
“passaged multiple times through mouse brain tissue. The use of the mouse was new in the 1930’s, only previously having been used in the development of a Yellow Fever vaccine.
In addition the staff [of the hospital where the chronic fatigue syndrome was first noted] was given an accompanying immune system booster, preserved with thimerosal, a mercury derivative.”
The cited references for the above statements are:
W.A. Sawyer et al., “Vaccination Against Yellow Fever with Immune Serum and Virus Fixed for Mice,” Journal of Experimental Medicine (May 31, 1932), 945–969.
John F. Kessel et al., “Use of Serum and the Routine and Experimental Laboratory Findings in the 1934 Poliomyelitis Epidemic,” American Journal of Public
Feel free to look them up and refute the facts cited regarding the use of the passage of the production of the polio vaccine administered to the LA County staff conducted by Mikovits and Ruscetti.
Another gift you can add to your collection btw.
I’m very generous. Thank you.
Big Pharma makes much of its money from the toxic synthetic chemicals that fill the PDR’s with contraindications and their coffers with profits that is true.
However, to pass off the vaccine as piddling is a bit disingenuous to say the least and a pile of dog poo to be frank. Injecting children worldwide with vaccines is quite profitable. Then again Bill Gates is just investing Billions in vaccines out of the goodness of his heart I suppose.
Additionally, it also serves as a way on ensuring a steady stream of customers later on as well serving as an investment in the future of the pharmaceutical cash machine.
By injecting toxic garbage like serious CNS toxins such as the heavy metal poisons of aluminum and mercury, formaldehyde preservatives, foreign DNA from dead babies (euphemistically called “human diploid tissue”) and more, the multi-trillion $ industry manages to weaken newly conceived human beings helping to make them sicker sooner or later.
What do they really care? They profit one way or the other. If the baby survives the toxic assault, they make some nice coin in the process. (Uh, you think vaccines are a money loser? Uh huh, that’s why there are over 90 of them in the pipelines under development and Gates et al are investing Billions in their development right? They’re money losers. Duh!)
If the baby gets sick as the result of the toxic vaccine assault, which grows more prolific each year it seems, they profit from the care of the sick child.
Either way they make money.
But hey, you just keep carrying water for them. They welcome all help from as many saps as they can get.
But hey, thanks for sharing. Have a good one.
It’s also not like everybody get it.
A product which you have to redesign and push through red tape each year, with limited market penetration? Doesn’t look like a bestseller to me. Better sell vitamin cocktails.
We can start by the fact that describing aluminum salts as a heavy metal suggests some misunderstandings.
This blog addressed aluminum adjuvants many times in the past. The search engine can help you find that.
Here is another accessible source about them. https://www.chop.edu/centers-programs/vaccine-education-center/vaccine-ingredients/aluminum
@Terry: “As noted by PubMed: Aluminum is an experimentally demonstrated neurotoxin and the most commonly used vaccine adjuvant. ”
Pubmed doesn’t note anything, it’s just a database of papers in the medical sciences. It also contains papers of questionable quality, like the one you cite by Shaw and Tomljenovic. About half of their papers get retracted again. But of course, you knew that already.
Anyway, aluminimum may be a neurotoxin, but the aluminium salts you mention are too big to pass the blood-brain-barrier.
Science retracted the paper on XMRV retrovirus being associated with ME/CFS, basically calling it a sham. This lady is trying to drum up all kinds of theories to sell her book.
She deserved the attacks, she’s a fraud.
Why would the indusry oppose an idea that XMRV causes CFS ? There is lots of money to be make with antiviral drugs. And if cancer is a symptom, what is the cause ?
?… finally some sense on this page.
@Terry: “carcinogenic chemotherapy (so toxic a spill requires a hazmat suit to clean up),
carcinogenic radiation therapy
the surgical removal of localized cancer (a symptom-based approach which often results in the spread because the cause was not addressed, only the symptom).”
Your descriptions are wrong. I am a retired physician assistant and I have worked in medical oncology, radiation oncology, and general surgery. If all these things are as bad as you say, why are cancer death rates falling and more cancers are being cured? I was on scene when chemotherapy was proven curative against 90+% of testicular cancer cases, and again when chemotherapy was shown to be able to cure bladder cancer. Survival was judged at one time as going five years without recurrence. Now for many cancers it is ten and even fifteen years. I had surgery for prostate cancer 11 years ago and by your lights it should have spread. Yet here I am with essentially negative PSAs right up to this year. My mother had radiation therapy for breast cancer more than a dozen years ago. Guess what? At 93 she is still without cancer.
If you believe what you say then you are an ignoramus. If you know better and say it anyway you are a liar.
On March 28, 1986, Dr. Robert B. Strecker and his brother, Attorney Theodore A Strecker,
summitted the Historical Document, “This Is A Bio-Attack Alert”, giving the US Government
Proof, AIDS/HIV, Cancers and other Diseases, were being intentionally spread during
Preventative Vaccinations Programs Globally. These diseases were being created in Labs and
Scientists were forcing Animal Diseases across the Species Barrier into Human Tissue Culture Cells
and creating these viruses to inject into human beings.
Solutions To CORONAVIRUS, OR COVID-19
The solutions to most all Viruses, Bacteria, Fungus, Pathogens and Parasites has proven to be
“Oxidizers”, which destroys these problems to the Human Body Extremely Effectively. The
primary oxidizers used since the 1940’s are Ozone Therapy and Food Grade Hydrogen Peroxide.
More recently, in the 1990’s, a Master Mineral Solution, or MMS, was discovered by a Gold
Prospector named Jim Humble. MMS was used in Uganda against Malaria and documented on
film by a Red Cross worker. After 24-48 hours, 154 men, women and children were free of
Malaria. Unfortunately, after the video and documentation was presented as proof, the Red
Cross Headquarters had the proof removed from the Internet and a smear campaign began to
discredit the findings and proof.
1. Ozone & Oxygen Generators take incoming O2 and transforms it into O3. The Ozone
Generators can saturate the atmosphere of homes, hospitals, etc. and eliminate any
disease, pathogens, viruses, or fungus from the atmosphere very effectively. The Ozone
Generators are also used to oxygenate water for consumption and for cleaning the
Human Body and equipment. Ozone Generators have many uses, you just need to do
some research to Save Yourself from COVID-19 and anything else harmful to you and your
loved ones. “Ozone Generators Are Oxidizers” Oxidizers Kill Germs, Viruses, Diseases,
Pathogens’ and Parasites.
UMOJA RESEARCH – CORONAVIRUS 2020
2. Food Grade Hydrogen Peroxide 35% is also an “Oxidizer”, which destroys pathogens,
viruses and diseases. The use of Food Grade Hydrogen Peroxide is widely known as a
“Class 1 Oxidizer”, which Kills Bacteria, Fungus, Pathogens & Diseases on contact. Read
“Flood Your Body With Oxygen by, Ed McCabe. (Please Note: 35% Food Grade Hydrogen
Peroxide is Dangerous if not handled properly and should be kept out of reach of
children and stored in a cool place. If you place one drop on your finger and rub it into
another finger, it will burn and your contact fingers will look white, that’s the oxidation
process. Please use Food Grade Hydrogen Peroxide 35% with Caution.)
3. MMS, Master Mineral Solution, this solution basically destroys Bacteria, Viruses, Diseases,
Pathogens, Parasites’ and anything else harmful to the Human Body. Keep in Mind, MMS
Dose Not Cure, It Destroys Whatever Is Harmful To The Human Body and The Body Heals
Itself.
Ref.
1. Oxygen Therapies, Ed McCabe
2. Flood Your Body With Oxygen, Ed McCabe
3. BURZYNSKI, Cancer Is Serious Business
4. Vaccines, What CDC Documents & Science Reveal, Dr. Sherri J. Tenpenny
5. HOXSEY: When Healing Becomes A Crime, Harry Hoxsey
6. Cancer The Forbidden Cures, Massimo Mazzucco
7. World Without Cancer: The Story of Laetrile, G. Edward Griffin
8. Understand MMS, Conversations with Jim Humble
9. MMS Health Recovery Handbook
10. AIDS Inc., Gary Null PhD
11. The Gerson Therapy Gerson Institute
12. A Cancer Therapy, Max Gerson
13. A Higher Form Of Killing; The Secret Story of Chemical and Biological Warfare, Robert Harris &
Jeremy Paxman
14. Dr. Robert B. Strecker, Archive.org
15. Wake Up, Zears Miles Audio Interview, Archive.org
16. Bacteria Inc., Cash Asher
17. The Cure Of All Diseases, Dr. Hulda Clark
18. Dr. William F. Koch Publications online, (Dr. Koch gave Cause & Cure of Cancer in 1918)
19. Dr. Royal R. Rife, Cured Every Known & Unknown Diseases in Early 1930’s
20. Forbidden Cures, Benjamin Ross
21. The BECK PROTOCOL A First AID Kit of The Future, Bob Beck (Free on Arcive.org)
22. Colloidal Silver, You can find information on how to use and produce your own Colloidal Silver
Generator. DO NOT use Sterling Silver, use Pure 12 Gauge Silver Wire. An online source is
puresilverwire.com, most of the Pure Silver Suppliers are closed due to coronavirus. Look in The
Beck Protocol for directions how to make a Colloidal Silver Generator. Although its 27v DC, you
can use 24v & 9v AC/DC Adaptors, or a 9v Battery with Alligator Clips. Follow instructions in The
Bob Beck Protocol.
23. THIS IS A BIO-ATTACK ALERT, Dr. Robert B. Strecker & Theodore A. Strecker
24. CORONAVIRUS 2020, UMOJA Research
2. Food Grade Hydrogen Peroxide 35% is also an “Oxidizer”, which destroys pathogens,
viruses and diseases. The use of Food Grade Hydrogen Peroxide is widely known as a
“Class 1 Oxidizer”, which Kills Bacteria, Fungus, Pathogens & Diseases on contact. Read
“Flood Your Body With Oxygen by, Ed McCabe. (Please Note: 35% Food Grade Hydrogen
Peroxide is Dangerous if not handled properly and should be kept out of reach of
children and stored in a cool place. If you place one drop on your finger and rub it into
another finger, it will burn and your contact fingers will look white, that’s the oxidation
process. Please use Food Grade Hydrogen Peroxide 35% with Caution.)
I’d suggest you run that one by Jarad as he is the defacto team leader on the coronavirus task force and daddy has a whole lotta egg on is face after this stupid suggestion:
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/24/lysol-maker-warns-against-injecting-disinfectants-trump-coronavirus-theory-206268
Do it, ,John Burns. Only you have the power, the influence. Nobody else is up to the challenge to stand up to trump’s withering gaze and suggest rationality.
Funny,,,,, media labels disinfectant as being bleach, lysol or other household product insisting he said to inject those and Trump is the one with egg on his face?
Because these are representative of that disinfectants are. Caustic and agressive for the inside of the human body.
And because Trump was indeed channeling bleach, as he was primed to do so by the peddlers of Mineral Miracle Solution a few days before his press conference.
I’ll grant you, maybe Trump was thinking of drinking a 70% ethanol solution. The FSM knows I’m sorely tempted sometimes to do so.
Still not a good idea.
From what I understand, he was describing a brainstorming conversation he just had with Bill Bryan, his Under Secretary for Science and Technology about how UV light and other disinfectants kill the virus so easily and wouldn’t it be great if we could get it into the lungs. The doctor had told him that surfactant medicines are indeed injected into the lungs and “helps keep the alveoli open to oxygenate the lungs”. I get that you’re anti-Trump, but how about a little fairness instead of just parroting the lies of Pelosi and her minions at CNN/MSNBC saying Trump told people to inject Lysol into their veins and that Trump wants to kill people.
@ Rob Burns
And Trump did say disinfectant, and talked of it like it would not just merely oxygenate the lungs, but actually kill the virus.
And he did say “by injection inside”. What I am supposed to understand?
Especially as he was also channeling some weird light therapy.
Look, I get that he badly expressed himself. And he did indeed mentions lungs. So he apparently mixed up a half-dozen things people told him the past hours or days, and it came that way.
But it’s not with me or Pelosi or whoever is your scarecrow du jour you should be upset with.
IRL, I’m really bad at expressing myself and people keep asking me to repeat myself. I know I have no-one to blame but myself. Notably if I misled people.
Seems I should be blaming Pelosi instead.
Pelosi nothing. I learned of it by reading the transcript of what he said.
Which I put below, in case you don’t believe me.
TRUMP: So, supposedly when we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light, and I think you said that hasn’t been checked, but you’re going to test it. And then I said supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. And I think you said you’re going to test that too. Sounds interesting, right? And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that so that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me. So, we’ll see, but the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute. That’s pretty powerful.
@Athaic: “maybe Trump was thinking of drinking a 70% ethanol solution. The FSM knows I’m sorely tempted sometimes to do so.
Still not a good idea.”
I think it’s a great idea. A 70% alcohol solution equals 140 proof. There are several brands of rum I’m aware of that have a higher proof than that, and I think that occasionally drinking some is a wonderful idea. It won’t make me any safer but it might make social distancing a bit more tolerable.
to every complex problem there is a simple solution and its wrong.
can’t find much in that list that is current peer reviewed science. some good tinfoil hat theory though
@SV
It was only sarcasm. Sheesh!
Orac is being unusually kind to cranks, creeps, and crazies today.
I can see another piece of propaganda and conspiracy against particular Dr. Spesialy about Bill Gates who is not a doctor or specialist on that field, but has involved in that process. Also, still to many questions not answered. So, many people can see some kind of dirty business is going on between big and powerful gays, who trying blame each other and fight for the money and power, and keep regular people in darkness to unknown the situation to what is going on? I can see only one thing here, to brainwashed people and manipulating them for some reason. This is totally terrifying and disgusting things to do. That’s completely wrong. So, your source is not different than others conspiracy theorists and propaganda.
Could you rephrase that in English?
For a moment there, I though Dr. Spesialy was meant to be a person and wondered what sort of crank they were.
I then realised that spelling, grammar and coherence were not meant to be part of this comment.
Presumably one imbues the information contained by some secret ritual.
Not only antisemitism (further up the page) but also homophobia. “Dirty business between big and powerful gays”? What the hell are you on?
Daddy? You got that pack of cigs finally? My hole salutes you.
RL: “What the hell are you on?”
He is on 80 proof conspiracy juice. Be careful with that stuff, because it will melt your brain!
Dr. Robert B Strecker and Attorney Theodore A. Strecker exposed the intentional spread of AIDS, Cancers and other Diseases to the FBI, CIA, Congress, Senators and President of USA on March 28, 1986.
Ref.
1. Oxygen Therapies, Ed McCabe
2. Flood Your Body With Oxygen, Ed McCabe
3. BURZYNSKI, Cancer Is Serious Business
4. Vaccines, What CDC Documents & Science Reveal, Dr. Sherri J. Tenpenny
5. HOXSEY: When Healing Becomes A Crime, Harry Hoxsey
6. Cancer The Forbidden Cures, Massimo Mazzucco
7. World Without Cancer: The Story of Laetrile, G. Edward Griffin
8. Understand MMS, Conversations with Jim Humble
9. MMS Health Recovery Handbook
10. AIDS Inc., Gary Null PhD
11. The Gerson Therapy Gerson Institute
12. A Cancer Therapy, Max Gerson
13. A Higher Form Of Killing; The Secret Story of Chemical and Biological Warfare, Robert Harris &
Jeremy Paxman
14. Dr. Robert B. Strecker, Archive.org
15. Wake Up, Zears Miles Audio Interview, Archive.org
16. Bacteria Inc., Cash Asher
17. The Cure Of All Diseases, Dr. Hulda Clark
18. Dr. William F. Koch Publications online, (Dr. Koch gave Cause & Cure of Cancer in 1918)
19. Dr. Royal R. Rife, Cured Every Known & Unknown Diseases in Early 1930’s
20. Forbidden Cures, Benjamin Ross
21. The BECK PROTOCOL A First AID Kit of The Future, Bob Beck (Free on Arcive.org)
22. Colloidal Silver, You can find information on how to use and produce your own Colloidal Silver
Generator. DO NOT use Sterling Silver, use Pure 12 Gauge Silver Wire. An online source is
puresilverwire.com, most of the Pure Silver Suppliers are closed due to coronavirus. Look in The
Beck Protocol for directions how to make a Colloidal Silver Generator. Although its 27v DC, you
can use 24v & 9v AC/DC Adaptors, or a 9v Battery with Alligator Clips. Follow instructions in The
Bob Beck Protocol.
23. THIS IS A BIO-ATTACK ALERT, Dr. Robert B. Strecker & Theodore A. Strecker
24. CORONAVIRUS 2020, UMOJA Research
John Burns, do you know what happens if a new born infant is given pure oxygen rather than oxygen diluted to the appropriate ratio with air? They go blind.
Oxygen is a dangerous gas, and anyone who thinks you should “flood your body with oxygen” is a dangerous fool.
JustaTech, putting someone with COPD on pure oxygen long enough will frequently depress their respiratory drive and paradoxically make them hypoxic. So there’s that, too.
The stupid. It Burns.
He seems to be a one-trick pony, just randomly posting the same thing anywhere he can.
@AT: “That you cast dispersions (sic) on the filmmaker outs your agenda — not good enough to savage Mikovits, you must try to impune (sic) the character of Mikki”
When someone makes a film pushing a claim and the person making the claim favorably then the filmmaker has an agenda and it’s completely legitimate to criticize them, and if they’re peddling pretend science, it’s okay to point it out.
Nobody is being impugned here because Orac is not raising doubts. He’s clearly and plainly calling bullshit.
Mining Woo for profit.
An expat friend of mine wanted me to watch that Plandemic pile of shit. WHY WHY WHY do these hee-haw conspiracy yokels almost always insist on video for their proselytizing? … It’s because their main audience has not read anything longer than a People Magazine article since ninth grade.
Thanks for a thorough analysis of this anal-product.
No, People Magazine is much too “wordy”. The extent of their literacy is confined to making sure that box of Camels is “no filter”. Loved your post!
The documentary acted as if the FBI/SWAT team raided her home. I am not sure where the footage came from? Reading about her arrest, it was said she turned herself in? So am I wrong or was this sensationalism?
You’re not wrong, & it was sensationalism. Intended to tie in with the whole “poor persecuted brave maverick scientist” schtick. I mean, a SWAT team to arrest someone in a civil suit?
Thank you for this. The amount of people beleiving in these conspiracy theories/theorists and anti-vaxxers are mind boggling. When they post stupid videos like this I don’t know whether or not to try and prove them wrong or just let them believe what they want to believe because its unlikely they’ll change their mind anyway.
Orac writes,
“Mikovits asks why we’re closing beaches because there are ‘healing microbes in the sand,'”…
MJD says,
In contradiction, a study indicated that a variety of pathogens have been reported from beach sands, and recent epidemiology studies have found some evidence of health risks associated with sand exposure.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4219924/
Mikovits uses of beach sand, and their microorganisms, as a mysterious healing remedy is bizarre.
Ahahahahhahha so weak. Arguing about sand being good or bad for you!!
The truth is stronger and it will be seen.
Ms Mikovits argued about sand being good for you. Who needs enemies eh Judy? When you’ve got pals like Nikki.
I live near the beach in North Carolina. I used to kick off my shoes and leave them by the steps when I went for morning walks, enjoying the feeling of sand between my toes. I found, however, that I was constantly suffering athletes foot or other infections and so decided to keep my Crocs in place as I walk. I have not been troubled with foot infections since.
Thank God you wrote this extensive review. I almost wanted to vomit reading the thousands and thousands of posts about this fraud. As a retired Army Colonel RN for over 45 years I have traveled the world treating the enemy and our own. Science matters. Honest science matters even more.
You are my new hero!
Judy Mikovits is a poster child for bad science and conspiracy theorist everywhere.
She is nothing more than an angry person who is trying to sell her book and documentary, and I use that term loosely.
I did find it interesting that one of the things I honed in on was also something you brought up, she was a revered scientist but she was working as a bartender. Big red flag ?
Umm … most definately NOT a revered scientis
[…] More epic backstory on the “star” of the “documentary” Plandemic. […]
Just curious where you get all of your data and how you know the data you write about is factual? Trying to get the big picture!
There’s source links to everything stated. Usually the beginning of the sentence
Her assertions about the similarity to hiv coincide with this research (which she mentions):
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338957445_Uncanny_similarity_of_unique_inserts_in_the_2019-nCoV_spike_protein_to_HIV-1_gp120_and_Gag
What can you say about it?
Uncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag
We are currently witnessing a major epidemic caused by the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV). The evolution of 2019-nCoV remains elusive. We found 4 insertions in the spike glycoprotein (S) which are unique to the 2019-nCoV and are not present in other coronaviruses. Importantly, amino acid residues in all the 4 inserts have identity or similarity to those in the HIV-1 gp120 or HIV-1 Gag. Interestingly, despite the inserts being discontinuous on the primary amino acid sequence, 3D-modelling of the 2019-nCoV suggests that they converge to constitute the receptor binding site. The finding of 4 unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV, all of which have identity /similarity to amino acid residues in key structural proteins of HIV-1 is unlikely to be fortuitous in nature. This work provides yet unknown insights on 2019-nCoV and sheds light on the evolution and pathogenicity of this virus with important implications for diagnosis of this virus.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.30.927871v1.full.pdf (archived)
This now-withdrawn paper claims that SARS-CoV-2 has “uncanny similarity” to HIV-1, implying that it was engineered or recombinated with it in some way.
It has been widely debunked by other scientists. Such inserts can also be found in bacteria, bacteriophages (viruses that only attack bacteria), and other viruses, including other coronaviruses (directly contradicting the paper). In fact, any six-letter sequence is likely to match against an HIV protein.
With an understanding of the science involved, and after doing my own research, funny! I’ve come, exactly, to the same conclusion: this movie is another piece of manipulative crap.
It’s amazing how in the age of Artificial Intelligence greed and evil, still, scuffles to meet Natural Stupidity.
Glad to read your article, let’s keep it on.
Is the intentional violation of copyright laws in her YouTube video a brilliant move? It seems unlikely that any content producer would be unaware how closely they police for fair use.
It allows a group trying to market and sell a book and documentary drum up attention by claiming YouTube is helping the shadowy forces of big government and big pharma cover up information “They” don’t want you to know?
Would somebody who actually sat through the video please explain to me what this is all about?
YouTube is absurdly strict when it comes to videos using other people’s copyrighted material. In fact, some content creators have had their videos taken down after spurious complaints were made to YouTube. If I understand correctly, Mikovits is using other people’s/businesses’ copyrighted material. This would lead to complaints and the video being taken down, allowing Mikovits to shout “conspiracy!”
You are my new hero!
Judy Mikovits is a poster child for bad science and conspiracy theorist everywhere.
She is nothing more than an angry person who is trying to sell her book and documentary, and I use that term loosely.
I did find it interesting that one of the things I honed in on was also something you brought up, she was a revered scientist but she was working as a bartender. Big red flag ?
That was not Mikovits’ only attempt to leech from the Vaccine Court system by the provision of Expert Witnessing. I refer you to this entertaining document,
https://ecf.cofc.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2012vv0378-175-0
in which Special Master Moran goes on at some length explaining why he rejected Judy’s own assessment of $350 / hour as reflecting the hourly value of her research and testimony, and reduced it to $250 and then down to $150 on account of lack of reputation or competence. Our old friend Clifford Shoemaker turns up on the same gravy-train.
Based on her reputation and bona fides, Ms. Mikovits’ credentials are simply not in the same league as experts who are paid $250 (or more) per hour. While this does not mean that Ms. Mikovits is incapable of providing expert testimony on specific topics, it does mean that she cannot expect to be paid the same hourly rate as those with much better reputations than she. Individuals with better reputations are, presumably, in far higher demand. Accordingly, based on the rate that the undersigned found reasonable for non-medically trained immunologists—$250 per hour—the undersigned makes an additional deduction of 40%. This deduction reflects Ms. Mikovits’ relative lack of reputability in the field compared to comparable experts. This results in a rate of $150 per hour for a non-medically trained immunologist of Ms. Mikovits’ reputation.
After Frank Ruscetti retired from NIH, he and Mikovits set up “MAR Consulting”. I am not sure entirely what consultancy work they provided, other than Expert Witnessing in failed Vaccine Court litigation, and presentations to VaccineOne scamfests.
“MAR Consulting” has submitted a number of reports in Vaccine Program cases, all signed by both Mr. Ruscetti and Ms. Mikovits but with Ms. Mikovits being the testifying witness in each case. Thus, it remains unclear the extent to which the opinions contained in the report reflect the analysis and conclusions of Mr. Ruscetti exclusively. The invoice for the work indicates that a small fraction of the work was performed by Mr. Ruscetti.
The MAR Website is no longer extant and I do not know if the company still exists.
PSA:
Check with cloudflare, Orac. This same little text problem here also shows on the 502 error from them that you’re unreachable.
HTML insertion. Whatever it takes, I guess, to keep you safe (strangely enough, the text is not fucked up on a firefox browser but it also indicates your site is buckling*).
*No other sites I visit are exhibiting this strange behavior.
I just turned on Cloudflare’s “under attack” mode. I’ve had over 420K requests in the last few hours, with only 18K unique visits, which makes me think I’m under DDoS attack. I’m going to leave it on overnight and then reevaluate.
Seems fixed now but this morning from around 8-10 cdt it was unusable for me. It would eventually go through after about 5 minutes (which is strange because usually the browser gives up before then; and I never saw the cloudflare* checking browser page except the half of times it did not make it with 502)
On mobile, it would just be a blank page with the green banner at the top.
Does refreshing the page count as a ‘visit’? Because that is only 23 refreshes per unique visit to see new comments (don’t know if your page or dashboard looks the same but the ‘search and explore’ is missing now. I like the new look otherwise).
*Cloudflare is a bit squirrelly sometimes. Between browsers and vpn on or off, I would see my comments in one combination but not the other for quite a few minutes. I guess they cache at different servers depending on routing/BGP.
Also, that whole checking browser page sometimes requires to allow webgl to execute for fingerprinting. Thanks. I hate it.
Peace
I’ve become inured to redesigns (although the Wheatish #F4E1B7 strikes me as an odd choice), but yah, the lack of a “recent comments” widgets is a pretty serious lacuna.
@Narad
It is a total shit show. It varies between browsers and even ip addresses. I would try to lay this all on cloudflare injection and caching but it is too fucked up to even lay that on them.
Orac, fire your IT guy. And if it is stll Alain, then don’t fire him but tell him to step it up (sorry, don’t know the ever changeing wordpress/jetpack format html tag for strikethough) help you figure this out.
All these karens in here that need a dose of insolence and the place looks like shit. I’d say, a first starting point is to loose cloudflare. But that is just a suggestion.
Something in transition is always painful, but this is a clusterfuck.
I’ve also noticed the “reply” button placing the replies in seemingly random places, including before that which was being replied to.
Wow, it’s been years since my non-Gravatar pointed at “xtralog.”
P.S. The “save my name” checkbox is clearing itself every other comment over here.
It must be multiple discrete server caching. I can make a comment, come back an hour later, and see a page refresh that was in a state before I even made the comment!
Perhaps it is a cloudflare switch set wrong? IDK. But, clearing cookies and cache seems to fix it. Sometimes.
On the positive side, pages load lightning fast now compared to anything they ever did in the past and the #comments under the article is a nice feature (even though it seems not to jive with ## (which is always lower) after clicking on the article).
I could just chalk it up to high volume, I’m only a simpleton troll, but the mechanism for such strange behavior eludes me. If it has to be just slower, then that is better, in my book.
As a conspiracy theorist, I hope you are not diddling around with AMP and it is just hidden???
Ahh. I see it all explained on your not-so-secret other blog.
Never mind. Allthough, ‘bare bones’ should act less squirelly, not more.
Perhaps put a Patreon link beside the stupid blue ‘f’?
Do you mean at the bottom of the page? Those links work on my Android tablet but not with FF 75 on my Windoze laptop. I haven’t tried the 4,1 MacBook Pro, because the fans run constantly when it’s in use, and I may wind up actually needing it before too long.
The rest of the machines are on the South Side in places that I’ve been given refuge in.
Yah, I too have just seen the SBM post.
Never mind.
That could be related to FF inbuilt blocker/tracker settings. I think the only scripts that must run are respectfulinsolence, wordpress, and wp.
I do not like the late model FFs, their settings pages are too cludgy and mobile-like. Also, tying the behavior of one setting to other settings makes it pretty much a lost cause to force behavior as I would actually like to have it.
For instance, there is no option to not send the DNT but only not to send it if FF is set to block trackers. There is that, and, of course, the always send checkbox. Guhh! I don’t want to send the header and I don’t want to let firefox manage tracker blocking (that is what ublock origin and umatrix* are for).
That is why I stick with forks based off the glory days of XUL which is what a functional noscript likes with its’ easy right click tuning of sites. There is no crap hamburger menus with stuff you want to do nested three levels deep. I hate mobification.
Stay away from Waterfox, though. I’m afraid they went the way of Startpage and sold out to some potentially shady characters related to the advertising industry.
*umatrix is so very powerful and as fine tunable, page by page, as one would like (it is blocking 36 scripts on this page with still full functionality, for instance) but sometimes it is just better not to peek at the horrid reality of so many facebook, doubleclick, and google analytics calls. SMH.
p.s. I meant the #comments now shows on the home page under each offering of insolence.
The problem seems to have been resolved.
But, yah, I’m not crazy about FF at the moment, which seems to be trying to push updates every other day. Even worse is ABP on Windoze, which has almost no conveniently accessed granularity for users.
Ah, good ole ABP. But it has not been the standard of care for several years now.
Try ublock origin (not ublock) it defaults to incorporating the same ‘ricks easylist’ as ABP plus many others you can tick on or off such as facebook following you around anytime you see the stupid blue f on the page, cookie popups, paywalls (sometimes), and much more.
https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock
Push updates only ‘every other day’? Damn. That must be nice. Before I blew my trusty mobo and landed with this piece of crap, I had FF 71 or 72 on (because I could never get reddit video to do right with any build of palemoon) and that thing would nag every five minutes or so before shutting up. And always nag after a restart of the browser or just waiting a day before refreshing it. After a month, it updated itself anyways and set all my about:config preferences back to superspy.
The fix is to grab a developer build and you can turn off automatic updates or even calling out to check for them. Also, you can sideload any extention (not just approved ones from Mozilla) and keep them all working in the event that Mozilla forgets to renew a signing certificate again, and tick individual ones not to check for updates*.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19823701
Southside. Gallagers, man.
*ABP as well as ublock regrabs easylist every couple of days by default — I seem to remember a switch to keep that process silent.
oops. I forgot your beef with ABP was with granularity. Try UBO. Oh, before I forget; It also puts a stop to most ‘please turn off your adblocker to continue’ crap, even on Forbes (though they may have dropped that practice anyways).
Naturally, it has a big button to turn it off for unobjectionable sites.
Warning
As per the above ycombinator link, apparently the developer, nightly, and release builds don’t play nice together with the profile folder — it is recommended to make a backup of it.
Any idea how to globally disable rollovers with ublock?
@Narad
I had to Ecosia (because my google is broken) ‘rollover’; But no, I do not**. If you were only talking about the big blue ‘f’ and whatnot (except the login with — those are still there as they are under jetpack) then that is fixed by checking the easy privacy, Fanboy’s social, Fanboy’s annoyance, anti-facebook, and social annoyance filters.
You might find a lead here: https://www.maketecheasier.com/ultimate-ublock-origin-superusers-guide/
And probably you’d need to dig into the ‘my rules’ syntax — But, if you’re talking about it highlighting any link, then I think it would also render the link unclickable and just text kinda like happens to me with noscript sometimes.
That would require extra steps of copying and pasting the url into a new tab. Barbaric.
**unless the concern is browser prefetching and caching those links; in that case, with FF, there are settings in about:config to stop that.
I think I misunderstood what you wanted to stop.
NoScript stops all that, sometimes to the point of breaking the whole page as it sometimes lacks ‘granularity’.
NoScript is no longer useful to me on modern FF because of them dropping XUL. Thus the simple right click interface is replaced with something ‘kludgy’ and not at all intuitive. Umatrix is the new kid on the block and that will do exactly what you are asking. There is a learning curve (at least, for me).
https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Per-site-switches#no-scripting
^^ That would certainly do it. Testing on YouRube to stop the preview playing on hover works perfectly; It is only that the entire page is now just grey rectangles.
Umatrix is what you want. Goes hand in hand with Ublock Origin — I dare say I haven’t run active antivirus (other than to sometimes check …questionable…budget software or search and destroy on the rare occasion that my usual state of not checking said software has lead to an oopsie(s)) in 15 years since using ad block/script block combinations.
>This same little text problem here also shows on the 502 error from them that you’re unreachable.
I suspect the font problem is just you. There hasn’t been any sign of it here, at least.
^ Although after “upgrading to Firefox 75, the comment, name, and E-mail fields (and comment leading) are enormous. At least I was able to revert the address bar to its previous behavior.
@Orac
Hello? I don’t think that last comment made it through.
Getting behind cloudflare has fucked your shit up beyond belief.
Things actually look fine to me at the moment. The site is responsive again, and comments are showing up.
People desperate for a story to help them feel special and smart will continue down these unfortunate rabbit holes despite your best efforts. On behalf of those who are more interested in the history and probable evolution of this particular conspiracy theory, thank you for taking the time to put this together.
WOW! You are highly motivated to completely crap on her story.
I think you’re full of shit guy.
And yet you can’t point out a single error in fact, science, or logic in my post. Ri-ight.?
She even claimed that in 1999 she worked at Fort Detrick in order to “teach Ebola how to infect human cells,” further claiming that Ebola couldn’t infect human cells until it had been “taught” how to do it.
As outlandish as this claim is, Ebola was in human population in the 1970’s. I follow simple rule where I see someone make 1 blatantly false and then I don’t have to waste any more time listening to their crazy or insidious lies.
Thanks for this properly researched and communicated blog post.
Why do I see the image of a class filled with ebola virussses and a teacher telling them how to infect human cells in my mind, if I read about miss Mikovitz teaching the ebola virus how to infect human cells?
I’m not sure what truth can be heard in either one of these spin-doctors, but the “sounds of silence” can be clearly read in The Discover Magazine article from July 19, 2013 cited in a comment above and discussed below. After reading that article, it’s clear that the truth is NOT in this virulent attack by an anonymous, unscientific, allopathic “onc-columist.”
Good scientists don’t write this kind of garbage full of half-truths and outright lies, or “mistakes” in the truth. Check out the Discover article to see what I mean, but the only reason I write here at all is my bone is with the allopathic distortion of physiology and human health that underlies all this research and intervention into natural medicine on Earth.
It’s a highly-destructive game of humans manipulating nature, and look where it’s gotten us. Think the US didn’t import Nazi scientists from Germany and hide their laboratories, after WWII to start up US chemical and biological warfare research? Think again. Think the COVID virus just lept on some poor shopper at a Wuhan seafood market, with the lab WE HELPED FUND, just 900 yards away?Really? And what kind of logical evidence, instead of hearsay, half-truth claims would suggest that?
Personally, I think US allopathic medicine and it’s involvement in this type of research is the real story we should be examining here. AND here’s my takeaway column on it:
For those who have read this information about Judy Mikovits from the “oncolumist” who both ridicules and disputes the videos sometimes still circulating on Judy Mikovits and the Pandemic, the Discover article is a credible place to start sorting out the evidence. The backs up a lot of the facts claimed in the video, and contradicts a lot of the slanderous libel in the opinionated writing of this poorly-trained professional who is so clearly invested in the ignorance of interventionist medicine.
Sadly, an allopathic-trained oncologist who blogs incessantly behind a pseudonym no less, just isn’t a good, front-range source of the truth, as the Discover article makes clear….So, if you’ve read the “Respectful Ignorance,” I mean, “Insolence,” column about Mikovis and COVID, but then make sure you read the Discover Magazine article too.
Without adding any facts to this aspect of the story, I want to comment on the brief history of US medicine that was mentioned in the Pandemic trailer, (according to the on-columist) and ridiculed in his column. This back story, which is far from irrelevant today, is unfortunately, all too true….According to the pitiful, anonymous oncologist, the movie is promoting pseudoscience because it says:
“In the early 1900s, America’s first Billionaire, John D. Rockefeller bought a German pharmaceutical company that would later assist Hitler to implement his eugenics-based vision by manufacturing chemicals and poisons for war.
Rockefeller wanted to eliminate the competitors of Western medicine, so he submitted a report to Congress declaring that there were too many doctors and medical schools in America, and that all natural healing modalities were unscientific quackery.
Rockefeller called for the standardization of medical education, whereby only his organization be allowed to grant medical school licenses in the US. And so began the practice of immune suppressive, synthetic and toxic drugs.
Once people had become dependent on this new system and the addictive drugs it provided, the system switched to a paid program, creating lifelong customers for the Rockefellers.”
Sadly, this story about the history of US medicine is the truth–which is why we primarily now have a high-tech, “barber surgeon’s” perspective of human health and medicine in this country. And that is also why lay midwifery is legal today in only 16 states–yes, you can go to jail in the other 34 if you assist a woman giving birth, without a license. And that is also why episiotomies are still done in almost 99% of hospital births in the US, (resulting in lifelong pain and medical problems, sometimes including additional surgeries, for many women)– even though the last medical study I saw from Canada indicated that episiotomies were only “medically necessary” in about 7% of childbirths).
So we have this expensive, unnecessary, and debilitating surgery done almost automatically by a lot of male OB-gyns–fir their convenience, the hospitals’ profit, and at great expense to women’s health. Surprised? If you want to read more about this back story of how the male OB-gyns first went to Carnegie and Mellon in the late1800s to stop competition from midwives and how this then led to formation of the AMA and the closing of all alternative med schools in America, then read the book I did in the 1970s by Gina Corea: “The Hidden Malpractice Against Women”–and you’ll have a better understanding of why herbal medicine and plants are so poorly understood in America–(in contrast say to Germany, where e-documents on herbal research are published and funded by taxpayer dollars).
This isn’t just a history of malpractice against women. This is the story of “malpractice” against all Americans, and the ignorant, high-dollar funding of both sides of this story that has led to the ill-health of millions of Americans and the irrational prejudice against the practice of Indigenous and natural medicine in the U.S.
It’s a sad history about greed, and White, upper-class, men’s control of childbirth and women’s health, and
it describes the practices most people think are based on science and almost all the medicine that U.S. insurance companies are willing to pay for. Instead, understanding medical paradigms should lead you to understand why most US doctors are so ignorant about alternative medicine and why Integrative Medicine was developed as a new paradigm in the first place. Not that this perspective of medicine is practiced–or even understood–by most licensed physicians in the U.S.
This is the sad history of medicine we have in this country….”Read’em and weep,” I say boys….if you’ve got a trace of empathy or intelligence in your bones, and you want the woman you love to be healthy and bear healthy children, then stop this virulent oppression.
And yet, for that long rant, you can’t point out a single error of fact, science, or logic in my post. Oh, and I did read the Discovery article. It doesn’t support your rant.?
Oh, what fun! The bit about malpractice on women… so this is someone who is opposite of ProudConservative.
What fun! You have angered folks both on right and left extremes. Which in the end are the same. It is an ouroboros.
“Pandemic trailer”
Not only did you not read the Discovery article, you did not read the title of this blog post. I doubt you had the patience to read the long long article that Orac is famous for.
My hint was you got the name of the movie wrong.
@ Chris:
Notice how the woo-entrenched often attempt to get women into their camp by recitatives about how badly women have been treated by medicine decades/ centuries ago.
It’s not as if SBM has not ever addressed those issues repeatedly since the 1970s. Many doctors ARE women.
Woo-meisters and anti-vaxxers take up feminism because they want women as followers ( see AoA, TMR, Del, Andy) and they know that women might but more of their products ( see PRN.fm, NN etc.)
Also: “Rockefeller” clues us in with their views about SBM/ pharma
@Choshe: Your long post left out an elephant in the room, and that’s the fact that all the historical wrongs, and the present ones, are things you know about because medicine is always a work in progress, and what is wrong, scientifically or socially, is corrected as soon as it’s understood to be wrong. The peddlers of superstitious and unscientific crap never correct themselves or their doctrines no matter how many times they are proven wrong.
Your admiration for German government funding of “herbal research paid for by taxpayer” euros is reflective of the long German tradition of believing in superstitious and magical claptrap. It’s no accident that it takes place in the birthplace of homeopathy. Over the centuries, large numbers of Germans have proven at least as susceptible to appealing nonsense as any other people, if not more.
You describe Orac as “anonymous” several times. When I wanted to know Orac’s name, it took me less than a minute to find it out. In fact the first two entries on a Startpage search had his name right there. Same on Qwant and DuckDuckgo. On Searx.be it was just a little farther down the page. I will make it easy for you. “Who is blogger called Orac” – copy and paste into your favorite search engine and enter. You don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes, or even Woodward or Bernstein, to investigate that far.
There you go!
>my bone is with the allopathic distortion of physiology
Whoops.
“my bone is with the allopathic distortion of physiology”
Funny, distorted physiology never gave me a bone.
I’m a DO and even I don’t call anything “allopathic.” As soon as I see that term used I know what’s coming next. Thank you for reaffirming…
BTW – do some research before your next “fit.” “All natural healing modalities are unscientific quackery?” I refer you to our second tenet: “The body is capable of self-regulation, self-healing, and health maintenance.” What could be more natural? The NYIT College of Osteopathic Medicine is in the Rockefeller building and a Rockefeller was critical to its founding. At a time when osteopathy was definitely NOT considered “Mainstream Western medicine,” the Rockefellers invested millions to promote it. Ol’ JD, himself, established the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research circa 1907 that included a broad array of osteopathic research.
Are there “homeopathic-trained” oncologists?
And… how do you know it even originated in Wuhan?
There are always 3 sides to every story.
The 3rd side is unseen, or hidden, or
what I love as a “learner” the undiscovered.
As they say, Right What You Know.
Get busy Learning or get busy selling your
Stupidity. Humanity has this tendency of
Believing that we know most of what there is
To know. We look backwards at what we’ve learned. However the real geniuses look forward into the darkness and bridge. We have much to learn. And will. Soon new technological advancements will carry us through much of what we haven’t found solutions through. And vast improvements towards humanities future.
Personally I’m hopeful. That the controllers of Earth will be exposed and side lined. The meek may find peace. Money and its powers will fade.
We all really need to be free, not afraid.
The truth is coming.
AGREED! Well said:)
>Get busy Learning or get busy selling your
Stupidity.
I was working on combinatorics this weekend, and indeed learned some things. You?
What an elegantly strung together collection of word vomit
Keith: “There are always 3 sides to every story.”
See you, and raise you one.
Ambassador Kosh Naranek: “Understanding is a three-edged sword.”
Who says there are three sides to every story?
I’m thinking of the movie “Rashomon.
And there are some stories that only have one side – truth.
10 points to anyone who can correctly identify Ambassador Kosh Naranek, 25 if you can demonstrate your knowledge in a way that shows you know but doesn’t reveal it to the non-cognoscenti.
So instead of wasting precious minutes bashing one side or the other (though entertaining for the readers it is), use your own free-thinking, intelligent mind to decide for yourself (given the volumes of info)…then wait. I can only HOPE disease/sickness won’t be on the rise after we FULLY re-open. But that remains to be seen.
I did spend a couple of hours “deciding for myself.” That’s why I wrote this post. You’re welcome.?
Nice…”Deciding for YOURSELF”…All anyone could ask for:)
I like that answer very much. And also this one from above:
Keithsays:
May 6, 2020 at 9:08 pm
There are always 3 sides to every story.
The 3rd side is unseen, or hidden, or
what I love as a “learner” the undiscovered.
As they say, Right What You Know.
Get busy Learning or get busy selling your
Stupidity. Humanity has this tendency of
Believing that we know most of what there is
To know. We look backwards at what we’ve learned. However the real geniuses look forward into the darkness and bridge. We have much to learn. And will. Soon new technological advancements will carry us through much of what we haven’t found solutions through. And vast improvements towards humanities future.
Personally I’m hopeful. That the controllers of Earth will be exposed and side lined. The meek may find peace. Money and its powers will fade.
We all really need to be free, not afraid.
The truth is coming.
That’s a very appropriate ‘nym. Presumably you became a free thinker when no one was willing to pay a penny for your thoughts.
Rd has “jokes” Love the humor. All in good pun-fun?
I was fact checking the “Plandemic” vignette featuring Dr Judy Mikovits and I found the articles below interesting.
Snopes Facts here =>https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/scientist-vaccine-jailed/
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), reputable news source, shares facts on Dr’s arrest. The Dr’s “gag order” the result of her lawsuit with her former company after her firing. =>https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2011/11/controversial-cfs-researcher-arrested-and-jailed
This Heavy article, a non-biased news source, touches on claims of the Dr and why the video is taken down on social media. =>https://heavy.com/news/2020/05/plandemic-movie-video/
Wikipedia on the Dr here =>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judy_Mikovits.
Retraction article from AAAS is interesting. See last paragraph.
The Dr’s “gag order” the result of her lawsuit with her former company after her firing. =>https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2011/11/controversial-cfs-researcher-arrested-and-jailed
There is nothing in the Science report about a “gag order”. If Mikovits is claiming that some kind of “gag order” has silenced her for the last few years, she really needs to come up with some evidence, or people are going to write her off as a shameless lying fraudster.
You’re a member of which political party? If you say you’re a Democrat, well, you just flushed any credibility down the toilet. The Democrats are liars and are in on this with Gates, Fauci, and others. This whole thing was funded by Obama in 2011, back when they tried to create something with the avian flu. Since there was too much fear in playing with that, they switched to coronaviruses. It makes sense since coronaviruses are far more common and more easily found in nature. Dr. Fauci was heavily involved and most likely Democrat scientists from US labs were as well. That’s why China blamed the United States. Democrats are using this to full push their agenda and to change the United States into a communist country, in fully unity and coalition with the Chinese Communist Party. Gates gets to use this to push his eugenics, to get everyone microchipped, and to further his vaccines for all agenda. Fauci gets to make billions from the vaccine sales. The Democrats will get to track your every movement and activity. Gates will be able to have a database that will put the ones built through Alexa, Siri, and Google Home to shame. Your information will be sold repeatedly. They will use the information against you when needed.
Basically, anyone who is treating the words of Gates, Fauci and the Democratic leadership as gospel are going to be in for a rude awakening. If you love the United States, you will push back against this grossly obvious attempt to screw this country over and sell it to the highest bidder. On the other hand, if you hate the United States, continue doing your thing. We will be in another civil war and this one will not end with a reunited country and if the country is reunited, the rebels will be the winners this time.
Honestly, it’d be better if all the liberals would just board planes heading towards China, Venezuela, North Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc. If they want totalitarianism, GTFO. We will survive just fine and if you screw with us from over there, there are nukes for that.
For all that long rant, you haven’t pointed out a single error in fact, science, or reasoning in my post.
And yes, I’m laughing AT you, not with you. You don’t realize how idiotic you sound.?
It seems you are having a wee bit of fun tonight. It is almost like dealing with a bunch of folks like Scudamore and the Schlafly brothers.
Signed, the former HCN 😉
Agreed. Good call out.
Deer silly person, why would Bill Gates use the products of competitors like Apple and Google? Do you not understand how capitalistic companies work? They compete with each other, they do not cooperate.
Oh, wait… it seems you do not know how science works. Science does not care about politics, except when it gets in its way. Like the the church in Italy going after Galileo and calculus.
@ Chris
Like the the church in Italy going after Galileo and calculus.
The Church attacked calculus?
I have heard some of the nuttier US fundamentals attack set theory but I never heard of an attack on calculus.
Yes. The Jesuits did like stuff like there being infinite points on a line: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22229650-600-smallest-subversive-mathematical-fight-for-our-world/
Why did I leave out a very important word, mainly “not” , as in “The Jesuits did not like stuff like there being infinite points on a line:”
@”ProudConservative”:
“We will be in another civil war and this one will not end with a reunited country and if the country is reunited, the rebels will be the winners this time.”
Go drink your rightard coolaid and dream about your “Boogaloo”.
Is there a secret Democrat handshake? I’m just wondering if the only scientists in labs were Democrats, or if they had some kind of nod/wink system to make sure they didn’t spill the conspiracy beans to the wrong person.
Would it be fair to say that the further politically right you go the less scientific learning is valued and the further left you go the less scientific learning is valued?
NumberWang: “Would it be fair to say that the further politically right you go the less scientific learning is valued and the further left you go the less scientific learning is valued?”
If we use the left, right, and middle of the road metaphor, the extremes of right and left meet in a foul stinking culvert under the road.
I think maybe you mean “leftists”, not “liberals”.
Recombinant DNA
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Construction of recombinant DNA, in which a foreign DNA fragment is inserted into a plasmid vector. In this example, the gene indicated by the white color is inactivated upon insertion of the foreign DNA fragment.
Recombinant DNA (rDNA) molecules are DNA molecules formed by laboratory methods of genetic recombination (such as molecular cloning) to bring together genetic material from multiple sources, creating sequences that would not otherwise be found in the genome.
Recombinant DNA is the general name for a piece of DNA that has been created by combining at least two strands. Recombinant DNA is possible because DNA molecules from all organisms share the same chemical structure, and differ only in the nucleotide sequence within that identical overall structure. Recombinant DNA molecules are sometimes called chimeric DNA, because they can be made of material from two different species, like the mythical chimera. R-DNA technology uses palindromic sequences and leads to the production of sticky and blunt ends.
The DNA sequences used in the construction of recombinant DNA molecules can originate from any species. For example, plant DNA may be joined to bacterial DNA, or human DNA may be joined with fungal DNA. In addition, DNA sequences that do not occur anywhere in nature may be created by the chemical synthesis of DNA, and incorporated into recombinant molecules. Using recombinant DNA technology and synthetic DNA, literally any DNA sequence may be created and introduced into any of a very wide range of living organisms.
Proteins that can result from the expression of recombinant DNA within living cells are termed recombinant proteins. When recombinant DNA encoding a protein is introduced into a host organism, the recombinant protein is not necessarily produced.[1] Expression of foreign proteins requires the use of specialized expression vectors and often necessitates significant restructuring by foreign coding sequences.[2]
Recombinant DNA differs from genetic recombination in that the former results from artificial methods in the test tube, while the latter is a normal biological process that results in the remixing of existing DNA sequences in essentially all organisms.
time to grab some more ammo, get back in the bunker & study Chairman Bannon’s little black book some more. your leaders are the problem not the solution, they don’t care about you, they are in it for money & power. you are the cannon fodder.
I love how these “freedom-loving” conservatives are perfectly happy espousing the ideas of civil war and killing their political opponents.
The Founding Fathers would be proud, I’m sure…..
Well, that’s what they did. I believe it was called something like the war of independence.
Have you lost wit?
You know? I’ve been thinking about something lately. For years we allowed nonsense like this to dominate the comment sections of every website, most of the FB comments, discussions at the brewery, etc, etc. We ignored people like you because it was clear that you were just a blowhard unworthy of our time or attention.
Trouble is, impressionable folks have waded into the fever swamp of your creation and assume that everyone thinks like you do. There has been little pushback, that was a mistake. Your bizarre, unmoored-from-reality perspectives are NOT the majority opinion; rather, we have just been silent because you were not worth our time.
This has to change. We must start to call out nonsense where nonsense be. We must resign those who refuse to accept fact and reality back to their basement or the dustbin of time. For those reasons, I now join the conversation.
What’s more, this combat veteran progressive says I’m not going anywhere, Venezuela or otherwise. I spilled blood and risked all for this country, I’m not going to stand back and watch as it descends into a pseudoscientific, factual-relativist hellscape.
Guhh.
It should be fun, fun, fun. But it has yet to be determined whether one gets immunity or if it is like HIV and just keeps hitting. Airborne aids. Checkmate, southern baptists — now let us all get together and sing some praises and shit.
https://www.king5.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/coronavirus-parties-walla-walla/281-3f983c32-3b6a-48f8-8ee0-bc6cff3881ec
You can’t sell the bleach to drink in god’s name anymore. This is what tyranny looks like:
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article242484731.html
Oh, yeah. We saw the thing on the coronavirus parties in Walla Walla, WA (not only a joke on Bugs Bunny cartoons, but the locatio of the state penitentiary. Whitman College and several nice wineries). I wonder how many of those people were at the protests in Spokane, WA and Salem, OR (from this video you can see the presence in Seattle was pitiful):
The conspiracies are coming harder and faster across the board. Even more virulent than the actual viruses to society and they act in the same fashion. Blunt one strain of the conspiracy, and it morphs into another one by the time you’ve addressed it. It’s very frustrating.
Thank You! This video has spread like wildfire (or like a virus?) and people are seeing it as “proof”. I did a couple quick searches and immediately saw it was many conspiracy theories rolled in one. Another friend found her anti-vaccine connection. Foolishly, I debated with people who NEED to believe this.
It took a bit more work to realize this is being presented like “The Blair Witch Project” and people aren’t realizing it’s a plug for a movie. Researching Willis confuses me a bit; I guess I was hoping to find he was luring people in for a big surprise ( you conspiracy folks have all been punked!) but I guess not.
I found the connection with an old presidential tweet interesting; joked that if I were a conspiracy theorist this is rich., it’s an article about people believing bad science:
https://qz.com/595909/why-bad-science-wont-ever-die/
Also, do you know anything about this organization? The director has been connected with it. https://www.sourceofsynergyfoundation.org/welcome
it was refreshing to see Science supported and restored my faith in critical thinking skills!
Also, do you know anything about this organization? The director has been connected with it. https://www.sourceofsynergyfoundation.org/welcome
“The Source of Synergy Foundation Advisory Board
Deepak Chopra”
My New-Age Scam Detector is flashing.
@Keith (above)
I love Mikki but not his belief about the so called plandemic as shown in this new sleek documentary with Dr. Mikovits
I love you but find your style of communication a bit abrupt so that people that may have embraced the misinformation can really listen to you and reconsider.
All that said, I’m thankful for all your work and research to point out that “plandemic” is full of opinions, but very thin on facts.
That, in and of itself IS your opinion
Chris, oh wait…It seems you struggle with 3rd grade vocabulary. You used “deer” (“Deer silly person”) instead of “Dear” one of 84 third grade sight words (Lol) Just sayin’?
Note: the use of “deer” is a joke. Specifically based on a conversation when an classmate in 6th grade called me “dear or deer” and then quickly explained it was the animal. It is also the last name of a journalist that many anti-vax folks hate.
I have used it on this blog and a couple of others for years. Deal with it.
And the use of my “Lol” and laughing face also indicates a joke. And “the name of a journalist many anti-vax folks hate” (wouldn’t/didn’t know). Thanks for the 411 🙂
This blog has a search feature. Try hitting the “Explore” button.
Correction: “Search and Explore”
Mixing up with one of his very close friend’s blogs.
By the way, have you met “Eniman”: https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/?s=eneman
Basically, the Whittemore-Peterson Institute reported that Mikovits’ lab notebooks were found to be missing after she had been terminated, noting that she had the only key to the locked desk in which they were stored. Mikovits’s attorney countered that several people had keys to her office and laboratory, although, conspicuously, I never saw any mention of anyone else having a key to the desk. A few days later, Mikovits was arrested for theft. Ultimately, criminal charges were dismissed.
You will be shocked, I know, to learn that none of this was Judy’s fault and all the blame for the legal imbroglio falls on her student falls on
…falls on her lab assistant, Pfost.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-research-into-chronic-fatigue-syndrome-turned-into-an-ugly-fight
Pfost declined to comment on the substance of this article, but in a signed affadivit, given in November 2011 shortly before Mikovits’ arrest and used by the WPI in its civil case against her, Pfost says he removed the notebooks from the lab at Mikovits’s behest and hid them at his mother’s house until Mikovits returned to Reno the following month.
According to Mikovits, on Oct. 16 she returned to Reno to gather her remaining possessions. Pfost picked her up at the airport and pointed to a big birthday bag in his backseat of his car. He had just turned 30. The notebooks are in there, she recalls him saying.
They returned to her condo and started packing. The next day when she woke up, she says, Pfost was gone and the birthday bag was empty by her front door. She says she assumed that Pfost had taken them—to photo copy or to be safe—so she finished packing her things, loaded the cardboard boxes into her car, and left for California.
On Nov. 4 the WPI filed a legal complaint that marked the official beginning of its civil lawsuit against Mikovits, alleging among other things breach of contract and that Mikovits was in wrongful possession of intellectual property—including notebooks, flashdrives, and e-mails—that “severely hampered” the WPI’s ability to continue its research.
One week later came the man with the papers. And the five days on the boat. And the long weekend in prison.
According to Mikovits, it was while she was in jail that her husband received a call from Pfost, who told him that the notebooks were in California, with Mikovits. Sitting in her jail cell, Mikovits thought of two unpacked boxes stuffed into her closet. She told her husband to look there. He did, found the notebooks, and turned them over to the police. Mikovits was released from prison.
>According to Mikovits, on Oct. 16 she returned to Reno to gather her remaining possessions.
Synchronicity of the first water, I say.
This has become a political battle by the Dems against our great President Trump and the Republicans. President Trump has recommended great medications like hydroxy that have saved people’s lives. The media is scared of him. He has also defeating the pandemic.
Actually, COVID 19 fatality rate is raising fast, so Trump is not treating anything. And what about having a clinical trial ? I would accept o be randomized to the control group.
“This has become a political battle by the Dems against our great President Trump and the Republicans. President Trump has recommended great medications like hydroxy that have saved people’s lives.”
Yet they say that satire is dead.
But you failed to make any valid points against what she said, other than assassinating people’s character along party lines.
And yet you can’t point out a single error of fact, science, or reasoning in the post. ?
howie bradley in tbe end people without personal scientific knowledge have to rely on others for their “facts”…whether its hers or yours or his..one things for sure heath and profit should not be linked and until tbat changes people will be exploited for profit and whistleblowers who threaten that money stream will be silenced….my grandad was a homeopath I’ve personally had experience of it working for me, but its banned in the states isn’t it…must be such a threat …seems odd to ban somthing that does no harm except the occasional false hope just like big pharma promised land of drugs..
No, it isn’t, unless you’re thinking of “practicing medicine without a license.”
@ Orac,
Nobody is but that is probably because they are smarter than me and not wanting to get sucked into that rabbit hole.
I have taken issue here before with very specific errors but I find most here are unable to follow. A few of your minions are the exception (Narad, Julian +).
You follow this very narrow path of ‘science ‘ which is little more than a prepackaged agenda narrative. Few are capable of critical thinking. Thinking outside of the box.
Vaccines. Immune mediation. Microglia & synaptic pruning. Cytokine profiles and the lack of baselines. Immunomodulation. Immunogenomics.
NONE of that matters here because ‘the epidemiology didn’t signal’.
If you REALLY wanted to contribute to a narrative… COULD you conduct an epidemiological study that would show whatever you wanted? I think you could but I don’t think you have.
But you could. Somebody has.
It gets really old trying to point out an amazing landscape to someone holding their blinders firmly over their eyes.
Btw, you never replied to my email regarding the CDC research facility in Albuquerque & their SV40 cancer research subject.
A girl named John. Resonance of the pineal gland. The Gnomes of Zürich. Orbital Mind Control Lasers. Ernest Borgnine.
And another Dichotomy is Borne…
Who to trust hmm?
“I’d like a Coke please”
“Is Pepsi OK?”
Dichotomy 😉
Borne, past participle of bear1.
adjective
carried or transported by the thing specified.
“waterborne bacteria”
These Anti-vaxxer types are the real life super villain mad “scientists” … They get busted for making shit up … and then go completely rogue and then make up a ton of more shit. Only this time the shit they make up actually contributes indirectly to killing people through otherwise preventable deaths… which should be a crime. Many of these deaths would have otherwise not occurred had people not been discouraged from following health guidelines grounded by sound science and evidence based medicine.
What is the difference in dying “with” and dying “from” Covid 19?
In the former, you’re infected with COVID-19 but something else killed you. In the latter, it’s the COVID-19 that caused your death.
If you have Covid-19 and you run under a car, you die with Covid-19. If you have Covid-19 and you die without another cause of dead, you die from Covid-19.
If you have been diagnosed with Covid-19, you are not likely to be ‘running’ under a car or any where else, for that matter.
Please refer to the infection as with SARS-COV-2 and the disease it sometimes precipitates as covid-19. Else these facebook Karens will run back to their own domain with heroic tales of *what morans*.
Well if you have a mild case of Covid-19, which is still a possibility, you are still able to walk under a car.
Thank you so much. I have been inundated with You Tube links from ex-friends who have all lost their goddamn minds. They see a “them” everywhere and are insulted when you’re not converted by words like “overloads” & “Big Pharma”. Your clear identification of the conspiracy theorist need to be a hero is why I see these theories as so seductive to them. Look how smart and brave they are for sending a You Tube link! My poor friends are unhappy with their mundane lives and instead of actually doing something these beliefs allow them to take a hero’s journey without never leaving the house. I wish they just go back to D & D….I’ll even spring for the 6 sided dice.
Thank you so much, Orac. I have been bombarded with faces of Judy, snoozed half my friend list, and really had begun to question whether I was the only person who thinks she’s a flake trying to sell her book on a Covid-19 wave.
I think I’ll have that glass of wine now.
Cheers.
Have two.
It sounds like you have earned them.
Here is video of Judy Mikovits participating in a press conference with W. Ian Lipkin to announce the publication of his study in which they found no association between Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and XMRV. https://youtu.be/Y3dJsNZuNUk?t=336
Why would Mikovits be at this conference to support Lipkin’s findings, to agree that her Science paper was incorrect? Because she cooperated with the study and is in fact listed as an author on the published study. That’s right, Judy Mikovits discredited her own research! https://mbio.asm.org/content/3/5/e00266-12
This is irrefutable proof that Judy Mikovits’ story in PlanDemic that her research has been suppressed (“At the height of her career, Dr. Mikovits published a blockbuster article in the journal Science. The controversial article sent shockwaves through the scientific community as it revealed that the common use of animal and human fetal tissues were unleashing devastating plagues of chronic diseases. For exposing their deadly secrets, the minions of big pharma waged war on Dr. Mikovits, destroying her good name, career, and personal life.” ) is complete and utter bullshit.
No – I’m sorry but it appears you’ve simply dismissed this out of hand re: Dr. Mikovits.
She HAS the credibility, the qualifications & growing support of many medical professionals around the world.
Note that she’s able to document her claims and had provided the FBI with evidence regarding her assertions 5 years ago. And …. they sat on it.
Please watch this 2nd interview linked below. It provides more details and will help in broadening the understanding of your followers.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=qq2uuHfmq8k&t=897s
Please also read the forward written by Robert Kennedy Jr. to her book “Plague of Corruption”, found on Amazon. Interestingly, if you review related titles on Amazon, you’ll find a number of people have been attempting to expose Dr. Fauci, et al for years, as the “Plandemic” documentary fairly points out if the full 26 minutes of Part 1 is watched.
It’s important to be fair to your viewers and followers. They NEED this information to make informed decisions. Everyone does.
Please do not dismiss this out of hand with a mere Google search. We are all becoming frightfully aware of how reputations are managed, mismanaged & mangled by the titans of Google and social media these days….
Thanks and good luck to all out there.
Citing an antivaccine nutjob like RFK Jr. doesn’t help your case or credibility.
I remember RFK. I had RFK as my senator. RFK Jr, you’re no RFK.
I can’t remember when I had such pure pleasure as a commenter. Thanks for providing what the military call a target-rich environment.
“Antivaccine nutjob”, that’s really sophisticated. I appreciate all the highly intelligent points made about people who point out issues with vaccines. It’s almost like they’re afraid to even talk about it…Like an ignorant superstitious person who clings tightly to the idea of faith in the tree gods, vaccines are idolized and damn-near perfect, and it’s absurd. This sort of blind reliance on man-made concoctions is precisely what’s wrong with our medical fields today.
Judy was (I think) obviously setup through the whole ordeal, and probably coerced into saying what she did. She sure looked out of sorts, and was not her normal self (compare to talks she’s given since then) when she made that statement. She’s spoken about it since, talking about how it was a fraudulent study, how she had to “participate” over the phone, not even in the lab, which was the one that found what they were looking for, and the study immediately was stopped after that.
It really does all add up when you think about it – the historical battle of Dan Peterson and Paul Cheney with the incompetent CDC “Epidemic Intelligence Service” officers, Ed Hooper and the revelation of HIV/AIDS originating with the oral polio vaccine, developed using monkey kidneys, the cells of which the virus.is dormant in. Elaine DeFreitas’ run-in with the CDC, after very similar findings to Zaki Salahuddin, Dharam Ablashi and others in the blood of many in the Incline Village outbreak. Elaine actually had a patent for the test and treatment of these patients…I wonder what happened to that.
Let’s not keep dealing in name-calling please. Let’s figure this out together, enough of the child-like behavior, let’s discuss and debate like adults please.
Seriously?
Have you thought about this for a minute? Contamination of influenza vaccines in 2013 to 2015 leads to a fast spreading outbreak of COVID-19. Remember that 19 means 2019. So what happened to 2016, 2017 and 2018? Did we sleep through them?
This of course ignores the fact that different countries use different influenza vaccines.
I have read fairy tales to my children that are more believable than this.
Please read the article in the link below. It should help broaden your understanding of youtube and Next News.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/feb/02/how-youtubes-algorithm-distorts-truth
If watching these videos didn’t set off your bullshit alarms, you need new batteries!!
Promoting dubious claims about the virus and mitigation, no acceptable data to back up claims, and potential to influence the public to ignore scientific research and conclusions.
It’s not complete though, is it? I’ve read in a few places about how she responded to the initial inability of other labs to duplicate her findings…that she claimed that just because they couldn’t find XMRV, that it didn’t rule out the family of gammaretroviruses that could also be responsible. And during a presentation she showed a slide showing results from a Western Blot test, using 5-azacytidine…with an identifiable patient number. But some noticed that it was an exact match to a picture used to reference the body of work in the published paper, where a different patient number was assigned, and that there was no mention of 5-azacytidine in the published work in materials or in the steps. And that she and Lombardi (and others) had to admit that they had indeed used 5-azacytidine but omitted that detail in the paper, because they didn’t find it “germane” to the issue of XMRV. And that they used the picture again and changed the label because they were “under a lot of stress” and to “protect patient privacy.”
I understood that was a very significant part of her fall from grace. Scienetific blasphemy.
It was worse than this. This particular blot was a key piece of evidence that XMRV was present in blood cells of chronic fatigue patients and not controls. The real blot showed no ability to identify XMRV in chronic fatigue patients, unless the samples had been treated 5-azacytidine. Samples from chronic fatigue patients were labelled as controls. Samples treated with 5-azacytidine were labelled as from chronic fatigue patients.
This was out and out fraud.
It’s not complete though, is it?
Orac has a reputation for brevity and terseness which forced him to leave out a lot of the story.
Indeed. My post was only around 5,000 words. I found that, once I started going down the rabbit hole, it just kept taking longer and longer to refute all the bullshit I found.
I’m confused. Dr. Mikovitz has made it clear that she’s not antivax. So why are you calling her antivax? If I recall correctly, her main beef was that some vaccines had been contaminated and her paper exposing this fact was blocked from publication. She didn’t have a beef with the vaccines themselves.
I suppose you think that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) is a democracy, too. Seriously, antivaxxers almost always deny that they’re antivax. ?
Mikovits has a long history of promoting the bogus claim that vaccines cause autism, as well as other antivax pseudoscience. The co-author of her book is a rabid antivax loon. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a leader of the antivaccine movement, wrote the foreword of her book. She’s antivax as hell.
As a rule of thumb, I think any country having democratic in its name, is far from it, like the former DDR (GDR German Democratic Republic).
Just to make sure I wasn’t losing my mind, I looked up the definition of antivax. It means “opposed to vaccination.” Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has stated he is not opposed to vaccination. Here is one place he says that:
https://ricochet.com/podcast/whiskey-politics/reconsidering-robert-f-kennedy-jr-why-rfk-jr-s-not-anti-vaxxer-his-take-on-todays-democrats-trump/
Dr. Mikovitz says here at 2:40 that “Vaccines definitely don’t cause autism.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=n6HPe-s1V2o&feature=emb_logo
The antivaxxers I know of can’t stand Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. or Del Bigtree.
“
Bless your heart. You must think the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) is a democracy.?
Antivaxxers always deny that they’re antivaccine. (Well, almost always.) RFK Jr. frequently says he’s “fiercely pro-vaccine,” but then he spreads antivaccine misinformation, compares the vaccine program to the Holocaust, and blames vaccines for the “sickest generation” of children; i.e., today’s generation. Mikovits has been spouting antivax misinformation at least since 2009. As for the video, she goes on to qualify her statement that vaccines don’t cause autism, saying we “don’t use the word cause,” saying that every single case must have an origin in vaccines. She then says that vaccines are “absolutely” associated with autism and brain damage. That’s antivaccine.
Lorelei, ould you prefer we call Mikovitz and Kennedy a more appropriate term for their behavior: delusional liars?
“As for the video, she goes on to qualify her statement that vaccines don’t cause autism, saying we “don’t use the word cause,” saying that every single case must have an origin in vaccines. She then says that vaccines are “absolutely” associated with autism and brain damage. That’s antivaccine.”
Yes, I’m aware of what she says in the video. She says that because of her claim that some of the vaccines were contaminated. Still doesn’t make her antivax.
Lorelei, please tell which vaccines she approves of. Remember to link to the source of that information.
Skimmed it briefly, fantastic work from what I saw. I think, another thing it surreptitiously did, really well I might add, was weave in the Fauci conspiracy with Aids. “Fauci killed millions.” It’s clearly designed to move the goalposts. That way, when Dems argue “Trump killed tens/hundreds of thousands with his inaction,” conservatives will “point” to Fauci, saying he’s killed millions.
I knew who you were when you labeled Dr. Mikovitz as an antivaxxer. Which she is not.
Except that she is. She’s spoken at antivax conferences. Her co-author is co-founder of a major antivax website. The foreword is written by RFK Jr., a major leader of the antivax movement.
Except that RFK Jr. is not an antivaxxer. RFK Jr. calls for things like (1) better safety testing of vaccines (so that they at least are on par with the same safety testing that regular medications go through with double blind studies of vaccinated vs unvaccinated), (2) the repeal of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act that bans lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers for damages caused by the vaccines and (3) that vaccines should not be mandatory, just like any other medical intervention isn’t mandatory.
It seems like you are constantly misrepresenting and ad hominem-attacking anyone who disagrees with your opinion, which happens to be extremely well aligned with the (by far) most influential lobby in Washington – the pharmaceutical lobby. Using every opportunity to smear your opponents with such disingenuous tactics is incongruous with wanting any rational, intelligent, honest exchange and the effect of that on a discerning reader is that you indeed are smearing yourself.
“RFK Jr. is not an antivaxxer”?
The only reaction possible: ???
https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2017/01/13/no-robert-f-kennedy-jr-is-not-a-vaccine-skeptic/
He’s so antivaccine that his own family called him out on it: https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2019/05/08/rfk-jr-so-antivaccine/
He’s so antivaccine that he’s compared the vaccine program to the Holocaust, not just once but multiple times! https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2017/01/11/donald-trump-meets-with-antivaccine-ideologue-robert-f-kennedy-jr/
Those three are all nonsense. Vaccines ARE tested on par with and even more stringently than regular pharmaceuticals, and there are plenty of double-blind studies. The NCVIA doesn’t ban lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers. It only requires that vaccine injury claims go through the Vaccine Court first. If the complainants lose, they not only have their legal fees and reasonable costs reimbursed, win or lose, but they can sue elsewhere. Finally, vaccines aren’t mandatory. Parents can refuse them for their children; the price is that their child might not be admitted to school.
“He’s so antivaccine that he’s compared the vaccine program to the Holocaust, not just once but multiple times!”
It seems you have delved so deeply in to polemics that you forgot your logic. Maybe Orac should get its circuits checked. Criticizing and being anti the vaccine program is not the same as being anti-vaccine. Similarly, criticizing circumcision is not the same as being anti-religion.
Your mischaracterizations of RFK Jr. include “Preferring anecdotes over science and epidemiology”, “Cherry picking and misrepresenting the evidence”, “The copious use of logical fallacies in arguing”, yet these are tactics you yourself employ.
If RFK Jr. is an anti-vaxxer, then I suppose that makes you a hypocrite as well as a big pharma-shill-cum-manipulator.
Lets start with “Cherry picking and misrepresenting the evidence” and “Preferring anecdotes over science and epidemiology”, you seem to just blindly quote Science instead of responding to criticism of the studies that supposedly refute her findings. The studies that couldn’t detect XMRV used an assay that was too specific, naturally they weren’t able to detect anything.
As for “The copious use of logical fallacies in arguing”, just look at the shit-ton of smearing you have regurgitated about Mikovits in your post.
“He’s so antivaccine that he’s compared the vaccine program to the Holocaust, not just once but multiple times!”
It seems you have delved so deeply into polemics that you forgot your logic. Maybe it is time Orac got its logic circuits checked. Criticizing and being anti the vaccine program is not the same as being anti-vaccine. Similarly, criticizing circumcision is not the same as being anti-religion.
Your mischaracterizations of RFK Jr. include “Preferring anecdotes over science and epidemiology”, “Cherry picking and misrepresenting the evidence” and “The copious use of logical fallacies in arguing”, yet these tactics you employ yourself.
If RFK Jr. is an anti-vaxxer, then that makes you a hypocrite as well as a big pharma-shill.
Lets start with “Cherry picking and misrepresenting the evidence” and “Preferring anecdotes over science and epidemiology”, you seem to blindly quote Science instead of digging into the actual science by responding to criticism of the studies that supposedly refute Mikovits’ findings. The studies that fail to detect XMRV used and assay that was too specific, naturally they weren’t able to detect anything.
As for “The copious use of logical fallacies in arguing”, just look at the shit-ton of smearing you have regurgitated about Mikovits in your post.
The anti-vax folks all have one thing in common: they are all liars. They must lie because there is no real evidence to show what they want, especially when they prey on parents.
The claim that they are “not anti-vax” is one of their more common lies.
Also, one of my “favorite” lies by RFK Jr. is that a 1980s study done in one of the poorest countries in Africa is proof that vaccines used in 21st century North America and Europe are bad. I would really love for RFK Jr. would get an airplane ticket to Guinea-Bissau, and try to live off of the economy (essentially pennies a day, not hundreds of dollars a day).
Because Mr Oldman, all the scientists specifically looking for XMRV apparently didn’t know how to find it? That’s her argument? That only she had the genius to detect it? If you are going to all the bother of pretending to use actual facts then present a few, with sources.
the studies that supposedly refute Mikovits’ findings. The studies that fail to detect XMRV used and assay that was too specific, naturally they weren’t able to detect anything.
Mikovits publicly conceded that XMRV was not detected in the blood samples because it wasn’t there.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2012/09/final-study-confirms-virus-not-implicated-chronic-fatigue-syndrome
“It’s simply not there,” Judy Mikovits said at a press conference this morning
Mikovits, formerly at the Whittemore Peterson Institute (WPI) in Reno, Nevada, participated in Lipkin’s study and concedes that it is “the definitive answer. … There is no evidence that XMRV is a human pathogen.”
She reneged on that concession as soon as she found that antivaxxers wanted to hear that XMRV ISREAL, because of course she did.
I really love it when people can’t even get their own shtick right. This comes from Kenyon & Lever and is wholly contingent upon the speculation that “XMRV is much more genetically diverse than originally observed.”
And… let’s move to the next paragraph:
“This charitable view is difficult to sustain, and the presence of yet another retrovirus in these samples most likely illustrates how easily contamination of samples can occur. In prostate cancer research, the techniques used to detect XMRV needed to be incredibly sensitive in order to find such small amounts of viral material. However, the numerical data from Lombardi suggest that XMRV is abundant in the blood cells of CFS patients, yet no corroborating data has emerged from other laboratories. Detection of a virus using highly sensitive techniques and high-level detection of a new pathogen in a tissue where others cannot find a trace both point to the probability of contamination.”
Also of note: In her presentation to the 2014 AutismOne scamfest, Mikovits showed this slide to establish the same point: there was no XMRV in 12 samples of blood (six of the samples being from ME-CFS donors).
http://nebula.wsimg.com/8df84321dea7c253559283e0d7e84055?AccessKeyId=AA72033528C71398D300&disposition=0&alloworigin=1
In 2014 at least, Mikovits’ claim was that the results presented in the 2009 Science paper were fake. Since it can’t have been her who faked them (by spiking the samples with XMRV plasmid), it must have been one of her co-authors. Hence the warning at the bottom of the slide about choosing colleagues wisely.
One fallacy on this review (with time, I could list others): «No, people are being arrested for overcrowding and refusing to social distance sufficiently.» And yet, here in Italy, where I live, people were charged 400 to 1000 euros fines for running alone in a deserted beach, swimming alone in the sea, phishing alone in a river or lake, manifesting with social distancing in the streets, putting a flower in the tomb of someone, giving a mass to thirteen people in a church (with capacity of hundreds of seats), as well as an old women that was charged with a fine only for being seated in a bench, while resting after going to the supermarket, some went to custody (jail) for resistance to these abuses… A long list of absurdities, I could say, that goes on and on, and still does…
Go for the absurdities to your own government, that decided to choose for a very strict lockdown, just like several other European countries, like France, Spain and even Belgium, all considering the Dutch for having a less strict lockdown as a bunch of idiots.
In my comment I was not discussing about which government made the worst or better decisions, I was only confuting a false accusation by the author of this review, who presented a fallacy saying that, regarding the current measures, «people are being arrested for overcrowding and refusing to social distance sufficiently», and not for other matters. No, people were and are being charged (with high fines) and arrested – under these government measures – for other matters, like being alone in a beach or not hiking without having a mask alone in the mountains (detected by a drone).
Alberto, Orac’s comment related to America, not Italy. Therefore bringing Italian events to the table is irrelevant.
@ NumberWang
Orac’s comment related to America,
If so,I did not see the qualifier. Alberto’s point seems valid. Orac has readers around the world.
Terry’s comment @ May 8, 2020 at 5:18 pm seemed crazy to anyone outside the USAas it was not qualified
struck me as parochial
Your lack of familiarity with this blog is not Orac’s problem. He is American. Based in America.
It’s ‘murica for y’all… and doncha all forget it!
Oh, crud why I cannot pull off this satire in the midst of this total bovine excrement show we have all been experiencing.
On the bright side between myself removing most of my hair with hair clippers (I am going to say the bald spots near the temples were in sympathy to to dear hubby’s receding hairline), and the same wonderful hubby for fixing my self haircut… I am doing okay. I think my hair should now be kept at less than half an inch long. But I think I will depend on paying cosmetologists from when the lockdown ends.
“No, people are being arrested for overcrowding and refusing to social distance sufficiently.”
As you are not a native speaker of English, you probably missed the comma after the word “No” and/or don’t understand it’s significance.
Orac quoted from the trailer “People are being arrested for surfing in the ocean and meditating in nature.” His response, which you quoted out of context means, no, people aren’t being arrested for surfing or meditating, they’re being arrested for failure to maintain social distance.
Punctuation is important.
Where? (Odd doings over here.)
Apparently Newsweek is not ready to exonerate Fauci like you are.
https://www.newsweek.com/dr-fauci-backed-controversial-wuhan-lab-millions-us-dollars-risky-coronavirus-research-1500741
The funny thing is, that’s not what Mikovits accused Fauci of. She accused him of delaying the publication of important HIV research from the lab where she was working (apparently as a technician or research assistant) way back in the 1980s.??♂️
Yet you have not refuted her on this at all, you just talk like you have with your emojis.
That article is nothing more than clickbait title talking about grants given to a lab to do science stuff.
We know that the virus didn’t come from a lab, because we used the work done using that grant money to inform our understanding of where the virus actually came from. It’s really complicated to figure out where it came from and as far as I know there’s still no concrete conclusion. But we know what manipulations are being done to viruses in labs so piecing together if it’s even possible COVID-19 could’ve been made in a lab is probably pretty easy for a virologist. It’s been proven it couldn’t have been made in a lab. This documentary is a farce for antivaxxers and cranks to make money off of the pandemic.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9
Thanks, that was a good write up. Well, one think I know for sure is that Mikovits is about to make a lot of money from book sales.
I guess I should start my own conspiracy, but I first need to write a book. Given that 5G and COVID-19 are already taken as topics, I wonder what could be the topic of 2021. :))
Cheers
Thank you for debunking this POS trailer. Saves me the trouble. You do a great service for the world, and I am sharing this article far and wide. Thank you for your excellent analysis!
lol this dude is literally some random blogger on the internet, I wouldn’t use that particular source to claim someone as a conspiracy theorist or not. Didn’t disprove her creditability, but definitely made his liberal bias crystal clear.
“Yes, the conspiracy theory in Plandemic is utterly ridiculous to those of us who know science, medicine, and history, but most people don’t know the relevant science, medicine, and history. To them, it sounds plausible.”
Yet he lists no science, medicine, or history at all and uses WIKIPEDIA as a source which is hardly creditable. He lists his person perspectives. BEST OF ALL he sticks up for people like Bill Gates, who he obviously knows nothing about. The fact is that Judy Mikovots is FAR from the only person blowing the whistle on vaccines and pharmaceuticals and that is where your cognitive dissonance must have its foundation. If you research for yourself you may be surprised what you find. Time to go back to college and learn how to write a persuasive paper loser.
Lol this is literally some random blogger on the internet, I wouldn’t use this particular source to claim someone as a conspiracy theorist or not. Didn’t disprove her creditability, but definitely made his liberal bias crystal clear.
“Yes, the conspiracy theory in Plandemic is utterly ridiculous to those of us who know science, medicine, and history, but most people don’t know the relevant science, medicine, and history. To them, it sounds plausible.”
Yet he lists no science, medicine, or history at all and uses WIKIPEDIA as a source which is hardly creditable. He lists his person perspectives. BEST OF ALL he sticks up for people like Bill Gates, who he obviously knows nothing about like his escapades with Jeffery Epstein etc. The fact is that Judy Mikovots is FAR from the only person blowing the whistle on vaccines and pharmaceuticals and that is where your cognitive dissonance must have its foundation. If you research for yourself you may be surprised what you find. Time to go back to college and learn how to write a persuasive paper loser.
See the answer to your previous, near identical, comment.
Yep, I’m just some random blogger on the Internet who’s been debunking nonsense like Mikovits’ conspiracy theories for 15 years, after having done the same on Usenet for 6-7 years before that. Oh, and I’m just a random blogger with an MD and a PhD, whose name can easily be found if desired.
Indeed you are an outspoken “skeptic” with a very strong bias in favor of the incumbent interests represented by rent-seeking pharmaceutical companies.
This stands in stark contrast definitions of skepticism which represent truth-seeking and respect for the limitations of human knowledge in general…the opposite of a propagandist in disguise.
I have one thing to say— WHY would Fauci say “a pandemic is coming”? In what context was this said? Is it camera and audio trickery??? All the naysayers that like to point fingers at so-called “conspiracy theorists”, “anti-vaxxers”, and whom just plain label their lives away….HOW and WHY would this man Fauci say that? To ME, that would ONLY be stated by someone with advanced, or planned “knowledge” of something in the works. I smell a rat. This is puppeteer, insider-trading kind of nonsense. Come on. How much of this corruption are we gonna endure? Stop the peoples’ division. Labeling. Etc.
Why would Fauci say that a pandemic is coming? Probably because pandemics are inevitable. It’s not as though he were the only one predicting a pandemic some day.?
It’s like saying “An earthquake is coming” in California. It’s a given that eventually, it will happen.
Heck, the French MD Raoult (of Chloroquine and unreliable controls fame) did say in a report in 2003 that we will sooner than later be facing a pandemic due to a virus causing respiratory diseases.
Double heck, if you had asked me last decade or last year, I would have predicted that as well.
Maybe the fact that parts of the world do face such pandemics every three or four years has some relation with our powers of prediction.
Pandemics are semi-unpredictable natural phenomena. We might not know what disease is going to emerge next, or where, or how bad it will be, but we know it’s coming. Scientists and researchers and doctors and historians know this from mountains of evidence.
It’s like earthquakes. We may not be able to predict where or when or how big, but we can say they’re coming. And like earthquakes, we should be prepared for the next pandemic.
It seems to me that the writer, much of a scientist he thinks he is, believes that Wikipedia and the internet are true sources of scientific investigation. Funny.
Actually, I only used Wikipedia once, and then went on to fact check the entry by reading its primary sources. Wikipedia is useful as a starting point, as long as you verify the primary sources listed in the bibliography of the entry you’re examining. I also happen to know enough about Mikovits, retroviruses, her crappy research, and her antivaccine background to be able to quickly identify what is accurate in an article. I read Mikovits’ primary research article in Science (the one that was retracted) and could identify the flaws. I read the papers that refuted her work and found that her finding was spurious, most likely due to laboratory contamination and possibly even scientific fraud.
As for believing that the Internet is a “true source of scientific investigation” (whatever that means), reading comments from someone like you is more than enough of a cautionary tale to tell me that I shouldn’t believe everything I see on the Internet. Come to think of it, so is drivel like Plandemic.?
You are welcome, I am sure, to respond to the actual facts and analysis presented by posting your own, either here or by setting up your own site. I notice that the predominant responses on this thread claiming much about how wrong our host is seem to be woefully short of reliable sources.
My use of (Lol) and laughing emojis also indicate “a joke” (Deal with it). And thank you for the 411 about “anti-vaxxer folks hating a journalist with that said name.” Interesting ?
Curious, besides humble surgeon/scientist is there any other available data on your scientific qualifications? I like the way your blog is written but without some context, for me, you are just as knowledgeable as the people you consistently knock down.
Please disregard, I found what I needed to find on your credentials!
Thanks for consolidating information on this looney lady! Please keep adding to it and put some more citations in as well– maybe we can shut up the anti-vaxxing loon-conspiracy theorists.
Thank you for posting this bit of sanity.
I have to give credit where it’s due in support of “Plandemic”; there hasn’t been a film with this kind of plot since “Get Smart” was cancelled.
You lost my interest when you called her antivaxxer. Makes me wonder if you actually know anything about her. ? You definitely know lots of words, scientist…
I called her an antivaxxer because she is an antivaxxer, and I cited evidence. I suppose you believe that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is actually a democracy.?
I’m thankful to the friend who put me onto your debunking of the Plandemic Parody. I loathed the mockumentary and when someone tried to put out that Judy Mikovits was ‘intelligent’ I said there are first class honours from Cambridge and cut and paste degrees from substandard universities, for which I placed her. I also said that I didn’t have the time to argue to ‘investigate’ the obvious bullshit as I was saving my tin foil for cooking rather than making a hat. I pull my hair out at misinformation and stupidity (especially when it is dangerous) and I despise people who have tall poppy syndrome, obviously jealous that they aren’t as wealthy or successful as others. Maslow hierarchy has self-actualisation at the top, people who have a strong sense of justice and altruism are generally gifted. I put Gates in this category. To discredit him when he donates so much of his wealth to charity and to say he is trying to profit comes from people who are unable to make it in the real world. If you live your life by jealousy and guilt, you will never live a proper life. I am forever pointing out media bias and if I don’t recognise where an article comes from, I just hit https://mediabiasfactcheck.com. I’ve been trying to point out what are credible peer reviewed articles, but you will still get a few morons who want to spam conspiracy bullshit. I ask about the labs in The Spanish Flu or the Plague. I started my own covid19 group page for the Little Rock I am living on because I couldn’t cope with the lack of worldwide information and education. This mockumentary has tried to enter it several times. My caveat with the group is that you have to back your post with peer reviewed credible articles. If you want to come lurk on the FB group page, it would be an honour. I’ve been following the covid19 with an intense fascination and it’s been good to keep my mind distracted while I deal with other ongoing issues. I’m easily bored and covid had managed to combine both math, health and economics. As I’ve got degrees in most of those, my brain is very happy. BSc(Hons) GradDipEd BEd GradDipFinPlan MNursSci MAppFin. I had to pull out of a PhD a while ago due to circumstances but I’d like to get back to it one day…. Love your article. Thanks again.
Hey what state are you from? No let me guess you are from one of those southern red states that take more money from the government than they pay in but hate socialism! We settled the civil war once or maybe you are too stupid to realize this! In case you forgot I’ll refresh your memory on what happened. The union kicked your backward hillbilly asses back to poedunkville so you can hunt squirrels and other small animals that don’t shoot back! So the next time you are FIXIN to open your mouth about another civil war remember we put you in your place the last time and we will do it again!!
I live in the Detroit area and work in the city.
Orac, UnionMike was referring to previous comments by StupidAssclown, uh, sorry, I meant “ProudConservative” about an imaginary future race war.
Why can’t Americans follow the international standard for political shading? Red is for communist. Blue is right of center. You should ask someone to do your colors for you.
“Red is for communist. Blue is right of center.”
In military maneuvers the aggressor/invader team is the Red Team. The good guys are the Blue Team. I think this is coincidental. If I remember right, the colors came from a vote-tracking election night map on cable TV.
Hey Tim. For future reference, it would be far more powerful when calling someone a “fucktard moran” to spell moron correctly when correcting their English.
Forgive me, karan. I’ll put a postit note on my monitor to remind me not to make this mistake in the future. Thank you for correcting me, you, fucktarded tool.
Thanks for sharing this, and thanks for making the link attractive to the conspiracy theorists that most need to hear this. I hope that some are convinced, or at least start to question enough to check their information against common sense a bit. Sorry about all the quacks attacking you in the comments, price to pay for getting your message to the right place, I guess…
Only reason I saw your page is I was trying to find a link to the video all the conspiracy theorists were up in arms about. Judging from the comments, so were many others…
My take on her “antivaxx” stance is that she is against the mRNA vaccines.
And I read that Italy did vaccinate with the 4 “pack” vaccine that included N1H1…. was that a mRNA vaccine?
There are no mRNA vaccines currently in use. They are all still experimental.
Like Orac, I have noticed the vast amount of material woo-meisters/ anti-vaxxers have put out in the past several weeks in response to the Covid pandemic.( See his first paragraph) Opportunistically as ever, they contribute their two cents’ worth of “scientific” evaluation, conspiracies and preventatives/ cures for this illness.
Why do they do this?
Obviously, they seek out recognition and profit: despite their lack of relevant information, they spin tales to impress their audiences, selling them explanations and products. Covid gives them a way to continue displaying their hatred for SBM ( usually described as “allopathic” medicine) and various miscreants ( Gates, Fauci) as well as tooting their own horns ( their cures of hiv/aids, autism, cancer etc).
Because I survey this crap, I invite readers to simply peruse any of their sites and count the number Covid-19 articles / total articles since early April ( websites like PRN.fm, Natural News, Age of Autism, @ the High Wire Talk, Mercola, Health Nut News, The Bolen Report etc.) Amongst the contributors, only one *may* have a reasonable education ( a DO)** valuable for understanding the issues- not that he doesn’t fall into the same natural health traps as the others do. These are the folks who decry Mr Gates’ lack of a college degree- he’s a “drop out” ( AoA)
Similarly, we can see here how their followers respond to Orac’s good sense.
So why did they *switch* from their usual topics- ASDs, vaccines, weight control, cancer treatments, longevity studies, relationship counselling, lifestyle etc- to infectious disease control?
Because that’s *what people currently fear most* and want to avoid as well as to get explanations because standard research about the virus and news about its origins are still not solidified.
To use a simile I often select to describe opportunism in general: like a termite or another destructive insect, they will seek out the smallest hole in which to insert themselves to chew away at structural foundations- be they wood or science.
** the usual suspects have degrees or their facsimiles in nutrition, business, copy writing, English, Marketting, television production, unknown/ not any at all etc.
I read every comment. I need a shower.
Dear Illuminati,
Next time, weaponise Nipah.
Gratefully yours,
The Tumorous Pustulent Body of Western Civilization
RFK’s children are vaccinated. So you use the all or nothing description of ANTIVAXXER. This is not an all or nothing topic, but making it so eliminates any chance for necesary checks and balances.
Yes, their mothers got them vaccinated. Apparently Kennedy really did not pay much attention until much later. Also dementia can start at anytime, especially with his history with recreational self medication.
I’m concerned enough about big pharma/vaccine overreach to question the dominant paradigm, AND I personally know two children harmed by vaccines. I also know that they work. That said, even us skeptics need to be able to ID a grifter when we see one. This woman is dangerous and thanks for the deeper discussion here. “There is no vaccine currently on the schedule for any RNA virus that works.” My ass!
@ Jesus Christ follower
I suggest you read the following paper which makes quite clear that both the Old Testament and the Talmud explicitly emphasize treating non-Jews with compassion, justice, decency, etc. And, maybe you should also carefully read the New Testament. Jesus was NOT against the Torah, the Old Testament, the Talmud, he preached them; but added more and, of course, the promise of eternal life. Jesus wasn’t an anti-semitic moron asshole like you. By the way, I’m a Jew who attended as an undergraduate Loyala University of Chicago, have had numerous Christian friends, including Baptists, and Moslem friends and have studied the New Testament, Christian theology, Islam, and Buddhism.
Rabbi Reuven Hammer (2016 Apr 21). The Status of Non-Jews in Jewish Law and Lore Today. Available at: https://www.rabbinicalassembly.org/sites/default/files/public/halakhah/teshuvot/2011-2020/hammer-non-jews-law-lore.pdf
AS ORAC AND OTHERS HAVE MADE PERFECTLY CLEAR, AD HOMINEM ATTACKS ARE JUST A MAJOR EXAMPLE OF PEOPLE WHO REALLY CAN’T DEFEND THEIR POSITIONS, DON’T EVEN ATTEMPT TO REFUTE WHAT ORAC AND OTHERS WRITE. IN OTHER WORDS, STUPID STUPID STUPID ASSHOLES ASSHOLES ASSHOLES.
AND MANY OF THE PEOPLE THEY SUPPORT MAKE MONEY SELLING UNSCIENTIFICALLY CONFIRMED COMPLEMENTARY AND ALTERNATIVE MEDICINES. BUT, OF COURSE, THAT DOESN’T BIAS THEM???
MEDICAL SCHOOLS DO RECEIVE GRANTS AND OTHER FUNDS FROM INDUSTRY; BUT ALSO FROM VARIOUS NON-PROFITS, CHARITIES, AND GOVERNMENT. IT IS STUPID TO ASSUME BECAUSE ONE HAS AT SOME TIME RECEIVED MONEY FROM A MEMBER OF SOME INDUSTRY OR WORKS AT AN INSTITUTION THAT HAS THAT AUTOMATICALLY ONE IGNORES ONES TRAINING, SCIENCE, ANY CONSIDERATION FOR ONES FELLOW MAN AND LIES. THE LIE IS PEOPLE WHO BELIEVE THIS.
IN SCIENCE, SOMETHING THESE MORONS DON’T UNDERSTAND, WE LOOK AT METHODOLOGY, ETC. NOT THE PERSON. ONLY IF ONE REALLY CAN’T REFUTE THE ACTUAL SCIENCE, DO ASSHOLES RESORT TO AD HOMINEM ATTACKS.
90% of this article is an ad-hominem attack on Mikovitz and anti-vaxxers
Well he could hardly offer an in-depth analysis of her research and data on COVID-19 because she hasn’t produced any. There’s really nothing to say about her role in this conspiracy theory except that she’s a discredited dishonest crank making stuff up in her head.
Robert Kennedy Jr. and other, are they antivaxxers? All they want is better safety tests? But they ignore, discount, etc. that vaccines are probably the safest product on the market. The FDA protocols for approving a vaccine, including visits to production facilities before and after approval, the after market surveillance, etc. and all we know about immunology, microbiology, etc. makes vaccines the safest product on the market.
However, as opposed to the black and white world of antivaxxers, vaccines don’t always confer 100% protection, may require boosters, and often have mild adverse reactions and RARE serious adverse reactions. The question comes down to benefits vs costs and the ratio exponentially favors the benefits. So, antivaxxers only want a fantasy world where vaccines confer 100% protection, last a lifetime, and don’t even cause minor discomforts like a sore arm, short time low grade fever, etc.
Seat belts only reduce the risk of death and serious injury by about 50%. And there have been cases where people have suffered bladder, kidney, and other damage, even a couple of deaths when the seatbelt edge dug in. I guess we should either abandon seatbelts or, at least, not make them mandatory. But then if someone is seriously injured and without health coverage, the law requires emergency treatment, so who pays. And if it is a young person, handicapped for life, should they suffer for a youthful foolishness? I, for one, don’t think so.
Seat belts have been tested thoroughly, and the test results are accessible to the public, so you know exactly what to expect when putting one on. Also, you can take a seat belt off when your ride is finished. Can’t undo that injection, though. Once it’s in, it’s in for life, bringing along who knows what for the ride. Have any questions/concerns about what’s being pumped into the veins of every single one of our youngest and most vulnerable members of society, without their own (or sometimes even their parents’) consent? Good luck finding any real publications on the safety and efficacy test results on a large scale… they don’t exist. Not for the public, anyway. Good thing I can just trust my doctor to know best, and then if something does go wrong, my conscience is off the hook. It’s their fault, right?
Don’t exist?
Boy, you didn’t look very hard, did you?
There are long term safety studies involving millions of participants.
@ Truth Seeker
You really are an idiot. Go to PubMed or Google Scholar, type, for instance: Vaccine AND Safety. You will get probably 10,000 articles. Narrow the search to Vaccine AND “placebo trials” and you will get several thousand. A while back I used a variety of search terms and always found thousands. You can also go to CDC or WHO websites where they list and link to dozens of studies. As for “real publications . . . don’t exist”, I guess any publication that doesn’t confirm your bias isn’t “real.” Vaccine research has been carried out in many different nations with different cultures, different histories, different political systems, different economic systems, and different educational systems. Do you really believe that all these researchers are willing to sacrifice the welfare of the children of their respective nations? You are SICK! ! !
And try reading the histories of some vaccine-preventable diseases, e.g., smallpox. Without the vaccine there is a good possibility that neither you nor I would be here as smallpox killed about 1/3 of population in waves, left many blind, and almost all disfigured.
While I realize that calling yourself “Truth Seeker” is being ironic, if you even consider yourself slightly open-minded, I suggest you start with a delightful little book: Lauren Sompayrac’s “How the Immune System Works (6th Ed). About 160 pages, well-written, well-illustrated, and costing less than $50 delivered from Amazon. Or you can get the 5th edition for much less.
They can take my seat belt when they pry it from my cold, dead torso.
That being said, I am extremely passionate about berating pigs for causing deaths by forcing people to seek out unfamiliar routes, congesting traffic over said routes, and for giving chase to those perceived to be avoiding them over the rouse of a ‘safety check’.
Police stops are often very violating, violent, and a major source of PTSD regardless of the reason, justified or otherwise.
No one expects 100% effectiveness with no side effects, or rather, no one I’ve spoken to on the topic does. What many people hope for is the right to choose what goes into their own and their children’s bodies, without being publicly shamed and stigmatized. We all acknowledge there is risk involved here, and some think it higher than others. Where there’s risk, there should be choice. And the constant propagandist approach from “pro-vaxxers” has only led to animosity from both sides of the discussion.
There is virtually zero expression of the succinct and direct anti-vax concerns and questions in the mainstream media outlets. We’ve all heard the word “anti-vax” ad-nauseam lately, but can many pro-vaxxers even clearly state the main arguments from the anti-vax side? I would wager no, because they’ve not been voiced. It’s just the ramblings of crazy people, pay no attention. You either want everyone “immunized” or your an enemy of the state. But what about addressing the actual content of the concerns being raised. I haven’t yet heard any mainstream pundits voice these concerns accurately, even if only to tear them down point by point immediately after. It’s almost as if they’re afraid to have these points heard at all. Can’t have people asking questions like “does it really make sense that our best hope for preventing death from infectious diseases is to pump millions of gallons of untested concoctions directly into the blood of the global population and just hope for the best? Must there not be a better, more strategic, less irreversible approach?”
That’s what makes me suspicious. Prove me wrong, please!
Wow, you certainly throw a lot of strawmen out, don’t you?
It’s anti-vaxers who claim that “pro-vaxers want to vaccinate everyone.”
Actually, pro-vaxers advocate for vaccination to protect those, who cannot for legitimate medical reasons, be vaccinated.
There is no right to spread infectious diseases.
And you can certainly choose not to vaccinate, but society can also hold you accountable for your choice.
“No shirt, no shoes, no service.”
Well, that’s why Dr. Bob told yall to “hide in the herd.”
“Well, that’s why Dr. Bob told yall to “hide in the herd.””
Also known as being a parasite.
@ Truth Seeker
While I am just one person, I have written over a dozen papers where I point by point refute antivaxxine claims. You can find two of my papers on Science-Based Medicine and others at:
https://web.archive.org/web/20170930170514/http://www.ecbt.org/index.php/facts_and_issues/article/expert_commentary
I got an article completely refuting claims in Wakefield’s book “Callous Disregard” in a peer-reviewed journal. I put a lot of time and effort into my article, so I contacted a number of organizations, hoping they would refer to it. One of the organizations I contacted was Every Child By Two. I suggested I could write additional articles. They said they would be willing to look at them and possibly post them. And they did. They then changed their name to Vaccinate Their Family and were in the process of reposting my articles when their webmaster, a really great guy who I had many conversations with, suddenly died. So, until they get a new webmaster, I posted them on the waybackmachine.
I dare you to read them.
And you are absolutely full of it claiming antivaccinationist claims haven’t been refuted. They have been refuted with numerous research projects that have been published in peer-reviewed journals and on blogs like this that actually hyperlink to supporting documents.
Dear Orac, where are YOUR citations?? This all comes off like “he said, she said” to me. Frankly, your written meanderings here are very disappointing to me. As a sincere seeker of truth, I find it disheartening that after sorting through many, many links, trying to find some convincing counter arguments and cited facts to combat the outrageous claims in this vignette, that your critique here is basically the only thing I could find, and it’s just a regurgitation of the same flawed logic and lack of hard evidence that always comes from the medical establishment: label people as “anti-vax” and move on. Where are your references? Where are your hard examples disproving some of the most disturbing claims in this film? You’re not doing anyone a service by escalating the finger pointing but leaving a huge vacuum where real facts and records should be.
Waste of time reading this “review”. Very biased, no real valuable or new information. If “anti-vaxxers” (a.k.a., pro informed consent and pro actual published test results) are so obviously wrong, why can’t you easily show us how and why? Rather than trying to simply dismiss and deny their perspective, how about providing some real counter arguments. Bad.
My citations are in the form of hyperlinks. Click them for more information, silly.??♂️
Sadly, your hyperlinks mostly point to other biased and heavily opinionated articles. Some good history too, but nothing very consequential. I’m looking for cold, hard truth, man! Leave out the part where you tell me what to think and how to feel, and just show me where she’s wrong. How can you be so sure that seemingly reasonable claims put forth by anti-vaxxers are all lies?
It’s not enough to label people as conspiracy theorists and walk away. It’s not intellectually ethical or honest to dismiss people’s experiences and claims simply because it doesn’t fit your world view. We need to have a thoughtful and charitable discussion here, for the sake of all of our best interest. History has shown us time and time again how wrong we can be as an entire civilization (doctors used to smoke cigarettes inside operating rooms because rich and powerful tobacco companies convinced the public and the health officials it was safe). It has also shown that powerful people and organizations do in fact engage in deep conspiracy and fraud for the sake of profit and power. Personally, I think we have only exposed a small percentage of these crimes on humanity throughout the ages.
I’m not saying you haven’t listed some references to help prop up your personal opinions on the matter, but again it’s mostly based on the authority of who’s saying what, and not based on real hard evidence or solid logic. I strongly believe what’s said is more important than who says it, but of course we need to know people’s backgrounds in order to assess fully. A good question to ask in these scenarios is “Who stands to gain more in this situation?”
It really hurts the discussion when we continue to use derogatory language towards people with conflicting perspectives, instead of simply facing their claims head on and negating their perspective with a more thoughtful and demonstrably true one.
And yes, if you send me some scientific papers I will read them, and am capable of understanding them.
@Truth Seeker. Do your own work. If you are capable of understanding the papers then you are equally capable of finding them yourself.
They used to have a tag line “for the seeker”…
https://redice.tv/red-ice-radio
This reddit thread crushes that video into the ground, point for point.
Give it a read for research, it’s a great takedown.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CovIdiots/comments/gezery/plandemic_documentary_debunked/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
One thing that doesn’t make sense to me, if she claims the COVID virus is the result of a flu vaccine and thus the reason why Italy’s elderly population was most impacted, why then are low-income (minority) communities in New York who have a very low adoption rate of annual flu vaccines being hit the hardest with COVID deaths?
some say because of health complications resulting from toxicity of 911 dust throughout the region
Because they ride on subways and frequently have jobs that involve interpersonal contact which can’t be performed through computers?
Oh wait, I make sense: she would never consider it.
@ Boss Man,
Source for unvaccinated NY population?
I don’t know what is more nauseating, this page’s layout or the content.
Hi Dr. why dismiss the idea that the virus escaped from a lab? we know china is super shady, lies a lot, and has a terrible track record when it comes to transparency. moreover the virus was being studied – manipulated – in that lab, and was near the epicentre of the outbreak. it is more than plausible that owing to malpractice in the lab and government incompetence, that such an outbreak occured. of course the chinese government will likely never release any data which would confirm this theory. but they have also destroyed some evidence and disappeared whistleblowers. so to say that its all a bullshit conspiracy is also farfetched. and puts far too much confidence in china.
Because lots of people all over the world who study viruses and viral manipulation have looked at SARS-CoV2 and say it hasn’t been manipulated.
If you want to study a natural phenomena (like volcanos or glaciers) you don’t build your research center thousands of miles away, you build it where the thing you are studying is. Thus, if you want to study bat corona viruses, you build your lab near the large populations of wild bats with corona viruses.
Folks have got the causality all backwards here. The virus didn’t appear because the lab was there, the lab was there because that’s where the bats that carry lots of viruses are.
I saw that article yesterday, started reading the wild claims of Mikovits, and decided I was too tired to deal that this level of concentrated craziness right then.
Came back today, saw all the comments.
Holy Asimov on a pogo stick. Did someone upend a barrel of nitrous oxide somewhere on the internet?
It’s full moon.
“Holy Asimov on a pogo stick.”
That made me smile!
@Meg
I got it from the webcomic Freefall, IIRC.
I just stumbled on your page after my brother posted that video on my FB feed. I have some close friends who are health care providers and ID specialists. I will listen to them, not some random YouTube video. I like what you say about why people grasp to these conspiracies. I think that defines my brother. Thank you for continuing the good fight. I find all these conspiracy theories maddening in ordinary times, now they’re full out deadly and need to be called out.
If you’re afraid of conspiracy theorists, explain to them how they’re wrong. Offering up your friends’ claims against other doctors’ claims is not sufficient. Break down the arguments and provide factual or rational counters. Not only will this help you understand your own position better, but you may teach someone something, and you might learn something yourself in the process. Unfortunately, this article doesn’t do that. Attacking people, and not arguments, is unproductive. YouTube continuously removing this video for “violating its terms” only fuels the fire for millions of people who think their perspective is being silenced, not validly countered.
Good god! Are you an idiot? You can’t explain to a conspiracy theorist that they are wrong. If that was possible then they wouldn’t be a conspiracy theorist. You could show them a complete study with all the results, methods, workings laid out in front of them. Explanations of any reasoning, calculations. It will be ignored. There wont be any scientific critique. Just a dismissal because their favourite back slapping source tells them what they want to hear. Doooont belieeeve itttt, theyyyyre allll paaaid money toooo liieeeee. Soooooo arreee wee but thaaats oookkk, weere paaiid by the goooood guuyss.
You may notice that not one of the various new commenters has used a single scientific argument. Or shown any sign that they actually paid attention to what has been written. Obviously they skimmed just enough of the post to tell it was an enemy and then started behaving like chimps. Scream loudly, beat chest, wave arms, throw shit, strut away smugly as if they’ve managed to make a point.
By definition, these conspiracy theorists cannot be reasoned with, they cannot be corrected. They’ve internalized their beliefs – they are actually a part of them.
Which is why these “CTs” take any attempted correction as an attack on their person.
Why we cannot reason with a conspiracy theorist, from a quote by James Randi: “I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.”
“hydroxychloroquine probably doesn’t work”- this blogs author Oroc
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2020/04/06/here-are-five-doctors-whose-patients-have-seen-recovery-with-hydroxy-chloroquine-n2566409
Tell it to the patients of these doctors….quack
Sure thing.
https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2020/04/01/fda-eua-chloroquine-hydroxychloroquine-covid-19/
News articles are not science, they are anecdotes. The plural of anecdote is not data. Next time find the data here: http://www.PubMed.gov
And Townhall is an overtly Conservative “journalist” outlet whose job it is to back up what ever bullshit the cheeto encrusted shit gibbon garbles incoherently on tv.
Look here I found 5 people who got better and had taken this drug so proof to me it must be a cure. Pwned. GTFO of here with that shit. Has their been confirming research done on this yet? 5 people, 5 fucking people? Well certainly finding it may have contributed to positive change in 1.50150150E−8 % of Americans means we can shut down testing. Nope of course not but yeah Mr. Orac is the quack.
Want to extend a personal thank you to those medical professionals here who call it like it is without giving concern to the feelings of uneducated, lazy people who because they lack the core capacity to understand the massive and very complex world of science. I think I recall “fuckstick” being used and that is what you call people who reject science.
Glad I found this blog and thank you good people of medicine.
Ok, I’ll jump in here. I just came off a tour in the ICU where I cared for several COVID patients. Now I’m in the ED where we get a lot of possible cases presenting. I had a couple I see in the clinic come down with it, both ended up in the ICU, one died.
Back in early March (Seems like a million years ago) we used Hydroxychloroquine with Azithro because so little was known about this virus we figured we’d give our patients every chance we could. We had plenty of it on hand. Heck, they’re already on the unit so we can handle an arrhythmia. Guess what? The arrhythmias were COMMON.
After about three weeks of gathering data, the following was presented to our critical care committee:
– The hydroxy/Azithro protocol DOES NOT lower hospital stay
– It DOES NOT lower ventilator time
– It DOES NOT decrease chances of being shipped to the unit from the floor or improve oxygenation in patients not on a vent
– It FREQUENTLY required further intervention due to a cardiac event
– An odd, unexplored side finding was that some of the patients who got the drugs were harder to wean from a vent. Folks smarter than I have jumped on that to study…
Long story short? ZERO benefit and possibly harm for our patients here at our center – we stopped using it.
What people like you don’t understand is that the scientific method worked here, like it has for hundreds of years before. We gave your miracle cure a chance and have rejected it after ample and rigorous experimentation. Nothing is being “suppressed.” Something else comes along that looks promising? We’ll be all over it. That’s what we do. We WANT people to get better and see their loved ones again. That’s why we became doctors.
My older couple who both ended up hospitalized? They both got it. He died, she survived. What we know about this virus is that men fare worse, the magic hydroxy did nothing to change that. Also, she had to be shocked out of an arrhythmia while she was in the ICU. (Speaking of men faring worse – there’s a study out yesterday that androgens play a role.)
Want to know the most profound outcome we’ve seen here from Hydroxychloroquine? We had a patient come in to our sister hospital in Phoenix who had drank pond treatment because it said something like the name on the label after he had just been told by our president: “What do you have to lose?” In his case he had his life to lose. He also ate up massive resources in the ICU just as a spate of COVID cases were coming into that hospital from a nursing home. As did his wife, who survived, after eating up a ton of resources.
It is quite apparent that Judy Mikovits, Kent Heckenloony, and Mikki Willis sensed that Orac was a danger to their income stream from the planned grift of the terminally gullible via their propaganda video and sent their flying monkeys to hilariously drool all over the RI discussion board.
You shouldn’t feel too superiour, Orac, ZDogg is getting quite the response from the knuckledraggers as well… 12,000+ comments on his “Plandemic” Youtube rebut. The drool is so deep over there you’d better don boots before entering.
.
Well… what else are you going to do when you are a failed thieving criminal fraud of a scientist who is so dishonest she manufactured data for her retracted “study”.
Talk about dishonest… but in woo-woo land she is some sort of hero just like the fraud Wakefield, et al. Honest scientists are reviled in the alt-med anti-science universe.
Have fun.
** I also note a lot of them have a lot of trouble with the English language… perhaps they should try their native Russian…
Just a single data point here, but I never heard of any of the people in this video until a few days ago. I find myself commenting here after google searching “fact check plandemic documentary” and this was the first non-ad sponsored result I found. Sadly, it doesn’t convince me the film makers are entirely wrong. And all you’ve done is add to the problem with more name calling. Please stick to substantive arguments so we can all learn something. Thank you.
@ Truth Seeker
What a crock calling yourself “truth seeker.” Did you actually read Orac’s article? He goes through, in detail, Judy Mikovits background, education, retracted publications, fact she was NOT independent researcher; but worked in someone else’s lab, etc. He links to several criticisms of her retracted article. And discusses her claim that Rockefeller is at fault for much of current medicine, that is, current science-based medicine. That is the entire point of this and its sister website, science-based medicine. No where do you attempt to refute what he wrote about her retracted article, about her claims regarding chronic fatigue syndrome, HIV, etc. So, when you write: “Please stick to substantive arguments so we can all learn something,” it is obvious you are incapable of learning anything and don’t understand what a “substantive argument” is.
And you apparently don’t even understand what an ad hominem attack is. It isn’t an ad hominem attack to bring up that someone’s research has been refuted, that is what science is all about. If you disagree, then refute with science.
As for: “Sadly, it doesn’t convince me the film makers are entirely wrong.” And there are people who still believe racial differences in intelligence despite literally thousands of studies and genetics refuting this. So, what else is new?
And, please explain what your education, training, occupation etc are that makes you think you are capable of understanding anything.
She literally states she is not anti-vaccine. And the video is to highlight the corruption behind the scenes. You read like a CNN article covering Covid-19
Stalin literally stated he was not a mass murderer.
I guess that let’s him off the hook then.
Well that settles it.
[…] video clip from the upcoming movie ‘Plandemic’ is going viral online, even as it’s been removed by YouTube and then re-uploaded many times on […]
Hi Orac,
While I think you do need to take this all with a grain of salt, I think she has a good point around using mRNA for a vaccine as we ramp. Do you think getting vaccinated then makes more sense than letting your body deal with the virus on its own, coming from someone who contracted the disease and didn’t even know it?
Craig, I’m not Orac answering, but you ask, “Do you think getting vaccinated then makes more sense than letting your body deal with the virus on its own, coming from someone who contracted the disease and didn’t even know it?”
First and foremost, unlike other viruses, Coronaviruses tend not to confer lasting immunity, so vaccination makes a lot of sense, especially if the duration of the immunity is longer or if it evokes a better anamnestic response, one where the immune system “comes on line” faster when rechallenged.
Second, like the flu vaccines, a vaccination may confer a degree of immunity to other related strains.
Third, there’s no way to tell in advance who will get sick or how badly if and when they get infected. I wouldn’t want anyone I love or anyone I associate with to get infected if they can avoid it. No disease is better than disease any day.
Fourth, someone who has been infected without knowing it may be an asymptomatic carrier, and therefore pose a risk to everyone around.
There are some people (Jair Bolsonaro, for one) who seem to think that letting COVID-19 kill off the immediately susceptible in a misguided quest to attain crowd immunity can somehow succeed instead of causing an ongoing prevalence of the disease, with recurring outbreaks and surprise deaths. It didn’t work very well with measles, smallpox, or any number of other diseases that are now vaccine preventable.
Getting measles naturally can sometimes lead to subacute sclerosing panencephalitis…getting mumps naturally can lead to infertility. These are two quick examples off the top of my head but there are dozens of others…
@ Mike
You write: “Are you aware that Mercury, which is in many vaccines (fact), is the second most toxic substance on the periodic table(fact)?”
First, mercury, actually thimerosal which is only 50% mercury, was removed from all vaccines except flu vaccine 20 years ago. And one can get flu vaccine without thimerosal.
Second, it was NEVER in MMR vaccine or other attenuated vaccines, so only in about half of childhood vaccines.
Third, mercury is ubiquitous in the environment. We get much more from air we breath, water and food we imbibe, and minor abrasions to skin.
Fourth, as Paracelsus said in the 15th Century, “the dose makes the poison.” The amounts in vaccines prior to 20 years ago was trace amounts.
Fifth, the planet Earth when bacteria first arose had 100 or more fold mercury than today. For those who believe in Evolution, starting with bacteria, living organisms developed systems to cope with mercury and other toxic substances, including excreting, transforming, sequestering.
So, not in vaccines today; but when in vaccines, in trace amounts, much lower than what we get from environment, so, you are just one more ill-informed person.
Sixth, mercury is not second most toxic substance on earth:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_lethal_dose
Second most toxic substance is tetanus toxin, 500 times more toxic than mercury. My guess is that you want children be poisoned by it, in vain attempt to acquire natural immunity
@ Aarno
Some antivaxers eventually got that. Now they substitute “on earth” by “in the periodic table”, as in one of the first comments (for a given value of “first”).
Still not true. Letting aside that the mercury in some vaccine is not elemental put part of a bigger assembly (a.k.a. molecules), if we go for elemental atoms being injected/ingested, I would be hard-pressed to choose between the first column (lithium, sodium…) and the halogene column (fluor, chlore…) as the most reactive/dangerous.
Randall Monroe (from XKCD), with some help from Derek Lowe, explored the ‘What if’ we built a ‘wall’ of the periodic table.
https://englishatlc.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/randall-munroe-periodic-wall-of-elements.pdf
”I’m looking for cold, hard truth, man!…How can you be so sure that seemingly reasonable claims put forth by anti-vaxxers are all lies?”
If their lips are moving or their fingers are typing, it’s a safe bet they’re not putting out anything remotely close to ”cold, hard truth”.
A few helpful hints for Truth Seeker as he continues on his Truth-Seeking Journey:
You can access many good articles on this very website that refute antivax nonsense, with abundant references to the scientific literature.
You can similarly find lots of excellent takedowns of antivaccine foolishness on the website Science-Based Medicine, with numerous scientific literature references.
For a comprehensive journey back out the rabbit hole of antivax idiocy, here’s a nice compilation by a physician, refuting antivax memes, again with lots and lots of scientific references. Remember, hyperlinks are your friend.
http://docbastard.net/2019/04/vaccine-mythbusting.html
Try not to be upset if you encounter a snarky tone here and there. All these folks have experienced the same bad antivax arguments and bogus claims over and over and over again, despite patiently explaining where antivaxers have it wrong. It wears on you after awhile.
@ Dorothy Diana RN, MSN
You write: “There is no way Mikovits would put herself out there Jailed and probably her life in danger now, here the hate in this Doc’s speech, for the money. She has a 45 year history/reputation as a highly regarded virologist/researcher.”
She may not put herself out there for the money and actually believe she is right. So what? Lot’s of people in history have believed they were right. As for “hate” speech. Are you nuts. It isn’t hate speech to discuss retracted articles, a person’s documented history, etc. As for “5 year history/reputation as a highly regarded virologist/researcher.” Yikes. Regarded by whom??? Mainly others who lack reputations are legitimate researchers.
Just a reminder, ORAC not only is a respected cancer surgeon; but has numerous publications in peer-reviewed journals and has received a number of grants from NIH.
DID THE SARS-COV-2 ESCAPE FROM A CHINESE LAB? This is a repeat of a comment I posted on a previous ORAC article.
From a recent article by Ed Yong (2020 Apr 29). “Why the Coronavirus Is So Confusing: A guide to making sense of a problem that is now too big for any one person to fully comprehend.” The Atlantic. Available at: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/pandemic-confusing-uncertainty/610819/
Note that he links to a number of excellent articles, including the two that the following is based on:
“scientists have also identified about 500 other coronaviruses among China’s many bat species. “There will be many more—I think it’s safe to say tens of thousands,” says Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance, who has led that work. Laboratory experiments show that some of these new viruses could potentially infect humans. SARS-CoV-2 likely came from a bat, too.
It seems unlikely that a random bat virus should somehow jump into a susceptible human. But when you consider millions of people, in regular contact with millions of bats, which carry tens of thousands of new viruses, vanishingly improbable events become probable ones. In 2015, Daszak’s team found that 3 percent of people from four Chinese villages that are close to bat caves had antibodies that indicated a previous encounter with SARS-like coronaviruses. “Bats fly out every night over their houses. Some of them shelter from rain in caves, or collect guano for fertilizer,” Daszak says. “If you extrapolate up to the rural population, across the region where the bats that carry these viruses live, you’re talking 1 [million] to 7 million people a year exposed.” Most of these infections likely go nowhere. It takes just one to trigger an epidemic.”
So, 3 percent of people had antibodies to bat corona viruses. As the above explains, it is quite probable that the current virus came from someone infected by a bat. Now, since sequencing of the current SARS-Cov-2 has found its genome quite close to the 2003 SARS virus and to several bat coronavirus genomes, goes against your sick need to blame the Chinese. A coincidence is not even close to any type of proof, except in the mind of a moron like you looking to place blame. And there is a great book on “coincidences”: David J. Hand (2014). “The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day.” Basically, what someone might think is a rare coincidence isn’t.
And, the major blame for what is happening in the U.S. is a combination of Trump and overall American unappreciation for Public Health and, thus, pandemic preparedness. When it comes to cutting funding, first to go.
Thank you for sane replies and I appreciate anyone reading this thread trying to just understand the truth of it. I trust the science and can’t fathom a doctor enabled plot that would harm everyone. With Covid-19, the government has utterly failed us at the federal level. We can’t let bullshit go uncalled on anything, too much is at stake anymore and we need responsible people in charge. Yeah Science!
@ “Jesus Christ follower”: You are a sick deluded walking shitpile.
I apologize for not responding sooner, but this Jew was busy poisoning wells, sticking needles into host wafers to make them scream, and baking matzahs with the blood of Christian babies.
As my Irish friend would say, “Jesus wept.”
@ Old Rockin’ Dave
You left out Hitler’s claim that Jews were responsible for German defeat in World War I. They were starving, Americans, fresh cannon fodder had entered the war, and an army, led by Brittish officers was moving up through the Balkins. And the flu pandemic of 1918 hit them especially hard. They literally were out of manpower; but, heh, none of this had to do with their defeat?????
And Christian history is rampant with barbarous actions. I don’t blame Jesus; but people claiming to follow him. Teutonic knights in Finland. Either convert or be thrown into lake to drown. Albigensian controversy of 12th Century, Bishop and army surrounds a town. General asks Bishop what if “good” Christians in the city. Bishops reply: “kill them all. Let God sort it out”. The Thirty Years War, 1618-1648 where Catholic and Protestant armies raped, pillaged, and slaughtered defenseless peasants. Executing anyone in towns who even slightly deviated from set doctrine. Puritans slaughtering Pequots in 1636 yelling “Praise the Lord.” Again, not what Jesus taught; but unfortunately, followers of various religions seem to ignore the basic teachings. If Mohammed were to come back and visit ISIS, Al Qaeda, or Taliban they would behead him. The Quran clearly states one doesn’t kill or harm civilians, especially women and children and even says if someone makes war on you; but puts down their sword, let them go in peace.
Have you read The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time by John Kelly?
There is quite a bit on how Jewish communities were targeted and sometimes totally slaughtered. It is where I learned about “blood libel.”
Isn’t it strange how the two big Abrahamic religions can’t stand to be reminded that the original one is still here and still not accepting either of them?
In any case both of them have a great deal to answer for before the bar of history.
I didn’t think it was necessary for me to add all that. It wouldn’t touch him anyway.
I think he was one of the people Ambrose Bierce had in mind when he wrote this:
https://bit.ly/2Wcr7Mu
(I shortened the link because the original URL is sort of a spoiler.)
“Jesus follower”, you can declare the things you do about the Talmud because there is no danger of you knowing enough classical Hebrew and Aramaic to study it for yourself so you eagerly swallow the lies sick people pour into your ears and eyes. You wouldn’t know the Talmud if all 24 books and all the accompanying exegesis and the Tanakh fell on your head. Which, while it gives me a giggle to imagine, would be a terrible thing to do to all those books.
I really don’t want to see anything else from you ever again – I don’t enjoy being nauseated – but maybe you’d care to explain what the quote from Joshua has to do with anything else you had to poison our eyes with.
This blog lacks science and reeks of ego, I can literally post hundreds of Studies showing links of vaccines to autism but this blogger repeats mainstream articles that there is none. He shows little science at all.
” Babies born in America are less likely to reach their first birthday than babies born in other wealthy countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a new study found.
Compared to 19 similar OECD countries, U.S. babies were three times more likely to die from extreme immaturity and 2.3 times more likely to experience sudden infant death syndrome between 2001 and 2010, the most recent years for which comparable data is available across all the countries. If the U.S. had kept pace with the OECD’s overall decline in infant mortality since 1960, that would have resulted in about 300,000 fewer infant deaths in America over the course of 50 years, the report found.” – Time
U.S. FEDERAL COURT: VACCINES CAUSE SUDDEN INFANT DEATH SYNDROME (SIDS)
“it is more likely than not that the vaccines played a substantial causal role in the death of J.B. without the effect of which he would not have died. The role of inflammatory cytokines as neuro-modulators in the infant medulla has been well described and is likely the reason for “a significant number of SIDS deaths”
1 child in 4,000 will die from the Pediarix vaccine. The manufacturer said so!
That equates to 1 dead child in 4,000 vaccinated with Pediarix.
Doctors will recite what they’ve been taught in pharmaceutical school—that vaccines injuries and deaths are 1-in-a-million. Well, here’s the vaccine manufacturer’s own document disputing that number by stating that their product has killed 1-in-4,000 children during research trials. And still it was approved by the FDA!”
https://www.learntherisk.org/sids/
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2533334793367729&id=100000737007811
Sids largely eradicated in japan and Sweden after withdrawal of the pertussis vaccine.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3364648/
History of Infant Mortality Rates.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3170075/#bibr25-0960327111407644
SIDS after hexavalent vaccine.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18538957
Infant mortality and vaccine schedule.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1470243/pdf/envhper00326-0221.pdf
Adverse effects on vaccinating preemies.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2082954/table/tbl2/
Infant mortality and vaccines study.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3170075/
Correlation between the number of infant deaths and the number of vaccines.
http://het.sagepub.com/content/31/10/1012.abstract
Both twins die after vaccines.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17654772
“babies died at a rate nearly eight times greater than normal within 3 days after getting a DPT vaccination.”
“Vaccinated babies died at a higher rate than non-vaccinated babies”
“African–American infants are at greater risk of dying relative to White infants…”
??????
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3170075/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3170075/
I’ve probably read the vast majority of those studies claiming to find a “link” between vaccines and autism, and guess what? They’re all crap. I can tell you why they’re crap too. I’ve actually analyzed quite a few of those studies right here on this very blog and demonstrated why those studies are crap. The search bar is there if you have the courage to challenge your preconceived beliefs.
Child polio death rate was 2-5%.
So if 1 out of 4000 = bad isn’t 200 out of 4000 dying of polio worse (5% rate)? Why is the one child dying an issue but not the 200 (leaving aside the non fatal injuries suffered)?
Orac, great job on the post! As a fellow scientist who’s been having to answer text after text re: this silly “documentary”, thanks for taking the time to do the write-up.
Fake news! Your false claim to have debunked the “myth” that medical error are the 3rd leading cause of death, is in fact, a lie. And I picked the claim that you seemed most proud of debunking to investigate.
Here’s a link to a faith based source you can trust proving it:
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/22/medical-errors-third-leading-cause-of-death-in-america.html
Compare that to your hysterical indoctrinated ranting:
“At this point, I can’t resist mentioning that medical error is not the third leading cause of death. Not even close. That’s a myth that just won’t die. (It’s my duty to point that out any time someone parrots that idiocy.)”
If you can be so wrong with such a simple fact, maybe it’s time for a new career? Or at least switch to psychology and understand the concept of “projecting.” Sad, (and sick) guy!
Hahahaha! A news article? Sorry, that proves nothing. Since you asked, though…
https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2016/05/16/do-medical-errors-really-kill-a-quarter-of-a-million-people-a-year-in-the-us/
https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2019/02/13/medical-errors-2019/
https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2020/02/10/medical-error-third-most-common-cause-of-death/
You won’t bother to read them, of course, but my posts are more “fact-based” than your citation. Of course, I linked to two of these posts in the very sentence you quote. You obviously didn’t bother to click on the links, silly person.
What is it with you folks and the “Fake news!!” knee-jerk? Get some new material
Steven Novella MD has also rebutted the Plandemic video.
https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/skeptical-of-plandemic/
My sense is that people are just overloaded, and are responding emotionally to this propaganda film
@ Truth Seeker
You write: “No one expects 100% effectiveness with no side effects, or rather, no one I’ve spoken to on the topic does. What many people hope for is the right to choose what goes into their own and their children’s bodies, without being publicly shamed and stigmatized. We all acknowledge there is risk involved here, and some think it higher than others. Where there’s risk, there should be choice. And the constant propagandist approach from “pro-vaxxers” has only led to animosity from both sides of the discussion.”
First and foremost your rights end at my nose. You have NO right to be incubating an infection that can harm others, especially those who can’t be vaccinated, e.g., autoimmune diseases, undergoing chemotherapy, too young. We live in communities. They have the right to go shopping, to school, to parks. Have you heard of quarantine, goes back to Middle Ages when ship came to port, even if no one with symptoms, was not allowed to land. And you don’t have the right to choose to put alcohol in your body if you drive. I realize its not the same; but the point is we don’t have absolute right to determine what we do with our bodies.
And things go into our bodies daily that we don’t choose. Polluted air, coliform in water, etc.
I suggest to buy a deserted island and move to it. There you can do as you like, not showing any consideration for the welfare of others.
@ Orac’s May 7, 5:16 p.m. post
…and yet you fail to state exactly WHAT it is about vaccines that you know more about than she does…nor do you disclose WHAT exactly you understand about molecular biology that makes her claims erroneous??? Interesting?
I don’t know if any of your character assassination is true or not. But you missed the thing that proves she’s a liar beyond the slightest doubt. It’s so simple, even a moron like you should have found it. The fact that you missed the best proof against her makes us suspect that you’re not being completely honest, as usual. Your typically moronic words bashing her thus abet her deception.
Oh, boy, I missed this entry from the owner of the U.S.
Hey, John’s back. And he’s less spittle-flecked than usual. Lupron? Haldol?
This piece of writing is not compelling. Statements made seem ‘short sighted’ (ie: ignorant) … I wanted to vomit when the writer said that no place has collapsed. I guess he/she doesn’t understand money or the economic impact of the Federal Reserve becoming the buyer and lender of last resort. The millions of people who lost their businesses or income suddenly. The tremendous burden that all this stimulus money will put on the average citizen. Supply chain disruptions. Etc. …. The idea that this might have happened for a nefarious purpose is worth looking into since the mainstream is going to a heck of a lot of trouble to shut down an contrary opinions, clearly manipulating death tolls, and using financial incentives to get patients treatment that hurt rather than help. … And don’t forget that many of the players influencing policy decisions do not have clean hands (meaning that are financially interested parties) — which is a conflict of interest and should disqualify them: Fauci, Gates, et al.
Would you like to squeeze any more conspiracy theories into your comment?
I could suggest a few, because we need more laughs.
Perhaps you should actually read the article before commenting. This behavior of not reading an article, not mentioning what was written in error and using lots of off topic claims is quite common: http://thesciencepost.com/study-70-of-facebook-commenters-only-read-the-headline/
@Chris
That’s a funny article! And a funny site.
I can only suppose that Sheila is missing access to her favourite gym, and is using the Comments thread here as a substitute for the elliptical trainer.
It’s easy to mistake the hyperbolic trainer for an elliptical trainer. It explains their failure to follow up to replies: one comment and they’re gone. I’d better get back to running laps on my Mobius track.
You are probably right!
I suggest that you start with Bretton Woods, work your way to the Nixon shock, and then climb the ladder to the present before worrying about the Fed “becoming” the lender of last resort.
“clearly manipulating death tolls”
Come to New York City to work in the hospital with me. No need to wear a mask… You’ll see the deaths better.
Just to let people know, this post above from 5/7/20 at 7:15pm is not mine.
Where is Dr Fauci’s financial interest? If you mean his patents, you can look them up in any number of places and see that while he is listed as the inventor, or one of the inventors, the assignee, meaning who holds the rights to the patent, or the applicant if it’s pending approval, is the United States. Patents produced by federal employees on government time, using government resources, or with substantial help from government employees are automatically assigned to the US Government. In Dr Fauci’s case the US is represented by the Secretary of Health and Human Services. The government has the right to dismiss its claims to the patent if the patent is not of interest or involvement of governmental resources was trivial, but then it keeps a royalty-free right to make use of it.
Any patent of his that the government hasn’t claimed would be one that was done with his own time or his own resources, or is so unimportant that it was decided he might as well keep it.
For more details, you can find my comment farther up the page.
Perhaps the confusion regarding RFK, Jr is because people don’t realize that comparing vaccines to the Holocaust is not a compliment to vaccines?
Of course, one explanation could be that those who claim that RFK Jr. is not antivax just because he says he’s not antivax can think that because they actually think the Holocaust was not a bad thing? I mean, there is a not inconsiderable overlap between white nationalists and COVID-19 truthers and antivaxxers.
Orac, Do you think there is a connection between the high death rates in Italy, the low death rate in Germany and the fact that Italy have a mandatory forced vaccination program and Germany does not (until this year) ? It not what do you base your opinion on?
Lalaland, if you are capable of the mathematical reasoning, what would happen to the death rate per cases diagnosed if you tested everyone in the country? Alternatively, what would happen to the death rate per cases diagnosed if you only tested people who were ill enough to require hospitalisation?
If the answer escapes you, the first page of a search engine will provide the answer. Try typing in ‘germany low death rate from coronavirus’.
NumberWang, being an engineer I believe I am capable of mathematical reasoning. Germany and Italy have respectably about 90 mil and about 60 mil citizens. Germany have tested about 2.7 mil and italy about 2.5 mil. So Italy have tested more per 1000 citizens that Germany have. This means that according to you statement Italy should have a lower death rate per? If we look at the death rate per citizen of the country instead I believe we get a better comparison. What is the difference in the way the health system work? We all have to agree that vaccines are an integrated part of a countries healthcare strategy. So what is the difference between countries like Germany and Italy? Is there any studies on the vaccine usage and forced vaccinations? Or what about the intake of Vitamins, like vitamin D. Look at Sweden. No lock-down and still no higher death rate per case compared to UK with full lock-down. What is the difference? As an engineer I look for the cause when I have a symptom, I do not try to fix the symptom. There is no shame in admitting that players in Big pharma and the medical establishment have been wrong. It took about 30 years from Ignaz Semmelweis claimed that washing hands had an effect on spreading disease, until the established group of surgeons and doctors finally accepted that they where wrong and he was right. Until that point he was not seen as nothing else than a nutcase and a quacker. Hmm.. I have read about others with that label.
Lalaland, did you follow the second part of my post? The first part of my post stands. Testing everyone or just testing suspected cases produces different percentages. You are correct that it doesnt explain the low death rate in Germany. However, Germany came down like a ton of bricks once they started, testing, isolation, tracing on a national basis. Italy didn’t. No doubt there are multiple other factors as well but you want to focus on one. Have you checked actual German vaccination rates? Or just assumed that not mandatory means not had? How about UK vs Germany? We dont have any mandatory vaccinations and our deaths are also massively higher than Germany.
In other words ‘I think you ‘ll find its a lot more complicated than that’.
[…] Here’s a decently thorough debunking by surgical oncologist David […]
AS I write…
Ben Collins ( NBC News) MSNBC
Social media conspiracy theorists have Covid ER/ ICU doctors fed up. and demoralised.
Companies like facebook should be more active in curtailing BS.
Even if what you claim has merit…You ooze of arrogance. ?
That’s nice. At least my arrogance is somewhat earned, contrary to Dr. Mikovits’ arrogance.?
Whew! What did I just read?
I mean the comments, not the blog post. It’s as if someone called in the flying monkey brigade to the post. I wonder who could do that? Who’s done that before?
You say “that is the problem with private institutes run by wealthy philanthropists. If the philanthropists are fixated on one idea, they’ll hire people and fund research looking for evidence to support that idea” I think that is the caso for Bill Gates an friends, don’t you agree?
No, I don’t agree. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funds many different things, not just vaccines. The two are not single issue philanthropists.
[…] up with this very dubious-sounding story," said Dr. David Gorski, a surgical oncologist who blogs about medical disinformation and has called Mikovits a scammer […]
Conspiracy theories comes from a term Made up by the CIA to cover up the truth that someone might find out the real truth. It started when they assassinated JFK… https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCthJtvcJZQgfCHG9QOWXjqw PLEASE WATCH ALL episodes 12 of them… I happen to believe dr Judy M.
Actually, the claim that the CIA invented the term “conspiracy theory” in order to discredit JFK assassination conspiracy theorists is in itself a conspiracy theory. The term “conspiracy theory” dates back to at least the late 1800s. https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/03/16/did-the-cia-invent-the-term-conspiracy-theory/
The OED traces “conspiracy” back as far as “c1386 Chaucer Monk’s T. 621 Brutus and Cassius‥Ful prively hath made conspiracie Agains this Julius in subtil wise.”
Good piece but the real fun is in these comments. I hope enough of them are just internet trolls pulling your leg rather than people who actually believe their bs 🙂
Does anyone know whether these “healing microbes” in the ocean are limited to oceans or just any saltwater ocean connected body? It’s that I live close to the English Channel and would like to get me some (we’re allowed to walk on the beach so no biggie on getting me some). Is there a recommended distance from the water, amount of exposure? BTW it’s a pebble beach so unfortunately enough I might miss out on the soil sequences 🙁
I have no idea what she’s talking about. I once had a massage where the person giving it claimed that the process drew ‘negative energies’ out of the body of the person being massaged and that at the end of each day she went to the ocean and soaked her hands in the water to release the ‘negative energy’ otherwise she would have contracted arthritis.
I shouldn’t even make this joke but my sister had boils as a kid, swimming in the ocean seemed to clear them up. Maybe they can try injecting salt water into the lungs ?
@ Chris
Yep, read “The Great Mortality”, even own it, just one of half dozen books I have on the plague. It also demonstrates the old adage: “none are so blind who fail to see.” Jews were dying en masse just as everyone else during the plague. Reminds me of a number of commenters who don’t really read what Orac or others write; but see what they want to see
Jews did die, but they weren’t as affected.
It turns out that following the hygiene rules in the Talmud was highly effective at lowering the spread of Plague. In fact, when Poland gave sanctuary to persecuted jews, although it suffered an outbreak, it was one of the less affected countries.
@ Julian Frost
I love it when people split hairs. Enough Jews were dying that it was impossible to not notice. That was the point I was making, nothing more, nothing less. And the hygiene rules only went so far. Rats in the attic still carried the plague and fleas jump around. Bathing once a week, washing ones hands, etc. all nice; but they don’t stop rats and fleas. In addition, Jews were often isolated in ghettos, so maybe the plague just didn’t reach them.
From JewishHistory.org “The Black Death”:
“It is hard to tell whether proportionally more Jews died from the plague or the persecutions. The Christians claimed that the Jews died at only half the rate. Even if true, it would then be about 20% of the Jewish population who died from the plague.
It’s obvious something’s amiss right up front when she says Larry Kramer hated Tony Fauci. That’s true, sort of, but anybody who knows anything about AIDS in the 80s and ACT UP knows that ultimately, Kramer came around to respect and love Dr. Fauci, they became personal friends, and have stayed so to this day. There was a story about Kramer published in the NY Times not two weeks ago that referenced their decades-long friendship. If suggesting that the enmity were still there were the worst lie in that craptastic piece of nonsense, it might be ok, but that was only the tip of one enormous iceberg of bullshit. Thanks for taking it down.
[…] Here’s a decently thorough debunking by surgical oncologist David […]
First, I want to state that at this point, I have no reason to believe or disbelieve Dr. Mikovits’ story. I’m simply intrigued that it’s being silenced in social media, and I’d like to understand why.
I’m particularly interested in two of your statements. The first is made in the paragraph starting with “As you might imagine, the story sounds very fishy.” and ending with, “…because antivax grifters gonna grift.” Actually, as a reader discovering Dr. Mikovits’ film and any arguments for and against it for the first time this evening, I wouldn’t imagine her story sounding any particular way. This paragraph is where you needed to hit a home run for me by refuting her story with evidence, such as by establishing that she had a pre-existing axe to grind with Fauci. Instead, you led me to believe that because Dr. Fauci could have communicated his wishes in a different way, he did not communicate them in the way Dr. Mikovits described. To me, this is not a convincing argument. Also, I don’t think her mentioning Bill Gates in a discussion of big money transfers is refuted by your ad hominem. Even if the anti-vaccine position is incorrect, that Dr. Mikovits holds that position does not establish the invalidity of her description of the events presented in this paragraph of your essay. So, with no evidence to corroborate or refute this portion of her story, I’ll have to look elsewhere.
The second statement that interests me is the paragraph that starts, “Oh, and hydroxychloroquine makes an appearance, too, because of course it does.” My understanding is that although clinical trials have not been conducted, there is plentiful anecdotal evidence that it is helping people. Five people in my circle of friends and acquaintances became ill with COVID-19, and all survived. I know that four of them were treated with HCQ; i don’t know about the fifth. I know that three of them saw rapid improvement after being treated with HCQ; they believe it saved their lives. My understanding is that in spite of questionable studies, HCQ successes are widely reported. Unfortunately, the nature of HCQ reporting seems split along political lines–reports from conservative sources are nearly all optimistic, and reports from liberal sources are nearly all pessimistic. I am highly skeptical of both political extremes in our polarized society. My hunch is always that the truth lies somewhere between them. Therefore, I conclude that there is at least some valid anecdotal evidence in support of the use of HCQ. In my dictionary, “anecdotal” is not a synonym for “false”.
Again, anyone can say anything. I’ll keep searching for evidence to help me evaluate Dr. Mikovits’ claims.
Here you go: https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=Mikovits+site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.virology.ws%2F
You can also listen to the older TWiV podcasts that discuss her work.
“In my dictionary, “anecdotal” is not a synonym for “false”.”
By the way anecdotes are actually also not data. The problem is that do not know if they are real or false. Learn the definitions of “subjective” and “objective” evidence, and why the latter is more important.
Thanks for your reply. I don’t question that Dr. Mikovits has held one or more incorrect positions in her virology career. But that would have nothing to do with the first issue I discussed in my post. If, for example, she claimed in the video that her findings regarding CFS were correct, then: 1) the scientific record would demonstrate that claim to be false; and 2) the viewer would be compelled to look at other claims she makes in the video with skepticism. But each claim would have to be examined on its own. This is simply the way logical arguments work. Her description of how Dr. Fauci obtained her paper isn’t refuted convincingly by this article. I haven’t yet looked for information that corroborates it.
Anecdotal evidence is considered within the scope of the scientific method when it’s empirical and verifiable. Science compels us to look on HCQ success stories with proper skepticism, not pessimism, so positive anecdotal evidence should motivate clinical trials. Again, optimistic and pessimistic views regarding HCQ fall along political party lines, but politics has no place in scientific inquiry. Further, a compassionate view of human suffering should inspire us to be thankful that success with HCQ is often reported.
“Anecdotal evidence is considered within the scope of the scientific method when it’s empirical and verifiable. ”
And there is a large unbiased sample size. I am sorry, but you do not know what you are talking about.
“My understanding is that although clinical trials have not been conducted, there is plentiful anecdotal evidence that it is helping people.”
There HAVE been controlled studies of hydrochloroquine. For instance, this one: https://www.contagionlive.com/news/preprint-results-of-hydroxychloroquine-use-among-va-health-systems- (This is a pre-print as the full article is still in the review process). I’ve heard a number of medical staff that have found the contrary as they hope to duplicate the positive anecdotal results and found, often, it made matters worse due to cardiac issues.
This may be all you need to read.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2011/10/chronic-fatigue-syndrome-researcher-fired-amidst-new-controversy
Thanks for your reply. If the topic of Dr. Mikovits’ film were support of her CFS findings, then I would agree. But this isn’t even mentioned in the film, so I disagree. A person’s holding correct or incorrect views with regard to one issue does not determine the correctness or incorrectness of their views with regard to another issue.
You said it perfectly right!
So right that I won’t bother commenting on this article(for now). Though I am also still researching, I came to the wrong place because this guy and his sources are ALL biased. You open their pandora box and they (he) come out as they really are. I need a reputable serious site to find information I can trust and asses from a neutral perspective.
Do let us know if you find one.
It is true that Orac is biased – heavily biased in favour of sound science and solid evidence. Woe betide you if you fail on either score!
Asses…….snigger.
You say that this blog is all bias ….so you’re off to find another source that will uphold your preconceived notions? But that source won’t be biassed?
Do let us know if you find some.
You didn’t address her “gag” order. The one that prevented her from warning us about the planned pandemic and Fauci, you know until just this very moment, conveniently when she discovered this latest grift.
What gag order?
The reason her study couldn’t be replicated was not due to fraud, but due to an unknown lab contamination (see Discover article below). After numerous follow-up studies, including one that she participated in, it was confirmed as the cause and put the mouse virus theory to rest, although, she still suspects that another type of retrovirus might be the cause of some modern disease.. That said, her relationship with her last employer was explosive – her boss was also a moron and she should never have been jailed. Who knows what really happened there, but it was due to an acrimonious relationship, not her trying to cover something up. Which obviously she didn’t, since she participated in the final study that put her theory to rest.
an unknown lab contamination
That is, someone contaminated six blood samples with XMRV plasmid. Coincidentally, the six that happened to have come from donors with ME-CFS. The only person who knew which samples were which happened to be Judy Mikovits.
I strongly suspect that a lot of the people who buy into the fake conspiracy theories are able to do so because they think everyone else is as vicious, greedy, and amoral as they are so they have no trouble believing the worst about anybody.
I’m absolutely certain that the Acting President feels that way.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31607599/ She lied about the results of this project concerning respiratory virus interference among Dept. of Defence personnel. The conclusion was that the flu vaccine did not cause it. Why would I believe anything else she says.
Earlier today I kept telling people that Judy Mikovitz reminds me of Mercola – a guy that peddled(s?) pseudoscience against soybeans for The Weston A Price Foundation (heavily funded by big beef and dairy industries back when soy started becoming a big competitor). Haven’t paid attention to him in years.
In college, for about a year, I had a hobby of debunking his soy studies (we’re talking ~ 15 years ago), which as a vegetarian, ppl plagued me with. It annoyed me so much, I started digging. His studies on soy are embarrassingly grift. Maybe you’ve already addressed him (first time I’ve read your blog and I’m already digging it).
I highly recommend you read his papers on soy, just for the laughs. The methods horrific and his conclusions didn’t even follow. He literally pulled conclusions out of his…. The methods literally made zero sense. Like he just enjoyed watching rats with their ovaries removed, die of starvation (I’ll let you be the judge of whether or not my description is apt).
None of it was peer reviewed of course.
Anyway, I decided to type her name into YouTube and there it was: Mercola interviewing her a year ago. I nearly died laughing. I just cannot UNSEE that.
Grifters always find a way to find each other. I think trump may have praised her. ?
@ Winter Snow
Thanks for the heads up on Mercola’s article on Soy. Found it on Huff Post. Yep, soy must be unhealthy. I’ve been a vegetarian for 55 years, now mid-70s and consume lots of soy milk, veggie burgers of soy, tofu, etc. My blood pressure is low and also my total cholesterol and my BMI is 23. Probably combination of diet, exercise, and good genes; but I love my vanilla soy milk on cereal, tofu scramble, etc. If you know of any other articles related to Mercola and soy, please post.
By the way, there is an article on Science-Based Medicine about Mercola:
Joseph Albietz on October 16, 2009 “9 Reasons to
Completely Ignore Joseph Mercola”
Joel, aka Soy Boy! Fermented soy is the better option according to Dr. Mercola. https://probiotics.mercola.com/fermented-vs-unfermented-soy.html
@ Natalie White
Who gives a shit what Mercola says? He has NO credibility. And I eat both unfermented and fermented soy.
By the way, did you read my post where I totally destroyed your claim virus leaked from Wuhan Lab? Summary, studies in 2015 found 3% of population had antibodies to various coronaviruses which exist as large number of serotypes in bats. And genome sequencing of SARS-COV-2 found close to several bat coronavirus genomes, only a minor couple of mutations. So, with 1000s of coronaviruses in bats, people living close to them, showing with antibodies many exposed to, and genome sequence very close to several, the more logical explanation is that nature is quite capable of creating nasty microbes.
As usual, you believe what you choose to believe. And, as I mentioned, you show contempt for the American system of justice that claims someone is innocent until proven guilty. I would hate to have you on a jury. You would ignore either the prosecution or the defense and vote based on your belief, ignoring the evidence. Just to repeat: You are a despicable excuse for a human being and a moron.
OT – is there a way to restore the old layout or at least to get a more sensible one? I am reading this on a regular PC and have a column of text, a third the width of the screen, the rest is empty.
It is the same with me on Pale Moon 28.8.2.1 even with all scripts and font allowed.
The problem is fixed with Firefox 74.0b2.
I guess some wordpress module changed or something that is not so backwards compatable.
I loath updating for the sake of it so what I’d do if I were you is get a standalone version of your ‘daily driver’ or some other browser and try it out — nothing wrong with two browsers running at the same time (just…please, please, please not Chrome or Edge).
This blog post has been repeated at the Science Based Medicine blog. There it is explained that Orac had to get to a bare bones version by removing many plug-ins. Just go over there.
[…] up with this story that sounds really dubious,” said Dr. David Gorski, a surgical oncologist who blogs about medical disinformation and has dubbed Mikovits a “COVID-19” […]
You’ve been disgraced and discredited over and over again. Why feed off naive peoples emotions?
You are pitiful and should be ashamed peddling your snake oil and hoaxes you LOON.
Unproven and even discounted conspiricies are the enemy of the people. Which puts you right up there with Don – a terrorist.
You k ow not what you do. But you should just get a job.
Whom are you addressing? Orac, or Mikovits?
Don King? That can’t be right. Dons Shula, Rickles, Cornelius, Ho, Larsen, Ameche, and Pardo are no longer in the running, as it were. Do clarify.
[…] this story that sounds actually doubtful,” stated Dr. David Gorski, a surgical oncologist who blogs about medical disinformation and has dubbed Mikovits a “COVID-19” […]
There’s only one solution – put Judy Mikovits in court.
She’s making staggering accusations that incur libel at least
“Plandemic” was a transparent attempt to push her book for personal financial gain. Her promotional “interview” worked, sadly. Her hardcover book is now number one on Amazon’s best sellers list. Her agenda is quite clear to folks who can connect a couple dots.
It’s not often that one sees a putatively serious hardcover for $16.71 new. How many pages does this thing have?
Thank you for writing extensively about the plandemic video and saving me some time in doing dreaded research. Who would have thought adults around the world would be having passionate discussions regarding medical research? Our childhood selves would be shocked. I wish less of you would use insults in your criticisms. You immediately convert your opponent to the opposite point of view when you do so.
I lean towards the view that plandemic promotes conspiracy theories but more because of psychology than facts, though I’ve heard some great counterpoints to the plandemic narrative. For one a conspiracy theorist believes they are the victim who is being silenced which we all feed into when we take down their videos or mock them. I hate to say it but we have to listen respectfully to people with these views in order to let them feel less alienated and victimized.
The proliferation of these views is also a failure of communication by scientists and doctors. How many of us have gone to multiple doctors to get a diagnosis? Or felt like the only reason a doctor suggested a diagnostic test was to bilk us of our money? It has absolutely happened to me and my family members. An initial suspicion of the motives for doctors orders is enough to distrust the industry as a whole. Further, we aren’t really inclined to read scientific journals, articles or studies. The plandemic video was attractive, had moody dramatic music and lighting, and creative a narrative compelling enough to have found its way into my unhappy eyes. The “victim of the deep state” narrative taps into all of our fears as we start to feel like the truth is a commodity for the elite, of which I’m including those well educated in science. This is a failure on many levels surrounding education, trust in our government and our treatment in the health care system.
But without the vitriol and mockery, maybe this is a good thing. We are deeply investigating many aspects of our health care. We are no longer accepting whatever our doctors give us since when we do that we end up with the opioid epidemic. If people are worried about vaccines then let’s research them again. And again if we need to. I keep hearing my friend say she and everyone she knows gets sick after the flu vaccine. Let’s do a better job of explaining why instead of calling her stupid.
Thank you again for taking the time to discuss this issue.
How does testing “bilk [you] of [your] money”? If you have copays, they’re not going to the doctor who ordered them, they’re going to your insurance carrier. And what has forced you to go doctor-shopping?
[…] to make a number of other, bewildering claims, as Dr. David Gorski of the blog Respectful Insolence points out: “Indeed, the amount of nonsense, misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy mongering in […]
Can someone (politely, without nastiness) please explain the entire conclusion of the Dept of Defence study, as it seems contradictory to me as a layperson. One the one hand is says “Receipt of influenza vaccination was not associated with virus interference among our population.” Shortly afterwards is says “Vaccine derived virus interference was significantly associated with coronavirus and human metapneumovirus”.
https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2020/03/31/coronavirus-viral-interference/
*it* x 2 typo, please correct
This is a quite amusing take down as well, another Dr warrior for evidence based medicine
https://youtu.be/KHeg9DDrjMs
[…] to make a number of other, bewildering claims, as Dr. David Gorski of the blog Respectful Insolence points out: “Indeed, the amount of nonsense, misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy mongering in […]
Mikovits’ book was published mid-April 2020 — less than a month ago. The video clip is a trailer for movie to be released in the summer of 2020, a couple of months from now.
Somebodies put together a successful marketing campaign to sell books and movie tickets. #itsallaboutthebuzz
Can you comment on why people I thought were knowledgeable are supporting her? Are there any valid points in her arguments? Why are some Naturopaths supporting her?
Because they’re naturopaths and naturopaths are quacks, perhaps?
When I was a professor of medicine back in the 1980s we had a little joke;
“What do we call alternative medicine that works?”
We call it medicine.
Quite a lot of pharmaceutical product was discovered by indigenous herbalists, and then transferred to Western medicine without credit by anthropologists. One of the most well known practitioners of “ethnobotany” was Richard Evans Schultes of Harvard.
In the late 1970s I was with some grad students from the University of California to record a Yucatec Cha Chak rain ceremony. All the men had to take a drink called Bal Che, literally translated “Holy Tree.”
It was a euphoric and mild hallucinogen.
I checked on my students, and warned them to not try any “extra.” One remarked, “I LOVE anthropology! Pagan rituals in a jungle setting with drugs unknown to science.”
A “naturopath” to the extent they promote good nutrition, exercise et cetera is not a quack. It is if they extend their claims to absurd lengths they become quacks, and dangerous.
Does this beverage have any known psychoactive components other than EtOH? There’s a certain absinthey ring to it.
I know one good naturo. She’s a great resource when I have patients ask about supplements, where to buy them, what companies are FDA/or independent lab tested, etc. I like talking with her and getting her perspective. She will be the first to say “There’s no science behind this, but…” That’s fine.
The two others I personally know were people who couldn’t even get into a Caribbean medical school. They carry a tremendous amount of animosity around over this and look for ways to “Get back” at “Mainstream medicine” for “Shunning them.” That should tell you all you need to know. They went to these online, ahem, “schools” as a way to throw a brick through the window of the system rather than seeking out a calling more suited to their talents.
Want more anecdotes? I get patients coming into the clinic with these bizarre laboratory study forms asking me to order them on behalf of their naturo in the desperate hope insurance will cover them. Some of these “tests” cost upwards of $3500 APIECE. There was another one recently shut down in my neck of the woods for illegally performing invasive procedures involving baking soda injections or some other such nonsense.
I could go on and on…
Dave Corsello: “I am highly skeptical of both political extremes in our polarized society. My hunch is always that the truth lies somewhere between them.”
I’m highly skeptical of the idea that truth in science and medicine is found in a magical middle ground between evidence-based practice and flaming woo-nuttery.
Thanks for your reply. Please demonstrate: 1) that Dr. Mikovits’ description of how Dr. Fauci obtained her report is false; 2) that anecdotal evidence for success with HCQ is invalid; and 3) that partisan politics plays no part in popular views of HCQ. “Woo-nuttery” sounds like ad hominem to me. But I could be mistaken; perhaps its power as a pejorative is sufficient to free it from the rules of logic.
1) It’s up to Mikovits and her supporters to demonstrate her claims about Fauci have validity. They have failed to do so.
2) The hype about hydroxychloroquine has fallen far short of reality, as you’d know if you had been paying attention.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/07/hydroxychloroquine-fails-to-help-hospitalized-coronavirus-patients-in-us-government-funded-study.html
3) Partisan politics undoubtedly has had a role in the promotion of hydroxychloroquine (with Trump and his fans endorsing it as a quick way out of the pandemic), but actual science is far less favorable.
4) Woo-nuttery is a relatively kind term for the conspiracy blather Mikovits et al are pumping out.
Again, there isn’t a safe and reliable ground midway between a) sound science and evidence-based medical practice, and b) flaming bullshit.
Sorry about the “ad hominem”. 🙂
But first you must demonstrate you can read and understand studies. Show us all the PubMed indexed studies on HCQ published in 2020 that show it works well.
Then demonstrate you can search a website, an example: https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/?s=hydroxychloroquine+coronavirus
Because your demands are ridiculous and continue to show that you do not understand how science works.
You demands are ridiculous and continue to show you do not know how this science stuff works. Unfortunately politics do get in the way of science, often with very bad results. Essentially lawyers should not make policies based on the “feelings.”
Right now you should show us all the PubMed indexed studies published in 2020 that show HCQ has a positive impact on the present pandemic. We require actual factual scientific evidence, not a bunch of random anecdotes.
Perhaps you should also demonstrate that you can navigate a blog you are commenting on. For example, how to use its search function: https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/?s=hydroxychloroquine+coronavirus
Sorry for the double post, this blog is touchy when it is overloaded with much woo-nuttery.
Dangerous Bacon,
“1) It’s up to Mikovits and her supporters to demonstrate her claims about Fauci have validity. They have failed to do so.”
Of course the burden of proof is on Dr. Mikovits. I indicated that I understand this in my original post. My point here is that the original post in this thread fails to invalidate her description of how Dr. Fauci received her report.
“2) The hype about hydroxychloroquine has fallen far short of reality, as you’d know if you had been paying attention.”
Yes, I agree that HCQ has not been proven to be effective in treating COVID-19, i.e., it has not passed clinical trials for this use. It’s also my understanding that it’s not effective in treating advanced COVID disease. But I know that anecdotal evidence supports its effectiveness in treating less-than-advanced disease. Again, 3 out of 5 infected people I know experienced rapid improvement in their COVID symptoms immediately after starting HCQ treatment. You haven’t addressed or refuted my position.
“3) Partisan politics undoubtedly has had a role in the promotion of hydroxychloroquine (with Trump and his fans endorsing it as a quick way out of the pandemic), but actual science is far less favorable.”
In my original post I stated that partisan views on HCL go both ways. What disturbs me about left-leaning views on the drug is that they appear to favor political advantage over compassion for human suffering. I would expect compassionate liberals to acknowledge that success with HCQ would be a wonderful thing.
“4) Woo-nuttery is a relatively kind term for the conspiracy blather Mikovits et al are pumping out.
Again, there isn’t a safe and reliable ground midway between a) sound science and evidence-based medical practice, and b) flaming bullshit.”
Sorry, your pejoratives simply do not strengthen your position. I offer the following info which you might want to consult as you formulate your arguments:
https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/academic_writing/logic_in_argumentative_writing/fallacies.html
You don’t have “anecdotal evidence,” you have random hearsay.
Dave, HCQ is an actively dangerous drug. If it cannot show success against covid 19 then it is dangerous to give it unnecessarily. I may be misreading you but it feels like you are advocating general prescription of HCQ……on the off chance.
I get the hunch that Dave is in fact only highly sceptical of one of the political extremes.
[…] Judy Mikovits in Plandemic: An antivax conspiracy theorist becomes a COVID-19 grifter […]
( AoA, today)
Anne Dachel provides a transcript of an April panel discussion ( probably not free) about Covid-19 and vaccines with Mikovits, Wakefield, Kennedy, Tenpenny, Bigtree, the Bollingers and Rashid Buttar. All the luminaries in one convenient place.
Grifters gotta grift.
Where’s the “Antivaxxers are mostly wrong but academic elitism is just as dangerous” section? I’m new.
Perhaps start your own blog and enlighten us with your thoughts on that subject. Until, do not tell a blogger what to write.
@ Rando
So what do you mean by “academic elitism?” ORAC has a medical degree, including courses in microbiology and immunology. He has numerous scientific peer-reviewed publications and federal grants. I, not even close to being as accomplished as he is, have some education in microbiology, immunology and extensive education and training in social psychology, educational psychology, research methods, philosophy of science, epidemiology, biostatistics, history and current status of infectious diseases, etc.
How is it “elitism” to defer to those who have the education and training? So, I guess you don’t go to doctors when sick? If you were on a city council deciding to build a bridge, wouldn’t defer to those with training in structural engineering? Maybe we should eliminate degrees in various subjects as anyone who devotes time, energy, and effort to mastering various subjects and thus gives their educated opinion would be, in your mind, guilty of elitism. We should give equal weight to those opinions with nothing behind them except personal beliefs???? Yikes!
You actually believe that it’s justifiable that “people are being arrested for overcrowding and refusing to social distance properly”? Wow, just wow. These guidelines are not laws, and even if they were enshrined in law they would be struck down on first challenge as unconstitutional.
You also are ignorant of the great amount of documentation about Covid deaths garnering larger amounts of reimbursement (so many references online it would be impossible to list them all here (Google is your friend), not to mention the fact that non-Covid patients are being denied treatment due to this current insane over-reaction to an illness. I work in an acute care facility and deal with Covid patients daily. I’m not afraid. And I am 67 years old; my husband has polycythemia vera and takes hydroxyurea to suppress his bone marrow. We are not cowering in fear. This entire hysteria is killing our country under the weight of non-scientific “guidelines” about not working, distancing and mask-wearing, and the government and other establishment authoritarians such as you are squarely to blame.
A. Several courts upheld stay at home at this point. States have pretty extensive power to act in the public health. Those that didn’t usually addressed specific issues.
B. If you’re not afraid from COVID-19, at your age and given your husband’s conditions, that seems like either ignorance or abundant optimism.
C. If you are claiming the deaths aren’t happening, that’s… unrealistic.
Okaaaay, here we go…I don’t paid a single cent more to code for COVID. No one is telling us to code for it, either. Not on the floor, not in the unit, not in the clinic.
You work in an acute care facility. Ok. How many patients have you received? Laboratory CONFIRMED cases? Those of us dealing with the aftermath of the kind of reckless disregard you champion would like to know.
I would like to see you having a debate on vaccines with Dr Judy Mikovitz and see who knows better. Did we see any of your discoveries in any magazines ? please enlighten us. The attempt to descredit her with 2 cents arguments shows how scared you are that People know the truth about vaccine and the corruption of BIP PHARMA . AND yes VACCINES ARE ASSOCIATED WITH AUTISM. Subject closed !
https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/?s=debate+vaccine
Have you read the article? Dr. Mikovits has no recent scientific credentials related to vaccines.
I agree that having a debate with someone willing to make up lies on the spot – as Dr. Mikovits appears to be – can put the more honest debater (Orac) at a disadvantage. That’s not because Dr. Mikovits knows more. Her comments – like claiming there are no vaccines against RNA viruses – suggest at best lack of knowledge (measles and polio are RNA viruses).
@ Doritmi
Yep, MMR vaccines for RNA viruses. Even undergraduates taking a first course in Microbiology know this, so why doesn’t Mikovitz? Check out Wikipedia articles on each of the MMR viruses. Articles include type of genome.
@ Rana Rayes
ORAC has numerous peer-reviewed journal article, not discoveries in magazines or newspapers. Do you know the difference?
And NO, vaccines aren’t associated with autism. Close to 20 well done studies in different nations have found NO association; but more and more about the genetics of autism is coming out.
Yep, Big Pharma is corrupt; but the FDA regulations for approving vaccines are in a league of their own, plus the best post-marketing surveillance of any product. In addition, researchers, public health experts, etc. in many different nations also support vaccinations. Do you really believe that ALL these professionals are willing to sacrifice the welfare of their nation’s children?
As for debates, they are mainly won or lost by personality, charisma, etc., not by focusing on the science. That is what medical journals, medical conferences, etc. are for.
“2 cent arguments”. Did you carefully read ORAC’s paper? Did you check out the hyperlinks? I did.
Just one more example of someone who can’t refute with science what someone writes; so resorts to hyperbolic meaningless language.
I, for one, have never heard of “Bip Pharma,” but it does sound suspicious.
Retraction Watch had posted some info about Mikovitz after noting that there was an unusual amount of interest/queries about her on their site. Now I can’t access it so I wonder if RW is now under attack too?
@ JDK
I just accessed Retraction Watch. So, its up and also mentions high volume problems
A quick glance suggests to me that the crazy over there is even worse than here. I don’t know why they’re even bothering to let them through.
Nice piece of writing. I applaud you for making it as far as you did watching, “Plandemic.” If there was a drinking game where people consumed a shot each time blatantly false information was presented in that video everybody who played would die of alcohol poisoning.
You’d end up in the ICU for sure unless you passed out before reaching a toxic blood alcohol level!
@ Orac is this site transparent , it seems not to be ? deleted comments HMMM
Transparent? Yes, it is. We can see through you just fine.
It is the same with me on Pale Moon 28.8.2.1 even with all scripts and font allowed.
The problem is fixed with Firefox 74.0b2.
I guess some wordpress module changed or something that is not so backwards compatable.
I loath updating for the sake of it so what I’d do if I were you is get a standalone version of your ‘daily driver’ or some other browser and try it out — nothing wrong with two browsers running at the same time (just…please, please, please not Chrome or Edge).
[…] Gorski has debunked the numerous claims in this video in his article on Respectful Insolence. PolitiFact also fact-checked this video and found it to be “full of false conspiracy theories […]
[…] Gorski has debunked the numerous claims in this video in his article on Respectful Insolence. PolitiFact also fact-checked this video and found it to be “full of false conspiracy theories […]
[…] this story that sounds really dubious,” said Dr. David Gorski, a surgical oncologist who blogs about medical disinformation and has dubbed Mikovits a “COVID-19” […]
Hi friend, I’m new to this blog. I found it while trying to finder info and counter arguments to the “Plandemic” video. I don’t see how you took my comment as a demand for the blogger to write something. I think in a different mood you would have seen it as a snarky jest about healthy skepticism.
Stay well.
You wrote: “Where’s the “Antivaxxers are mostly wrong but academic elitism is just as dangerous” section?”
If that was sarcasm it should be noted. But we get lots of people telling Orac what to write, sometimes on that subject.
Dangerous Bacon, regarding your point #1, of course, the burden of proof is on Dr. Mikovits. I think I made that clear in my original post. My point is simply that on two central arguments, the original post in this thread fails to invalidate her claims. Regarding your point #2, I would agree that HCQ has not been proven effective against COVID-19 (i.e., the drug has not passed clinical trials for this use). And, last I read, it has been reported to be ineffective in cases of advanced COVID disease. But you haven’t established that favorable anecdotal evidence is false. Again, of the 5 people I know who were infected, 3 showed rapid, dramatic improvement in symptoms as a result of HCQ. Regarding your point #3, of course, partisan attitudes towards HCQ run both ways. I made this clear in my original post. What I find particularly disappointing about left-leaning criticism of HCQ is that it appears to prefer political advantage over reported relief of human suffering. Regarding your point #4 and your closing remarks, your pejoratives simply do not enhance your logical position. You might find this information helpful as you put together future arguments: https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/academic_writing/logic_in_argumentative_writing/fallacies.html
It has not been established that HCQ was the proximate cause of their improvement. Just because 3 of 5 did get better after after having it does not mean they did so because of it. That’s what trials determine. If you care to look at this article (https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/hydroxychloroquine-ebm-sbm/), it links to several reputable studies and is much better at explaining than I am.
Perhaps you could benefit from a basic college freshman statistics course. Especially the first part of the course which deals is “sampling bias.”
“What I find particularly disappointing about left-leaning criticism of HCQ is that it appears to prefer political advantage over reported relief of human suffering.”
You have a golden opportunity here, don’t you see? What you have to do is keep lefties thinking that HCQ is ineffective and dangerous. All the righties, like you and your buddies, should go nuts binging on HCQ. That way all the lefties will perish of COVID-19 and only righties will be left!!! Within a year you will achieve your goal of world domination! So you’d best keep this to yourself, hoard HCQ and count down the days until the grand plan succeeds. But you will have to watch out for all those shifty centrists.
What I find particularly disappointing about left-leaning criticism of HCQ is that it appears to prefer political advantage over reported relief of human suffering.
During the Trojan War, Cassandra was probably accused of “preferring political advantage” or “being on the side of the Greeks” or “wanting the Greeks to win”, when she tried to point out the flaws in the strategy of hauling the big hollow wooden horse inside the walls of Troy.in order to end the war.
Are you familiar with the legal concept of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus?
I’m pretty impressed with the number of nutters who came out of the woodwork on this one….just in time to coincide with the change to the site as well.
It hasn’t been this exciting around here in months.
Thank you.
The change to the site was a consequence of the number of nutters who turned up.
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/plandemic-judy-mikovits-covid-19/
i just did a major upgrade to my system and reinstalled my various browsers. It was a bit of a stock when I got to Respectful Insolence.
[…] star interviewee Judy Mikovits’s work and criminal controversy, and Dr. David Gorski, does a thorough breakdown of the film’s distortions. Dr. Jennifer Kasten focuses on Mikovits’s claims about masks […]
Poor Dave Corsello.
“Of course the burden of proof is on Dr. Mikovits. I indicated that I understand this in my original post. My point here is that the original post in this thread fails to invalidate her description of how Dr. Fauci received her report.”
The meaning of the phrase “burden of proof” sadly eludes you.
It’s nifty that anecdotes support use of hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid-19 infection. You can find voluminous anecdotes on the Internet that support drinking or bathing in MMS (industrial bleach), using Rife machines and consuming one’s own urine. The point (which also escapes you) is that when anecdotes are unsupported or flatly contradicted by science, rational people go with the science.
Dave: “What disturbs me about left-leaning views on the drug is that they appear to favor political advantage over compassion for human suffering”
Dave: “Sorry, your pejoratives simply do not strengthen your position.”
🙂
“There are many here among us
Who feel your posts are but a joke”
Dangerous Bacon: “The meaning of the phrase “burden of proof” sadly eludes you”
Please explain.
DB: “It’s nifty that anecdotes support use of hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid-19 infection. You can find voluminous anecdotes on the Internet that support drinking or bathing in MMS (industrial bleach), using Rife machines and consuming one’s own urine. The point (which also escapes you) is that when anecdotes are unsupported or flatly contradicted by science, rational people go with the science.”
Now we’re getting somewhere. Yes, please explain how anecdotal evidence, reported by medical doctors and acknowledged by Dr. Fauci early on, that HCQ has been found to be effective in treating COVID-19 is refuted by science. I’m already aware of the heart arrhythmia side effect and that it’s been found to be ineffective with advanced COVID disease. I’m also aware that in one study, patients treated with hydroxychloroquine had a higher rate of death than those who weren’t treated with the drug. But I’m also aware that that study was not a randomized clinical trial. What are your thoughts on this report of positive results?
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hydroxychloroquine-coronavirus-covid-19-treatment-turkey/
And again, what are your thoughts regarding 3 out of 5 of my acquaintances who were infected seeing rapid improvement immediately after beginning HCQ treatment?
I don’t believe it’s reasonable to state at this point that anecdotes are unsupported or flatly contradicted by science where HCQ is concerned. If that were the case, why would Novartis have launched a Phase III trial in late April?
https://www.genengnews.com/news/novartis-plans-phase-iii-trial-of-hydroxychloroquine-for-covid-19/
Are the reports on bleach and urine you mentioned also made by medical doctors and acknowledged by Fauci? If so, I’m interested. Please provide sources.
DB: “Dave: “What disturbs me about left-leaning views on the drug is that they appear to favor political advantage over compassion for human suffering”
Dave: “Sorry, your pejoratives simply do not strengthen your position.”
Agreed. That was unnecessarily pejorative. I’ll rephrase. Optimistic and pessimistic views regarding HCQ fall along political party lines, but politics has no place in scientific discussion. Further, I believe that a compassionate view of human suffering should inspire us to be thankful that success with HCQ is often reported. Until the Novartis trial is completed, all of us have probably jumped the gun by supporting or not supporting the use of HCQ for COVID-19 and exposed not rational devotion to science, but political bias.
Here’s an interesting article on political polarization over HCQ:
http://bostonreview.net/science-nature-politics/cailin-oconnor-james-owen-weatherall-hydroxychloroquine-and-political
DB: “There are many here among us Who feel your posts are but a joke”
Yeah, I get it. These discussions can be very frustrating, and at some point it becomes easier to indirectly ask someone to leave than to address their arguments with respect and logical refutations. But I have better hopes for you, my friend.
“what are your thoughts regarding 3 out of 5 of my acquaintances who were infected seeing rapid improvement immediately after beginning HCQ treatment?”
What are your thoughts regarding the proven cases of people falling from airplanes as high as 10,000 meters and surviving? Ready to jump?
Anecdotal evidence: “My grandpa has smoked every day for 80 years and he doesn’t have lung cancer.” We’ve all heard variations on that. Ready to light up?
3 out of 5 – given the known risks of hydroxychloroquine, is that strong enough to convince your to try it? Why is 3/5 improving a stronger case than 28% against 11% dead in 368 VA patients? Even 5 out of 5 is still not statistically strong, at least not in science. Granted, neither is a properly conducted trial, but the only value of anecdotal evidence in medicine is to suggest a basis for or against further study.
You’re leading with your wishes instead of your reason.
Dangerous Bacon,
You said, “when anecdotes are unsupported or flatly contradicted by science, rational people go with the science.”
Tell that to Novartis who launched a Stage III clinical trial in late April to evaluate treatment of COVID-19 with hydroxychloroquine. If you tell them tonight that the anecdotal evidence is already contradicted by science, maybe they’ll still be able to get their money back.
https://www.novartis.com/news/media-releases/novartis-sponsor-large-clinical-trial-hydroxychloroquine-hospitalized-covid-19-patients
Look, I know of three people who attribute their being alive to HCQ, and I know they’re not the only ones. But it’s too early to jump on one side or the other of this debate. Doing so exposes not rational devotion to science, but political bias.
You are funny, Dave.
Novartis are doing science.
You on the other hand are continuing to pour our anecdotes while at the same time declaring it is too early to decide.
“Launched”? Perhaps you could find it for everyone at clinicaltrials.gov; I couldn’t.
[…] defy science and have been debunked by dozens of doctors and other leading experts who have also pointed out Mikovits’ past. “The doctor in the video is considered a charlatan in the research community. […]
I wouldn’t be too confident Anthony Fauci has to produce emails between him and WHO.. If he fails to do so, that just debunks your theory. As Judy Mikovits named Fauci
The suit was filed after HHS failed to respond to an April 1, 2020, FOIA request seeking:
Communications between Dr. Fauci and Deputy Director Lane and World Health Organization officials concerning the novel coronavirus.
Communications of Dr. Fauci and Deputy Director Lane concerning WHO, WHO official Bruce Aylward, WHO Director General Tedros Anhanom, and China.
The time period for the request is January 1, 2020 to April 1, 2020.
https://www.judicialwatch.org/press-releases/fauci-who-records/
[…] defy science and have been debunked by dozens of doctors and other leading experts who have also pointed out Mikovits’ past. “The doctor in the video is considered a charlatan in the research community. […]
Just an idea…
In 2008-9, during the depths of the Great Recession, I noted ( here and elsewhere) how woo-meisters I survey became hissy and loudly attacked the government as well as corporations, universities and the media. Everyone, they stated, ( except them) was stewing in a corrupt miasma of criminality. lies and malfeasance: crimes against humanity!
Although that rhetoric has never entirely disappeared- they rant on- I seem to discern another uptick in decibels.
Could something similar be afoot? I imagined that again they foresaw that their bottom lines would be dropping precipitously into negative territory as customers weigh whether expensive supplements and super foods should remain within their shrunken budgets. In the past few days. dire predictions cited “depression level unemployment” and a grim forecast for the next quarters. Thus, they must convince followers to remain healthy in hard times by consuming their products even if they are short on cash. And not to trust the government et al.but to TRUST THEM!
[…] up with this story that sounds really dubious,” said Dr. David Gorski, a surgical oncologist who blogs about medical disinformation and has dubbed Mikovits a “COVID-19” […]
[…] up with this story that sounds really dubious,” said Dr. David Gorski, a surgical oncologist who blogs about medical disinformation and has dubbed Mikovits a “COVID-19” […]
Here’s the chance for Fauci to clear his name, as Judy Mikovits has named him .
(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit on behalf of the Daily Caller News Foundation against the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) for communications and other records of National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci and Deputy Director H. Clifford Lane with and about the World Health Organization (WHO) concerning the novel coronavirus (Daily Caller News Foundation v. U.S. Department Justice (No. 1:20-cv-01149)).
https://www.judicialwatch.org/press-releases/fauci-who-records/
You continue to be a useless hack, Orac. Why are so many “debunkers” medical practitioners? Doctors are barely scientists, and surgeons probably know the least molecular biology of anyone. Yet you wade in with your snark and your egos as if you had some authority. I’ll listen to the virologists thank you, and not those who stand to make a buck, like the generally reviled Fauci. I’ve been in biological sciences for 30 years and after reading Mikovits account, what she observes resembles a lot with the dishonesty, corruption and shoddy thinking I have seen in my career.
Orac is a scientist.
That’s not hard to find out.
Fauci is not “generally reviled” outside conspiracy theory circles.
He is actually quite admired by many in science and medicine.
We will see Anthony Fauci responds with the emails, Judy Mikovits has named Fauci.
(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit on behalf of the Daily Caller News Foundation against the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) for communications and other records of National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci and Deputy Director H. Clifford Lane with and about the World Health Organization (WHO) concerning the novel coronavirus (Daily Caller News Foundation v. U.S. Department Justice (No. 1:20-cv-01149)).
https://www.judicialwatch.org/press-releases/fauci-who-records/
Well, I didn’t know that Judy Mikovits had gotten into bed with the far right conspiracy mongers at Judicial Watch.
I guess it fits with the whole anti-vaccine thing. Judicial Watch have made numerous false claims about the safety of HPV vaccines.
I noticed that Mikovits had also appeared on far-right Holocaust denier Michelle Malkin’s show in April. PatTimmy at BolenReport was pretty excited about her joining “The Team.” Totally a normal day in modern Wootopia.
Chris Preston, Novartis is conducting a trial because there’s evidence to warrant it. Evidence exists in the form of limited trials and anecdotes. Are you disputing that there is anecdotal evidence or that anecdotal evidence is science? You would be incorrect in either case. Novartis will prove whether or not it’s worthy of FDA approval. My hunch, knowing that the drug was effective for my friends, is that it will be approved. If not, then my hunch will have been wrong. Pretty simple. That’s the way science works, hypotheses and experiments.
If you understood how science works you would not say that you know the drug was effective for your friends. You don’t know it. You believe it. There is no solid evidence as yet that it works as claimed and is safe for Covid19.
You said you were going to look elsewhere for information. Come up with anything yet?
I found the following link interesting:
http://matthewremski.com/wordpress/the-plandemic-spectacle-a-viral-loop-of-emotional-control/
Leigh Jackson, you are absolutely right. I stand corrected. My belief or hypothesis is that the effectiveness of HCQ in treating COVID is evidenced in the lives of friends who state that their COVID symptoms were dramatically improved immediately upon starting HCQ treatment. Further, I know there are others who report similarly. To me, this is strong evidence, and I believe that my hypothesis is reasonable. Further, because I believe the drug is effective, my utterly uneducated hunch is that it will be FDA approved. I certainly could be wrong. I’ll know when the Novartis trial is completed.
The link you shared is an interesting critique of Mikki Willis’ other work. I haven’t seen any of his other videos, and honestly, I’m not interested in him or his work. I am only interested in what Dr. Mikovits presented as facts in the Plandemic video.
I don’t trust the film. At worst, it demonstrates that anyone can say anything about anyone. At best, it contain facts. I can’t know without more information. I’m not optimistic about finding evidence that actually corroborates or repudiates Dr. Mikovits’ story, so I might never know.
My sole reason for getting involved in this forum was my disappointment with the quality of the arguments made against the film. I came here looking for facts, and found mostly ad hominems. I focused on two arguments that I thought were particularly poorly constructed in the original post. I’ve tried my best to stay focused on those arguments.
The first one I objected to was this: Dr. Fauci could have gotten access to Dr. Mikovits’ paper a different way than Dr. Mikovits described, so her description must be false. I think this a weak argument.
The second argument I objected to was a premature conclusion that HCQ’s ineffectiveness in treating COVID has been established by science. This has not been established.
That’s all I really have to say. In the unlikely event that I learn something significant, I’ll pop in again. So for now I’ll say take care. Stay healthy. Be blessed.
Bye bye.
As a post-script in case you glance back.
Remski’s critique is very specifically aimed at this viral Willis/Mikovits video.
Remski gives several links to information relating to the content of Willis’ film. One of those links is here to Gorski. Did you check all the other links? In the comments here there are other useful links. Have you checked them all?
Have you found any information anywhere to counter all that found on Remski’s and Gorski’s sites?
Mikovits thought she had made a significant discovery. She did not know she was working with contaminated tissue samples. When this was discovered she went off the rails.
She got together with Willis who appears to be a man on a messianic anti-pharma/vaccine mission and together they make a video timed to coincide with a book published by Mikowitz.
Unless you come back with something more than this, that’s the information we have.
As a post-script in case you glance back.
Remski’s critique is very specifically aimed at this viral Willis/Mikovits video.
Remski gives several links to information relating to the content of Willis’ film. One of those links is here to Gorski. Did you check all the other links? In the comments here there are other useful links. Have you checked them all?
Have you found any information anywhere to counter all that found on Remski’s and Gorski’s sites?
Mikovits thought she had made a significant discovery. She did not know she was working with contaminated tissue samples. When this was discovered she went off the rails.
She got together with Willis who appears to be a man on a messianic anti-pharma/vaccine mission and together they make a video timed to coincide with a book published by Mikowitz.
Unless you come back with something more than this, that’s the information we have.
Oh, and again on how science works. It is not for science to disprove HCQ’s effectiveness. That must be the starting assumption – which remains to be disproven.
@ David Corsello
Nope anecdotes have NO credibility. Given that over 90% survive COVID-19, even senior citizens, there is NO way to know if the person who received hydroxychloroquine would NOT have followed the same course. And, in fact, more and more studies are finding it doesn’t work and even is harmful.
So, your “hunch” is worthless!
“I’ve been in biological sciences for 30 years”
I’ve encountered numerous posters who preface their antivaccine rants, attacks on mainstream medical care or support for woo-based remedies by proclaiming that “I’ve worked in healthcare for X years”.
Do they actually have jobs requiring medical expertise, or are they employed as receptionists or dispose of the clinic trash?*
*there are of course similarly deluded nurses and physicians out there, thankfully overshadowed by the vast majority of their peers.
I love how these, “Follow the money!” people never seem to follow the money when it comes to quacks selling magick healing crystals and colloidal silver potions. As if these quacks are giving away their woo for free.
Alternate medicine is not mandatory but vaccines are and the COVID-19 vaccine may be compulsory.
Wonder if Kate will be out in the streets protesting when a Covid-19 vaccine is mandated for health care workers. No doubt she’d prefer to take her chances of contracting a potentially fatal vaccine-preventable disease when she goes to the hospital for a knee replacement or appendectomy.
@ Dangerous Bacon
Well I won’t be protesting when health care workers are forced onto a vaccine for Covid-19. In fact, I’d consider it irresponsible to let them work if such precautions are not taken.
It’s nonetheless a fact — and vaccines here are the least of the least of my worries — that medicine can be pretty much compulsory and violent. And while “alternative” medicine is most obviously BS and indeed can endanger people’s lives, to some extent, it still is supposed to be a patient’s own choice to apply for a Darwin Awards Gold Medal. Even if with alt-med, they’re bound to get, at best, a Chocolate Medal. Indeed alt-med doesn’t score a 10 out 10 for originality in selecting one’s own existence out of the reproduction cycle.
Sometimes misinformed consent is still a better choice than hypocritical “informed” “consent” where the patient is deemed to be too dumb to ever be allowed to consent. Which boils down, in the end, to the following situation: “You give your consent? Good. You do not give your consent? Tough luck… In the end I do not care, and the question was all an exercise in pretending. See you next time for the same good old-fashioned joke.”
Healthcare workers being forced on Covid-19 vaccine? Fine with it. Population being forced on Covid-19 vaccine? Fine with it too. Paying lip service to every medical coercion of people for their own good? Not fine with it at all. While I have no specific sympathy for antivaxxers, I still feel it is our duty to respect, as much as possible, some modicum of irrational positions on ethical or religious grounds, even dubious ones. As long as it does not spill over into mass antivaccine hysteria.
Which it obviously has, as even a good friend of mine fell a week ago for an antivaxx “documentary” about the “autism epidemic”. First time I witnessed that in one of my acquaintances.
@ Chris Whitehouse:
Agreed.
For over a decade, I have sought out figures from business sites about how much altie quacks earn and have shown how to find photos of their estates. This is rather risible as they often accuse doctors, scientists, sceptics and professors of being “on the take”, “bought and sold” and “pharma whores”, rolling in money.
A little of my work:
–Gary Null earns over 10 million USD, 10-25M USD yearly in sales ( according to different business sites at different times) and lives in estates ( in FL and TX, photos on the internet) and in an NYC apartment with ‘views of both rivers’, he brags.
–Mike Adams has a ranch outside of Austin and owns warehouses in nearby Cedar Creek. he earned millions when he sold his software company.
— Dr Mercola is probably worth 100M USD, with an elaborate estate in Illinois and a winter place in FL. He donates millions to anti-vax groups like BLF’s NVIC
–Dr Oz, lives in a veritable palace in Cliffside Park, NJ. overlooking the river and bridge.
His income includes television work as well as other projects.
— Andy Wakefield lived in a huge house outside Austin with tennis courts and a pool prior to his divorce. He has now hooked up with an extremely wealthy model/ entrepreneur who owns a waterfront estate in FL and a health and beauty company.
All of this information is easy to find: in fact, one of the idiots even includes photos of his wealth on his web site!
-btw- to quote our peerless leader, Orac, “Where’s MY Maserati?” Actually, I want a Jag.
[…] Rebuttal to Plandemic, carefully annotated, from fire and emergency management educator Jim Chaffee https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QwU4jcRw-qb77BLCLs99af05S1mL2E2vUz2x2M1396U/preview?pru=AAABchiJGww*PoZA8X8uDFFVumD4UBZEzg ~ ~ ~ Politifact: “Fact-checking ‘Plandemic’: A documentary full of false conspiracy theories about the coronavirus.” ~ ~ ~ Judy Mikovits in Plandemic: An antivax conspiracy theorist becomes a COVID-19 grifter: […]
This the news at the moment. Where’s the MSM ? Anthony Fauci will be exposed …
(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit on behalf of the Daily Caller News Foundation against the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) for communications and other records of National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci and Deputy Director H. Clifford Lane with and about the World Health Organization (WHO) concerning the novel coronavirus (Daily Caller News Foundation v. U.S. Department Justice (No. 1:20-cv-01149)).
The suit was filed after HHS failed to respond to an April 1, 2020, FOIA request seeking:
Communications between Dr. Fauci and Deputy Director Lane and World Health Organization officials concerning the novel coronavirus.
Communications of Dr. Fauci and Deputy Director Lane concerning WHO, WHO official Bruce Aylward, WHO Director General Tedros Anhanom, and China.
The time period for the request is January 1, 2020 to April 1, 2020.
The coonection between Mikovits’ rich fantasy life and the activities of the far-right rat-fuckers at Judicial Watch is not entirely clear, except that both are devoted to the cause of removing anyone of any competence from a public-health role during a time of plague.
Perhaps you are convinced that in his correspondence with WHO, Dr Fauci would have taken the time to describe how he magically appeared in Ruscetti’s laboratory, decades earlier, unseen by anyone else, to browbeat the young Mikowitz.
@ Smut Clyde
The emails should’ve been released to give a clear “picture” to the conversations that took place between Fauci , WHO and China . Fauci has nothing to worry about from most of the opinions here.
It’s funny how Judy Mikovits names Fauci as the main suspect in the corruption……..The emails will surface , or be destroyed .
But that’s probably gone way over left leaning stupidly.
Fauci has contradicted Trump on many things.
Trump has got something very special for Fauci when he is questioned in the senate.
@ Smut Clyde
Fauci will have to answer at some point , maybe after the emails are deleted. Oops !
There problem fix for you …….Don’t think so ! …. they will come out .
Then again Trump has something special for Fauci in the senate …
Judicial Watch has dabbled in anti-vaccine activism before, especially targeted at Gardasil
Has it, now? I didn’t know.
See, e.g. https://www.judicialwatch.org/press-releases/judicial-watch-uncovers-fda-gardasil-records-detailing-26-new-reported-deaths/
https://www.judicialwatch.org/press-releases/jw-seeks-answers-to-payouts-made-to-victims-of-hpv-vaccines/
Fauci has contradicted Trump on many things.
Trump has got something very special for Fauci when he is questioned in the senate.
Repetition Rob seems to dwell on fantasies of future revenge.
Yes, yes he has. I leave this here so that you have the solid evidence of that extraordinary claim to take with you into the senate:
My guess would be SARS-COV-2 since none of the old bastards on that side of the isle can be arsed to wear a covering. (The face is the likeness of god, don’cha know?)
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/05/ohio-gop-lawmaker-says-he-wont-wear-a-face-mask-because-god-doesnt-wear-one/
@ ORAC
What’s Anthony Fauci hiding ?
Surely he could’ve cleared his name by releasing the emails. Bring on the popcorn !
@ Doritmi
So you are saying Anthony Fauci doesn’t have to answer to anything because Judicial Watch has no credibility . That ‘s unbelievable !
I’m pointing out it’s not the first time Judicial Watch worked with science deniers.
Government has to comply with FOIA, on its terms, of course. If there was evidence of wrongdoing by Fauci, of course there should be consequences.
So far, the evidence is that the wrongdoing is by Dr. Mikovits and her film makers, who engaged in misrepresentations that can put people at risk of a deadly disease.
@ Smut Clyde
Stay on subject…
Left leaning stupidly is on the menu here . Fauci will have to answer at some point !
Do I have to keep reminding !
Having seen the long history of past misrepresentations of Judicial Watch, most people here do not take their claims as gospel truth.
@ Doritmi
Science Deniers ? Judicial Watch worked with science deniers ? it’s doesn’t matter who they work with as long as the truth comes out at the end.
While you are at dragging Judy Mikovits through the mud, how about you look at the conduct of Fauci & Gates … It’s going to come out sooner or later .
The longer this goes with no emails released,the more suspicious it becomes.
@ Chris Preston
Left leaning stupidly is on the record here. Stay on subject …
https://www.judicialwatch.org/press-releases/fauci-who-records/
Apparently in your world Michael Savage is a left leaning idiot:
https://twitter.com/asavagenation/status/1233922965860831232?lang=en
And: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/16/us/politics/michael-savage-trump-coronavirus.html
Thanks for this. They should put her and the filmmakers in jail.
It might help to understand the drive behind David Gorski’s blogging this post. An interesting read..
https://www.ageofautism.com/2010/06/david-gorskis-financial-pharma-ties-what-he-didnt-tell-you.html
Not really.
Why? We all know AoA is a joke.
Not the first we’ve seen and will not be the last shot either! The more studies we produce proving (at this point, with so many done, I will call it proof) vaccines and autism are not connected except possibly for a few VERY rare cases, the more they say it vaccines do cause autism. Orac is very consistent in calling them out. If they see a chance cause trouble, they do …..and in very consistent patterns.
@ Justin Kredible
In Science we look at what someone writes, that is, how scientific it is, including references. Gorski’s writing including many hyperlinks. Gorski’s main income is as a cancer surgeon. He has also received income as Principal Investigator on grants from Federal Government. And Crosby speaks of research on one pharmaceutical drug. Since the article was from 10 years ago, I suggest you investigate to find any publications related to the drug. The question isn’t whether Gorski worked on research that his institution received money from a drug company; but the quality of the research, what portion of his total income even indirectly came from this, if any, and, quite simply, his integrity as a scientist. When antivaccinationist accuse anyone of being bought, I wonder if they are projecting their own deficiencies, that is, they are people who can easily be bought, so they assume others are like them. Well, some are; but many aren’t.
As for Jake Crosby. On his blog he mentioned his MPH thesis. When I requested he post it, he refused. When I requested just the title, he refused. I contacted George Washington Universities library, they claimed not in the catalogue. And when I contacted their School of Public Health to verify his degree and thesis, was told they can’t release such information. Well, I have a PhD and four Masters degrees and copies of each of my theses are in the school libraries and can be found sometimes even online catalogues. What does he have to hide? In addition, he began a PhD program at the University of Texas School of Public Health at Austin; but didn’t last. He claims misconduct on their part and, by law, they aren’t allowed to respond. However, his uncle is almost a billionaire and donated money to several schools he attended.
One of Wakefield’s 12 kids from his 1998 retracted article was from California, Child 11 The father, Richard Demirjian, saw the Wakefield article and wrote a complaint that the time interval listed for his kid was wrong. Crosby then posted a portion of the table, giving the “Age of Onset of Symptoms”, not the “Interval from exposure to first behavioral symptom”. Totally dishonest as the father’s complaint was that Wakefield claimed in the table that onset of symptoms following MMR was 1 week (Wakefield, 1998, p. 639) In addition, Crosby tracked Demirjian down, posted Google satellite photo of his home, his phone number and address and encouraged people to contact him. Finally, Crosby obtained his autistic son’s Facebook page and began harassment. Crosby lacks any credibility and doesn’t know when to draw the line, including harassing people in their homes and encouraging others to do so. He has, as far as I can tell, NEVER worked as an epidemiologist, lives off his families wealth. Among antivaccinationists, he is among those who devote a lot of time to ad hominem articles.
As for Wakefield’s retracted article, just one reason: he wrote the kids were normal referrals to clinic, they weren’t. He recruited them from the families of the law firm he was consulting with who were suing, claiming MMR caused their kids Autism and some from JABS, an antivaccinationists organization supporting the lawsuit. So, when he asked parents what they thought caused their kids autism, he knew the answer already. And, this had nothing to do with “purpose” of paper, something he just added in. And on and on it goes.
And Age of Autism takes money from many people who promote and sell Complimentary and Alternative Medicines.
So, you find one paper, take it at its face value. Typical dishonest, moronic, antivaccinationist.
References:
Note you can go to Crosby’s blog, Autism Investigated, then type in “Demirjian” and also “Harrison”. He allowed me to comment several times; but then cut me off, thus, not allowing a real dialogue. Read all his articles on Demirjian and the one on me.
Crosby J (2017 Nov 21). Richard Demirjian Throws Autism Research To The Wolves. Autism Investigated.
Wakefield A (1998 Feb 28). Ileal-lymphoid-nodulaar hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children. The Lancet; 351(9103): 637-641
Apt username there, Justin.
[…] Respectful Insolence: Judy Mikovits in Plandemic: An antivax conspiracy theorist becomes a COVID-19 grifter […]
Thank you for your hard work, The mental anguish of watching the destruction of rational thought by anti-science brigade brought me here.
This whole thread was so much fun. Thanks, Orac for the great work!
Thanx Nicole Nunya-Bidniz for your research. As you see this is all back up by research links. Quit letting the media tell you. Please do your own research.
““For Those Who Doubt the Plandemic Movie
Get it straight on some of the “facts” going around claiming to have “debunked” the movie, which are being regurgitated by many who prefer to remain asleep and won’t put the effort in to research things themselves.
SOURCE LINKS INCLUDED.
Here is what was found along with all of the supporting sources.
1. Dr. Anthony Fauci has worked at the National Institute of Health (NIH) since 1968 and has been a Director with the organization since 1984, “both as a scientist and as the head of the NIAID at the NIH”. A simple Wikipedia search resolved that one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Fauci
2. The NIH was one of the institutions funding the original study published in 10/23/2009, which Dr. Mikovits participated in and makes reference to in the Plandemic movie. Dr. Fauci worked at and continues to work at the NIH, one of the primary financial contributors to the study as one of it’s most senior directors, so you can indeed say that Dr. Judy Mikovits was in fact working for Dr. Fauci. I have downloaded the complete original study and saved for you to access here (highlights on page 3 denote Dr. Judy Mikovits’s participation and her employing firm) (highlights on page 6 indicate the institutions which provided the funding for the study):
https://drive.google.com/open…
3. The study was challenged in 2010, when other researches could not replicate their findings and in September 2010, the original team, inclusive of Dr. Judy Mikovits issued an official response supporting their work.
https://drive.google.com/open…
4. After which the original study was partially and then subsequently fully retracted (a very rare move in science). The partial retraction document states that two of the co-authors, Robert Silverman and Das Gupta (whom the original study listed as working for the Department of Cancer Biology) re-analyzed the samples they used and discovered that they had been contaminated. Please refer back to the first link provided herein, for item #1 showing the original study, indicates on the document that it has since been retracted.
5. That she was arrested and a quote from the prosecuting district attorney, that said the charges were dropped because “there were issues with the witnesses”.
https://www.sciencemag.org/…/criminal-charges-dropped…
6. In September 2012, Dr. Judy Mikovits and a team of other scientists conducted another study replicating the original one and published their findings, ultimately resolving the scientific communities dispute over the original work.
https://twp.duke.edu/…/file-attachments/1441.full_.pdf
https://www.sciencemag.org/…/final-study-confirms-virus…
https://mbio.asm.org/content/3/5/e00266-12
7. As previously shared in another post, Dr. Fauci does in fact hold a large number of patents related to HIV (as Dr. Judy Mikovits states in the video). He also holds numerous patents related to the Novel Coronavirus.
https://patents.justia.com/search?q=Anthony+Fauci
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB113383825463714813
Other Interesting and Related Facts:
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has appointed Dr. Anthony Fauci to their Vaccination Action Plan.
https://www.gatesfoundation.org/…/Global-Health-Leaders…
Bill Gates personally owns a number vaccine related patents (amongst many other interesting and unrelated patents):
https://patents.justia.com/inventor/william-gates
Pirbright, a company funded by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation owns European protecting replication of a variant gene of an avian infectious bronchitis virus.
European Patent# 3 172 319 B1 https://data.epo.org/publication-server/pdf-document…
Here is proof that Pirbright is in fact funded by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
https://www.gatesfoundation.org/…/2013/11/OPP1098099
Pirbright also a US patent on the Coronavirus (you will need to scroll down quite a bit to see the owner and inventor they really covered every base on this patent.
https://patents.justia.com/patent/10130701
Vanderbilt University owns a large number of Coronavirus vaccine patents:
https://patents.justia.com/patent/7452542
Dr. Anthony Fauci and the Director of Vanderbilt University go back..
Here you see them lobbying together: https://news.vumc.org/tag/anthony-fauci/
Here it mentions how they went to college together:
https://news.vumc.org/tag/anthony-fauci/
Also as previously shared in another post, the polio vaccines the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation tested on children in the Africa, causing an outbreak of Polio from the vaccine itself and paralysis on the children.
https://thebulletin.org/…/vaccine-causing-polio-in…/ “
Gish Gallops like this is why we often insist on PubMed indexed studies. Especially when you do not understand the lack of relevance they have for your convoluted claims.
Yeah, anything that is contrary to this blog’s dogma is now classified as a “gish gallop”. Is that the approved dismissal perchance?
Of course, the original “gish gallop” of Judy Mikovits which lumbered all over the place was acceptable. Refutations of that biased tripe however are not permitted.
Not that we’re biased on the side that butter our bread or anything. We’re objective. Uh huh, meanwhile Plandemic is going viral and Judy’s book is doing quite well.
She thanks you all for the free publicity and increased sales.
@ Terry
This blog certainly shows a new type of stupidly, this, and Youtube videos are giving Judy’s Plandemic free publicity. No point now trying to have a conversation here based on Chris’s comment above. Which is about the normal standard here.
Try looking up the definition of Gish Gallop: https://effectiviology.com/gish-gallop/
Trying to drown someone with a fire hose of nonsense is not science.
Barfing up a Facebook post from “The Green Fyre Review” does not exactly suggest that you are familiar with the concept.
^ Oh, kewl:
“CV19 is a classic depopulation aka “eugenics” event. Bob Bows lays out a meticulous evidentiary trail”
“so you can indeed say that Dr. Judy Mikovits was in fact working for Dr. Fauci”
I was a clerk in a VA hospital for 7 years, so you can say I worked for Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan. I worked at a New York City public hospital for a time, so I was in fact working for Rudy Giuliani and David Dinkins.
Dr. Fauci’s patents: “The main section of the executive order provides that the government shall obtain all rights to any invention made by an employee if any one of the following conditions applies: the invention is made during working hours; the invention is made using either government facilities, equipment, etc., or is made with the help of another government employee who is on official duty; or the invention relates to the official duties of the inventor.” The Federal Funding of R&D: Who Gets the Patent Rights? https://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/matters/matters-9004.html
It doesn’t matter if the patents are in his name. The rights are held by the United States, unless “the government is not required to take title if it would be inequitable. For example, if the invention was made by an employee with minimal use of government time or materials, the government does not have to take title. Similarly, the government is not required to take title when it has insufficient interest in the invention. Even if the government has the right to take title but elects not to, it retains a nonexclusive, irrevocable, royalty- free license with the power to grant licenses to others for all government purposes.”
6. In September 2012, Dr. Judy Mikovits and a team of other scientists conducted another study replicating the original one and published their findings, ultimately resolving the scientific communities dispute over the original work.
https://twp.duke.edu/…/file-attachments/1441.full_.pdf
https://www.sciencemag.org/…/final-study-confirms-virus…
https://mbio.asm.org/content/3/5/e00266-12
Dude, you have engarbaged the links, or copy-pasted them from some source where they were already engarbaged. It is clear that you can’t have read the relevant papers before puking up this paragraph, or you might have noticed that the Sepember 2012 paper in Science contradicted the 2009 paper.
The full, ungarbaged title might have been a fucking giveaway:
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2012/09/final-study-confirms-virus-not-implicated-chronic-fatigue-syndrome
How sad is this now? Very sad.
Thanx Nicole Nunya-Bidniz for your research. As you see this is all back up by research links. Quit letting the media tell you. Please do your own research.
In the unlikely event that anyone cares, Enid McBride has proven her ability to conduct her own research by puking up a bullet-pointed stream of lies, verbatim, from https://www.dotcomnieuws.com/corona/for-those-who-doubt-the-plandemic-movie/
This combination of mendacity and laziness is just depressing.
Oh, and thanks for the wall o’ broken links, Enid.
Dear Enid McBride,
Thank you so very much for posting your comment containing such a thorough list of facts related to the Judy Mikovits video. I too am very interested at getting to the “TRUTH” of the matter…
However, some of the links you have included within your comment which were truncated and followed by an ellipsis which are the three periods (. . .) are broken links and the web pages cannot be found. Is it possible for you to email me your article containing the “full links addresses”?
Thank you again so very much for this most informative comment you have invested your time for sharing with the world.
Please send me your article with the “full link addresses” via email…
My email address is [email protected]
Have a wonderful day, Enid.
Jo Ro
2020 0513 12:06 PM
Here is another rebuttal to the Mikovits video from Science Magazine:
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/fact-checking-judy-mikovits-controversial-virologist-attacking-anthony-fauci-viral
I have copied below the point-by-point commentary from that article, for those of you who can’t, or won’t, access the link above. The Interviewer below refers to the interviewer in the Mikovits video:
Below are some of the video’s main claims and allegations, along with the facts.
Interviewer: Dr. Judy Mikovits has been called one of the most accomplished scientists of her generation.
Mikovits had authored 40 scientific papers and wasn’t widely known in the scientific community before she published the 2009 Science paper claiming a link between a new retrovirus and CFS. The paper was later proven erroneous and retracted.
Interviewer: Her 1991 doctoral thesis revolutionized the treatment of HIV/AIDS.
Mikovits’s Ph.D. thesis, “Negative Regulation of HIV Expression in Monocytes,” had no discernible impact on the treatment of HIV/AIDS.
Interviewer: At the height of her career, Dr. Mikovits published a blockbuster article in the journal Science. The controversial article sent shock waves through the scientific community, as it revealed that the common use of animal and human fetal tissues was unleashing devastating plagues of chronic diseases.
The paper revealed nothing of the sort; it only claimed to show a link between one condition, CFS, and a mouse retrovirus.
Mikovits: I was held in jail, with no charges.
The district attorney in Washoe county, Nevada, filed a criminal complaint against Mikovits that charged her with illegally taking computer data and related property from WPI. The charges were dropped, in part because of legal troubles faced by her former employer.
Mikovits: Heads of our entire HHS [Department of Health and Human Services] colluded and destroyed my reputation and the Department of Justice and the [Federal Bureau of Investigation] sat on it, and kept that case under seal.
Mikovits has presented no direct evidence that HHS heads colluded against her.
Mikovits: [Fauci] directed the cover-up. And in fact, everybody else was paid off, and paid off big time, millions of dollars in funding from Tony Fauci and … the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. These investigators that committed the fraud, continue to this day to be paid big time by the NIAID.
It’s not clear which fraud and what cover-up Mikovits is talking about exactly. There is no evidence that Fauci was involved in a cover-up or that anyone was paid off with funding from him or his institute. No one has been charged with fraud in relation to Mikovits’s allegations.
Mikovits: It started really when I was 25 years old, and I was part of the team that isolated HIV from the saliva and blood of the patients from France where [virologist Luc] Montagnier had originally isolated the virus. … Fauci holds up the publication of the paper for several months while Robert Gallo writes his own paper and takes all the credit, and of course patents are involved. This delay of the confirmation, you know, literally led to spreading the virus around, you know, killing millions.
At the time of HIV’s discovery, Mikovits was a lab technician in Francis Ruscetti’s lab at NCI and had yet to receive her Ph.D. There is no evidence that she was part of the team that first isolated the virus. Her first published paper, co-authored with Ruscetti, was on HIV and published in May 1986, 2 years after Science published four landmark papers that linked HIV (then called HTLV-III by Gallo’s lab) to AIDS. Ruscetti’s first paper on HIV appeared in August 1985. There is no evidence that Fauci held up either paper or that this led to the death of millions.
Interviewer: If we activate mandatory vaccines globally, I imagine these people stand to make hundreds of billions of dollars that own the vaccines.
Mikovits: And they’ll kill millions, as they already have with their vaccines. There is no vaccine currently on the schedule for any RNA virus that works.
Vaccines have not killed millions; they have saved millions of lives. Many vaccines that work against RNA viruses are on the market, including for influenza, measles, mumps, rubella, rabies, yellow fever, and Ebola.
Interviewer: So, I have to ask you, are you antivaccine?
Mikovits: Oh, absolutely not. In fact vaccine is immune therapy, just like interferon alpha is immune therapy, so I’m not antivaccine. My job is to develop immune therapies. That’s what vaccines are.
In another recent video, Mikovits is wearing a hat that says VAXXED II, which is a sequel to a film that links the mumps, measles, and rubella vaccine to autism, a debunked theory. She also repeats several claims made by people who are leading the antivaccine movement. In the PowerPoint presentation she sent to Science, she calls for an “immediate moratorium” on all vaccines.
Interviewer: Do you believe that this virus [SARS-CoV-2] was created in the laboratory?
Mikovits: I wouldn’t use the word created. But you can’t say naturally occurring if it was by way of the laboratory. So it’s very clear this virus was manipulated. This family of viruses was manipulated and studied in a laboratory where the animals were taken into the laboratory, and this is what was released, whether deliberate or not. That cannot be naturally occurring. Somebody didn’t go to a market, get a bat, the virus didn’t jump directly to humans. That’s not how it works. That’s accelerated viral evolution. If it was a natural occurrence, it would take up to 800 years to occur.
Scientific estimates suggest the closest virus to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is a bat coronavirus identified by the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). Its “distance” in evolutionary time to SARS-CoV-2 is about 20 to 80 years. There is no evidence this bat virus was manipulated.
Interviewer: And do you have any ideas of where this occurred?
Mikovits: Oh yeah, I’m sure it occurred between the North Carolina laboratories, Fort Detrick, the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, and the Wuhan laboratory.
There is no evidence that SARS-CoV-2 originated at WIV. NIAID’s funding of a U.S. group that works with the Wuhan lab has been stopped, which outraged many scientists.
Mikovits: Italy has a very old population. They’re very sick with inflammatory disorders. They got at the beginning of 2019 an untested new form of influenza vaccine that had four different strains of influenza, including the highly pathogenic H1N1. That vaccine was grown in a cell line, a dog cell line. Dogs have lots of coronaviruses.
There is no evidence that links any influenza vaccine, or a dog coronavirus, to Italy’s COVID-19 epidemic.
Mikovits: Wearing the mask literally activates your own virus. You’re getting sick from your own reactivated coronavirus expressions, and if it happens to be SARS-CoV-2, then you’ve got a big problem.
It’s not clear what Mikovits means by “coronavirus expressions.” There is no evidence that wearing a mask can activate viruses and make people sick.
Mikovits: Why would you close the beach? You’ve got sequences in the soil, in the sand. You’ve got healing microbes in the ocean in the salt water. That’s insanity.
It’s not clear what Mikovits means by sand or soil “sequences.” There is no evidence that microbes in the ocean can heal COVID-19 patients.
@ Elliot
Very good.
Yep, follow Mikovitz logic and we should abandon masks altogether, including in hospitals, surgery, etc. Doesn’t she even understand that there are literally 100s of millions of active viruses coursing through our blood and, as they enter our cells and hijack our cells mechanisms, they are pumping out millions of new fully activated viruses per hour?
As for “healing microbes” in sand and soil. Yep, that’s why people who spend a lot of time at the beach have longer life expectancies or do they? I have devoted a life-time to reading on current and history of infectious diseases and haven’t found anything that claims people saved from some deadly disease by rolling in sand or bathing at beaches. But, heh, Mikovitz must be privy to some esoteric knowledge that has escaped literally 10s of thousands of medical researchers. Yikes
Mikovitz states: “In fact vaccine is immune therapy, just like interferon alpha is immune therapy, so I’m not antivaccine. My job is to develop immune therapies. That’s what vaccines are.”
Well, yes, vaccines are for activating one arm of the immune system, the acquired/adapted arm, e.g., B-cells and T-cells, creating memory cells that recognize intruders more quickly than if they had never experienced them before and revving up faster and to higher levels. When working well, vaccines stop infections cold. Interferon is a chemokine released by cells to notify other cells under attack and to tell attacked cells to commit suicide so virus doesn’t survive. But it doesn’t stop, slow, weaken initial invasion. And stating vaccines and interferons involve immune system doesn’t prove she isn’t anti vaccines. If someone who was rabidly supportive of one political party, active in voter suppression, etc. stated that Republican and Democratic Parties both part of our democracy, what would that mean? Her level of stupidity just gets bigger.
“Somebody didn’t go to a market, get a bat, the virus didn’t jump directly to humans. That’s not how it works.”
Oh, really?
“Prevalence and Genetic Diversity of Coronaviruses in Bats from China” https://jvi.asm.org/content/80/15/7481? That paper is from 2004.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-chinas-bat-woman-hunted-down-viruses-from-sars-to-the-new-coronavirus1/ This is from this year, but Dr Shi and her team have been at it for a long time. They found antibodies to batborne coronaviruses in humans living near bat caves.
“Bats Are Natural Reservoirs of SARS-like Coronaviruses” https://www.jstor.org/stable/3842715?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents That one is from 2005.
Somebody neglected her due dilligence.
Great article with evidence. The conspiracy folks are dangerous, and need to be debunked regularly.
very bizarre interview indeed. Unsure how someone who had any education in virology at all could say there are no vaccines that work against RNA viruses… she can’t be that dumb can she? Or did she misspeak? Or was the video edited? I cannot understand it.
But.
Fauci, which is what drew me to the video, is really the subject of my interest. I have questions for him:
Why did he say, after the election, that there was going to be a pandemic? To appear smart? Well, I’d like to know how he knew that.
And I have read that he illegally continued to give financial support to the Wuhan lab. Is this true? Why?
And why was he so hesitant about HCQ, but so enthusiastic about Remdesivir? I noticed that you, Orac, have posted about Remdesivir’s anemic abilities. I was wondering if you noticed Dr. Raoult (dear reader- please note he is considered by many to be the number one expert in the world on communicable diseases) has doubled down on his insistence that HCQ works. A recent post on Twitter:
Two major preprints have been published.
Zhong Nanshan, hero of the 2003 SARS outbreak in China and his team: medrxiv.org/content/10.110…
Hospital Central de la Defensa, Madrid: preprints.org/manuscript/202…
Both are strongly supporting the use of hydroxychloroquine for treating SARS-COV2
It should be used with zinc, and not given to half dead patients. I wonder if you reviewed the VA study also. Highly flawed.
“The original version (archived) of the “study” was published on April 21. It received crushing criticism in the comments and was replaced with another one on April 23, hiding those comments. Casting even further doubt on the credibility of this study, one of the authors disclosed Gilead funding for another research. This work was funded by a NIH grant.
Despite its multiple flaws, lack of peer review, and obscurity of the authors, this pre-print immediately received wall-to-wall media coverage. Given these circumstances, this work looks like a criminal fraud, rather than a scientific one.“
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/05/02/pseudo-science-behind-the-assault-on-hydroxychloroquine/
Here is the original paper, especially note the comments:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.16.20065920v1?versioned=true
Anecdotal, but not for those who survived:
https://www.fox7austin.com/news/fox-26-gets-unprecedented-access-to-texas-1st-nursing-home-to-treat-covid-19-with-hydroxychloroquine
“Why did (Fauci) say, after the election, that there was going to be a pandemic?”
If somebody has a secret plot to start a pandemic, why would he reveal that plot to everybody ? Nobody would be that stupid. He simply meant that there will always be pandemics, and we have definitely not won the fight against viruses.alwa
I believe he was trying to look prescient. Looked smug to me. He said it would definitely happen in the next few years, implying during Trumps presidency.
Why did he not advise Trump that Obama did not restock supplies for a pandemic? If he did, where is that evidence?
Why was he saying in February we had nothing to worry about?
Why was he praising that idiot Tedros?
Why did he not advise Trump that Obama did not restock supplies for a pandemic?
Not so fast there, Sheila! Your argument, that Fauci should have advised Trump that Obama let pandemic supplies run down, hinges on a key premise – that Obama did let pandemic supplies run down. Don’t you think that it’s a little bit underhanded and cowardly to just smuggle that premise into your comment without trying to justify it?
If ’twere true, surely there is some documentary proof. If, however, your only evidence is a responsibility-denying claim that fell out of the face-hole of a gutless, honorless chickenshit currently squatting in the White House, then your argument is garbage.
You don’t have to be smart to know that pandemics are ancient and recent history. You have to be stupid not to know that they will continue to be so.
He was not the only one predicting it.
https://gumc.georgetown.edu/gumc-stories/global-health-experts-advise-advance-planning-for-inevitable-pandemic/
You read something somewhere.
Perhaps because there’s better evidence for one than the other?
Raoult is considered by many to be an egomaniac. Whatever one thinks of him the evidence is insufficient to justify his loud trumpeting for the treatment. Zinc was not mentioned as part of the treatment.
Header to the preprint: This article is a preprint and has not been peer-reviewed [what does this mean?]. It reports new medical research that has yet to be evaluated and so should not be used to guide clinical practice.
Repeat: NOT be used to guide clincal practice.
Vets study, most recent preprint version:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.16.20065920v1?versioned=true
CONCLUSIONS: In this study, we found no evidence that use of hydroxychloroquine, either with or without azithromycin, reduced the risk of mechanical ventilation in patients hospitalized with Covid-19. An association of increased overall mortality was identified in patients treated with hydroxychloroquine alone. These findings highlight the importance of awaiting the results of ongoing prospective, randomized, controlled studies before widespread adoption of these drugs.
Anecdotal. Period.
Always best to quote the most recent version, but I must have backtracked too far and posted the earlier version. I wasn’t there to look at the comments. Public comments are not a substitute for peer review.
A lot of brilliant people are egomaniacs and a little kooky.
Bottom line- who are you going to believe? Government bureaucrats shilling for big pharma or the number one expert in the world on communicable diseases? Who is actively studying this, and cites other studies? Did you even bother to read them?
I posted the link to the original for the w press purpose to show what those who generally read and re ire such material,i.e., other experts in the field, evaluated the study. Junk science.
Sorry I was running to the beach whilst typing.
I posted the link to the original for the express purpose to show what those who generally read and review such material,i.e., other experts in the field, evaluated the study. Junk science. You don’t need to read the comments to see that. When it first came out I noticed they used very high doses, on very sick people.
Raoult (and others) pointed out that it needs to be used earlier rather than later.
He IS using zinc now.
As far as the cardiac effects. Perhaps it was due to the high dosage. Patients can be monitored for it.
If I was high risk, and contracted Covid… or if you were. Are you going to go with a drug that’s been around for 70 years? Or one that’s brand new with no idea of side effects? Or nothing at all? When doctors around the world are saying they are using HCQ successfully. You can do what you want. I resent the government telling me I cannot.
Ok one more point. I am somewhat sick of the evidence based only people.
I am a retired dentist. Years ago I began to notice when reading journal articles, that the ones (majority of them) funded by Crest, or Cogate or whoever, ALWAYS and I mean always had a result favorable to said company.
If it wasn’t for anecdotal evidence, we would probably be still in the dark ages of medicine.
rilliant people are not infallible. Whether Raoullt is brilliant is a question best left to his peers. He is not infallible – or is he?
If zinc is required then your reference was irrelevant. Not good.
I listen to the different voices and look at the evidence – or at least to some of it. It’s not my day job.
Many people really are studying the virus and what to do about it.
I pointed out that your reference made no mention of zinc. How do you think I knew this. Psychic power? No, I located and read it: Non-peer reviewed, not to be used in medical practice.
I located and read the Vets study. How do you think I could quote from it? Regurgitating stuff from second-hand sources? No, I read it. Non-peer reviewed. Not to be used to guide medical practice. Quote: “These findings highlight the importance of awaiting the results of ongoing prospective, randomized, controlled studies before widespread adoption of these drugs”.
Comments from the public are not peer review. You can call the study junk. RCTs are needed is what I say. Your hero Raoullt might be proved right. Wouldn’t be so good for his megalomania, though, I fear. God alone knows how he will respond if he’s proved unequivocally to be wrong. An interesting thought.
“Why did he say, after the election, that there was going to be a pandemic?”
For the same reason a cop says there will be crime. Given the history of pandemics and major epidemics it’s inevitable.
Despite its multiple flaws, lack of peer review, and obscurity of the authors, this pre-print immediately received wall-to-wall media coverage. Given these circumstances, this work looks like a criminal fraud, rather than a scientific one.“
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/05/02/pseudo-science-behind-the-assault-on-hydroxychloroquine/
Inquiring minds had already noticed the overlap between HCQ pimps and climate-change denialists.
Yep.
Oh, dear L-rd, Anthony Watts? This is noise, not signal (except in an unflattering sense), Sheila.
[…] genera articoli di debunking, come quello di Orac che avevo segnalato, e questi aumentano l'attività di antivax ecc. e la ricomparsa di quello […]
If the charges against her were dismissed by a judge who has had ties to WPI, are you suggesting that WPI filed suit against her and then also influenced the dismissal of charges? I am not sure what that piece was implying – thanks!
At first I thought you were just having trouble conveying Satire, and bad Satire at that, and that your sarcasm wasn’t translating in the blog. LOL Yes, you , IMO, have got to be the best example of a “Jone’s Town” cool aid drinker and proveyer… The first sign is when you use the CIA talking points of the “Conspiracy Theorist/theories” and other gems as “Rabbit” and on and on…. Red Herring, straw man arguments and many other Use of opinions and subjective ideas that really are just talking points, so either you are a unwitting fool or a paid propagandist. People like you need so much love…. Hugs <3
Silly man. The CIA did not invent the term “conspiracy theory.”
https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/03/16/did-the-cia-invent-the-term-conspiracy-theory/
“Jone’s Town”? Are all of Mikovits’s cheerleaders semiliterate?
echolalia n. 1. meaningless repetition of another person’s spoken words as a symptom of psychiatric disorder; 2. repetition of speech by a child learning to talk.
Phonetik über alles!
@ Response Orac — May 6, 2020 at 9:56 pm
Yea. Gotta agree. That tube interview is like a fantasy or just weird servility. I’m saddened that this credentialed person has been brought down based on his clear words and no science based argument(s). Is it like this in your world?
That dude Ayyadurai just turned a decent degree into Grift. To see it is really amazing and sad.
Some things gotta be known.
Thanks, this was rough to watch.
Ayyadurai has been a grifter for decades. Or for as long as he’s been claiming that he invented e-mail.
@ Andrew May 9 448. Decades? Yuck, a paid polluter – terrific. What he said in that interview is (oh shyt really?) boggling. Never thought a mind could be so corrupt until a few years ago. Doesn’t matter if it is right or wrong — just matters if you believe it (heard that in a interview but can’t find link — interesting).
He got dredged up somehow like some of these douches in response.
Interesting and happy there was some trigger (just me).
Cheers.
You are obviously a disinformation shill. Shame on you.
It was Jan. 22, a day after the first case of covid-19 was detected in the United States, and orders were pouring into Michael Bowen’s company outside Fort Worth, some from as far away as Hong Kong.
Bowen’s medical supply company, Prestige Ameritech, could ramp up production to make an additional 1.7 million N95 masks a week. He viewed the shrinking domestic production of medical masks as a national security issue, though, and he wanted to give the federal government first dibs.
“We still have four like-new N95 manufacturing lines,” Bowen wrote that day in an email to top administrators in the Department of Health and Human Services. “Reactivating these machines would be very difficult and very expensive but could be achieved in a dire situation.
…“I don’t believe we as an government are anywhere near answering those questions for you yet,” Laura Wolf, director of the agency’s Division of Critical Infrastructure Protection, responded that same day.
…In the end, the government did not take Bowen up on his offer. Even today, production lines that could be making more than 7 million masks a month sit dormant.
…The story of Bowen’s offer illustrates a missed opportunity in the early days of the pandemic, one laid out in Bright’s whistleblower complaint, interviews with Bowen and emails provided by both men.
…“The world just looked at me as a mask salesman who was saying the sky was falling,” he said, “and they would say, ‘Your competitors aren’t saying that in China.’ ”
https://www.washingtonpost.com./investigations/in-the-early-days-of-the-pandemic-the-us-government-turned-down-an-offer-to-manufacture-millions-of-n95-masks-in-america/2020/05/09/f76a821e-908a-11ea-a9c0-73b93422d691_story.html?wpisrc=nl_most
I wonder who made that decision?
Obama? Duhh.
Ok sorry just read article. Heads should roll.
@ Joshua M
First, you write: “Sids largely eradicated in japan and Sweden after withdrawal of the pertussis vaccine.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3364648/ ”
You really should check your links as it goes to: Ewing GE (2009 Jul). What is regressive autism and why does it occur? Is it the consequence of multi-systemic dysfunction affecting the elimination of heavy metals and the ability to regulate neural temperature? North American journal of medical sciences; 1(2): 28-47.
Which doesn’t mention SIDS even once in the article.
Then you link several times to: Neil Z. Miller and Gary S Goldman (2011 Sep). Infant mortality rates regressed against number of vaccine doses routinely given: Is there a biochemical or synergistic toxicity? Human & experimental toxicology; 30(9): 1420-1428.
They conclude with: “Using linear regression, the immunization schedules of these 34 nations were examined and a correlation coefficient of 0.70 (p < 0.0001) was found between IMRs and the number of vaccine doses routinely given to infants. When nations were grouped into five different vaccine dose ranges (12–14, 15–17, 18–20, 21–23, and 24–26), 98.3% of the total variance in IMR was explained by the unweighted linear regression model. These findings demonstrate a counter-intuitive relationship: nations that require more vaccine doses tend to have higher infant mortality rates.”
First, correlation isn’t causation and taking one of two variables, making it the dependent variable and the other the independent variable doesn’t change this. A bivariate regression analysis is a simple algebraic transformation of a bivariate correlation analysis. Second, I won’t bother giving the links, you can find them; but there is one blog showing a bivariate correlation between increase in cell phones and diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorders and another blog showing a bivariate correlation between increase in organic foods and Autism Spectrum Disorder. As for the grouping, it changes a “interval variable” to an ordinal variable and, thus, wrong equation used.
But what about infant mortality rates. Well, having lived, for instance, in Sweden for 10 years, they stress children’s health, including quality prenatal care regardless of social economic status. Even today refugees from Middle East and Africa have lower infant mortality than poor minorities in U.S. In addition, rather than a tax deduction for kids which benefits higher income brackets more than lower, they mail a check each month to each family for each child to cover decent nutrition and housing. Finally, for working families or attending school, they offer high quality sliding scale day care. Finland, Denmark, Norway, and many other nations all offer quality prenatal care and better programs to support families with children. Including both prenatal and postnatal checkups. And they don’t have infants living in slums with chipping lead paint, exposure to rats, insects, etc.
And you should check out the following about Neil Z Miller:
Encyclopedia of American Loons (2014 Mar 11). #950: Neil Z. Miller & Gary S. Goldman Available at: https://americanloons.blogspot.com/2014/03/950-neil-z-miller-gary-s-goldman.html
And, though several pages supporting him use Dr. according to his own website:
Education
College of Santa Fe, 1990, Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology Available at: http://thinktwice.com/Neil_Z_Miller_CV-Bio.pdf
And I read parts of one of his books, “Miller’s Review of Critical Vaccine Studies: 400 Important Scientific Papers
Summarized for Parents and Researchers”
Just one thought, on page 26 he writes: “In 2000, a new study in the Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics confirmed earlier findings that children who received DPT or tetanus vaccines are significantly more likely to develop a ‘history of asthma’ . . . than those who remained unvaccinated.” From the actual article: “The odds of having a history of asthma was twice as great among vaccinated subjects than among unvaccinated subjects (adjusted odds ratio, 2.00; 95% confidence interval, 0.59 to 6.74).”
For those unschooled in statistics, a confidence interval of 1 means no difference between the groups. A number below 1 would mean that the unvaccinated had higher incidence of disease and, obviously, a number above 1 would be the vaccinated had the higher incidence. When a confidence interval range contains both and is as wide as this one, it means that any finding could be solely due to random chance. Either Mr. Miller just doesn’t understand research methods and statistics or . . . In any case, this study clearly does not remotely show anything “significantly more likely.” Don’t believe me; but the study authors own conclusion is “Although it is unlikely that these results are entirely because of any sources of bias, the small number of unvaccinated subjects and the study design limit our ability to make firm causal inferences.” The conclusion should have simply read the results were inconclusive. Claiming that they can’t make “firm causal inferences” would be like tossing a coin a few times and claiming one couldn’t make a firm causal inference as to the coin being balanced or not.
As for SIDS, the number of SIDS cases has plummeted since the mid 1990s while vaccines have been added to the schedule. If one wants to think correlation, means more vaccines, less SIDS, so, if we want to end SIDS, let’s increase number of vaccines. ? I won’t bother to give references, except to say that cases of SIDS go back long into history; but modern nations document and count. And the reason for plummeting rates can be found, CDC. Sudden Unexpected Infant Death and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome at: https://www.cdc.gov/sids/index.htm AND https://www.cdc.gov/sids/ResourceLinks.htm AND Vaccines and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) Available at: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/sids.html
So, you are just one more moron who finds articles that confirm your unscientific bias and copy them. Oh well.
tl;dr
Funny thing about SIDS; When I was squirted out in the late ’60s, they would not let me lay on my back.
FF to early 2000s and my daughter could not lay on her stomach.
Same prevelance. (idk, I don’t know billy lights)
As a one-time, totally untrained, absolutely dangerous (which now causes me to believe in many worlds since I was very good at it without ever even having heard of ‘samba’) practitioner of static apnea, and as one who, since childhood, often has pleasant dreams of breathing underwater; I think that the babies die in the position they are most comfortable in. Kinda like some people are more comfortable with a sleep aid, like fentanyle.
@ Tim
You write: “I think that the babies die in the position they are most comfortable in”
Since only a very very small percentage of infants die of SIDs, what a stupid thing to say. Of course, most survive either on stomach or back; but the studies make it clear that the risk can be reduced significantly by sleep position and removing anything they may suffocate from, e.g. Teddy bears, blankets, etc. Do you understand!
Or can you give another explanation why the number of cases plummeted as the new recommendations were followed?
““Sids largely eradicated in japan and Sweden after withdrawal of the pertussis vaccine….”
I hate that pernicious lie. What happened after a couple of babies died after the DTP from SIDS, they stopped giving it until age two. Then over forty babies died from pertussis. I am sure you have access to this paper:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9652634/
It has the sad story of Japan, plu what happened in Sweden and elsewhere. I seemed to have forgotten my password at the Lancet.
Also, never take vaccination advice from Japan where politics often rules over science, and the doctors are not happy about that (the last couple of sentences of this paper reflect that): http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3824286/
You forgot about the cats, Joel A. Harrison, PhD, MPH. My grandmother said that cats steal your breath in your sleep. Can a ‘teddy bear’ compete with that nextfuckinglevel stealth?
In Japan, it was not SIDS rates, it was amount vaccine injury compensations awarded. In Japan, SIDS cannot diagnosed after 1 year, so a 2 year cannot be compensated for it. No wonder that compensation rates drop to zero when vaccination age was raised to 2 years. But Japan has a pertussis epidemic, as you an guess
The original origin of that idiotic story was from the 1970s, and it was SIDS: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15889991/
It was one of the first anti-vax lies I heard about in the late 1990s.
[…] Il debunking di Respectful Insolence […]
Sheila: “I was wondering if you noticed Dr. Raoult (dear reader- please note he is considered by many to be the number one expert in the world on communicable diseases) has doubled down on his insistence that HCQ works.”
Who exactly considers Raoult to be “the number one expert in the world on communicable diseases”? There’s probably a wide range of opinion (among those qualified to have one) on who deserves that honor, but I can’t find “many” or even any independent infectious disease specialists who are on record as viewing Raoult as Mr. Big.
Fauci would get some votes. Raoult may be #1 in his own mind but he doesn’t show up in lists elsewhere.
https://www.idsociety.org/news–publications-new/articles/2019/leading-infectious-diseases-experts-honored-at-idweek-2019-for-outstanding-work-in-patient-care-research-public-health-and-education/
Sheila: “I am somewhat sick of the evidence based only people.
I am a retired dentist.”
Anyone who needs dental work should be pleased at the retirement of non-evidence based dentists.
Please note: evidence based ONLY. Dentists routinely share experiences to learn from each other. Anecdotal, but extremely helpful to our patients.
Also note: someone posted here, don’t listen to anything out of Japan, science has gotten mixed up with politics.
I might add China. And the USA.
Le sigh. In college I was referred to a dentist by my roommate’s then boyfriend, a soon to graduate dentist. I tried to be a test client for his final clinical testing, but my teeth really only needed to be cleaned. So he referred me to one of his clinical professors. Who I went to until he retired, and now we are seen by the younger guy they looked hard to replace him (I believe the criteria was the same kind of dad jokes).
A few years ago I looked up what my roommate’s old boyfriend was up to. He was up to scaring patients about mercury fillings and replacing all their teeth. He had become one of those grifters. Aargh.
This is what anecdotes gets you. Subpar medical care. It happens in all medical fields. Many have been documented on this blog and the other blog the author writes at: Science Based Medicine.
One of the former authors of the Science Based Medicine blog, Dr. Mark Crislip, has a saying that the most scary/dangerous thing you can hear from a medical practitioner is “In my experience….”: https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/who-you-gonna-believe-me-or-you-own-eyes/
This is the paragraph of note:
Instead of pointing out your opinion as fact, and simply parroting potential misinformation, why not actually investigate her claims? All you have done is found other misinformed people as ‘proof’. If you were truly a humble doctor you would be open to being proven wrong, and learning from it. Instead, you are grandstanding. I don’t blame you really. This is what you are taught and you are too wary of disagreeing and public ridicule. On that alone she has far more credibility than you do right now. The world is not saved by cowardice but by true conviction. I believe you could be filled with true conviction for the truth if you just put your ego aside. Please try.
Silly man. You think I didn’t investigate her claims? Her claims are BS.
“We can start by the fact that describing aluminum salts as a heavy metal suggests some misunderstandings.
This blog addressed aluminum adjuvants many times in the past. The search engine can help you find that.”
So, the article you link to states that they are tested extensively in clinical trials before being released and then the studies claim that since it is such a small amount it makes no difference. Uh, who funded those studies? The vaccine manufacturers perhaps?
I ask because a study (which took about a minute to locate) on PubMed.gov from the NIH states:
We have examined the neurotoxicity of aluminum in humans and animals under various conditions, following different routes of administration, and provide an overview of the various associated disease states.
The literature demonstrates clearly negative impacts of aluminum on the nervous system across the age span.
In adults, aluminum exposure can lead to apparently age-related neurological deficits resembling Alzheimer’s and has been linked to this disease and to the Guamanian variant, ALS-PDC.Similar outcomes have been found in animal models.
In addition, injection of aluminum adjuvants in an attempt to model Gulf War syndrome and associated neurological deficits leads to an ALS phenotype in young male mice.
In young children, a highly significant correlation exists between the number of pediatric aluminum-adjuvanted vaccines administered and the rate of autism spectrum disorders. Many of the features of aluminum-induced neurotoxicity may arise, in part, from autoimmune reactions, as part of the ASIA syndrome.
Hmmm….I wonder what they mean by “a highly significant correlation exists between the number of pediatric aluminum-adjuvanted vaccines administered and the rate of autism spectrum disorders.”
Do you think that could mean that aluminum adjuvants from children’s vaccines may be contributing an increased incidence of autism? (I’m sure the vaccine industry funded some counter studies to state – don’t pay attention to that study, we now know that aluminum – a known and serious CNS toxin given to children without a developed brain blood barrier at the age of 2 months on, is just peachy keen and has no impact on children with undeveloped brains and nervous systems.) https://bit.ly/2Wh7XFi
But wait why stop there!
There’s another study from PubMed titled:
Aluminum adjuvant linked to Gulf War illness induces motor neuron death in mice.
Gulf War illness (GWI) affects a significant percentage of veterans of the 1991 conflict, but its origin remains unknown. Associated with some cases of GWI are increased incidences of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and other neurological disorders. Whereas many environmental factors have been linked to GWI, the role of the anthrax vaccine has come under increasing scrutiny. Among the vaccine’s potentially toxic components are the adjuvants aluminum hydroxide and squalene.
Hmmm….the adjuvant aluminum hydroxide…let’s see what they discovered with this “perfectly safe” CNS toxin.
To examine whether these compounds might contribute to neuronal deficits associated with GWI, an animal model for examining the potential neurological impact of aluminum hydroxide, squalene, or aluminum hydroxide combined with squalene was developed. Young, male colony CD-1 mice were injected with the adjuvants at doses equivalent to those given to US military service personnel. All mice were subjected to a battery of motor and cognitive-behavioral tests over a 6-mo period post injections. Following sacrifice, central nervous system tissues were examined using immunohistochemistry for evidence of inflammation and cell death.
The results?
Behavioral testing showed motor deficits in the aluminum treatment group that expressed as a progressive decrease in strength measured by the wire-mesh hang test (final deficit at 24 wk; about 50%). Significant cognitive deficits in water-maze learning were observed in the combined aluminum and squalene group (4.3 errors per trial) compared with the controls (0.2 errors per trial) after 20 wk. Apoptotic neurons were identified in aluminum-injected animals that showed significantly increased activated caspase-3 labeling in lumbar spinal cord (255%) and primary motor cortex (192%) compared with the controls. Aluminum-treated groups also showed significant motor neuron loss (35%) and increased numbers of astrocytes (350%) in the lumbar spinal cord. The findings suggest a possible role for the aluminum adjuvant in some neurological features associated with GWI and possibly an additional role for the combination of adjuvants. https://bit.ly/2YK8aCK
Not a very good outcome it seems. Here’s another:
Aluminum hydroxide injections lead to motor deficits and motor neuron degeneration.
Possible causes of GWS include several of the adjuvants in the anthrax vaccine and others. The most likely culprit appears to be aluminum hydroxide. https://bit.ly/2WGmgT0
There are more.
So, what misunderstandings are being missed here?
Aluminum is a serious CNS toxin that can be fatal and accumulates in the body over time.
Children as young as 2 months with an immature and not fully developed brain blood barrier and developing brain and nervous system are given at least two doses of aluminum adjuvant vaccines at as young as 2 months according to CDC vaccine scheduling recommendations as well as formaldehyde containing vaccines (I suppose that’s a good thing too.). However, we’re supposed to believe that since it is such a small amount, it really means nothing.
After all, they get more in their diets right?
Funny that the studies don’t seem to share your confidence. I guess we should just trust the doctors right.
Not common sense. Not facts. Not studies which demonstrate otherwise. Just trust the drug pushing docs.
Otherwise, you are an “anti-vax” conspiracy nut right?
When did medicine become so dogmatic and deceptive. Was it when it passed the first annual Trillion back in the 90’s or the third annual Trillion?
I guess the late Dr. Robert Mendelsohn M.D., author of Confessions of a Medical Heretic was right when he stated,
“Modern medicine can’t survive without our faith, because modern medicine is neither an art nor a science; it’s a religion…Just ask ‘why’ enough times and sooner or later you’ll reach the chasm of faith.”
Either that or intransigent dogma or perhaps a blend of both.
So, Shoenfeld, Shaw & Tomljenovic, and two more Shaws. That’s a lot of ophthalmology. It’s too bad that Helen “Homologous Recombinaltion Tiniker” Ratajczak has gotten on the bandwagon.
^ “hasn’t” gotten on the bandwagon
Terry, aluminum is still not a heavy metal. It is one of the lightest metal elements, so not a heavy metal. Calling it a heavy metal is showing a lack of understanding of basic chemistry. So is assuming if something is a problem in large doses, then it is a problem with small doses.
Because all you are proving with your so-called research is that you do not understand what you are reading. Revealed when you had no idea what a “Gish Gallop”… especially with the one you used to tell us how bad the most common metal element on this planet’s crust is.
@Jo Roderick: “I believe…”
I believe you need a mirror.
The world is saved by true conviction…..
I guess we should all applaud the religious fundamentalists then?
Judy Mikovitz has been dishonest about many things. Mikki Willis is also a liar claiming things about his involvement in 9/11 which are also false. However it is so easy to poke holes in their stories because they are controlled opposition designed to push easily debunked conspiracy theories and shut down reasoned debate about a myriad of problems with the science and policy decisions being made around COVID-19. There is no other reason for their existence or their plandemic film. It’s all just too easy.
Oh, great. Now we have a conspiracy theory about the conspiracy theories.
It had to happen…
Surely there’s no such thing as an easily debunked conspiracy theory? Once you’ve got a few people hooked, it can only grow. Anyone read ‘The Psychopath Test’ by Jon Ronson? Try getting UN-diagnosed.
In response to those who would love to call Dr Raoult a quack, egomaniac, or whatever other insults you can drum up:
each column, black bars show the relative amount of expertise for each place or person. Longer is better. For example, D Raoult is the top-rated expert in Communicable Diseases in the world. Past data are available.
http://expertscape.com/ex/communicable+diseases
@ Sheila
The number of publications doesn’t equal the impact. John Watson and Francis Crick published one article on structure of DNA and changed the world. There are other scientists who have published a handfull of papers that had major impacts. And years ago many universities decided that only if one were among first three authors could articles be included for promotions and tenure. Many articles include as authors members of lab, chair of department, etc. I did a quick search using Raoult’s name and skimming a few pages of articles, the vast majority he wasn’t among the first three authors. And there are top line peer-reviewed journals and over the past decades a number of for-profit journals have popped up, easier to get published in. Sometimes they also contain quality articles; but not always.
I found this: “Expertscape has gained acceptance as a means for clinicians to identify single-disease subspecialists.” Well, “Communicable Diseases” has a huge range, totally impossible for anyone to masters even a small subset, and he is certainly not a single-disease sub specialist.
And finally, if you read Orac’s articles on his research on hydroxychloroquine you would understand just how poorly they were done.
And he is basically a denier of climate change and/or man’s contributing to it. Way outside his field of expertise; but he still makes his opinion public.
Only really stupid people believe one can rate in such a way.
I’m sorry, weak arguments. I find it astounding the lengths you people will go to to discredit those you disagree with.
Sheila is seriously arguing that expertise is measured by the number of papers in which one is listed as an author?
Publication inflation is a relatively modern phenomenon.
“When cardiologists become directors of major clinical and research centers, for example, they can see their authorship go up 10-fold. Their names get embedded in what their center produces. It’s a norm that field has adopted, even though it doesn’t necessarily meet rigorous authorship standards.”
http://sciencemag.org/news/2018/09/some-scientists-publish-more-70-papers-year-here-s-how-and-why-they-do-it
A more realistic measure of how highly rated a physician or scientist is, involves recognition by his/her peers.
You said you skimmed a few pages of his publications, and he was not on the first three of the vast majority. Ok, so what? What about everyone else? Let’s face it, most of academia does the same thing.
As far as him not being a sub- specialist… sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees when your focus is so narrow. Perspective can be everything.
Also. Orac’s review was April 14. Raoult has done additional work since then, have you looked at that? Did you look at the articles linked in my previous posts?
Common sense, in view of all the reports from doctors all over the world, dictates that HCQ is an effective treatment. I am desperately trying to open people’s eyes to this, in order to save lives.
It seems to me that there is an agenda here, hoping to prove, and hoping it doesn’t, work. Not good. Sianara!
“Also. Orac’s review was April 14. Raoult has done additional work since then, have you looked at that?”
Why? If it is being done properly it will not see the light of day for six months. Sorry, good science is slow. A human pregnancy should go on for about nine months. One does get nine women pregnant to get a one baby out in one month. Reality has a time table.
I can not argue that it would take less than 6 months to produce a good, double blind study that will prove/disprove HCQ +zinc’s effectiveness against Covid.
In 6 months, how many more dead bodies will we have? The high number of anecdotal reports, combined with its long use, low incidence of adverse reactions, and cost, make its utilization a no-brained IMHO. Just monitor for the cardiac effects.
Perhaps these anecdotal reports are not double blind. You might be able to say the controls fill the morgues of the nursing homes in NYS.
I’m not too interested in looking at altmetrics at the moment, but his Crossref h-index is 36, which isn’t shabby. Then again, his last big hit was in 2015.
@ Sheila
You really are a MORON. Yep, once in a while in history we have people like Newton, Einstein, etc. who individually change the course of history; but this happens seldom. However, finding one individual in any profession as the “top-rated” is absurd. First, as I already explained, it isn’t the number of publications; but their effects, including how many other peer-reviewed articles cite one or more of an individual’s publications. Your need to believe that we can rank individuals in a world of 10s of thousands of communicable disease researchers says more about you than him.
I gave a few examples; but I can give many more of researchers who didn’t publish tons of papers; but one or a few had a major impact.
Though slightly different, I’ve lived in several other nations. I find American politics absurd. For instance, when ones candidate wins nomination or race, people cry, jump for joy, etc. as if the Messiah has returned. No matter how qualified or unqualified someone is, they are humans, not messiahs. I NEVER saw anything similar in other nations. Many Americans, not all, are looking for a savior, someone who will do everything right for them. Never happen. This need warps how many vote, seeing candidates through rose-colored lenses.
And even geniuses are sometimes wrong. A great book that details major errors by the giants of history is: Mario Livio (2013). Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein. Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe.
I promise you that those included in the book were far more intelligent, had far more effect on human history than Raoult. And, besides, several of Raoult’s papers have been found to be either fraudulent or really poorly done.
I’m sure you won’t answer; but I’ll ask the same question I’ve asked of others: What education, training, work makes you think you are right?
I will humbly submit – none. And I am not saying I am right. I am saying that I do not trust the science/ pharma partnership and I wish more doctors and scientists would be more honest. I am just a thinker, a reader, and with a daughter working as a nurse in NY, somewhat obsessed with finding every bit of info I can.
I posed a question to the group that no one answered (I don’t think- am having trouble keeping up with so many posts) – why was Fauci so pumped up about Remdesivir and so reticent on HCQ? Early, before we knew anything? Even the illustrious Orac posted on Remdesivir’s not so great results.
Also, was it you? who linked to wired, which said only Remdesivir is in a full out study. Ok. since I have outed myself as being, as you say graciously say, a moron, and you all have access to information I do not: is that statement in wired true? And if so, why?
Shorter Sheila: “Never mind the quality, feel the width!”
D Raoult runs an enormous paper mill. Of course he sticks his name on every paper they churn out, regardless of whether it’s any good or he himself was personally involved.
That doesn’t make him a great scientist, it makes him a great salesman. And the product he’s selling is D Raoult.
Now, the science establishment is guilty of something: guilty of letting him get away with all his dodgy self-serving crap for as long as it has. Ignorance, indifference, different priorities; whatever. And now he’s dug in like a tick, with powerful friends in politics and media. If it was GSK or Dr Gorski behaving like that, you’d be all over them like a rash—and quite right too. (So would we.)
https://forbetterscience.com/2020/03/26/chloroquine-genius-didier-raoult-to-save-the-world-from-covid-19/
https://forbetterscience.com/2020/03/26/chloroquine-genius-didier-raoult-to-save-the-world-from-covid-19/
So if you are a neutral observer then why a double standard: automatically assuming malice on one side and altruism on the other?
Are you really after the truth, or just a pleasing narrative that makes you feel good? ’Cos as someone who learned that particular difference the very hard and painful way, I’m just going to quote you a truly good scientist here:
“Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.”—Richard Feynman
Scientist or layperson, I encourage you to read the whole thing. For science is at heart an intellectual tool for separating facts from fictions. You may find it useful.
Thanks for the Richard Feynman link – I’ve only ever read the quote you gave, nice to read the whole thing – if only more of us could live up to that kind of integrity and intellectual honesty!
Via Dr. James Todara, MD.
The Italian Society for Rheumatology studied 65,000 patients on longterm hydroxychloroquine for RA and Lupus.
Only 20 patients tested positive for COVID-19. No ICU, no deaths.
This is a 90% reduction in infection rate compared to the rest of Italy.https://t.co/Pta97oBA8O
Why would a professional society do studies? They may have a journal where they publish papers, but they don’t fund studies. The American Society of Mechanical Engineers has a magazine/journal, but they do not do their own studies (former member). Also, that is a news story in Italian. Go find its PubMed ID number and post that.
Not in PubMed. Must be preprint… seems like it is bogus, my apologies if it is. Was considering having my son-in-law translate the paper for me, but will wait to see if more comes of this before I bother him.
But the premise is something that would be extremely useful to look at. My problem is a low trust factor for the science/pharmaceutical industry partnership.
No, it must be in PubMed. No more preprints, because they have not been peer reviewed. Get us PubMed indexed studies only, because this idle speculation without actual verifiable evidence is dangerous.
https://xkcd.com/2304/
@RS xkcd never fails
The story is a fabrication. Shocking, I know, that chloroquaints should be inveterate liars.
The number is completely fictional. As mentioned here in the comments, the president of the Italian Rheumatology Society was contacted directly and states that this number is completely wrong, that the society is monitoring 150 patients in its registry, 20 of whom are taking hydroxychloroquine. The 65,000 number is bogus.
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/05/04/hydroxychloroquine-update-may-4
@ Smut Clyde
Thanks for finding the article and link. I asked in a comment if Sheila could read Italian and, if so, what education and training does she have to evaluate it. I await her answer; but with your comment, she will probably just crawl back under her rock.
I stand corrected. (I think). Will continue to monitor this story.
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/05/04/hydroxychloroquine-update-may-4
Oops… I went straight to Google the moment I saw this. Ever reliable Smut Clyde is there before me.
Re James Todaro:
https://www.wired.com/story/an-old-malaria-drug-may-fight-covid-19-and-silicon-valleys-into-it/
Todaro should vet his sources before rushing to propagate fictions. I refer to The Italian Society for Rheumatology fiction.
Assuming he is propagating this fiction. Which I infer from Sheila’s somewhat gnomic post.
From your source:
Nichol didn’t respond to a request for comment, but a CDC spokesperson emailed this: “CDC is aware of reports of various medications being administered for either treatment or prophylaxis for COVID-19, including those demonstrating in vitro activity against SARS-CoV- 2. At this time, it is important to ensure robust clinical data, gathered from clinical trials, are obtained quickly in order to make informed clinical decisions regarding the management of patients with COVID-19.”
Then above that:
Though nearly a dozen drugs to treat coronavirus are in clinical trials in China, just one—remdesivir, an antiviral that was in trials against Ebola and the coronavirus MERS—is in full-on trials in the US.
My question: is that true? (It’s your source), and if it is, why is HCQ not in full-on trials?
The moment I saw your “Via Dr. James Todara” post I smelled a rat. I quickly found the take-down and gave the link. I immediately found that Smut Clyde had already done the job.
So I switched my focus to your source and found the article about whichI linked to. This was simply by way of providing some context about the source – and giving him his correct name. At least I assume it’s his correct name? I thought we should have the correct name and some context.
I take it he is propagating this fiction?
As for your questions about the article on Todaro, I have no idea. They are incidental to my purpose in linking to the article.
“why is HCQ not in full-on trials?”
HCQ is, in fact, in full-on trials.
@ Sheila
First, people with lupus and rheumatoid arthritis usually are under medical supervision, so, at the first outbreak, one can hope that their personal doctors warned them. Second, having known several, they don’t go out and socialize like “healthy” individuals. Third, several studies have been recently completed that did NOT find hydroxychloroquine worked. In fact, at least one study was terminated early because of higher adverse reactions and deaths in group receiving it.
If future research shows you are totally wrong, will you admit it? As I’ve written numerous times in comments, I have NO problem admitting when I’m wrong. My current evaluation is based on over 40 years of education, training, and experience; but I could be wrong for the right reasons and someone else could be right for the wrong reasons; however, the odds are highly in my favor as i know how to look at research, design, choice of statistics, etc
Unfortunately I can’t read Italian, so can’t look at the article you linked to. Do you read Italian? If not, how do you know the study was well-designed? And, if you can read Italian, what education, training do you have to make such a evaluation?
Joel, that was the first post I read that had a humble tone to it. I already apologized, it does look like it was bogus. Like I said, I was going to have my son in law translate it for me. I want your advice – is it worth it?
@ Joel:
I tried to read the article – in my limited Italian- but it kept disappearing, quickly replaced by adverts for ‘Mondo Disney’- not my scene at all.
Maybe someone else will have better luck with it.
This is one reason why you need to wait for the reviewed and vetted studies. This is mostly what they have indexed on PubMed. This article on how to read and understand a paper might help you: https://violentmetaphors.com/2013/08/25/how-to-read-and-understand-a-scientific-paper-2/
Also, you might want to download this book from your local library (or elsewhere): Lies, Damned Lies, and Science: How to Sort through the Noise Around Global Warming, the Latest Health Claims, and Other Scientific Controversies by Sherry Seethaler
And by the way upthread: aluminum is not a heavy metal, that is what was being conveyed. You cannot get “heavy metal” poisoning from one of the lighter metal elements. Which happens to be the most common metal element on the crust of this planet. It is a component of all the soil you food is grown in. It would be useful if you learned a wee bit of chemistry along with biology.
Oops… it was “Terry” who gave us a Gish Gallop on aluminum for the second part of my response. It gets a bit hard to navigate a thread with almost 900 comments.
In addition to the fiction already debunked, Il Tempo cites another trial for hydroxychloroquine as prophylactic treatment. It states that of 211 people exposed to Covid19 receiving hydroxychloroquine prophylactic treatment none were infected. Published in International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents.
However, concerns raised about the study have caused the publishers to issue a statement saying that additional peer review is under way and that a correction may be considered depending on the outcome.
https://www.isac.world/news-and-publications/isac-elsevier-statement
@Chris.
I appreciate your tone, honestly. It’s refreshing.
I do have a bachelors in bio, a DDS and a post grad specialty, so I know how to read a paper. To be honest, I’m retied and hate reading papers now, but I am trying because like I said, my daughter is on the frontlines(or was, it is much better at her hospital now) in NY. Lost a friend and a cousin to Covid. My other 2 children are also somewhat at risk. Many friends of friends were sick, most better, but now even an 11 yo.
I realize that I‘m in way over my head here, not being an MD or researcher. But I read a lot and am highly motivated. Just trying to get at the truth, and hoping some of you will help. I am unconvinced HCQ is a failure, and again, low risk (please don’t try to convince me otherwise, been around too long, widely used, it’s ridiculous IMHO), high reward, if used early enough and possibly with zinc.
Again, as I said before, I have lost trust in a lot of science in the US because of corruption. I think you know I’m telling the truth. I even think someone here admitted big pharma is corrupt, I was shocked. But maybe it was not a regular.
Thank you. The book I suggested gets into that “corruption”, essentially how to recognize it and depending the stakeholders how to interrupt their wants versus needs.
About your random opinions, sure.
[…] to make a number of other, bewildering claims, as Dr. David Gorski of the blog Respectful Insolence points out: “Indeed, the amount of nonsense, misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy mongering in […]
@narad
Do you feel that you are in a place where it is impossible to avoid exposure to SARS-COV-2 ?? Is it because of factions?
Join the club. No, wait… I wear a vacuum cleaner bag on my face — I’m ‘flattening the curve’ until animae catches up wiith a cure. It is a race between politics and religion and tribalism as I sneak to keep it on. And yet, I live with people that go to church and sing and spray god’s glory all over the uninitiated. And our mayor is just swell over the 500 pot arrests a day.
Sometimes, I just wanna pull the pin outta this thing and let’her’rip, but TVA would wanna have a word about the disruption afterwards– and a lotta fridges would stop working. Falsly attbuted, it is not like those dead grangrans gonna be complaining about making casserole out of that rotten ‘sparagus anywaysl.
Please ignore that^^
My test trumpbot troll AI has developed empathy. I’m most dreadfully embarrased.
Are you kidding? My sublessor will just about only let me out of the house to get him groceries and booze. I’m turning into a blob of adipose goo. And the nearest cannabis dispensary is generally out of… cannabis. On the rare occasion that they do, it’s absurdly expensive (seriously — $70 for an eighth of Sour Diesel, about twice the street price on the South Side) and they never have an “open window” to place an order. That’s corporate grass for you. Thanks, Cresco.
Nmmm. It always gave me this weird crushing guilt/anxiety feeling. Paradoxically, I somehow found ‘girl scout cookies’ to be worse; giving me paranoia + a panic attack on more than one occasion.
Turns out, I need low thc/high cbd/something else as yet unidentified that I only replicated once out in the field that was just pure euphoric with crystal clear mentality — It was off the male plant, of all things.
“Key Lime Remedy,” perhaps.
This is very helpful, but I strongly suggest that you correct the claim that no one is being arrested for failing to practice social distancing. It’s become a very public scandal in NYC that NYPD have been arresting, and in one very disturbing case, beating people of color for such infractions, while largely leaving white offenders alone, or letting them off with a warning or a summons.
Unfortunately with the flood of information coming out, those stories are not making to the west of the Appalachian Mountains. I have not seen it in the national news broadcast here, so perhaps it did not make it to Michigan. I only know because I follow a twitter feed of a neighbor who moved to NYC.
“Poodle Stomper” called it in 2011.
She will end up being the next Wakefield, pushing crap “science” and making money off of her followers. It’s really sad.
https://scienceblogs.com/erv/2011/11/21/xmrv-and-chronic-fatigue-syndr-30#comment-1748844
Hindsight is always 20/20. So kudos to PS… sad, mad and bad.
An article for your consideration.
How ‘Plandemic’ is Fake in 12 GIFs
It also has a link to the Reddit thread mentioned earlier.
Your link is not liked by my computer’s security.
It worked for me. Try this one: https://medium.com/@erin_gallagher/facebook-groups-and-youtube-enabled-viral-spread-of-plandemic-disinformation-f1a279335e8c
either you are a paid pharma-whore or just an ‘squarehead idiot’
before the doors of NaZi concentration camps where opened to eliminate millions there where ‘rumors ‘ about it for years and everybody laughed about this ‘rumors’ if they would have had available the CIA invented term ‘conspiracy theorist’ they would have called it back then a ‘ conspiracy theory’ and everyone warning about of what would be later on history a ‘conspiracy theorist’
but….unfortunately the widely unknown term for real evil is still ‘ ignorance’
IGNORANCE is the REAL EVIL
and the above fabrication is written and published by some of these whitespread cancerous IGNORANTS
Shame on You!
According to Urban Dictionary: a so-called “square head” has Scandinavian or German ancestry.
I don’t think that our esteemed leader has that background but other contributors here ( not me) do and that is insulting to them.
It may be permissible to call someone an “idiot”- if they are one- although the earlier usage of that term was diagnostic of people with intellectual disabilities so that would be disparaging if meant that way. I doubt that Orac or any of his regulars have an ID because you know, university degrees, doctorates and stuff.
re ‘IGNORANCE is the REAL EVIL’
Right, that’s why we’re here.
re “whitespread” do you mean that white people are spreading uncontrollably ( never a great state of affairs**) or that the music of Jack White is becoming even more popular of late?
re “NaZi concentration camps” – comparing anything to the aforesaid ( except OTHER Nazi concentration camps” is never a good look.
** -btw- I’m white
According to Urban Dictionary: a so-called “square head” has Scandinavian or German ancestry.
I don’t think that our esteemed leader has that background but other contributors here ( not me) do and that is insulting to them.
My ancestors evolved thick, protuberant skulls to cope with the selective pressure of other people hitting them on the head with sharp objects. I take no offence from terms that allude to this feature.
@ shameonyou
First, ORAC explained in an earlier comment with hyperlink that “conspiracy theory” was a term used long before the CIA.
Second, besides your moronic rant, you don’t address one single point made by ORAC. Thee real IGNORANCE is people who throw out gross hyperbole without any substance to back it up.
At least some of those who are wrong link to one or two papers showing a minuscule but at least some basis for their position, though I doubt they will change based on anything that points out flaws in those papers and links to other papers. So, you are even beneath them in level of IGNORANCE
https://www.dictionary.com/e/memes/godwins-law/
This is not only another proof of Godwin’s Law, but another one upthread also gives us a measurable Goebbels Gap.
@shameonyou – knowledge and ignorance are neither good nor evil – it’s what you do with them that counts. FWIW, in my opinion, Orac is most definitely on the side of good.
IGNORANCE is the REAL EVIL
I take it that you’re excepting the ability to, y’know, competently use your Mother Tongue.
Nazi party program included elimitating the Jews. It was definitely not “rumors” If you want to know what Nazism really was, check Youtube for “liberation of Bergen Belsen”. Richard Dimbleby’s version is the best. You will notice how his melliflous BBC accent cracks under pure fury.
Please rewrite in English and resubmit. Your request to be the village idiot will not be processed until a coherent application is received.
[…] to make a number of other, bewildering claims, as Dr. David Gorski of the blog Respectful Insolence points out: “Indeed, the amount of nonsense, misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy mongering in […]
@ Terry
May 10, 2020 at 3:35 am
You link to an article by Christopher Shaw and Lucija Tomljenovic, ophthalmologists whose many articles have been torn apart for poor methodology and a number retracted. Currently about 800,000 articles are captured per year by Medline, so one can easily find a few cherry picked articles that confirm ones bias, one ignorance.
Orac has actually dealt with the two authors, so, you can check out:
Orac (2017 Oct 10). Another antivaccine paper bites the dust at: https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/?s=tomljenovic
Orac (2017 Sep 7). Torturing more mice in the name of antivaccine pseudoscience: PubPeer versus antivaxers at: https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/?s=tomljenovic
Type in search box at top of Respectful Insolence and/or Science-Based Medicine either of the two names and you will find more. You can additional articles explaining just how poor these researchers are at Skeptical Raptor’s website.
I realize that you and others like you are highly unlikely to change your minds, minds not made up based on education and training as scientists; but on opinions form based on conscious and unconscious biases. Your litmus test for the validity of research is not its methodology, not its being replicated by independent researchers; but if its results confirm what you choose to believe.
As I often ask: what is your education, training, etc. that allows you to evaluate the validity of medical science?
@ Joel:
A while ago, I found an article in which Lucija T spoke about leaving research and devoting herself to her religion. I can’t find it now but there are a few easily accessible religiously oriented videos of her.
Do you think that her conscience finally caught up with her?
She used to be a frequent guest on Null’s noontime woo-fest ( and in his anti-vax films) but not recently.
I did a quick google search and confirmed that Tomljenovic has renounced her former Roman Catholicism and now appears to be a fundamentalist protestant. She makes a point of denouncing the “lies of Romanism and Darwinism”, and has added her name to the Discovery Institute’s list of scientists who “Dissent from Darwinism”.
I think this move is less about her conscience and more about her fanaticism.
@ Terry
May 10, 2020 at 3:35 am
You link to an article by Christopher Shaw and Lucija Tomljenovic, ophthalmologists whose many articles have been torn apart for poor methodology and a number retracted. Currently about 800,000 articles are captured per year by Medline, so one can easily find a few cherry picked articles that confirm ones bias, one ignorance.
Orac has actually dealt with the two authors, so, you can check out:
Orac (2017 Oct 10). Another antivaccine paper bites the dust at: https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/?s=tomljenovic
Orac (2017 Sep 7). Torturing more mice in the name of antivaccine pseudoscience: PubPeer versus antivaxers at: https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/?s=tomljenovic
Type in search box at top of Respectful Insolence and/or Science-Based Medicine either of the two names and you will find more. You can additional articles explaining just how poor these researchers are at Skeptical Raptor’s website.
I realize that you and others like you are highly unlikely to change your minds, minds not made up based on education and training as scientists; but on opinions form based on conscious and unconscious biases. Your litmus test for the validity of research is not its methodology, not its being replicated by independent researchers; but if its results confirm what you choose to believe.
Thanks for the reality based analysis, Orac. The antivaxers’ responses have been a wonder to behold; very telling.
[…] another debunker put […]
[…] Here’s a decently thorough debunking by surgical oncologist David Gorski. […]
@ Sheila
You write: “I have lost trust in a lot of science in the US because of corruption. I think you know I’m telling the truth. I even think someone here admitted big pharma is corrupt.”
One of the things that really angers me is when people see the world in black and white. Yep, Pharma has been guilty of submitting applications where they withheld key data and recently the FDA has upped its oversight. A great book with extensive references is Ben Goldacre’s “Bad Pharma”; but, on the other hand, I don’t trust or distrust a journal article simply because of its source of funding. I look at the methodology and also if similar studies have been done, don’t rely on one or two studies. And for antivaccinationists who may read this, vaccines are in a league of their own, FDA much stricter oversight and studies carried out around the world, including better post-marketing surveillance than anything else on the market, drugs, medical devices, food, etc.
As for hydroxychloroquine, the latest update I could find is: Chris Dall (2020 May 8). Study finds no hydroxychloroquine effect on death, severe
COVID-19. at: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/05/study-finds-no-hydroxychloroquine-effect-death-severe-covid-19
It points out that placebo-controlled randomized clinical studies still haven’t been reported. But, so far, the weight of the evidence is that hydroxychloroquine doesn’t save lives and causes severe adverse effects. So, until we have better studies, anecdotal evidence and Raoult’s bogus studies don’t mean anything
If it was used earlier I doubt the side effects would be severe. Again, don’t try to convince me it is high risk, been around way too long to say that, you know it’s ridiculous.
Some are theorizing it is an effect of Covid not hydroxychloroquine. Zpack can also do it.
As I’m sure you know, the VA study used way too high of a dose, on very sick patients.
If it was your mother, what would you do?
I most certainly would not use anything that plays with her QT interval, risking torsades! Given that both of those ineffective against any virus drugs do cause QT lengthening, it’s essentially like playing Russian roulette with a machine gun.
And for the record, my mother is long deceased, but our youngest daughter was diagnosed with COVID-19 yesterday.
Tell her to stay the fuck away from the shit, just like I told her to throw away Suzanne Somers’ Knockout.
“If it was your mother, what would you do?”
If she were rich and I needed cash quick, then it would be “Hey Mom, this HCQ stuff seems pretty cool – why don’t you try it?”
One major problem is the immense amount of drivel out there. I’ve even ran into oddball rubbish on PubPeer, relating a DNA sequence from Toxoplasma Gondii, which is extremely odd, given that SARS-CoV-2 is an RNA virus.
I did see one study that “showed promise” (yeah, we’ve all heard that far too often) for multiple antiviral medications, hopefully replication will be successful.
Link, please? I’m pretty sure I’m being obtuse, but is it not that, loosely, RNA is DNA Unraveled and split down the middle?
@Tim – no, RNA has a different backbone (ribose vs deoxyribose, that’s the R vs the D) and one different base (uracil instead of thymine). It does not pair with its complement in the same way to make the classic double helix and tends to be single-stranded. It’s far less stable than DNA. It’s a distinct molecule.
@Narad
Thank you.
@ Sheila
I realize that you are incapable of changing your mind; but for others monitoring this:
1. hydroxychloroquine has been successfully used for some autoimmune diseases, e.g., lupus; but the immune response of an autoimmune disease compared to acute respiratory distress syndrome/cytokine storm is like comparing 10 mph breeze to a category 5, 160 mph, hurricane
2. most people dying from COVID-19 are seniors &/or those with one and often several comorbidites, which means they are already debilitated, the addition of COVID-19 means that the likelihood of the severe reactions to any medication is much higher
So, believe what you want. As I wrote above, I have NO problem being proven wrong if it means saving lives, so I would be wrong for the right reasons (actually carefully looking using my training) and someone else could be right for the wrong reason. We’ll see; but what if you are wrong and it turns out that hydroxychlorine actually kills people?
I would feel terrible. But as I have said before, it seems it should be given before the patient is deathly ill.
Hopefully this horrible disease is abating, hopefully we will never need to know.
But until we do, with no other options at this point, I would rather put my money on Hydroxychloroquine plus zinc. Haven’t read enough yet on zpack.
Looked at the story someone reposted for me on Raouts study, a lot to digest, will do it tomorrow.
OTOH, I am also feeling terrible right now because I think it is very possible it does work and is not being used. Maybe my friend and my cousin would still be here.
@ Sheila
I won’t bother to give references; but there are several books and many more articles that go through history of premature adoptions of drugs and medical interventions, premature in that they weren’t based on solid science; but hopes, anecdotes, weak studies, whatever, and every one of the books and articles show that the vast majority caused more deaths and suffering. So, how would you feel if you had arranged for your friend and cousin to get the drugs, they died and later research showed the drugs caused more deaths? I’m sure you would find some way to rationalize your decision.
OK, they died without; but if later studies show the drugs increase risk of death, then, still, had you been able to get them to your friend and cousin, what level of guilt would you have, since you wouldn’t know they were going to die?
Your opinion goes against medical history; but, I’m sure you know better?????
Wow…the tin foil hat brigade is out, loud, and proud!
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/thimerosal/index.html — addresses the mercury-based preservative in vaccines that is being phased out. No, I don’t like the idea of mercury in vaccines, and I don’t want to die of the measles, either…speaking of which…
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01011-6 — explains why measles deaths are surging (you guessed it: it has something to do with vaccinations)
The reason people care whether or not others get vaccinated:
According to some estimates, 50 to 70 percent of Americans would need to develop immunity to COVID-19 — either naturally, or via a vaccine — in order to thwart the spread of the virus. If these estimates are correct, that could mean that nearly twice as many Americans would need to elect to receive a COVID-19 vaccine as those who currently opt to be vaccinated against seasonal influenza. Just 37 percent of American adults did so in 2017-2018, even in the midst of a historically severe flu season.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/05/07/opinion/23-percent-say-they-wont-get-covid-19-vaccine/
I wonder if most anti-vaxxers grew up before they witnessed diseases like polio, not connecting the vaccines THEY received as children to the relative good health they enjoy now.
Yes, I have my issues with big pharma just like I have issues with most giant corporations. But I’m not blinded by anger or mired in exaggeration and imaginary thinking.
Keep going, Orac! I don’t know how you do it!
@Sheila.
A circle.
Above your “Via Dr. James Todara” post there is a post from has. has employs my all time favourite science educational quote, from Richard Feynman:
“Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.”
has describes Feynman as a good scientist. I struggle with the word “good”. Particularly in the context of a certain pretender to greatness here under discussion. I can’t contain myself – Feynman was one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century. I feel much better for that.
Did you look at the link, Sheila? You should. Here it is again:
https://forbetterscience.com/2020/03/26/chloroquine-genius-didier-raoult-to-save-the-world-from-covid-19/
You see that my Wired link in response to your James Todaro post, connects Todaro to Gregory Rigano. In turn Rigano connects with Raoult in has’s link.
We arrive at the second study mentioned in Il Tempo. The very one in has’s link. Presently on hold for a second dose of peer review.
Philippe GAUTRET , Jean Christophe LAGIER author has email , Philippe PAROLA , Van Thuan HOANG , Line MEDDED , Morgan MAILHE , Barbara DOUDIER , Johan COURJON , Valerie GIORDANENGO , Vera ESTEVES VIEIRA , Herve TISSOT DUPONT , Stephane HONORE , Philippe COLSON , Eric CHABRIERE , Bernard LA SCOLA , Jean Marc ROLAIN , Philippe BROUQUI , Didier RAOULT
The greatest living egotist on the planet, some say, is the lead author.
CORRECTION
Whilst seeking more information about Annalisa Chiusolo, who made the claims in Il Tempo which have been discussed, I came across the following link:
https://internetprotocol.co/hype-news/2020/04/30/covid19-explanation-hcq-works/
There is a link to the study relating to the second of the claims previously discussed:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092485792030145X?via=ihub
The study in question is NOT Gautret et al.
Sun Hee Lee et al. are the authors and the study is available to download.
Further to my correction, having read Sun Hee Lee et al.
Annalisa Chiusolo’s interview in Il Tempo has been widely re-reported. Not quite in the realms of viral, but it has had some exposure.
These reports suggest how her work may explain how hydroxychloroquine can work to treat COVID-19.
In addition to the fictional claim:
“Out of an audience of 65,000 chronic patients (Lupus and Rheumatoid Arthritis), who systematically take Plaquenil/hydroxychloroquine, only 20 patients tested positive for the virus. Nobody died, and nobody is in intensive care, according to the data collected so far.”
What about Sun Hee Lee et al?
The blurb:
“Of 211 people exposed to COVID-19 positive individuals and prophylaxis with hydroxychloroquine, none were infected”.
100% success!
The header on the paper is:
Can post-exposure prophylaxis for COVID-19 be considered as an outbreak response strategy in long-term care hospitals?
From the buildup it seems as if the answer must be yes.
What is not reported by the press is that 92 other people exposed to Covid-19 who did not receive hydroxychloroquine, remained uninfected.
100% success for standard hospital anti-infection procedures.
All who received prophylactic treatment and all who did not, remained uninfected.
Adverse effects resulted in several patients having to stop hydroxychloroquine treatment.
Patients were better off without the treatment.
The public have been told the exact opposite of the truth in Il Tempo and its many re-reports – a falsehood plus a complete fabrication.
This is a transparently predictable attempt at character assasination written by a BigPharma hack.
Operation Mockingbird is alive and well.
You are very silly.
It’s a Chinese bio-weapon, and the reason they unleashed it now rather than at a different time is very obvious to anyone who is up-to-date on current trends in classical music.
There’s an opera– Puccini’s last opera– which is very challenging and not performed all that often, except by the really top-level companies, because it’s so difficult for the singers. Puccini never finished it, but other lesser composers have composed endings. It’s called Turandot and it is set in ancient Peking, or rather, in Puccini’s fantasy of what ancient Peking was like. (Puccini set several of his operas in exotic, foreign lands: Madama Butterfly in Japan, The Girl of the Golden West in USA, and, Turandot in ancient China, the city of Peking (“Pekino”).) Now, Turandot is experiencing renewed popularity right now; it’s a big fad in the opera world. The Met was scheduled to do it in April this year, and several of the lesser opera companies like San Francisco Opera and Chicago Lyric Opera were gonna do it, and even the “little-grand-opera” companies like Regina Opera in Brooklyn and West Bay Opera in Palo Alto — companies which cast young, unknown singers to give them a start on their careers, and which perform in small venues for audiences of fewer than 150 people, were getting ready to do it. It’s also trendy in Europe. (These trends come and go– a few years ago the mostly-forgotten composer Meyerbeer was all the rage, and before that everyone was doing Donizetti, including very obscure works by him like Poliuto.)
This opera Turandot is very offensive to Chinese nationalists, because it depicts the Chinese people as superstitious, bloodthirsty barbarians ruled by a sadistic tyrant. It’s kind of like old anti-Chinese movies like The Mask of Fu Manchu. But now, because of COVID-19, many of these companies have cancelled performances, as the states shut down theaters and concert halls. This was obviously what the Chinese government was hoping to accomplish by unleashing this virus at this particular time– to prevent Turandot from being performed in Europe and USA.
That is cui bono in this case.
Well, just look at this:
https ://www. youtube.com/watch?v=LPuIKEvcHmc& t=2m20s
It’s a Chinese bio-weapon, and the reason they unleashed it now rather than at a different time is very obvious to anyone who is up-to-date on current trends in classical music.
There’s an opera– Puccini’s last opera– which is very challenging and not performed all that often, except by the really top-level companies, because it’s so difficult for the singers. Puccini never finished it, but other lesser composers have composed endings. It’s called Turandot and it is set in ancient Peking, or rather, in Puccini’s fantasy of what ancient Peking was like. (Puccini set several of his operas in exotic, foreign lands: Madama Butterfly in Japan, The Girl of the Golden West in USA, and, Turandot in ancient China, the city of Peking (“Pekino”).) Now, Turandot is experiencing renewed popularity right now; it’s a big fad in the opera world. The Met was scheduled to do it in April this year, and several of the lesser opera companies like San Francisco Opera and Chicago Lyric Opera were gonna do it, and even the “little-grand-opera” companies like Regina Opera in Brooklyn and West Bay Opera in Palo Alto — companies which cast young, unknown singers to give them a start on their careers, and which perform in small venues for audiences of fewer than 150 people, were getting ready to do it. It’s also trendy in Europe. (These trends come and go– a few years ago the mostly-forgotten composer Meyerbeer was all the rage, and before that everyone was doing Donizetti, including very obscure works by him like Poliuto.)
This opera Turandot is very offensive to Chinese nationalists, because it depicts the Chinese people as superstitious, bloodthirsty barbarians ruled by a sadistic tyrant. It’s kind of like old anti-Chinese movies like The Mask of Fu Manchu. But now, because of COVID-19, many of these companies have cancelled performances, as the states shut down theaters and concert halls. This was obviously what the Chinese government was hoping to accomplish by unleashing this virus at this particular time– to prevent Turandot from being performed in Europe and USA.
That is cui bono in this case.
(Link to a sample of the opera removed b/c spam filter doesn’t like it)
Can’t tell if serious or a POE.
@ Lawrence:
I think it’s a poe. I hope it’s a poe**.
So let’s elaborate even further down the rabbit hole:
notice that one of the first countries to suffer horribly was ITALY.
Puccini was an Italian
The famous aria, Nessun Dorma *** was popularised for general audience by Luciano Pavarotti, another Italian
So Italians are punished for their contributions
Case closed
** this comment is also a poe
*** instant translation :No one sleeps, as in “Nobody sleeps when I sing this loud”
Oops..
I am D
“I am D”
Use the first two letters of your name and you, too, can be a short alphabetic sequence. It’s a very exclusive club.
Must be a Poe. He refers to Chicago’s Lyric Opera as a “lesser company.” ?
Best Poe EVAH.
[…] https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2020/05/06/judy-mikovits-pandemic/ […]
The Turandot Theory is intriguing.
“A great book with extensive references is Ben Goldacre’s “Bad Pharma””
It was Goldacre who said “Flaws in aircraft design do not prove the existence of magic carpets”. He was talking about people’s tendency to embrace woo as a reaction against defects in mainstream medical care.
The existence of corruption in the pharmaceutical industry does not (at least to rational folks) mean that diabetics should refuse insulin or that people with serious infections should decline antibiotics. It also doesn’t mean that we should jump on the bandwagon of a medication on the basis of limited and largely negative evidence (and a Big Pharma drug at that).
@ Dangerous Bacon
I’ve been a member of Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group founded by Ralph Nader, for over 30 years. They have a Health Research Group that over the past 30 years has raised concerns about most of the over 25 drugs that have been withdrawn from the market, raising concerns before they were approved and/or when reports of serious adverse reactions started coming in. For years they recommended not using a new drug before it had been on the market for five years. They have upped that to seven years. Unless there is no current treatment and once life, etc is at risk. Good advice.
As for Big Pharma, absolutely right, they sell drugs that are highly beneficial, minimally beneficial, and that confer little to no benefit with risks for adverse reactions. They make a profit on all of them, so when people use profit as criteria to criticize Big Pharma, really stupid. Who would refuse insulin if a Type 1 diabetic because it involves a profit? However, over the past couple of decades they have gone from “profits” to extortionist pricing, e.g., insulin has increased in price 10 fold past two decades, resulting in people dying. Our government has the power to stop this; but most legislatures are in the pockets of corporations and the wealthy. But, I repeat, making a profit, even a legitimate one, doesn’t say if a product is beneficial or not.
As I’ve written in previous comments, as you saying, “jump on the bandwagon” based on anecdote, a few poorly done studies, when over 90% of patients will survive, thus risking them, is foolish. If case fatalities were in the 90% range, then maybe desperate measures would be called for? But even then could increase deaths.
The Turandot Theory is intriguing.
“A great book with extensive references is Ben Goldacre’s “Bad Pharma””
A famous Goldacre quote: “Flaws in aircraft design do not prove the existence of magic carpets.” In other words, defects in mainstream medical care do not mean we should embrace woo, and misbehavior by Big Pharma shouldn’t lead us to jump on the bandwagon of a “miracle” drug for which evidence so far is weak or negative (and a Big Pharma drug at that).
It’s mildly amusing to see AoA ignoring the fuss over the “best-selling” Plague of Corruption book. You’d think that the success of a book with a strong antivaccine element would leave them overjoyed, but apparently fallout over the departure of Kent Heckenlively is continuing.*
*A few days ago they did tout an April 4th “expert panel” on Covid-19 and potential vaccines, co-starring Judy Mikovits and other luminaries such as Del Bigtree, Ty Bollinger and Dr. Nutter Buttar.
Well, thank goodness my first post re-materialized out of the ether. ?
The Plot Thickens on Remdesivir
Based on the study, not published, but explained by officials, including Anthony Fauci, it appeared to have a modest; but positive effect in reducing days of hospitalization/regaining normal functioning and possibly deaths. Today, a paper casts doubt. I suggest those interested read: Mathew Herper (2020 May 11). “Inside the NIH’s controversial decision to stop its big remdesivir study” at: https://www.statnews.com/2020/05/11/inside-the-nihs-controversial-decision-to-stop-its-big-remdesivir-study/
I based my judgment on what was available, however, as John Meynard Keynes once said when asked why he changed his opinion (not direct quote): “When new facts arrive, I evaluate them, what do you do?” So, now I am more doubtful of whether we released Remdesivir too soon. Oh well.
[…] week, I wrote about Plandemic, a viral video featuring disgraced scientist turned antivaxxer turned COVID-19 “Fire […]
The negative opinions about the pharmaceutical industry are more based on their business practices than the quality of the research they pay for, at least in my experiences with drug studies, and I was the “point person” for several. The people I dealt with didn’t come directly from the manufacturers. They worked for contractors in the business of managing studies for the companies.
To a one, I found them to be competent, dedicated, sharp, and demanding.They dug into every little data point that I could produce, and wanted me to report as adverse effects things that I thought were stretching it. I asked one, “What if the patient gets hit by a meteor and killed?” Her reply was to the effect of, “Maybe the drug impaired his ability to see it coming or to get out of the way.” Her answer was as much of a reach as my question, but I took the point.
I can’t say to what extent the drug companies paid heed to the data we collected, but I do know that the people I came into contact with were diligent to the max.
We know we are in for a treat when the proPharma boys and girls start trotting out their all-too-predictable “conspiracy theory” psychobabble. If you believe a claim is without merit, why not just provide your evidence and leave it at that? What is the point of a determinedly derogatory epithet? What purpose is served by the ‘conspiracy theory’ label? I would suggest one purpose is to patrol the parameters of approved thought. The term evinces a kind of arrogance and ethical stuntedness, as do all terms which attempt to dismiss, shame or silence people who think in ways other than those that the arbiters of society deem acceptable. Or, as Noam Chomsky put it: “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion.”
(And, really, the cheap ad hominem “grifter” bit only serves to undermine whatever credibility you might possess. Is the implication that anyone who dissents from the dominant corporate-approved narrative of Covid-19 a ‘grifter’? Is your ability to spot a ‘grifter’ the result of whatever connections you might have to pharmaceutical manufacturers? Does your ‘deny and project’ tactic come straight out of Edward Bernays?)
Secondly, the label ‘conspiracy theory’ basically functions as a dog whistle used by the self-appointed (and one could say self-righteous) protectors of government and the corporate definitions of ‘the truth’. The panderers of the ‘conspiracy theory’ label are a bit like the pitiable, bumbling Wizard of Oz who, as he is being revealed as a fake, cries out something to the effect of “pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.”
The issue is not whether another adult chooses to put a given substance, e.g., a vaccine, into their own body. The issue is whether that person demands that I put that substance in my body, for ‘the greater good’ of course. One would do well to heed the caution of Albert Camus: “The welfare of humanity is always the alibi of the tyrant.” We will see, quite soon I imagine, how the dog whistle of ‘conspiracy theory’ may be used to rally the (storm)troopers (the first wave will be the contact tracers) to the cause of mandatory vaccination. As Josef Goebbels so memorably put it: “Propaganda works best when those who are being manipulated are confident they are acting of their own free will.”
In the spirit of the moment here are a few things that ‘the man behind the curtain’ would prefer people not know about. Vaccines are alleged to be safe and effective. Yet it has been illegal, since 1983, to sue vaccine manufacturers for injury. Pharmaceutical corporations have no financial, let alone moral, responsibility for the effects of their products. Such a deal! But someone should tell DHHS that the science has been “debunked”. They obviously didn’t get the memo because the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Act (NVICP) (administered by the US Department of Health and Human Services) has paid out $4.3 billion dollars in injury claims since 1988.
https://www.hrsa.gov/sites/default/files/hrsa/vaccine-compensation/data/data-statistics-report.pdf
Then, of course there is the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREPA), passed in 2005, which further “provides immunity from liability (except for willful misconduct) for claims of loss caused, arising out of, relating to, or resulting from administration or use of countermeasures to diseases” in a public health emergency. This includes Covid-19. So just on the off chance that this “let’s skip animal trials”, genetically engineered vaccine should cause a problem or two, the vaccinated have no recourse. The corporations have their own butts covered….yours? not so much.
https://www.phe.gov/Preparedness/legal/prepact/Pages/default.aspx https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/04/15/2020-08040/amendment-to-declaration-under-the-public-readiness-and-emergency-preparedness-act-for-medical
Vaccines are alleged to be safe and effective. Why is it, then, that the ICD, the International Classification of Diseases, a tool that physicians use to classify causes of injury and death, has sixteen different classifications that code for poisoning from vaccines? See codes 978.0 through 978.9 and 979.0 through 979.7 (The codes in the ICD-10 may be somewhat different.)
https://www.findacode.com/search/search.php
Vaccines are alleged to be safe and effective. Why is it, then, in a FOIA request when the FDA was asked to provide “A copy of the report for each clinical trial relied upon by the FDA when approving for use by pregnant women any influenza vaccine currently approved by the FDA”, the FDA could provide no evidence of any safety trials having been conducted?
https://www.icandecide.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/ICAN-v-FDA-Resolved-Court-Filed-Copy-Copy.pdf
And then there are those pesky conflict of interest issues, you know between WHO/CDC and vaccine manufacturers but it’s probably nothing more than a ‘conspiracy theory’. You should probably talk with these researchers at the British Medical Journal and this researcher at Johns Hopkins who think otherwise.
https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/archivos_pdf/who-swine-flu-conspiracies.pdf https://www.bmj.com/content/350/bmj.h2362.full http://vaccinepapers.org/wp-content/uploads/Doshi-Flu-Vaccine-BMJ.pdf .
Of course, we all know that Bill Gates’ life has been unceasingly dedicated to the betterment of the poor and marginalized. Why would anyone ever think that there are conflicts of interest with his vaccine business ventures and his drive to vaccinate the entire world with his newest product as soon as it comes off the assembly line? Again someone should tell these people that it’s all a ‘conspiracy theory’ – the folks from the African Centre for Global Health & Social Transformation (ACHEST) (Uganda), Third World Network (India) Drug Action Forum (India), Nigerian Women Agro Allied Farmers Assn. (Nigeria), Initiative for Social and Economic Rights (ISER) (Uganda), Public Health Resource Network (India) and about twenty other international organizations who penned a letter to the Executive Board of the World Health Organization because they had grave concerns that conflict of interest safeguards were far too weak to protect WHO from the influence of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. (But I guess these folks who are mostly poor, brown Third Worlders are also among the tinfoil hat wearers. Obviously it takes privileged cognoscenti of the USA to set them straight. We could move right on to a discussion of medical imperialism but that is another, albeit closely related, story.)
https://healthscienceandlaw.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Public-Interest-Position.WHO_.FENSAGates.Jan2017.pdf
And whatever happens be sure not to bring up the involvement of the Department of Defense in the development of vaccines!!! I mean we can all agree it makes perfect sense that just as Bill Gates is concerned about our health so, too, is the Department of Defense.
Don’t mention this…DARPA gives $45 million to Inovio Pharmaceuticals for vaccine development.
https://web.archive.org/web/20200321101648/https://www.marketwatch.com/press-release/inovio-pharmaceuticals-selected-by-darpa-to-lead-a-45-million-program-to-expedite-development-of-novel-products-to-prevent-and-treat-disease-caused-by-ebola-2015-04-08
Or this….DARPA awards $25 million to Moderna to develop RNA vaccines.
https://investors.modernatx.com/news-releases/news-release-details/darpa-awards-moderna-therapeutics-grant-25-million-develop
Or this DoD grant for the development of “Multiagent Synthetic DNA Vaccines Delivered by Noninvasive Electroporation” file:///C:/Users/Toshiba/Zotero/storage/WE3NYN3S/398609.html
Not this one either https://www.federalgrants.com/Accelerated-Manufacturing-of-Pharmaceuticals-AMP-5895.html ?
And definitely not this. ” DARPA Is Developing Human Bio-Factories to Brew Lifesaving Vaccines” https://www.livescience.com/52150-humans-become-vaccine-factories.html?
You are only too aware that powerful individuals, institutions and corporations use their power in ways and for ends which need to be examined. The fact that their goals and interests converge (as in Gates, vaccines and the Department of Defense) does not require a ‘conspiracy theory’. All that is necessary to understand much of what we see happening in the world today is curiosity, a willingness to question, a moderate amount of intelligence, a basic knowledge of how systems work and power dynamics operate and an ability to connect the dots. You should try it some time.
I only spent 6,000 words doing just with all of Mikovits’ claims, but you clearly didn’t bother to read it.?
Why bother reading the article when you can post your own 1,000 word conspiracy theory about vaccines? After all reading the article won’t be changing the minds of any Janie Doebuck.
The inside of your head looks like a scary place. Pardon me if I ignore your random ranting.
Poor misguided soul. You need to think about whether or not the time and effort you seem to be pouring into this are well-spent. Is trying to get a rise out of others and lashing out really making you a better person? Especially in the face of such overwhelming evidence to the contrary for your beliefs? Do you walk away after dropping a steaming load like this and look in the mirror and like what you see?
I don’t have the time to unpack all of that lunacy but I will touch on the 978 code series. That code does not exist for injury by the components of the vaccine. I say again it HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE COMPONENTS OF THE VACCINE. What it existed for was unintentional infiltration of the vaccine into a vein/artery, giving a vaccine in error (Not needed, etc,) or if the patient gave it to themselves in an effort to injure themselves. I’ve NEVER seen it used. I just asked a doc who has been at it for about six decades sitting here next to me and he says the only place he ever saw it used was in the VA system.
And, to your second speculation, it does have an ICD-10 counterpart! Reading the description of the new series codes will further illuminate my point:
T50.A91A Poisoning by other bacterial vaccines, accidental (unintentional), initial encounter
or:
2020 ICD-10-CM T50.A92A Poisoning by other bacterial vaccines, intentional self-harm, initial encounter
or:
2020 ICD-10-CM T50.A93A Poisoning by other bacterial vaccines, assault, initial encounter
or:
2020 ICD-10-CM T50.A94A Poisoning by other bacterial vaccines, undetermined, initial encounter
There are other codes for viral vaccines. You’ll notice that they dropped the name of the organism because the specific vaccine and its components is totally NOT GERMANE.
Please, rethink this bizarre path you are on.
The conspiracy theory here is that the whole modern medicine is a plot by Rockefellers. Interesting thing is that Standard Oil was dismantled by Supreme Court. So Rockerfeller could not prevent even dismantling of his own company.
Vaccine safety data reported to FDA is here:
https://www.fda.gov/vaccines-blood-biologics/vaccines/vaccines-licensed-use-united-states
Just pick your vaccine. ICAN just proved that HHS did report Congress properly.
Peter Doshi is an anthropologist, hardly an super eport you think he is.
DoD fund vaccine research, because sicj soldiers cannot serve. What is more obvious than that ?
…not to mention, several places I was deployed there was a real chance we would face a biological attack.
You forgot to quote Brecht. Try harder.
@Janie Doebuck: “And whatever happens be sure not to bring up the involvement of the Department of Defense in the development of vaccines!!!”
Right, the DOD has no business getting involved in vaccines, just because they bring together thousands of young people from every state and many countries to work, train, eat, sleep, etc. in close quarters and then send them to places where sanitation and preventive medicine is sketchy FYI, the 1st World War was also the first major war in which combat killed more soldiers than infectious disease. If you want to see why DOD supports vaccination and vaccine research, read up on Camp Wikoff in 1898 to get a clue. The US Army has long been a leader in vaccination. George Washington ordered his soldiers to be inoculated against smallpox in 1776. FYI, https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/us-military-and-vaccine-history
And all of that is not to mention the very real prospect of biological warfare and bioterrorism.
Do you have any references to the warrants? Any actual proof that they exist in a database somewhere? Other than just some words in a story that some random dude wrote? Thanks in advance.
@ Janie Doebuck
According to the CDC, from 2006 to 2017 over 3.4 billion doses of covered vaccines were distributed in the U.S. For petitions filed in this time period, 6,253 petitions were adjudicated by the Court, and of those 4,291 were compensated. This means for every 1 million doses of vaccine that were distributed, 1 individual was compensated.
Since 1988, over 20,522 petitions have been filed with the VICP. Over that 30-year time period, 17,772 petitions have been adjudicated, with 6,465 of those determined to be compensable, while 11,307 were dismissed. Total compensation paid over the life of the program is approximately $4.1 billion.
By comparison, just measles during the 1950s before the vaccine caused up to 500 deaths and 1,000 disabilities (deafness, mental retardation) per year in the U.S. Since our population is over twice that of the 1950s and measles is just as contagious, extrapolated to today would mean up to 1,000 deaths and 2,000 disabilities. So just measles alone would have caused half the number of compensated cases for ALL vaccines. I won’t bother to give the stats, for instance, for polio, congenital rubella disease, and all the other diseases prevented by vaccines. And prior to vaccines, if a child was harmed by the wild-type microbe, no compensation, families on their own.
The bottom line is, yes, there is an extremely small risk of a serious adverse event from vaccines; but compared to what? Compared to the exponentially larger number of dead and disabled kids that would exist if the vaccines didn’t exist.
You are just one more moronic antivaccinationists who doesn’t understand the real world.
And one last thing. The Vaccine Court was NOT created to protect the Pharmaceutical Industry; but to protect public health. Just one lawsuit, even without merit; but a sympathetic jury could cost a vaccine manufacturer more than it would be worth for them to make vaccines. But one can still sue them if it can be shown any deviations from the approved production and they are assessed a certain amount for each vaccine which is where the Court gets its funds. If you don’t believe a jury can rule against a company despite any evidence of wrong doing, I suggest you read Marcia Angell’s book “Science on Trial.”
I also suggest you actually read up on the history and current status in the world of vaccine-preventable diseases.
And, please explain what education, training, etc. you have that allows you to take a position? And did you actually carefully read the several articles Orac has written?
ADDENDUM
And Janie Doebuck, I forgot to explain that for every single vaccine given, it is required to give a Vaccine Information Statement which not only explains about the disease, but includes minor adverse events, rare serious adverse events, and information on both notifying Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System, and how to sue in Vaccine Court. In addition, in private lawsuits lawyers get contingency fees starting at 40% and up and they can take many years to resolve. The Vaccine Court pays reasonable lawyer fees, so there are law firms that advertise online their interest in representing cases, even when little chance of winning because they collect their fees from the Court. And the Court also pays for witnesses.
So, you write:
“All that is necessary to understand much of what we see happening in the world today is curiosity, a willingness to question, a moderate amount of intelligence, a basic knowledge of how systems work and power dynamics operate and an ability to connect the dots.”
Nope, as my discussion of just the Vaccine Court makes clear, you missed a lot of the dots. I suggest you look up the Dunning-Kruger Effect online. It isn’t about raw intelligence or curiosity; but having the basic tools necessary to find all relevant information and the tools to be able to evaluate it. I really doubt you would be able to understand the methodology of any of the peer-reviewed vaccine safety papers!
How horribly mean it is when people who conjure up elaborate conspiracy theories are described as conspiracy theorists. Likewise, it’s a vile ad hominem when virulent antivaccine advocates are called antivaccine or antivaxers.
Shocking.
@Christine, And yet another variation on your story. Now you mom was fired, not kicked out of her degree program, for her speaking out. Look, we all have sympathy for the challenges and tragedies your family has faced, but tragedy doesn’t make your views true. The number of things you’ve tried to blame on vaccines (your son’s hair texture for crying out loud!) is nonsensical.
Orac said (way way back there) “not everyone with symptoms is tested and there are a lot of people out there dying of COVID-19-like illness who are never tested and never given a diagnosis of COVID-19”, also in the same reply Orac said he wouldn’t be surprised if the death rate was 50 – 100% higher than is publicized.
This also indicates that not everyone that has had COVID 19 has been aware they had it and was therefore never tested, nor has everyone that had it been tested, nor has everyone that had it and did’t get tested died. Because of this we will not know the true death rate of this virus, maybe ever. And, because of this, I wouldn’t be surprised if the true death rate of this virus is actually a fraction of what is publicized.
@ Becky
You write: “I wouldn’t be surprised if the true death rate of this virus is actually a fraction of what is publicized.”
Except that we also have stats on the number of deaths over past years at same time of year. Yep, some because hospitals full from “respiratory” illness where they do test for COVID-19, so some deaths because not hospitalized; but the higher stats, sometimes 3 – 4 times in some areas indicate clearly COVID-19
@ Christine Kincaid
The moron crawls out from under her rock and writes:
“Best Mothers Day present ever was visiting this site & seeing the outcry against the vaccine narrative. Orca & minions; has it ever occurred to you that maybe doctors and scientists are not ‘turning anti vaccine’ but actually discovering something that you haven’t yet? Do you realize this ‘turning’ is a one way street? No ‘anti vax ‘ scientists ever turn pro vax, do they? The reign of terror; the vaccine narrative, is starting to crumble. LOOK at the science again. The truth is in the science. Not the epidemiological nonsense that couldn’t correlate gravity to a falling object… The etiological science. Look at the history. If you don’t want to go back to Nazi Germany at least go back to SV40.”
Let’s start with SV40. Numerous studies have found NO relationship to cancer. Yep, some early studies did find this; but they were small with weaker methodology. Also, studies found that SV40 was ubiquitous in the environment. I realize this is a bit complicated for you; but it means people are exposed to it quite often without vaccines; but still not causing or contributing to cancer.
As for “epidemiological nonsense” it’s interesting how antivaxxers still cite epidemiological studies; but only the ones that support their position, cherry picking them and ignoring more studies and better designed studies that refute their position. I guess you are a smoker since it was epidemiological studies that first found relationship with cancer, cardiovascular disease, etc. Have you ever even read an introductory book on epidemiology? Do you understand it or does anything that contradicts your idiotic fantasy world immediately raise your ire.
In case you are unaware the population of the U.S. is around 330 million, so a few of your fellow nutcases posting on this website or other websites isn’t proof of anything; except proof of your lack of reality testing. Polls show a rather steady support for vaccines with minor fluctuations. The fact that an insignificant minority of doctors and scientists are antivaxx proves nothing. There are doctors who promote homeopathy, water, and a host of other unscientific treatments based mainly on anecdote and sometimes a few small poorly done studies. Result is patients suffer and die.
As for the “truth is in the science”, yep, and if you understood immunology and microbiology, that B-cells and T-cells develop into memory cells based on recognizing a killed microbe or parts of it in the same way if they had experienced the real microbe, so that when the real microbe attacks, they recognize it super fast, rev up much higher, and often stop it cold before we even notice it. However, by vaccinating we avoid or minimize the actual disease experience, including suffering, hospitalizations, disabilities, and deaths. Once more, I suggest moron you read: Lauren Sompayrac’s “How the Immune System Works 6th Edition”, available for Amazon.com I could recommend some 850 page undergraduate immunology texts; but Sompayrac does a super job of explaining the basics without getting lost amid, for instance, multiple chemical formulas, etc. and only 160 pages.
“Nazi Germany”, now you’ve crossed the line. Having grown up knowing many camp survivors, having since an early age read many books and articles, being Jewish, yep, the overwhelming majority of medical doctors, epidemiologists, public health workers, and politicians from numerous nations with different cultures, different histories, different economic systems, different political system, different educational systems, all are Nazi-like in their willingness to sacrifice their own respective nations children. YOU ARE DESPICABLE! ! !
Oh, I will be first in line when a COVID-19 vaccine comes out and before that in the Fall I will, as usual, get the flu vaccine first day my health plan offers it. And I get the high-dose flu zone.
ADDENDUM
Actually ORAC’s alter ego wrote an article on SV40:
David Gorski (2013 Sep 9). Another antivaccine zombie meme: polio vaccine and SV40 and cancer, oh, my! Available at: https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/another-antivaccine-zombie-meme-sv40-and-cancer-and-polio-oh-my/
You do understand that he is an oncologist?
I did another search and found a couple of articles where they hypothesized that SV 40 may be involved in mesothelioma. I emphasize “may.” You do know what mesothelioma is? Cancer caused by exposure to asbestos. They found a higher level of SV 40 in those with mesothelioma; but other articles didn’t, so, it could be an artifact of their methodology. I’ll let ORAC address this.
I have currently 106 journal articles on SV 40 in a file on my desktop
Is it conspiracy theory that pharmaceutical companies and medicine in the 1930s sold preparations with Radium powder – a very radioactive element? Is it a conspiracy theory that thousands died of cancer because of it? You are a useful fool of the pharmaceutical lobby.
@Tesla: blah, blah, blah. In the 30’s, people didn’t realise how dangerous radioactivity was. May I remind you that Marie Curie died from radiation poisoning caused by the radium she used in her experiments, and that even today the equipment she used can’t be touched as it is still too radioactive.
To try and spin this as underhandedness by pharmaceutical companies is ludicrous.
Dear Dr. Harrison, I have ordered the immunology text by Sompayrac. Can you recommend any learning materials accessible to laypersons on the topic of Virology or is that covered in the Immunology text?
A
Waiting for the threshold of 1000 comments to be reached. Dochniak set somehow a record on this blog above the 1000 comments. With a bit of luck, we may reach that milestone.
@Christine Kincaid
You have been told multiple times: (I exclude epidemiology.)
Is it biologically plausible that boys have so much different immune system ? Is is plausible that weakened virus causes symptoms that wild virus does not ?
What about autopsies of autistic brain ? No synaptic pruning can explain these.
What about twin studies ?
What about actual experiments ? Japan stopped MMR vaccination and autism went up.
There are even neonatal cytokine profiles of autistic persons
Spreading Virus of COVID-19, God blessed who recovering fast. Take care of yourself, if you want to know about your vehicles any detail from home, then we are doing well even in COVID-19.
Paging Orac.
I thought the AI of the future would kill us like in Terminator. Turns out it devolved all the way down to vapid advertising. So much for GANs.
It reads as if a couple of random news articles had been tossed into a blender and some of the pieces were joined together into a posting. Or am I being too kind?
[…] https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2020/05/06/judy-mikovits-pandemic/ […]
I don’t know anything about this Biologist or the people she talks about, nor a lot about medical terms, but can confirm on most of the statements she makes.
In Bulgaria, Europe are true:
– Many people diagnose with the Covid 19, having lethal health problems such as stroke, diabetes or skull damage because of accident,who later died are said to have died with Covid19 but not by covid 19. They all count in the statistics We have 68 deaths for 2 months, given that in car crash 100 people die for this period.
-Government here was tracked to launder huge funds from the EU into private companies related to the pandemic.
– With 2000 “confirmed” cases, in our country of 7m population that makes 0.02% infected and a pandemic is considered at least 2%
– Vaccination passports and cashless payments only are ridiculous and 80% of the people here will oppose it
Another thing is that only by looking at the headings of this website i can see its main purpose is to discredit people and topics rather than contribute to anything positive.
It appeared to me when i was researching more news about the video and respectfulinsolence was referenced as a respectful medical journal in a website with auto generated 10k likes, but i don’t see anything respectful in those yellow pages here.
Is that 100 people a yearly average or the last 2 months? If it is like most of the rest of the world, there hasn’t been much traffic for weeks. It needs to be seen the all -cause mortality to see undercounting/testing. It sounds like you guys are doing better than most, though.
7 million. I was going to ask Paraquay? I was thinking that there might be some elixir in the kesú paraguai chip dip.
https://apnews.com/e2921cc8a3b14ec76d80a5d0b3d0bbaa
India is interesting:
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/27/845352185/despite-the-pandemic-india-sees-a-drop-in-mortality-under-lockdown
Yes car crashes for 2 months. Yearly is around 1000. Any maybe you are right for sparsely populated areas it had less impact. But still …
I suppose it was inevitable that the pro-disease crowd would come out to beat the drums about COVID-19.
Re Orac’s comment on 7 May that ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if the true number of people who’ve died of COVID-19 is 50-100% higher than the official numbers’: Chris Giles, Economics Editor of the Financial Times, and his team have been estimating carefully the number of excess deaths in the United Kingdom during the pandemic (see his Twitter account: @ChrisGiles_); their current figure (14 May) is 60,700, 80.6 per cent higher than the UK Government’s current official figure for COVID-19 deaths is 33,614. Cavilling over a discrepancy this huge on the grounds that not all of these excess deaths are from COVID-19 is as plausible as the morbidly obese patient’s defence that his excess weight is due to the fact that ‘large bones run in my family’.
[…] Link HERE […]
[…] robo de parte del laboratorio para que había estado trabajando y del que había sido despedida (en este artículo se analiza a detalle esa parte de la historia, y hay detalles en el referido […]
This blog is rife with logical fallacies. https://thebestschools.org/magazine/15-logical-fallacies-know/
It misstates several things. One being that Fauci came to her lab to demand the paper, and then goes on for several paragraphs ranting about why didn’t he just call. She did state he called.
I notice the Science article you linked as verification that there were warrants does not have any actual links to any documents to verify its statements, and frankly even the author of the article sounded somewhat dubious himself about the veracity of the claims. This video interview with her shows her booking sheet with no primary charge listed, and she states there was only a secondary charge of “fugitive from justice”, which seems invalid without a primary charge in the first place. Additionally, it shows the “warrant”, which isn’t signed by a judge, meaning it’s not valid. Furthermore, do we really believe that if they had a shred of evidence that she was actually guilty of what she was accused of they wouldn’t have at least attempted to prosecute her? Instead they just dropped the charges. Why? https://www.facebook.com/BenSwannRealityCheck/videos/one-on-one-wdr-judy-mikovits-truth-about-her-arrest-and-the-one-issue-media-cant/241884393587395/
Finally, I’d like to share the Statement on Federal Vaccine Mandates from the Association of American of Physicians and Surgeons, who vehemently oppose them and clearly delineate precisely why the public’s concerns regarding the safety and effectiveness of vaccines are completely valid. https://aapsonline.org/measles-outbreak-and-federal-vaccine-mandates/
It is quite irrelevant, did Dr Fauci meet Mikovits or call her. She lost her grant because she commited scientific fraud, as Orac explained. This is the thing you should comment instead.
Mikovits arrest warrant is here (scroll to exhibit 1).
https://silo.tips/download/united-states-district-court-central-district-of-california-los-angeles-division.
Mikovits and WPI settled out of the court, when she returned the stolen property.
,
Finally, I’d like to share the Statement on Federal Vaccine Mandates from the Association of American of Physicians and Surgeons
The AAPS? The medical branch of the John Birch Society? Most regular members of this commentariat are already familiar with them, and their opposition to anything that might reduce their freedom to exploit their patients.
“One being that Fauci came to her lab to demand the paper, ”
You are a very gullible person. And the AAPS is a political organization not a medical group.
Strange that you didn’t get around to mentioning any.
The American Association of Physicians and Surgeons’ nuttery goes way beyond hostility towards vaccination.
“…despite the lab coats and the official-sounding name, the docs of the AAPS are hardly part of mainstream medical society. Think Glenn Beck with an MD. The group (which did not return calls for comment for this story) has been around since 1943. Some of its former leaders were John Birchers, and its political philosophy comes straight out of Ayn Rand. Its general counsel is Andrew Schlafly, son of the legendary conservative activist Phyllis. The AAPS statement of principles declares that it is “evil” and “immoral” for physicians to participate in Medicare and Medicaid, and its journal is a repository for quackery. Its website features claims that tobacco taxes harm public health and electronic medical records are a form of “data control” like that employed by the East German secret police. An article on the AAPS website speculated that Barack Obama may have won the presidency by hypnotizing voters, especially cohorts known to be susceptible to “neurolinguistic programming”—that is, according to the writer, young people, educated people, and possibly Jews.”
http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/11/tea-party-doctors-american-association-physicians-surgeons
The AAPS also flogs discredited notions like abortion causing breast cancer, and spread the false story that illegal immigration caused a leprosy epidemic in the U.S.
As you might expect, the group is madly in love with hydroxychloroquine, claiming that it will help “90%” of Covid-19 patients (reality is demonstrating that the drug is ineffective for treating serious Covid-19 disease).
Two actual reviews of Mikovits’ book “Plague of Corruption” posted on Amazon in the past two days:
“You can’t discredit someone sharing her experience. It’s her experience! Either read the book or keep quiet”
and
“Can’t put it down! There has to be truth in this! There is no way someone could fabricate this much info. Wake up America!”
They’re out there.
I am in the midst of reading a 1000 page novel. Can’t put it down! There has to be truth in this! There is no way someone could fabricate this much info.
Clive Barker had me staring into rugs for months looking for intricate, shifting patterns that might confirm that a whole society had been woven into there to hide them from a witch.
I was able to confirm, through direct observation, that it was a fact. So, stfu.
At one point during the 40 hour straight drive from Chicago to Seattle that I’ve mentioned before, I saw a giant baby rising over the horizon.* I suppose that if you don’t believe in giant floating babies, you’d better shut your yap.
*I think this was before I saw the ICBM lauches, but it’s been a while.
Too soon, man. It was pretty horrifying. I saw those! It was most striking and remains with me to this day because they were more squarish, garbage can shaped than Falcon 9.
[…] The John D. Rockefeller Pharma Story. In the early 1900s, America’s first Billionaire, John D. Rockefeller bought a German pharmaceutical company that would later assist Hitler to implement his eugenics-based vision by manufacturing chemicals and poisons for war. Rockefeller wanted to eliminate the competitors of Western medicine, so he submitted a report to Congress declaring that there were too many doctors and medical schools in America, and that all natural healing modalities were unscientific quackery. Rockefeller called for the standardization of medical education, whereby only his organization be allowed to grant medical school licenses in the US. And so began the practice of immune suppressive, synthetic and toxic drugs. Once people had become dependent on this new system and the addictive drugs it provided, the system switched to a paid program, creating lifelong customers for the Rockefellers. Currently, medical error is the third leading cause of death in the US. Rockefeller’s secret weapon to success was the strategy known as, “problem-reaction-solution.” Create a problem, escalate fear, then offer a pre-planned solution. Sound familiar? […]
“In the early 1900s, America’s first Billionaire, John D. Rockefeller bought a German pharmaceutical company”
Can you tell us the name of this company ? Any case, buying one German ompax hardly creates a monopoly
“Rockefeller wanted to eliminate the competitors of Western medicine, so he submitted a report to Congress declaring that there were too many doctors and medical schools in America, and that all natural healing modalities were unscientific quackery.”
This was Flexner report and it was financed by Carnigie Foundation. And, sadly, even homeopathy was grandfathered by FDA. So Rockefeller’s control ws not very good, after all.
“Rockefeller called for the standardization of medical education, whereby only his organization be allowed to grant medical school licenses in the US.”
Actually, UMSLE grants medical school licenses. Interested parties are medical schools and AMA.
“And so began the practice of immune suppressive, synthetic and toxic drugs.”
And life expentancy rised, too. How this is possible, if toxins where widely distributed
“Create a problem, escalate fear, then offer a pre-planned solution”
Nobody have a cure for covid 19, Trump perhaps excluded, And even Trump admits that there is no vaccine. So what is exactly the preplanned solution ?
.
Sorry a stupid typo.The Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME), jointly administered by the Association of American Medical Colleges and the American Medical Association, accredits M.D. schools, Not Rockefellers.
[…] virus, antivaxxers are spinning conspiracy theories about how the COVID-19 pandemic is a “Plandemic” or a plot to force everyone to be vaccinated, complete with Bill Gates conspiracy theories […]
[…] para fazer outras alegações desconcertantes, como o Dr. Davi Gorski do blog Respectful Insolence aponta: “De fato, a quantidade de nonsense, desinformação e teorias da conspiração da resposta de […]
[…] Angeles, incorrectly believing it part of a government conspiracy. And the anti-vaxxer movement is spreading misinformation and labelling COVID-19 a manufactured “plandemic.” (It is […]
[…] Angeles, incorrectly believing it part of a government conspiracy. And the anti-vaxxer movement is spreading misinformation and labelling COVID-19 a manufactured “plandemic.” (It is […]
[…] Angeles, incorrectly believing it part of a government conspiracy. And the anti-vaxxer movement is spreading misinformation and labelling COVID-19 a manufactured “plandemic.” (It is […]
Wow, Orac is so biased and ignorant of covid. Definitely propaganda from big pharma. Quote:
“The way the numbers are not reflecting reality is that COVID-19 is grossly underdiagnosed because not everyone with symptoms is tested and there are a lot of people out there dying of COVID-19-like illness who are never tested and never given a diagnosis of COVID-19. The excess death rates in March are strong evidence that a lot of people are dying of COVID-19 who are never diagnosed with COVID-19. No, the problem is not misclassification of some patient deaths as COVID-19 when they died of something else. That probably happens, but the numbers are FAR dwarfed by the number of deaths from what was almost certainly COVID-19 even though the patients were never diagnosed with COVID-19. I wouldn’t be surprised if the true number of people who’ve died of COVID-19 is 50-100% higher than the official numbers.”
This is so obnoxiously biased. There is no evidence at all more people than counted are dying of Covid and note Orac doesn’t provide that evidence. Doctors have been asked to count deaths that had nothing to do with covid just because they had the virus. Also, a vast number of the dying are elderly WITH underlying conditions. People who are healthy don’t die of just covid (very rare). They die of something they already have. Most were going to die in the short term given the average age of those dying are equal or above the average lifespan. BTW the oldest living survivor in the US is 107 years old and he’s a friend of my mom’s at her nursing home in St. Louis.
Hey, Orac, read these articles and learn something useful:
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/05/22/nothing-can-justify-this-destruction-of-peoples-lives/
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/i-think-it-may-have-cost-lives-nobel-prize-winner-slams-lockdowns-product-panic-virus
Heck, even the CDC is behind the curve. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the current “best estimate” for the fatality rate among Americans with COVID-19 symptoms is 0.4 percent. The CDC also estimates that 35 percent of people infected by the COVID-19 virus never develop symptoms. Those numbers imply that the virus kills less than 0.3 percent of people infected by it—far lower than the infection fatality rates (IFRs) assumed by the alarming projections that drove the initial government response to the epidemic, including broad business closure and stay-at-home orders.”
The story of the Diamond Princess cruise ship bolsters this view (you can’t find a better example of being locked down and having a test environment for the virus). Of the 3,711 people on board, about 20% have tested positive for the virus; less than half of those had symptoms, and eight died. A cruise ship is a perfect setting for contagion, and there was plenty of time for the virus to spread on board before anyone did anything about it, yet only a fifth were infected. Furthermore, the cruise ship’s population was heavily skewed (as are most cruise ships) toward the elderly: nearly a third of the passengers were over age 70, and more than half were over age 60. A research team concluded from the large number of asymptomatic cases that the true fatality rate in China is around 0.5%; more recent data (see above) indicates a figure closer to 0.2%.
John Ioannidis, a professor of medicine at Stanford University, raises some of these issues in a terrific post for Stat. Ioannidis wonders whether long-term and “draconian countermeasures” to combat coronavirus can be justified, given how uncertain they are to work and how little data we have about COVID-19’s true mortality rate: “The data collected so far on how many people are infected and how the epidemic is evolving are utterly unreliable. Given the limited testing to date, some deaths and probably the vast majority of infections due to SARS-CoV-2 are being missed. We don’t know if we are failing to capture infections by a factor of three or 300. Three months after the outbreak emerged, most countries, including the U.S., lack the ability to test a large number of people and no countries have reliable data on the prevalence of the virus in a representative random sample of the general population. This evidence fiasco creates tremendous uncertainty about the risk of dying from Covid-19. Reported case fatality rates, like the official 3.4% rate from the World Health Organization, cause horror—and are meaningless. Patients who have been tested for SARS-CoV-2 are disproportionately those with severe symptoms and bad outcomes. As most health systems have limited testing capacity, selection bias may even worsen in the near future…..Projecting the Diamond Princess mortality rate onto the age structure of the U.S. population, the death rate among people infected with Covid-19 would be 0.125%. But since this estimate is based on extremely thin data—there were just seven deaths among the 700 infected passengers and crew—the real death rate could stretch from five times lower (0.025%) to five times higher (0.625%). It is also possible that some of the passengers who were infected might die later, and that tourists may have different frequencies of chronic diseases—a risk factor for worse outcomes with SARS-CoV-2 infection — than the general population. Adding these extra sources of uncertainty, reasonable estimates for the case fatality ratio in the general U.S. population vary from 0.05% to 1%. That huge range markedly affects how severe the pandemic is and what should be done. A population-wide case fatality rate of 0.05% is lower than seasonal influenza. If that is the true rate, locking down the world with potentially tremendous social and financial consequences may be totally irrational. It’s like an elephant being attacked by a house cat. Frustrated and trying to avoid the cat, the elephant accidentally jumps off a cliff and dies.”
This was just a bad flu and Orac is trying to add to the hysteria.
On a final note:
“As of 2013, according to the FAO, five million children worldwide die every year of hunger; in 2018, 159 million children were stunted and 50 million were wasted. (Hunger was falling until recently, but has started to rise again in the last three years.) Five million is many times more people than have died so far from Covid-19, yet no government has declared a state of emergency or asked that we radically alter our way of life to save them. Nor do we see a comparable level of alarm and action around suicide – the mere tip of an iceberg of despair and depression – which kills over a million people a year globally and 50,000 in the USA. Or drug overdoses, which kill 70,000 in the USA, the autoimmunity epidemic, which affects 23.5 million (NIH figure) to 50 million (AARDA), or obesity, which afflicts well over 100 million. Why, for that matter, are we not in a frenzy about averting nuclear armageddon or ecological collapse, but, to the contrary, pursue choices that magnify those very dangers?” – Charles Eisenstein
Based on only Orac’s one statement above about covid, anyone can conclude Orac is ignorant and/or extremely biased.
You were provided reasons why Covid-19 mortality may well be considerably higher than what’s been reported (based on excess mortality statistics and the lack of virus testing in many deaths). It’s not Orac’s fault that you reject these parameters out of hand.
“Most were going to die in the short term given the average age of those dying are equal or above the average lifespan”
Yeah, all them old people were going to die anyway, so who cares?
Your concern for human life is touching.
[…] never seen conspiracy theories reach before. I just spent my last two posts discussing the conspiracy theories of Judy Mikovits, a disgraced virologist who is claiming that she was unjustly targeted for her […]
[…] Angeles, incorrectly believing it part of a government conspiracy. And the anti-vaxxer movement is spreading misinformation and labelling COVID-19 a manufactured “plandemic.” (It is […]
[…] to make a number of other, bewildering claims, as Dr. David Gorski of the blog Respectful Insolence points out: “Indeed, the amount of nonsense, misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy mongering in […]
Doctor Mike has a good fact check video on Plandemic for those who are interested.
https://youtu.be/TWpjc1QZg84
[…] been deservedly ridiculed by physician and hospitalist Dr. Zubin Damania, and surgical oncologist Dr. David Gorski, among many others, and her video has been removed from social media […]
[…] been deservedly ridiculed by physician and hospitalist Dr. Zubin Damania, and surgical oncologist Dr. David Gorski, among many others, and her video has been removed from social media […]
[…] predisposes people to COVID-19, that COVID-19 was created in a laboratory and is a “plandemic,” designed to provide a pretext for authoritarian control, or that the flu vaccine […]
You mention: “I was raised Roman Catholic”.
Are you sure about that? I think you are god! Please don’t ever stop doing Orac’s work!!! The world needs you!
[…] predisposes people to COVID-19, that COVID-19 was created in a laboratory and is a “plandemic” designed to provide a pretext for authoritarian control, or that the flu vaccine predisposes […]
Well, they must have taken her seriously, because they now screen the blood supply for XMRVs using Cyrex Technology (which she recommended) so we don’t have that contamination anymore. Shame they don’t do the same for vaccines.
Somehow, I sorely doubt that the Arizona equivalent of Doctor’s Data has anything to do with the national blood supply.
Correction – it was Cerus Corporation the Blood Working Group used to screen for the retroviruses.
Oh, my aching head. You have just shot yourself in the foot. Moreover, the full text of the “Blood Working Group” paper mentions Cerus exactly once — in the acknowledgements as a COI disclosure for author Steven Kleinman. (The acknowledgments do, however, list the labs that were used.)
This is just silly. First, Cerus doesn’t do that, although they did try to get on the XMRV bandwagon with their “INTERCEPT” pathogen inactivation system. Second, you’re citing the very paper (with Mikovits as coauthor) that put the final nail in the coffin of the whole freaking episode.
Citation please?
And testing blood for a potential pathogen like XMRV doesn’t prove any of Mikovits ‘ claims.
All funding for studying these retroviruses was stopped, so we don’t know as much about them as we could. But, thanks to her we now know these viruses contaminated the blood supply. They would not have screened them out if they were just harmless laboratory contaminants with no disease causing potential. We must not shoot the messenger. She not only alerted us to a problem but also suggested how to fix it.
XMRV takes the plural now? Protip: It is not a human pathogen.
You are not refuting the fact that the blood supply is now screened thanks to her discovery. I am sorry to give you a sore heid, but facts are facts and it doesn’t really matter who deals with the contract for this – at least it’s getting done. Now away and have a wee lie down. P.S. My foot feels fine!
Not for XMRV.
XMRV was never a human pathogen. It was a contaminant from Dr Silverman’s lab who cloned VP62 unknowingly before Judy and team sequenced and isolated the viruses she discovered which were a family XMRVs. In the replication study they were only allowed to look for VP62 which was made due to a recombination event.
Exactly what the fuck does that string of words have to do with the price of Ping-Pong Show in Patpong?
Furthermore, due to the fact they took her findings seriously, patients with M.E. are now banned from tissue donation when they die in certain countries so they don’t pass these and other animal tissue derived retroviruses on. SV40 anyone?
OK, Maisie, have fun playing with yourself.
Is that the best you can do? I’m outta here. I prefer to chat with people who actually know what they’re talking about. Have fun in your ignorant play pen.
Oh irony….
[…] to be available as of this writing from the production’s website, but as pseudoscience debunker Dennis Gorski reported in May, the blurb for the video included statements such as […]
[…] to be available as of this writing from the production’s website, but as pseudoscience debunker Dennis Gorski reported in May, the blurb for the video included statements such as […]
[…] From Respectful Insolence: Judy Mikovits in Plandemic: An antivax conspiracy theorist becomes a COVID-19 grifter […]
[…] any sort of sense of this bizarre interaction, here’s a more in-depth look. And another one here. We’re not wasting time digging into the he-said/she-said here. The burden of proof […]
[…] a video called Plandemic that went viral in May featuring disgraced scientists Judy Mikovits that peddled virtually every conspiracy about the COVID-19 pandemic, the narrator attacks John Oliver for a segment that he did last month […]
[…] of other COVID-19 conspiracy theories. I’ve discussed it in the context of—of course!—Plandemic and Judy Mikovits and Kelly Brogan‘s and Sayer Ji‘s COVID-19 conspiracy mongering; so […]
[…] Actually, Osterholm is correct. Although we have considerable expertise in genetic engineering and splicing genes in and out of viruses, but it takes a lot more than that. In order to engineer something like SARS-CoV-2, you have to know enough about how coronaviruses cause disease and how they are transmitted and then about what structural features are required in the virus’ proteins to achieve the desired virulence and contagiousness, and we just don’t. Moroever, as I’ve pointed out many times before, once the complete nucleotide sequence of SARS-CoV-2 was elucidated, it became very clear that the virus was of natural origin. It had no tell-tale signs of having been engineered, as documented in a study in Nature in March. There’s just a lot of evidence that the virus was not engineered, but that doesn’t stop this conspiracy theory from popping up again and again, such as in Plandemic. […]
[…] with antivaxxers eagerly joining the conspiracy theorists claiming that COVID-19 is a “plandemic,” that it’s due to a failed SARS coronavirus vaccine, that it’s due to 5G, that […]
[…] in a laboratory, how 5G is the real cause of the pandemic, how the whole pandemic is a “plandemic“, how the flu vaccine supposedly increases your chances of getting COVID-19 (it […]
[…] But, clever conspiracy theorist that he is, Adams easily incorporates elements of the “plandemic” conspiracy theory into his updated “Oblivion Agenda,” turning COVID-19 into the […]
[…] virus is not that deadly), and in general engage in conspiracy theories about this being a “plandemic” or an excuse to impose “forced vaccination,” resemble the antivaccine movement. […]