There’s a name that’s been popping up more and more in the COVID-19 conspiracy theory and antivaccine social media underground, one that I’ve been meaning to look into but somehow never got around to doing. I’m referring to Robert Malone, PhD. Currently, Malone shows up as CEO of RW Malone MD, LLC, a company, a consultancy and analytics company, for which Dr. Malone “specializes in clinical research, medical affairs, regulatory affairs, project management, proposal management (large grants and contracts), vaccines and biodefense,” including “writing, developing, reviewing and managing vaccine, bio-threat and biologics clinical trials and clinical development strategies.” On the surface, he sounds like a legitimate scientist, and maybe he was. However, in the era of the pandemic, something happened and he’s gone full COVID-19 crank.
I first noticed Malone a few months ago when his claims to be the “inventor of mRNA vaccines” gave me a mad “inventor of email” vibe. Remember Shiva Ayyadurai, the COVID-19 crank who claimed to have invented email but did not? Whatever Malone’s role in the history of mRNA vaccines actually is (and I’ll get into that a bit later), I get the same “inventor of email” energy that I got from Ayyadurai. Why? Malone’s “inventor of email” energy comes through perhaps the strongest in his appearance on Bret Weinstein’s podcast, which was featured prominently last week by über-quack Joe Mercola in an article entitled mRNA Vaccine Inventor Erased From History Books (because of course there has to be a conspiracy theory).
“They” are “erasing” Robert Malone from the history of mRNA vaccines
Before we even get to Malone’s COVID-19 conspiracy mongering and antivaccine nonsense, though, let’s look at the conspiracy theory that Mercola and Weinstein are peddling for Malone:
June 11, 2021, the inventor of the mRNA vaccine technology,1 Dr. Robert Malone, spoke out on the DarkHorse podcast about the potential dangers of COVID-19 gene therapy injections, hosted by Bret Weinstein, Ph.D. The podcast was quickly erased from YouTube and Weinstein was issued a warning.
To censor a scientific discussion with the actual inventor of the technology used to manufacture these COVID-19 shots is beyond shocking. But the censorship of Malone goes even further than that. As reported in the video above, Malone’s scientific accomplishments are also being scrubbed.
You can see where this is going. Malone spread misinformation on Weinstein’s podcast, and, as a result, “they” tried to shut him down, discredit him, and “erase” his role from history:
As recently as June 14, 2021, Malone’s contributions were extensively included in the historical section on RNA vaccines’ Wikipedia page. He was listed as having co-developed a “high-efficiency in-vitro and in-vivo RNA transfection system using cationic liposomes” in 1989.
In 1990, he demonstrated that “in-vitro transcribed mRNA could deliver genetic information into the cell to produce proteins within living cell tissue.” Malone was also part of the team that conducted the first mRNA vaccine experiments. In short, his scientific knowledge of mRNA vaccines is unquestionable.
Two days later, June 16, 2021, just five days after Malone’s appearance on the DarkHorse podcast, his name was removed from the Wikipedia entry. Now, all of a sudden, the discovery of mRNA drug delivery is accredited to nameless researchers at the Salk Institute and the University of California, and his 1990 research confirming that injected mRNA can produce proteins in cell tissue is accredited to nameless scientists at the University of Wisconsin.
Anyone who knows how Wikipedia works probably has their skeptical antennae twitching right now. Why? For one thing, Wikipedia is open. Every single edit, attempted edit, and the like are tracked and can be examined, and there are discussion pages in which edits can be discussed (or argued about). For the mRNA vaccine page on Wikipedia, for instance, here is the history page on which changes are tracked. (Or, you can look at the upper right hand corner for the “View History” link.)
Checking this history page out, I quickly found that over the last month or so there had been a rather vigorous discussion over changing the text. The first thing that I note is that, although Malone’s name is no longer in the history section of the entry, his work is still cited twice, specifically these papers:
- Malone, R. W.; Felgner, P. L.; Verma, I. M. (1 August 1989). “Cationic liposome-mediated RNA transfection”. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 86 (16): 6077–6081. Bibcode:1989PNAS…86.6077M. doi:10.1073/pnas.86.16.6077. PMC 297778. PMID 2762315.
- Wolff, Jon A.; Malone, Robert W.; Williams, Phillip; Chong, Wang; Acsadi, Gyula; Jani, Agnes; Felgner, Philip L. (23 March 1990). “Direct Gene Transfer into Mouse Muscle in Vivo”. Science. 247 (4949): 1465–1468. Bibcode:1990Sci…247.1465W. doi:10.1126/science.1690918. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 1690918.
But let’s go into the discussion now. Contrary to what some quacks like to claim about me and my supposed awesome power over Wikipedia, I only dabbled in editing Wikipedia about a decade (or probably more) ago and gave it up as too frustrating, after having discovered that I’m much more suited temperamentally speaking, for blogging and social media. Although I still have a Wikipedia login, I haven’t used it for many years. So I decided to change that and take a look at the history. There’s been a lot of activity on the page over the last month or so!
Admittedly, not being Wikipedia editor (contrary, again, to what the quacks say), I had a hard time reading and understanding a lot of what was in the history, but I did see a few things that were interesting. First, if Robert Malone was being “erased” from Wikipedia, then so was Katalin Karikó, the biochemist at BioNTech who made critical observations that led to the mRNA vaccine now being distributed by Pfizer with BioNTech and holds patents for the application of non-immunogenic, nucleoside-modified RNA. For example, here, a Wikipedia editor under the ‘nym Red Rose 13 posted in the talk pages:
(1) This photo of Katalin Karikó, supposedly a scientist behind a key discovery in the development of mRNA vaccines is peacocking one scientist. This should be removed immediately. [[8]]
(2) The History section either includes all scientist names or none – just using the name of the organization. This section is out of balance by promoting or deleting key scientists according to an editors preferences rather than neutral scientific information.
(3) The imbalance needs to corrected. Red Rose 13 (talk) 14:28, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
“Peacocking” or “puffery,” per Wikipedia lingo, is the use of non-neutral adjectives to “puff up” a subject. Some adjectives listed as examples include legendary, best, great, acclaimed, iconic, visionary, outstanding, leading, celebrated, popular, award-winning, landmark, cutting-edge, innovative, revolutionary, extraordinary, brilliant, hit, famous, renowned, remarkable, prestigious, world-class and more.
More tellingly, though, it is observed elsewhere:
Between 2017 and recently an account has existed purely, it seems, for the purposes of adding Malone’s name to multiple articles on Wikipedia.[6] On 8 June this year the account added Malone’s name to this article.[7] Such additions were not backed by the sources cited; in fact no reputable source identifies Malone as the “inventor of RNA vaccines”, or even as a significant figure. The account was blocked for self-promotion/spam and the article returned to its longstanding form and improved in other ways. Meanwhile, on social media and in the scummier parts of the web, a lie has been spread that “longstanding” information on Wikipedia was scrubbed. Some people have been suckered in by this. Alexbrn (talk) 10:44, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
Here’s an example of Malone’s name being added by this account, which has the ‘nym Glasspool1:
And, yes, Glasspool1 did do a fair amount of adding Malone’s name to Wikipedia as the “inventor of mRNA.”
This discussion on Wikipedia makes Mercola’s choice of June 14 as the date when “something” changed and Robert Malone was starting to be “erased” from Wikipedia most…interesting. It’s very telling that Mercola doesn’t mention that Malone’s name had only been added to the mRNA vaccine article less than a week before. He either doesn’t know, doesn’t care, or knows and is lying by omission. Take your pick.
There’s more argument, too, on this Wikipedia page in which anonymous commenters complained, for example:
It is a published fact. In as much you accuse Malone of self-promotion, you are anti-promoting Malone. Facts are facts. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.138.33.183 (talk) 10:49, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
Elsewhere, there were more complaints:
|ans=no These edits by user Alexbrn are attempting to hide the history of mRNA’s discovery by removing all references to Robert Malone. I suspect this is due to the recent controversy surrounding Robert, yet that does not make this edit appropriate. Please reverse these three abusive edits attempting to hide the history of mRNAs discovery. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=RNA_vaccine&diff=1029988072&oldid=1029743206 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=RNA_vaccine&diff=1030322202&oldid=1030284345 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=RNA_vaccine&diff=1030787298&oldid=1030331671
Asailum (talk) 06:28, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
Not done No source(s) given. Note this is being discussed at WP:FTN#The danger of the spike protein in RNA vaccines, according to … their inventor?. Also, note WP:COI. Alexbrn (talk) 06:38, 28 June 2021 (UTC)
Interesting, isn’t it, how Asailum refers to Dr. Malone not as “Dr. Malone” but as “Robert.” This raises at least the possibility that Asailum and Malone could be friends—or at least that they know each other—if not outright suggesting it. Curiouser and curiouser. Who could Asailum be? Inquiring minds want to know!
Robert Malone is an individual who has appeared on social media to (as this Reuters fact check puts it) say that the spike protein as used in several COVID vaccines is “very dangerous” and “cytotoxic”. He styles himself and is referred to in such forums as the “inventor of mRNA vaccines”.[11]
Over at RNA vaccine#History there has been repeated editing trying to get this “inventor” characterisation into Wikipedia, despite apparently there being no suitble WP:RS for it. While there is no doubt Malone was a scientist publishing early work in this field (see here) for example, his role does not even seem to have been so much that he is even namedin historical overviews of the topic, in contrast to – say – Katalin Karikó. Alexbrn (talk) 08:52, 25 June 2021 (UTC)
Katalin Karikó thanks Malone in the ‘Acknowledgements’ section of her first mRNA immunotherapy publication. This article tells Karikó’s impressive contributions as extensions of Malone’s earlier work. I sense you’re striving for good information rather than simply taking down Malone, but where are you getting this historical overview information? AntaniSuper (talk) 18:03, 30 June 2021 (UTC)
The main issue with Malone is there aren’t any reliable sources that discuss him in detail or the merits of his claim to have “invented” mRNA vaccines, though I see the Daily Mail and Fox News have uncritically parroted his claims. Hemiauchenia (talk) 08:56, 25 June 2021 (UTC)
In case you’re wondering, “WP:RS” means “Wikipedia Reliable Sources,” which should be “based on reliable, published sources, making sure that all majority and significant minority views that have appeared in those sources are covered (see Wikipedia:Neutral point of view).” Wikipedia further notes that “if no reliable sources can be found on a topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it.” Those articles “should be based on reliable, independent, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy, which “means that we publish the opinions only of reliable authors, and not the opinions of Wikipedians who have read and interpreted primary source material for themselves.” Similarly, “WP:V” stands for “Wikipedia:Verifiability,” which requires that “other people using the encyclopedia can check that the information comes from a reliable source.” It’s good to see that Wikipedia editors don’t view the Daily Mail or Fox News as reliable sources of information on COVID-19 vaccines, because they most definitely are not.
Let’s just say that I got the distinct feeling as I perused the edit history of the mRNA vaccine article that someone has been trying very, very hard to promote Malone by adding his name to this article and other articles on Wikipedia as the “inventor of mRNA vaccines.” I have no idea if it’s Malone itself and, given how late it was getting as I finished this post, was too tired (and didn’t have the time anyway) to start tracking down the IP addresses of the edits to see if there’s a pattern. This, I suspect, is a task best left to those with more time and patience—and a much more in-depth knowledge of the workings of Wikipedia.
However, from my brief analysis, I find it fairly obvious that there definitely appear to be Malone admirers out there “puffing him up.” Other Wikipedia editors caught this tampering and shut it down. I could speculate that these Malone admirers made these edits on purpose, knowing that Wikipedia’s error-correction mechanisms would catch them and lead other editors to revert their edits, thus generating a conspiracy theory about Wikipedia “erasing” Malone, but, quite frankly, I don’t think these Wikipedia tampering fans of Malone are clever or smart enough to have conceived such a plan.
The kerfuffle over this one article is a good example of one of the reasons why I decided long ago that editing Wikipedia was just not for me. Edit/reversion wars over contentious articles are exhausting, and I like spouting off my opinion too much to be able to stick to the neutral tone demanded by Wikipedia requirements. As Dirty Harry Callahan said in Magnum Force, “A man’s got to know his limitations.” One of my limitations is a lack of patience in the face of this sort of thing. That’s why I salute science-based Wikipedia editors like Susan Gerbic and her Guerrilla Skeptics on Wikipedia, who have to deal with the Malones of the world trying to tamper with Wikipedia articles like this, as well as antivaxxers, quacks, and COVID-19 conspiracy theorists trying to edit Wikipedia articles to conform to their grandiose views of themselves.
For example:
Comment: – This is being characterised on the conspiracy-theory corners of the non-wiki web as “censorship” rather than the removal of COI – https://ussanews.com/News1/2021/07/05/mrna-vaccine-inventor-erased-from-history-books/ – Cabayi (talk) 08:45, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
There is nothing conspiracy theory about it, Robert Malone along with two others were the first to discover and patent lipid carrier mRNA transfection methods in 1989 [7][8]which were later improved upon by others to create mRNA/DNA vaccines. There are no earlier patents of this specific technique being invented that is now in widespread use. Removing his name simply because anti vaxxers are misusing his concerns [9] is censorship. There is a key difference in safety concerns over a rushed vaccine which bypassed years of testing and well established vaccines which all had multi year trials to prove safety. Asailum (talk) 07:29, 7 July 2021 (UTC)
On the Asailum’s User talk page, Asailum states:
I have zero connection to anyone related to the topics I am discussing in the mRNA talk page. I work in software engineering related to autonomous cars and simply researching mRNA on my free time. I have other areas I plan to contribute to but this one in particular struck me as odd considering the chain of events
Someone “researching mRNA” in his/her free time who calls Dr. Malone “Robert” as if he/she/it knows him? That sounds plausible!
But what about Malone’s claim that he is the “inventor of mRNA vaccines”? There’s little doubt that he did work with an early group experimenting with injecting mRNA in liposomes into muscle to get the muscle cells to express the protein coded for by the mRNA sequence. Basically, in 1989, while in Inder Verma’s lab he published a paper in which the mRNA coding for Luciferase, a protein that undergoes bioluminescence when the right reagents are in the solution, was encapsulated in liposomes and used to transfect (introduce the mRNA or DNA into) NIH-3T3 cells (a commonly used fibroblast cell line), as well as human, rat, mouse, Xenopus, and Drosophila cells. This is basic cell culture work, a long way from vaccines. By 1990, he was second author on a paper in which mRNA constructs and DNA plasmids encoding chloramphenicol acetyltransferase, luciferase, and β-galactosidase (three common proteins that were used as markers because they could produce an easily assayable product) in liposomes were injected into mouse muscle, which was certainly an advance, but “inventor of mRNA vaccines”? It makes me wonder why this paper’s first (and corresponding) author Jon Wolff isn’t on Bret Weinstein’s and Joe Rogan’s podcasts and Fox News complaining about not getting his proper due as the one true “inventor of mRNA vaccines.” My guess is that he knows the proper role his work played in the development of these vaccines.
To be honest, I don’t actually care that much whether Malone does or does not deserve more credit as the one true “inventor of mRNA vaccines.” What I do care about is how he’s using his seeming scientific credibility to spread conspiracy theories and COVID-19 misinformation, for example, in Mercola’s article:
In his DarkHorse interview, Malone noted that he had warned the FDA that the spike protein — which the COVID-19 shots instruct your cells to make — could pose a health risk.
The FDA dismissed his concerns, saying they did not believe the spike protein was biologically active. Besides, the vaccine makers specifically designed the injections so that the spike protein would stick and not float about freely. As it turns out, they were wrong on both accounts.
The SARS-CoV-2 spike protein has reproductive toxicity, and Pfizer’s biodistribution data show it accumulates in women’s ovaries. Despite that, Pfizer opted not to perform standard reproductive toxicology studies.It’s since been established that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein does not stay near the injection site,7 and that it is biologically active. It is responsible for the most severe effects seen in COVID-19, such as bleeding disorders, blood clots throughout the body, heart problems and neurological damage.
I’ve written about all these false claims. Spike protein does not have demonstrable reproductive toxicity, and the study to which antivaxxers point to claim that it accumulates in the ovaries is a rodent study that doesn’t show that much accumulation at all and doesn’t show that the spike protein floats free in the bloodstream at quantities sufficient to cause problems. Indeed, the evidence we have shows that the spike protein from the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines is only transiently detectable in the bloodstream at infinitesimal concentrations.
According to Mercola, Malone claims that current COVID-19 vaccines violate bioethical principles:
…the adult public are basically research subjects that are not being required to sign informed consent due to EUA waiver. But that does not mean that they do not deserve the full disclosure of risks that one would normally require in an informed consent document for a clinical trial.
People are being given informed consent. What Malone doesn’t like is that they aren’t being given what I like to call “misinformed refusal,” in which risks of vaccines are vastly exaggerated and benefits denied, all to paint a distorted risk-benefit picture that leads people to fear the vaccine.
Malone is further quoted:
For example, if I were to propose a clinical trial involving children and entice participation by giving out ice cream to those willing to participate, any institutional human subjects safety board (IRB) in the United States would reject that protocol.
If I were to propose a clinical research protocol wherein the population of a geographic region would lose personal liberties unless 70% of the population participated in my study, once again, that protocol would be rejected by any US IRB based on coercion of subject participation. No coercion to participate in the study is allowed.
He bases this claim on his characterization of COVID-19 vaccines as “experimental.” As I’ve said so many times before, this is an intentional misuse of the legal definition of “investigational” or “experimental,” in which a drug or vaccine not approved by the FDA must be described using one of these words. However, from a scientific standpoint, COVID-19 vaccines are no longer experimental after they’ve undergone phase 1, 2, and 3 clinical trials involving tens of thousands of subjects and have now been administered to hundreds of millions of people with a good record of safety and efficacy. Basically, this is the intentional conflation of a legal term with a scientific term when they don’t mean the same thing in different contexts.
To reiterate, I don’t really care if Malone is truly the “inventor of mRNA vaccines” or not. I really don’t (even as I doubt that he really is). What I do care about is how he’s enthusiastically using his now ancient connection to mRNA transfection techniques. (Three decades ago is ancient history in molecular biology, something that I just thought of as I recalled that I cloned the new gene that became the basis of my PhD thesis about 30 years ago.) He’s using his status, regardless of whether he merits it or not, to spread fear about COVID-19 vaccines, with Joe Mercola eagerly lapping up the misinformation and conspiracy mongering:
This egregious example of censorship vividly demonstrates just how degenerated the media has become. The only possible explanation is that anyone or any piece of information that interferes with as many people getting the COVID jab is removed. Nothing that counters this narrative is tolerated despite every bit of information is making it clear that these COVID jabs are the biggest crime against mankind in the history of humanity.
Given the way mRNA COVID-19 vaccines are being demonized and how he apparently believes that they are so deadly and ineffective, I have to ask: Why is Malone so eager to claim ownership of them as their inventor? There really is a major disconnect here in his thinking. On the one hand, Malone’s desperation to be properly recognized by the scientific community as the one true “inventor of mRNA vaccines” is palpable. On the other hand, he routinely describes these vaccines (or at least the current COVID-19 vaccines) as not merely ineffective, but also horrifically deadly, a message amplified by quacks like Bret Weinstein and Joe Mercola, who proclaim these vaccines to be “the biggest crime against mankind in the history of humanity.” Why, if Malone truly believes that these vaccines are such scourges and horrors, would he want to be recognized as their inventor? If he were, then wouldn’t all the horror, death, and destruction attributed to the vaccines by antivaxxers then become, in large part, his fault? Yet COVID-19 conspiracy theorists and cranks lionize the “inventor of mRNA vaccines” for saying how evil they supposedly are. It does not compute.
He himself even Tweets things like this:
Let’s just say that Dr. Malone seems…confused. And enamored of conspiracy theories:
It’s the oldest con in the world. Make grandiose claims. Fear monger about something (in this case, COVID-19 vaccines). Then claim “persecution” or “censorship” when those claims do what such claims always do and invite scrutiny and attempts to correct the misinformation in them. By my estimation, though, Malone is just not that good at it.
298 replies on “Is “mRNA vaccine inventor” Robert Malone “being erased from Wikipedia” for his claims about COVID-19?”
Excellent job. Like you, I’ve been getting same vibe off of “inventor of email”/”inventor of mRNA” — I’m glad you found the time to debunk him.
It sounds to me now that the reason Wikipedia “erased” him is because his fans have been trying to edit Wikipedia to proclaim him the “inventor of mRNA vaccines.” So the editors basically “erased” everybody, so to speak, including Malone, to put a stop to it by just reciting the history of mRNA vaccine development without listing prominent names.
Well we KNOW Wikipedia hasn’t gone or of their way to cancel all conservative editors. They are just as biased as Google, fb & Twitter. One of the cocreaters of Wikipedia has shattered it’s not a reliable source of information anymore.
@zeke Check original sources. If they are good, the article is good
Funny you and Orac mention “vibes” – so very woo of you…but maybe not? https://qz.com/1490276/the-science-of-vibes-shows-how-everything-is-connected/
Next on the professional chopping block, Dr. Robert Malone. He had something to do with mRNA development…whether he was primary, secondary, or whatever. So petty, really. If he was fawning over the vaccine, he would have been praised for his contribution. Since he is expressing legitimate concerns as someone who is familiar with it, he needs to be erased well because the $cience proselytizers say so!
Why bother with mouse studies if the reply will be, “well, that was mice.” Whether or not the microscopic lipid nano particles are detected in the blood is not a complete assessment. Doesn’t the lymph carry those trillions of lipid nano particles away from the injection site? How long do they float in the lymph? Probably a very indivdual measurement dependent on several factors like activity, base line health, etc. Some are getting stuck and causing reactions in the lymph nodes…ie the axillary nodes. After eventually making their way to the subclavian vein, they can get stuck in the small exchange of capillaries and can cause blood clots. Some people seem to be okay with it and others clearly are not.
To add to the confusion, you’ve got Albert Bourla, Pfizer head telling everyone they’re gonna need a booster but then the CDC is saying, “no booster needed”…yet. Who is calling the shots? Pun intended.
OT – Speaking of Albert Bourla, he would have been a great character in the Sopranos. Dude looks and has a mafioso “vibe”.
Oh, great, dualists chasing the long-ago-sailed (and capsized) string theory ship. “We are all one” is a dullard’s mantra.
Whole story is actually that mRNA inventor turned turned against them, thats how
horrible tthey are. So it is quite important that Malone is not the inventor.
Pfizer does not call the shots. May I introduce to you ACIP:
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/index.html
Meetings data is avaiable.
Shocking that the author of this post and the majority of the commenters seem to be pro-censorship…as it suits them. Or is that just conspiracy theory on my ‘crank’ end of things. They could probably sense the negative woo before I even posted this. These folks are drinking the koolaid.
More an issue with reading comprehension, I’d say.
Either the Spike dis-attaches, or it doesn’t. Which is it ? And what evidence do you have to prove one way or the other ? This issue has been politicized. Tired of word-play…’dis’ and ‘mis’ information, or fear mongering. People can think. They can reason and balance the risks. If there is even a remote chance that Spikes are cytotoxic and/or move through the bloodstream, to the brain, to ovaries…then this gene therapy must cease. Period. Forcing people to get 40 Trillion packets of ‘vaccine’ against their will is simply wrong. We are talking about a virus which, without any ameliorative action, was survivable at an over 99% rate. Only after 60 yrs. did the rate go to something like 94%. Neither figure justifies shutting down an economy and taking away our constitutional right to choose what happens to our bodies.
baystatejim2. You are correct about constitutional rights. Not so correct about the threat of covid. True, Covid does have a high survival rate, but that is only half of the story. Significant percentages of cases develop blood clots, as well as lung damage. Many have long term Covid as a result, and we do not yet know how much of this is permanant damage. for me, I used my Constitutional right to chose the jab, in order to protect loved ones who are subject to severe Covid. I have lost several friends to Covid, who would have still been here, and am about to lose another who chose not to get the vaccine. None of them got the jab. There is more to the story, and better to dig a little deeper and learn well, so we can exercise our rights with wisdom and concern for others.
Just wanted to to pass my deepest fuck you in the name of my mother and friends who suffered the covid vax injuries. Hope you guys gona have a painful death, soon there will be no arguments…
Thank you for this – our local (NZ) antivaxxers have been promoting Malone’s claims lately.
Alison we at GSoW have several very active Kiwi editors that are trying to improve the pages associated with NZ. Several of them are vaccine related including Jenny & the Eddies which is a cartoon book written by a NZ doctor aimed at explaining vaccines to children. And we did the stings on psychic and Covid denier Jeanette Wilson which you can read all about on that Wikipedia page.
36 pages so far and counting which have been viewed 222,817 times. We are looking for more editors.
wouldn’t trust Wikipedia as far as a could throw a house. the only thing.I use it for now is how old a person is and family relationships. even then I don’t consider it written in stone
@zeke Wikipedia does not accpet your conspiracy sites, is this the problem ?
I’ll wait for the Novavax that’s protein based thanks.
Okey-dokey.
That doesn’t make sense.
Novavax contains spike proteins which is what Robert Malone is claiming is harmful about the mRNA vaccines – which don’t contain the spike protein but contain the mRNA that produces the spike protein.
why? If you’ve already had it the anti bodies are better than the vax. If you haven’t, then you’ve gone over 18 months without it. 2 of the best steps proven to help?
1) make sure you get plenty of vitamin D. studies have shown that people that catch it tend to be LOW. explains the ISSUE of darker skin types getting it because melatonin in the skin hinders D production from the sun.
2 ) the more obese you are the higher your risk. So losing weight especially if morbidly obese
Melatonin?
So, you’re apparently “replying” to nobody and decidedly semiliterate, but also missing the point and what T-cells are for?
@zeke And if you not have antibodies ? You would get COVID even if you are not obese, it just make the risk higher.
So this claim of inventing mRNA vaccines sounds an awful lot like he wants to take responsibility for them. Does that mean we should start to sue him directly for vaccine harms? Should we put him in jail for being criminally negligent in developing such a plague on the world? I’m just trying to wrap my head around what he is attempting to gain by saying he invented these while simultaneously talking about how bad they are. Like are these interviews him expressing regret?
My guess? He thinks the technology is just great but that THESE mRNA vaccines are horrible, coming as they do from people whom he views as having taken credit for his idea.
I’m wondering if he’s selling anything besides his image. Maybe too cynical, but after the previous COVID-19 deniers, several of whom appear to, I wonder.
Malone was involved in the use of famotidine as a Covid therapeutic early on.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-admin-21m-gambit-for-pepcid-as-a-covid-remedy-fizzles/2020/07/23/601337d6-cced-11ea-99b0-8426e26d203b_story.html
From the article, it appears he wasn’t to happy about credit or something.
Both Weinsteins appear to think that they are deserving of scientific greatness. Bret with his teleomere work and Eric with his geometric unity.
Many of these conspiracy types and woo peddlers seem to suffer from a perceived lack of respect and/or recognition of their greatness.
Unfortunately, even accomplished scientists (Nobel laureates included) can suffer from this. But like Jerry Hathaway in Real Genius said, ” That was yesterday, what have you done for me today.”
I’m not sure if you actually listened to the entire Weinstein podcast. I did. And I do remember Malone stating that he is not against mRNA vaccine technology. He just believes it is not appropriate to have it develop the spike protein. We can speculate as to why he is pushing this narrative. But I do think you mischaracterized him by saying that he is contradicting himself by claiming to be the inventor and then attacking the Covid vaccine.
Given the severity of the pandemic (at least in terms of transmission and mutations), I don’t think it is appropriate to allow intentional lies to be disseminated to the public. However, should there not be open discussion by at least brilliant minds with specialized knowledge and experience? I’ve noticed a common theme is to not be consistent with facts standards of evidence, or to omit specific statements in order to obscure context of other statements.
I have to side with the overwhelming majority that supports the vaccine; however, I see it as detrimental to science to not allow open discourse among scientists. They can be challenged with science, not censorship, name-calling, or questioning of motives.
Malone is not criticizing mRNA vaccines in general, obviously. He is concerned about the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines.
The latest online idiocy regarding made-up side effects from COVID-19 vaccination is fluorescence at/beyond the injection site, which anti-vaxxers attribute luciferase (which isn’t at all in the vaccines). Maybe Malone can claim to be the inventor is this fantasy fluourescence as well. Maybe tomorrow Malone will tell us he’s the one who really invented email.
Wait, there was an option for a COVID shot that would also let me glow in the dark? How did I miss that? Think of how much safer running at night would be!
/s
For goodness sake.
Justatech- especially naked!
I looked up the papers. There are two of them. The initial and primary paper was in cell lines and the subsequent follow-up was in vivo. Luciferase, the glow in the dark stuff that everyone thinks is oh-so-funny is used as a marker. It is the protein that makes fireflies glow. But the luminescence allows quantification of gene expression. Luciferase is therefore a reporter gene.
These papers were written over 30 years ago and they describe a novel technique for introducing RNA into cells using cationic liposomes.This method permits the introduction of nucleic acids and the expression of their protein products in vivo. Something that was not possible before that time. This is NOT trivial. It is a major contribution without which mRNA vaccines would simply not be possible.
Therefore, the technology that allowed for the current crop of mRNA vaccines to be introduced to the market was the product of that research. Malone was first author on the original paper describing the technology and second author on the subsequent paper. The technique, at that time, was novel enough to warrant publication in the journal Science.
I do believe that there was a patent dispute. I don’t know too much about it, but such things are not unusual and it is likely why there was no patent at the time.
Before you make fun of a major piece of research that came from someone who is simply saying things you don’t like, maybe you should understand the science first.
I do understand the science. In 1990 I started my graduate training in a lab that did work very similar to this, although only with DNA plasmids, not RNA. Just sayin’.
Nothing of this has anything to do with invention of RNA vaccines. If you actually have read the papers, you should know that Malone spoke about gene therapy, because he used DNA, too
The story also give me a kind of feeling, like the Wright brothers warning for the dangers of flying, without thinking of the things that have happened, since they took of for the first time, to make flying safer. Even if mr. Malone could take some credit for his inventions, since he ‘invented’ it, there have been a lot of developments, I suppose.
By claiming that he is the victim of “psy-ops”, Malone has gone down the Judy Mikovits rabbit hole of once decent scientists who have become the darlings of quacks and antivaxers.*
It wouldn’t be surprising if they started appearing together at Children’s Health Defense events.
*Mikovits, among other things, claimed that mysterious harassers were shining bright lights into her home. It’s a well-known psy-ops tactic, sometimes used against me by oncoming drivers on two-lane highways at night.
Not sure what you imply with Dr Mikovits however her arrest did happen. And govt did take her personal property illegally. We all know you dont mess with big phar#ma. “When she made a horrifying discovery in 2011 that was contaminating all vaccinations, she presented her data to government officials and was threatened and told to destroy all her data. When she did not, she was jailed, her career systematically destroyed, and a gag order put in place for four years threatening that if she spoke out she would be thrown back in jail.” Story here: https://goodizen.com/judy-mikovits-jailed-after-uncovering-deadly-viruses-delivered-through-human-vaccines/
Mikovits was jailed because she stole her employer’s property. It was a laptop containing lab data. That was important because her employer suspected scientific fraud.
Her career was ended because of the fraud, and lots of people wasted their time because of it.
Science 23 Dec 2011:
Vol. 334, Issue 6063, pp. 1636
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”
Point here is tCFS is caused by XMRV, and azacytidine activates it, and she called unactivated samples control.
I’m glad that Orac provided detail into the inner workings of Wikipedia so that readers – especially trolls- can see how important sources are . If you peruse talk and history pages on a particular subject, you can observe how the reality-based and alties battle it out. WP:RS and WP:V are especially valuable concepts for sceptics to maintain and respect in all of our endeavors on the net. ..
Woo-meisters and anti-vaxxers bemoan Wikipedia’s impermeability to avid attempts to transform it into a PR platform ( which may lead to pages becoming labeled protected). I’ve followed some of these wars ( although I AM NOT an editor), A few fantasy-based providers/ supporters demonise WP, its founder and its editors and discourage its usage for SB topics – one is even suing them ( This did not work out so well in the past and I predict a replay). Trolls who appear at RI might take a lesson from “victims” of WP policies: or as I call them victims of reality.
It seems like a dreadful hobby. I haven’t bothered with trying to edit the mess in years, aside from simply telling the talk page that something is broken, perhaps eight times a year (I don’t visit often).
Hierarchical crowdsourcing doesn’t seem to make for engaging (or, not unfrequently, coherent) prose.
I tried editing Wikipedia around a decade ago (or longer). I didn’t last long. Blogging is a lot more fun.
I made one change to Wikipedia many years ago. I changed “hydrophilic” to “hygroscopic.” My work there is done.
Back in undergrad, when Wikipedia was pretty new, I wrote an article on GMO crops as part of an ecology class. It was fully cited with the scientific literature (and correctly formatted) and stayed up for a couple of years before it was replaced with a completely different page with virtually no citations.
I was kind of annoyed that my work was thrown out, but by then I was working and didn’t want to get into the quagmire that any of the GMO pages could become.
Wikipedia is an excellent starting point for learning more about a subject, and for simple stuff or idle questions (how many Oscars did The Lion King win?) it’s perfectly cromulent.
(It’s also a better rabbit hole to fall down than say, TV tropes.)
“I’m glad that Orac provided detail into the inner workings of Wikipedia so that readers – especially trolls- can see how important sources are.”
Trolls prefer to ignore sources and veracity of published evidence and instead sneer “Wikipedia? Hah!”
Following the same well-worn path is Bryce, who prefers Just Asking Questions about Wikipedia editors, rather than attempting to challenge articles’ source material.
I note that Gary Null and Deepak Chopra are especially fond of attacking Wikipedia using deceptive nonsense. https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2019/10/21/attempt-to-nullify-wikipedia/
PRN.fm lists over 70 articles and letters to Wikipedia as well as a brand new set of lawsuits-.
OBVIOUSLY, these literary gems are purely for the benefit of followers who may have begun to doubt the master’s veracity and are buttressed by rather baroque
biographical videos about his “achievements” in more than a dozen fields and a large group of “self empowerment” videos providing many hours of “instruction”
.
His chief gripe with WP is that it tells the truth about his (so-called) education and history as an anti-vaxxer., hiv/aids denialist, conspiracy theorist. and pseudo-scientist,
Like others, he charges that the editors are not experts – unlike him- HOWEVER anyone who has ever written a paper knows that it’s the sources that matter not you. He doesn’t know that either. What he does know – and admit- is that the article has impacted his career: he is no longer invited to speak at conferences, given book deals and interviewed. I imagine his cuts into his profit stream. GOOD!
About Wikipedia: I once knew that something they had about this charlatan was very wrong but was wary about editing myself BUT it was soon fixed realistically.
.
Denise – The GSoW gets the publicity from the paranormal community from all angles, we work on lots of topics so we have seen everything.
You are correct, you really can’t sue Wikipedia. So the lawsuit will be probably laughed out of court AND then the Streisand effect happens and the person will see far more attention to them than they wanted.
@ Susan:
I think that this time, he’s going after specific editors ( Guy and Paul have been named) and people on WP’s board but I assume that these suits will be EQUALLY fruitless.
HOWEVER WP has them writing tomes to impress their followers which means LESS TIME for them to counsel and dis-inform innocent, trusting people or to write BS books AND they have to pay lawyers and IT folk
-btw- the chief lunatic at PRN ranted about YOU – “she’s only a picture hanger! I’m an EXPERT!” Ha ha. says a person who has meaningless credentials and no reliable link to reality.
.
Oh I doubt that anyone has to lawyer up – I think Wikipedia takes care of all that. But you are correct that it’s a time waster that could be better spent on actually editing.
A picture hanger? Oh I hate hanging photos, I now use double sided tape. LOL
PRN? I can’t keep these all straight, is this the one that unleashed about me and GSoW on a blue PowerPoint slide all kinds of text? I don’t remember a comment about being a “picture hanger” so I might be missing one.
@ Susan:
PRN is Gary Null’s “radio station” ( website actually, with audio).wherein he rants about sceptics, WP, social media and reality in general in both spoken and written form ( see PRN.fm) Most of it is hilarious showboating on his part. But as I said, it keeps him busy rather than “counselling” sick people to give up meds..
What irks him most is that his so-called education is uncovered as sub-standard and he is identified as an hiv/aids denialist, anti-vaxxer, conspiracy theorist and pseudo-scientist. WP and Orac are amongst his greatest betes noires
His anger, attempts to write his own bio to counteract WP and lergal manoeuvring illustrate how effective WP is! MORE POWER TO YOU!
You said this about Ioannidis too. People who have formerly done good science After COVID (AC/Year Zero) have now been revealed to have been quacks all along? Is it possible you are turning into a COVID crank yourself? You spent those years in medical school to become a blogger and Twitter polemicist? Here’s what Dr. Malone says about himself from his website:
You seem to be confirming that he’s telling the truth about himself, though you may quibble about the degree. Stat News praised Katalin Kariko’s role in taking mRNA vaccines the rest of the way to a real solution for COVID19, but Pfizer and BioNTech are getting most of the credit. I’ve noticed everyone shows up to take credit for successful projects. This is just the way tech works.
Your deep-dive into Wikipedia editing reveals why it’s not accepted in academic publications. Who are these “editors” and what are their credentials? How do we know their view of things is correct?
It’s possible we are just discovering the mechanisms for adverse events. Malone may be wrong about the spike protein, but the VAERS data clearly shows the current crop of vaccines – most of which are mRNA judging by the sales figures – are not as safe as the annual flu shot which is given to the same number of people. I found your comparison to background rates in the population to be inadequate. Doctors are able to use their medical judgment and say, “Gee, this patient really went downhill after the shots and I don’t see any other mechanism for their decline! I’d better call VAERS,” which is what many doctors have done.
You could have saved everyone time by not burying the lede.
Dumb non sequitur. I’m following the chronology of Orac’s article. I’d prefer he put his conclusions near the top and supporting evidence below in an inverted pyramid so that I don’t have to wade through screen-caps and twitter slap fights, but that’s not how he writes.
Here’s an idea: let’s all separate into our own tribes and stop interacting with one-another. Let’s make this separation physical. Let’s re-draw the borders, like Yugoslavia.
I could add a couple of sentences at the top saying that (1) Malone’s claim that Wikipedia is “erasing him from history” is utter bullshit and (2) Malone is almost certainly not the “inventor of mRNA vaccines.” Would you like that??
Sure thing, Homer.
Cry me a river. Your apparent limitations with prose comprehension are nobody’s problem but yours. Watch out for Benito Cereno, as it’s too late to whine to Melville.
Did someone say “dumb non sequitur”?
More discussion of baseline rates of adverse events in response to another crank making the same sorts of bad arguments. https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/vegan-cardiologist-dr-joel-kahn-is-amplifying-misinformation-and-conspiracy-theories-about-covid-19-vaccines-and-vaers/
Who is your audience? Is it hardcore anti-vaxxers which SBM says are 16% of the population? Is it a larger number people who may have been duped by hardcore anti-vaxxers? It seems to me you’re trying to trace the anti-COVID vaccine arguments to hardcore antivaxxers and convince a larger audience. Maybe this convinces some people.
However, there are a rat’s nest of lies and partial truths from media and government officials over the past 15 months and the rest of us are now expected to trust them on the safety of these vaccines. This a much larger audience that have never been hardcore anti-vaxxers and have had many vaccines. Do you not see how trust in institutions dropped this year?
@Nartard,
This is a different genre of writing entirely. You’re good at Twitter quips and that’s about it, which is why you will never rise to the level of usefulness and your pay will reflect this. Get back under your rock.
Bryce, please do not use ableist slurs. It adds nothing to your arguments.
Also, Bryce appears to be someone who used to comment here under a different ‘nym. Just a warning. I’m not quite sure yet, but if I become sure that I’m correct:
https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/commenting-policy/
Yeah, I won’t put up with “‘tard” insults. Bryce should consider this the only warning he will get.
Oh, dear, you’re dumber than I thought. I rarely use Twatter, as anyone interested can pretty readily verify. I can scarcely imagine what your “level of usefulness” is, aside from the canonical eater.
Petulant whining is unbecoming, Big Boy, but thanks for tipping your hand (yet again), as it were. I doubt that anybody gives a rat’s ass about the posturing.
^ Your “internationally recognized scientist” also happens to have exactly one more Pubmed-indexed paper than Orac does. Perhaps you should instead be asking yourself what he does in his free time, aside from self-experimentation with famotidine as yet another SARS-CoV-2 miracle cure, which seems not to have turned into Bicycle Day, as it were.
I note that the target of that article attempted to
gigbelittle the author of same for a misspelling of his name by claiming carelessness and lack of precision while spending a good bit of time saying that his case was supported by the VAERS database, apparently having missed the explanations of what it is and is not. **(Inigo Montoya to the meme generator, please: “VAERS, you keep claiming that as decisive evidence. I do not believe it does what you think it does.” Apologies to William Goldman and Mandy Patinkin.
Oh well…… If you want people to rely on feelings rather than analysed data, Bryce, maybe you could consider how well it works for gamblers.
Back in the day they wouldn’t accept Encyclopedia Britannica either. But Wikipedia is actually a better tool, because it provides immediate links to digitized sources.
There was a study published in Nature many years ago which compared the accuracy of Wikipedia and Britannica on several subjects in science. Wikipedia was found to be more accurate.
@Matt G, that’s actually not very shocking. Wikipedia can be edited in response to new information. Britannica… cannot. And given the lag time on print publishing, there’s a very real risk that it’s outdated by the time it’s published.
The reality is that the circumstances under which you would cite an encyclopedia in a paper are pretty limited. Mainly, they’re a starting point, giving you a broad overview and sources on where to find more in-depth information.
Why?
Wikipedia is based on credible sources, editors jiust enforce these.
Here is one Malone’s paper:
Wolff JA, Malone RW, Williams P, Chong W, Acsadi G, Jani A, Felgner PL. Direct gene transfer into mouse muscle in vivo. Science. 1990 Mar 23;247(4949 Pt 1):1465-8. doi: 10.1126/science.1690918. PMID: 1690918
You will notice that he does not mention vaccines, and speak instead about gene transfer (He used DNA, too.)
The author can’t understand why Malone would claim to have invented mRNA vaccines while claiming that the covid-19 mRNA vaccines are dangerous. Well … covid-19 mRNA vaccines are one type of mRNA vaccines. Maybe Malone thinks other mRNA vaccines are safe, but he does not think the covid-19 mRNA vaccines are safe. There was the unfortunate use of the spike protein as the antigen, for one thing.
And I’ve covered the nonsense antivaxxers are claiming about the supposedly “deadly” spike protein. It isn’t:
https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2021/05/04/about-that-salk-institute-paper-on-the-deadly-covid-19-spike-protein/
https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2021/04/29/no-theres-no-good-evidence-that-spike-protein-from-covid-19-vaccine-injures-the-lungs/
https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2021/05/31/antivaxxers-and-the-deadly-sars-cov-2-spike-protein/
https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2021/04/23/shedding-covid19-vaccine/
The text of the OP is surplus. All we need to know about Malone is there in the screen grab at the top of the page. And what offering up pontification about COVID vaccines for Tucker to give his patented quizzical reaction-shot means is that you are an accomplice in the deaths that are coming from the Delta variant outbreaks in under-vaccinated Red States like Missouri, where the ICUs are now already overflowing with 20-40 year olds on ventilators.
I wrote somewhere else (or maybe it was here, I forget – it must be all those vaccines I have had this year) about Malone that whatever his previous expertise, he was no longer a serious scientist. Serious scientists do not appear on Del Bigtree’s HighWire. Serious scientists avoid cranks like Bigtree like the plague.
This seems to have happened to Michael Behe, the biochemist-turned-intelligent design creationism apologist. He has averaged about 3 papers/decade recently (IIRC), while publishing IDC books.
What’s ironic is that COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials are demonstrably larger than any other vaccine clinical trials over the past 20 years. They give us more statistical data than say the HPV vaccine clinical trials which were one-tenth the size (if that).
I’m tired of fighting these wars.
I’m tired of it also – which is why we have to find new blood with the energy to get in the fight. Because really what are our options? We have to fight and I know you already knew that. Good egg that you are, you have been in the fight for years.
I’m grateful for you and your team, because I discovered long ago that, temperamentally, I am not suited to edit Wikipedia on anything resembling a long-term basis. My first edit/reversion squabble, and I’d be gone…
Keep up the good work.
Can you link the results of one such study? Preferably not a study originating from the developers, but that of a regulator whose job is to confirm/infirm initial results and act in accordance with their findings… you know, bias and all that.
Just check FDA website. Like:
https://www.fda.gov/media/144416/download
For one thing, you’re not the person I asked. But that’s not important here. What is important is that you provided a link to FDA’s reasoning behind their EUA for the Pfizer vaccine, which isn’t what I asked for. Moreover, that reasoning is their assessment on data provided by Pfizer. In it, you can read the results for phase 2 trials as well as multiple mentions that phase 3 is ongoing. Try again. This time something that doesn’t use data from the seller.
Catalin, the FDA doesn’t conduct clinical trials, so do you expect people to scour the globe for regulators that do?
@Catalin
Try looking here.
https://covid19.trackvaccines.org/vaccines/6/
Pay attention to size and methodology. Also, you said
Who would submit an application but the company developing the vaccine?
Did you look at the date on the first page and then take the trouble to go see when the EUA was granted?
Ahem.
^ OK, I was looking at the date of the revised fact sheet, sorry. I take it that Catalin would still object to the correct time frame.
@Catalin For instance:
Muhsen, Khitam and Maimon, Nimrod and Mizrahi, Ami and Bodenneimer, Omri and Cohen, Dani and Maimon, Michal and Grotto, Itamar and Dagan, Ron, Effectiveness of BNT162b2 mRNA COVID-19 Vaccine Against Acquisitions of SARS-CoV-2 Among Health Care Workers in Long-Term Care Facilities: A Prospective Cohort Study. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3885633 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3885633
There is any number of follow up studies, of course. Just do Google Scholar search for “covid vaccine efficacy”
@Arthur Dent: Every single one of those studies is either in phase 2 or 3. Meaning the safety part has yet to be assessed. All of them are ongoing. NONE of them have any results (even partial ones) posted. Over half of them are either sponsored by or CONDUCTED by the seller.
@Narad: I’m aware of how the FDA (EMA in my case) approve products. And no, I don’t agree with the methodology. If you’re gonna approve a product for the population based on what the seller says without conducting your own research, or AT LEAST hiring non biased parties to do your job for you, something’s wrong with you.
@Aarno Syvänen: Thanks for that. Both links forward to the same study, which is a pre print posted less than a month ago. I’m sure you’re aware what the value of a pre print is. Ivermectin’s being demonized over that very aspect. Funny I should believe pre prints on vaccines yet not on Ivermectin.
So, can anyone provide a finished study which proves the product is safe?
@SkepticalRaptor
That’s true.
Over 186 million test subjects in US alone.
Clinical trial participants were test subjects, after that risks were known, so there were no testing any more.
He seems to have an interesting definition of “specialize,” too: the company website says Malone “specializes in clinical research, medical affairs, regulatory affairs, project management, proposal management (large grants and contracts), vaccines and biodefense,” including “writing, developing, reviewing and managing vaccine, bio-threat and biologics clinical trials and clinical development strategies.”
That’s nothing – I once saw a sign in a restaurant which said “we specialize in everything“!
Ah, but that’s an obviously intentional, and quite lovely, oxymoron. I’m oddly comforted by knowing modest diner proprietors have better language skills than ego-tripping ‘brave maverick scientists’.
sadmar- I don’t think the proprietors of that restaurant were clever enough to recognize what they’d said….
@ Matt G
Way to kill my dig at the Malones of the world! :- )
I guess I’ll just have to content myself that diner proprietors offer accidental poetry where “brave maverick doctors” offer only word salad.
Orac,
(No need to publish this response.)
But just FYI, Glasspool1 is Dr. Jill Glasspool Malone – Dr. Robert Malone’s wife!
She has been promoting him as the inventor of mRNA vaccines.
You can see her ‘promo’ on https://www.rwmalonemd.com/mrna-vaccine-inventor
Thanks for your article.
Well oh wello that is some interesting info. Is this noted on the Wikipedia talk page?
I didn’t see it, but then I’m no expert at Wikipedia. Quite frankly, the discussion and history pages are NOT user-friendly. (In fact, they’re downright user-hostile.) If I had seen anywhere that Glasspool1 was Malone’s wife on any of the comment pages, I sure as shootin’ would have mentioned it in my post…
I see that the Glasspool1 account is blocked now and is an Single Purpose Account (SPA) which means that it only edits one subject or page, always with some kind of agenda
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?target=Glasspool1&namespace=all&tagfilter=&start=&end=&limit=50&title=Special%3AContributions
Just to add to everything that is pointing towards someone trying to insert Malone into wikipedia, here’s him tweeting about wanting to pay someone to write a wikipedia article on himself:
https://twitter.com/RWMaloneMD/status/1405108910512558080
I also seem to recall him tweeting that his wife had indeed been editing Wikipedia but didn’t think of saving that tweet at the time so it may or may not still be there.
Only now noticed that the tweet where he says his wife has been editing was a reply to one of the tweets on that thread, here: https://twitter.com/RWMaloneMD/status/1405120584682516480
Well, just another uninformed mind manipulator here with an agenda. Who pays you, my friend? Or are you just ideologically brainwashed?
Being censored in a wiki is a “conspiracy theory”?! 😀 You’re having a laugh!
As for your “preferred” scientist, Katalin Karikó, who now is in the spotlights as if she was the brain behind the mRNA vaccine’s discovery: you might want to check her credentials, since she was a communist interior spy in Hungary for decades before she was put in a passive status, coincidentally when she emigrated to the US to work on biohazardous research..
Since Hungarians are keen on exposing their former Stasi-like secret police, at some point the government had to allow access to all files relating to all enlisted secret agents and these files are open to the public. So that the common man may know if his/her neighbour, doctor, teacher, boss was spying on them.
What turns out? Katalin Karikó was one of those agents in the III/II category (“counter espionage”), recruited in 1978, before she was sent “on leave” in 1985. That’s the year she emigrated to the US (for those who grew up in the free West: there was no such thing as leaving the country foregood, especially for people in critical positions) and started working on RNA research in Temple University in Philadelphia.
She never exposed her past and was exposed only after the claim was made that she invented the mRNA procedures. A Nobel prize is at stake here, let’s not forget, not to speak of the millions and millions that the patent is worth..
So ask yourself: who do you trust? A former communist agent that emigrated to the US while still a sleeping agent or the scientist that can recount every step of how he discovered the procedure? I have never seen a single footage of Karikó explaining how she reached this point. Malone seems quite competent at explaining both the process of discovery and his ethics on why he is exposing the dangers it entails now. Which we clearly see, as the VAERS data is flowing in with all the death caused by these vaccines. Only a psychopath would turn a blind eye to the lethality of his/her invention.
Karikó has displayed some dismal behaviour on her FB page after the Hungarian government distributed the adverse effects and deaths of the vaccines administered in Hungary, in paid advertisements, to compare the types. She focussed on why vaccines other than the Pfizer one (her company interest) are more lethal than actually displayed and that it is an unfair comparison. At no point did she speak a word about the clear dangers that ALL of these vaccines represent to the public, clearly shown by the data. The dissonance between her concerns (i.e. which injection is LESS lethal) vs the uproar of the public (i.e. “Hold on, these vaccines are not safe after all??”) just shows the mindset of someone out of touch with the consequences of her “achievements”, if they were hers in the first place..
Your article is not just misleading, but serving the interest of these psychopaths, to whom human lives mean nothing. Only the profits they reap, the Nobel prize luring and probably a big chunk of blackmail because of her dark past, that is being shoved under the rug as we speak.
Shame on you.
Clearly below sources are quick to defend her position for whatever reason (i.e. that she was NOT sent to the US to spy) and you should make up your own mind about what sounds more plausible, but even these “journalists” cannot deny the facts of her enlisting:
https://dailynewshungary.com/katalin-kariko-i-didnt-give-any-reports-i-didnt-hurt-anyone/
https://dailynewshungary.com/krisztian-ungvary-kariko-was-not-sent-to-america-by-the-socialist-party/
https://www.blikk.hu/aktualis/belfold/kariko-katalin-ugynok-szocializmus-biokemikus/ym3snjk
Very odd. I barely mentioned Katalin Karikó, and then only in the context of the fact that her name was removed from the Wikipedia article as well, along with her photo, because editors thought including them was “peacocking” her. This is all I said about her:
After that, I quoted the Wikipedia discussion stating that her picture and name should be removed from the article because including them was “peacocking” a single scientist. I said very little about her, although one of my quotes from Wikipedia’s discussion page noted that in the Acknowledgments section of one of her paper she thanked Robert Malone. That’s about it.
Yet, here comes an anonymous troll posting a comment that is nothing more than a long, conspiracy-filled rant about Katalin Karikó and how she’s supposedly a Communist sleeper agent. Your rant was so over-the-top that it immediately set my skeptical antennae a’twitchin’. So I checked your IP address, and—surprise! surprise!—you’re commenting from Budapest, Hungary! Who could have seen that one coming?
Let me guess: You have a Google Alert set for searches on Karikó’s name, and you post that same rant in the comments section of any article that doesn’t support Malone as “the inventor of mRNA” and even slightly favorably mentions her.
“she’s supposedly a Communist sleeper agent…”
…for a regime which ceased to exist decades ago.
What I’m wondering is if Viktor Orbán, the right wing authoritarian Prime Minister of Hungary, has a reason to be running a disinformation campaign that smears Katalin Karikó and promotes Robert Malone as the One True Inventor of mRNA Vaccines. I certainly smell a disinformation campaign.
I should note here that Jill Glasspool Malone is Dr. Malone’s wife, so I strongly suspect that it is her.
I can buy that Glasspool1 was Malone’s wife, but what about Asailum, the fan of Malone who appears to have become more vocal after Glasspool1 was shut down and banned for spamming? Who is that, I wonder?
“Viktor Orbán, the right wing authoritarian”
Left or right, authoritarians need enemies. If they don’t exist or are weak they invent or exaggerate the risk. The existence of enemies tends to improve government popularity, no matter their ideology or competence. Whether Karikó fits the narrative would take someone closer to the matter.
Pulling out the “leftist” past is a favored way for the right (and vice versa) to launch attacks. Back in the days of communist east Europe enormous numbers of people were nominally “informants” to stay out of trouble, and they did as little as possible to maintain that position with innocuous and valueless reports. Again, whether that’s pertinent here I cannot say.
I’m willing to settle at “black hole of stupid“; the fellow travelers at TrialSite News are just as much a trigger for neuronal apoptosis. I also doubt that this sad rump has failed to come trolling here.
<
blockquote>What I’m wondering is if Viktor Orbán, the right wing authoritarian Prime Minister of Hungary, has a reason to be running a disinformation campaign that smears Katalin Karikó and promotes Robert Malone as the One True Inventor of mRNA Vaccines. I certainly smell a disinformation campaign.
<
blockquote>
You think Orban conspired against Kariko? What sense does that make? I just punched her name into a search engine and nothing but praise was returned. I see no evidence of a disinformation campaign against her. Isn’t your use of the pejorative “conspiracy theory” tribal then?
You might want to be careful with your fetish word, “Bryce,” or people might start noticing similarities to other, former commenters.
LOL. WTF
Please, please PLEASE tell us why this matters. That conspiracy theory has to be good.
Also, just as an FYI go to wikipedia (since that’s where you get your information from) and lookup ‘VPN’.
Whatever. You bore me.
Swinging wildly rarely works, but if you demand to be an object example, so be it. Perhaps you and Gerg could schedule a date at the Tim Hortons to map out strategy.
There’s an interesting structure to conspiracy theorists’ rants. It’s like spaghetti code or an attempt to jam one of their yarn boards into an argument.
re spaghetti codes and yarn boards
I have been searching for perceptive labels for flow / path charts that reveal that their creator is not functioning realistically ( see scene in A Beautiful Mind where Ms Nash discovers that Nash’s secret work project is a tangled mess of tangled connections and newspaper clippings on a board) Celtic knot flow charts?
@Denise
I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a body of work out there on the structure of conspiracy theories or a typology of them. Orac points out many antivax tropes. One could posit a genotype of foundational assumptions and add a context to obtain a phenotype of a conspiracy theory in the wild, eg
Assumptions
“They” cannot be trusted.
Greed runs the world, so always ask “Cui bono?”
Context
I don’t like scientists because they think they know everything and they’ve failed at things before.
I don’t understand vaccines.
Conspiracy
Greedy, arrogant elites want to experiment on us with their vaccine against a disease they tell me is dangerous, but they’re lying and just want to line their pockets. Besides, I’ve heard ivermectin works just fine just in case, but of course they’re supressing it because it’s cheap.
You could replace scientists with Jews and vaccines with monet and banking and you get
George Soros and Jewish bankers are trying to control us through fiat currency and they repeatedly crash the economy to enslave us, so you should get into crypto.
Richard Hofstadter remains relevant almost 50 years later:
“[B]ehind this I believe there is a style of mind that is far from new and that is not necessarily right-wing. I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind.”
Did you even read the actual post? The brief exchange with Bryce? Arse yourself to use the search box?
Pitiful, just pitiful.
Perhaps you should reexamine your own hobby.
[…] it’s alleged “pioneers in wellness” who tell “truth ‘they’ don’t want you to know”, far-right “anti-establishment” […]
^^ This is a good article that includes details on how much $$ Bret Weinstein in raking in on Patreon, citing Tweets from Matthew Remski, who observes:
If Bret threw in a MyPillow at the highest tier, the circle would be complete.
Grifters gonna grift.
As you may know, I sought out studies that explained how anti-vaxxers and other conspiracy theorists differed from the average by personality and other demographic variables and have presented them @ RI many times. Here is an interesting relationship that I’m sure many of you have considered:
CNN: Chis Cilizza demonstrates with maps just how much US Covid vaccine hesitancy and support of Trump co-vary. Where Trump lost, people accepted vaccines to a higher degree than in Trump strongholds. The overlap is astonishing. Of course, other variables like whiteness, education, conservative beliefs etc. may lie behind both choices.
Right now, I’m hearing how Covid rates have skyrocketed in some of the places that also fit well into that map model, How the unvaccinated make up more than 99% of Covid deaths despite what accomplished dis-informers tell you ( .” The vaccinated at DYING like flies” ” it’s a kill shot” “suicide jab” ” de-population”)
SO when we hear or read someone rant about how the vaccines don’t work or are dangerous should we automatically assume that that person supports similar positions on more political questions? Are most ( not all) of out trolls bent towards the Donald – or are conservative or at least, libertarian ? Does this equation hold for other political systems?
The proper skeptical attitude would be not to automatically assume anything, yes?
The trolls who show up here may be more idiosyncratic in their adoption of COVID antivax rhetoric than the mass of unvaxed folks leading the Red States into Delta variant crises — which is certainly ‘Trumpy’ as a general rule — by which I mean involved in some sort of reality-averse grievance politics.
To some extent this is a which-came-first, chicken-or-egg issue now. Being “conservative” now means opposing vaccines as a Big Guvmint social control scheme. Ron DeSantis has Tweeted “Florida Chooses Freedom Over Faucism”, and is selling “Don’t Fauci My Florida” drink coozies and T-shirts. And being antivax means feeding the Trumpy ideology, as in the supposedly ‘objective scientist’ contrarians showing up with Tucker, Mark Levin, NewsMax, at CPAC, on Bircher media — to the mutual legitimation of both host and guest to a certain unfortunately way to large portion of our population.
i don’t know how this might play in other countries, but i wouldn’t be surprised if anti-vax is becoming more intertwined with far-right politics worldwide — due to the fact other neo-facists like Bolsanaro were heavy into COVID denial, and right wing media organizations internationally — Murdoch’s, but not just those — tend to echo one another…
You didn’t fully hedge your bets in that one. I also doubt that The Majuscule writ large is paying attention anyway.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot. What drives this lunacy? Why are grifters so successful in times like this? Almost every patient we see now is unvaccinated. They all tell me how China engineered it and they are universally religious. I wonder if there is a direct link between these traits? It’s tough to accept that all it takes is for us to keep trashing the planet and its habitats, encouraging more and more interactions between humans and reservoirs of pathogens, for this to keep happening. The next one might be far more lethal. It’s hard for some people to comprehend climate change, geopolitics, economics, the totality of it all. It’s easier to just say: “The Chinese cooked it up in a lab!” It gives them a feeling of comfort and strength that the chaos is a false narrative. Just like “Give control to Gawd” gives them the same feeling. “I don’t understand evolution but it’s ok because it’s fake.” These people are desperate to escape the chaos that is natural world around us and the complexities associated therewith. Just like: “It can’t be that there were enough people who were tired of Trump’s incompetence and grift, they MUST have stolen the election!”
I’d say I hope their worldview matures but it may not have to – I’m looking at one on a vent through a glass door in front of my workstation. The situation might just resolve itself. Sad as that is to come to terms with.
“The situation might just resolve itself. Sad as that is to come to terms with.”
Hmm. A neutral position. “I’m afraid a lot of you may die because of my lack of expertise at fixing stupid. That is almost a sacrifice I’m willing to make.”
More likely, it will be a self-fulfilling prophecy. There are not enough protected and, being rna, it makes those variants. How long until one pops up that does not care about the current vaccine. Or one pops up that demonstrates that enhancement dependence in the current vaccines.
“We told ya’s! masks don’t work, distance don’t work, lockdowns don’t work, your vaccines don’t work and we told you this day one. Who owns the future vindication now? Stop the #Faucism.”
This is getting past annoying, Mitzi.
Looking on from afar, it strikes me that loyalty to Trump now requires one to catch COVID-19. This despite the fact that Trump himself has been vaccinated.
I was going to write that this is stupid, but it is beyond stupid.
@coriolis Do you think that Fauci rules the world ? Other countries have masks and lockdowns, too. They prevent spread of pathogens, too.
If SARS CoV 2 will became so different that currebt vaccine does not work, new vaccine must be develoiped. It is easier with RNA technology.
@ Dr Yeti:
It is enlightening to read whatever you write because, unlike conspiracy theorists with podcasts or anti-vax influencers, YOU witness the reality of Covid and its aftermath every day.. Tucker, Mike, RFKjr, Gary or Del can BS all they like because the suffering and death of millions is not their concern: only their image as a contrarian, paradigm shifter is,
I live in an affluent county right outside of a major city: we were hit early by the virus. Of nearly one million people, about 10% had Covid and 3000 died officially.Our vaccination rate is now very high and there is virtually no death and few people in hospital UNLIKE last year.
I know a successful doctor, businessman, town official who contracted Covid while treating elderly and orthopaedic rehab patients who died after 5 weeks in ICU. My partner’s mechanic of 20 years shut his business to care for his father 50 miles away who had the virus: both died of it within a month.
Anyone who who frightens people about the vaccine or makes Covid sound like a walk in the park is helping the virus to persist, spread and mutate
Please keep informing us..
,
@ Yeti
IMHO there is indeed a link between these traits, in that they’re all manifestations of a root problem that remains somewhat obscure. I think you’re on the right track toward that problem with “These people are desperate to escape the chaos that is [the] natural world around us and the complexities associated therewith”, except it’s not the natural world, but the unnatural world — the totality of AGW, geopolitics, economics… I don’t mean to suggest some “natural is better” fallacy — the problem is not that humans have somehow deviated from “nature”, but how we have done so.
Perhaps similarly, I wouldn’t put too much stock in the mere fact these COVID deniers are religious, but look to the specificity of their religious beliefs, and the nature of their religious subcultures, with an eye to how these have changed over time. My working hypothesis would be that evangelical Christianity has become more apocalyptic in the 21st century, in line with that apprehension of an inexplicable chaos, in contrast to the optimism that marked the whole ‘prosperity gospel’ thing. But I’m distant enough from anything religious to lack any substantive evidence, so that’s indeed just a guess…
https://www.woodfordsun.com/post/king-s-way-church-center-of-recent-covid-outbreak-prather-70-percent-were-unvaccinated
A fundamentalist church? Check. Not using the sense that God gave them? Yep.
@Aarno Syvänen
Ah, I agree. There has been a misunderstanding as I was attempting to mock the right wing echo chamber that infests am radio and some cable news.
~~ “We told you masks don’t work. We hinted not to get the vaccine (all night long) although we are not anti-vaccine. Now our people are dying. Why would liberal scum do this to us?”
Maybe not the world, but I do think Fauci rules.
No worries, I’m not exactly a native English speaker myself.
Things have shifted. I think there is some calculus to be done on the critical mass of stupid spreading stupid to make more votes weighed against the death of existing votes over a particular period of time.
Wonderful analysis Gorski. As I was reading this article I was saying to myself “peacock word” and then you addressed it. Also the “Robert” that came up, major red flag when we editors see that the first name is being used. Obviously they aren’t #1 a normal experienced editor #2 they are a “fan” or closely associated with the person.
Thank you so much for the shout-out to the Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia (GSoW) project. As far as I know, no one on our team has been involved in editing this specific Wikipedia page (not that there is anything wrong with that) but there is so much to do, and in languages other than English. We did write the Del Bigtree Wikipedia page and the Children’s Health Defense (which is anything but) both pages that I saw mentioned in your article or comments.
I just don’t have time to address each of the comments directly, but let me say generally that there are amazing Wikipedia editors that are doing this difficult task that are not GSoW editors, in fact we are a very small squad of well-trained editors. But I assure you and the other commenters that most Wikipedia editors take the task of editing very seriously. I see many commenters say that they “used to edit back in the day” and guess what, things have changed. Rules have tightened and the crap that used to pass on Wikipedia aren’t good enough anymore. Though there are many “old” pages that existed before these tighter rules and they have mostly been forgotten and still waiting for someone to rewrite.
One of the team has looked over the possibility of Robert Malone getting his own Wikipedia page, but as of this writing there is not enough reliable sources (RS) to push him over the fence to Wikipedia notability rules, I’m told that one of my editors now has a Google Alert for him with the possibility that this recent interest in him change things. Not everyone can have a Wikipedia page – Wikipedia is not a personal website.
Let me close with this, GSoW is always recruiting science focused individuals to become part of the team. We train and mentor, it takes months to train and we expect you to remain with us for years or until all Wikipedia articles concerning science, scientific skepticism, paranormal and people of science and in ALL languages are well-written and maintained. So … you will be with us for years. We have just published our 96th Wikipedia page concerning vaccinations and those 96 pages have been viewed as of this writing 3,633,201 times. We have a lot of work to do, but we are doing it. If you would like more information you can visit our website or Facebook page. Reach out to me by email if you must, but I prefer Facebook Messenger. And no I’m not going to give you the links, you should have enough Google Foo to figure out how find them.
In general we have written 1,815 Wikipedia pages, that have been viewed 92,428,154 times. 45% are in languages other than English. So yeah, we kick ass and hopefully you will join our team.
I don’t know that turning the “WP:Baroque” knob up to 11 is likely to work as a recruitment method one way or the other.
Awhile back I tried to rejoin the “team” in order to edit an alt health page (I had made a very few changes in the past to other pages without incident). This time I was informed that a wide range of IP addresses that included mine had been suspended for an extended period due to someone’s abuse. When I e-mailed back to protest my inclusion in this blanket suspension, the only response was an extension of the suspension period.
I was eventually informed by another party at Wikipedia that I could simply re-register an account and merrily resume editing.
But with such petty immature behavior going on, I figured, why bother?
Rather than resorting to defamation like precognitive children, any scientist’s claims that highlight vaccine potential problems should be seriously investigated without prejudice and defamatory tactics to obscure the issue which is a call for uncorrupted inquiry and investigation. Goals: Safety of every single human citizen in accordance with not only humanitarian but Nuremberg codes.
Vaccines do not violate the Nuremberg Codes. That is an antivax lie designed to make in a not-so-subtle comparison between vaccine advocates and the Nazi doctors who engaged in horrific human experimentation on prisoners.
@Orac,
Are you really this ignorant or do you mislead people on purpose?
No one is claiming vaccines violate Nuremberg Codes.
Administering vaccines (any medicine or medical procedure) without informed consent violates the codes.
Thank you for proving my point for me.?
@Orac
What point would that be?
You just distort other people’s claims and then ‘debunk’ your manufactured claims.
No one will honestly fail to insert “administering” in front of “vaccines violate Nuremberg codes”.
Vaccines were not developed to stay sitting on a shelf. So “vaccines” is a perfect shorthand for “vaccination”.
@Scientism Dave Nuremberg Code is here:
http://www.cirp.org/library/ethics/nuremberg/
It is about human expreriments, not about vaccines. People participating clinical trials would fall under the code, but other people would not.
Lies (like this one) are not information.
@Aarno Syvänen
Transparently misleading statement.
No one claims any vaccine, or a scalpel or any other object or substance is violating Nuremberg Codes.
Experimenting on humans using vaccines or scalpels or anything else without
informed consent is a violation.
If you create a drug (or a vaccine) and you test it on volunteers without telling them about risks then you are violating Nuremberg Codes. It’s very simple concept.
I find it disturbing that the “scientists” on here have trouble with grasping basic ethics and morality concepts.
You really don’t understand medical research ethics. First of all, informed consent is given. You just don’t like that the informed consent isn’t really what I like to refer to as “misinformed refusal,” in which the antivax version of “informed consent” includes all the horrible outcomes that antivaxxers falsely attribute to vaccines. As for vaccines, this is not human subjects research; the Nuremberg Code does not apply. Seriously, dude, you have zero clue what you are talking about.
@Athaic
Gorski did.
Was it ignorance? Was it on purpouse? Who knows.
But it makes a huge difference.
@ Scientism Dave I did say that clinical trials are human experiments. Nuremberg Code applies to them. Administering a product with a known safety profile is not an experiment. Data from COVID vaccine trials is known, and phase 4 confirms it.
Really strange is that you confuse legal term “experimental” with scientific term “experiment”.
No, it’s not strange at all. Antivaxxers do that all the time.
“Rather than resorting to defamation like precognitive children”
This threatens the record for fastest indulgence in a behavior after denouncing it.
I’d like to know where we’re supposed to find children who can see the future?
This isn’t the Minority Report.
Wow, so Orac writes like clairvoyant kids?
I/m not sure that that is an insult
Or does she mean pre-verbal although that is truly inappropriate for Orac who is usually rather verbal.
@ Denice
Maybe Orac was exposed to the Melange while its box of blinking lights was being assembled.
(I’m awaiting the new Dune movie to come to a theater near me)
Wikipedia has been captured by partisan political elements that use it to discredit their perceived enemies and to rewrite history.
What’s your opinion of Conservapedia?
Yet again, a quackery supporter attempts to dismiss Wikipedia altogether, instead of trying to refute relevant well-sourced articles.
If only you were as bright as Spiro T. Agnew, you would have had the sense to hire a writer who really had a knack for alliteration.
Wikipedia is captured by people who check the facts. It is sad that your opinions contradict them.
The best thing you can do, Dave, is to point out the bits on Wikipedia that you can prove are wrong. I assume that you are against people being able to put any old shite on there? I assume that you are against being able to put ideologically motivated puff pieces on there too?
Or is it just the brown nosing pieces that you approve of, that should be allowed?
Total lie. Phase 3 are ongoing. If they were completed and successful FDA would have approved the vaccines. That way the vaccines have EUA.
You are very silly and are substituting a legal argument (the requirements for FDA approval) for a scientific argument. And you wonder why I don’t take you seriously.
Meanwhile things have gone from repugnant to stagnant at the website of the Billions of Imaginary Health Freedom Fighters guy (Bolen), where there weren’t any new blog postings for months until the host felt obliged to explain that he didn’t feel like it, while ranting incoherently at the Dish Network for not justifying his subscription costs.
By forsaking The Bullshit Report, Kent Heckenlively may have concluded that it’s a poor venue for pumping up sales of his books. The publication date of “Ending Plague”, co-authored with Francis Ruscetti* and Judy Mikovits has been pushed back to August 31st, probably due to Official Censorship.
*retired Senior Research Investigator, who based on his chosen associates may be coming down with a bad case of Emeritus Syndrome.
That’s an impressive Photoshop invitation, if anyone wants to put a dish on his P.O. box (or in the woods).
The description of the redesign, however, merits a visit to the Wayback Machine.
Doesn’t go back far enough.
While I enjoyed the original takedown of the site’s rotten design, criticizing it on that basis is sort of like panning Mein Kampf because you didn’t like the font.
*forgive the reductio ad Hitlerum.
I was working from memory; there was a longer version,
the deuceyou say?In other news…
USA Today: The fourth wave of Covid-19 is here. Can we escape the UK’s fate?…
Infections have doubled in the past two weeks. Case may be higher but deaths may remain low because the victims are usually younger HOWEVER the illness targets primarily the UNVACCINATED of any age, the vaccinated who are immuno-compromised and people in areas with low vaccination rates.
As we see, again and again, those who frighten people about vaccines or minimise the effects of Covid, be they professional dis-informers like those I survey or run-of-the-mill trolls on the net:
you are doing your part to help … help keep the pandemic going. Delta isn’t the end of the Greek alphabet! Good job!
@Denice Walter
“…., the vaccinated who are immuno-compromised…”
If you’re out there telling immuno-compromised people to just go and get vaccinated you should be in jail.
Um, what? You do know (or maybe you don’t) that it’s only live vaccines that are contraindicated for the immunocompromised, don’t you?
Besides, I suppose immuno-compressed people have more risks if they catch the real disease.
“run-of-the-mill trolls on the net”
…and sure enough, Dave pops up out of his burrow.
@Renate
@Julian Frost
https://www.uchicagomedicine.org/forefront/coronavirus-disease-covid-19/immunocompromised-patients-covid-19-vaccines
“No data exists on the vaccines’ effectiveness in immunocompromised patients because, as is true with the development of all vaccines, they weren’t included in the initial clinical trials.”
I stand by my comment.
Of course maybe Orac has a article out there somewhere about how University of Chicago are right wing grifters.
@ Julian Frost
@ Renate:
I’ve ben thinking about you both in light of recent developments in your respective countries and am glad that you appeared here. Hopefully all is well.
re vaccines and the immuno-compromised:
the concern is that COVID ITSELF is more dangerous for them. Vaccines may not work as well as in average people so perhaps these patients may need a booster before everyone else or need additional protections/ treatments.
Immuno-ocmpromised people have HIGHLY variable reactions to vaccines: in fact, there is a new study, U Pittsburgh ( UPMC) by Ghady Haidar et al 30 June WITH ALMOST 5O0 IC patents contrasted to HCWs with normal immunity
They found that there are highly variable responses to the vaccine , from 1 in 5 for lung transplant patients to almost complete in people with well controlled hiv.
They looked at different types of IC such as transplant patients, blood cancer, autoimmune conditions and hiv.
That’s odd, as the item you proffered — and cherry-picked from — directly contradicts that “position.”
I take that you haven’t the faintest idea why this is more hilariously stupid than usual. I’ll leave that as an exercise. In any event, you apparently are not familiar with the business school. In any event, UCM is a separate business entity from my alma mater.
C’mon, Dave, put on your big boy pants and stand by your comment:
Remember, you’ve already asserted that this supports your remark:
YOU CAN DO IT !!!11!1111!!
@Narad
LOL. what are babbling about?
uchicagomedicine.org has a link to uchicago.edu.
Is that the school you “went” to? ..wink..wink.
Or was your diploma mailed from the guatemala?
@Narad
Oh this is gonna be good.
Oh geee golly! 126 people?! wow wee! We should inject everyone then.
She must have gone to the same business school you did.
Or painfully stupid. Let’s see.
Says the person who prescribed jail time for anyone administering mRNA vaccines to the immunocompromised.
I didn’t go to business school, Dave, and I doubt Dr. Mullane did either, foolishly not seeing incarceration in her future. Now, how easy do you think it is to recruit such a sample?
The problem with the covid-19 mRNA vaccines, according to Malone, is that they don’t necessarily stay in the muscle where they are injected. They can go anywhere in the body, including the brain, and the spikes can cause damage. Also, the spikes do not necessarily attached to the cells that create them.
Malone is NOT saying all mRNA vaccines are unsafe.
Your entire comment is an antivaccine trope.
Everyone here has seen it multiple times already. Many of us have refuted it multiple times already.
Pick a different tune to sing.
You really ought to have paid attention to response you already received.
Orac said, in the article, that Malone was criticizing the vaccines he claims to have invented. However, that is not true. Malone criticized the covid-19 vaccines, not all mRNA vaccines.
And by the way, Malone is not the only scientist who thinks the spikes can get into organs, including the brain, and possibly cause damage.
Malone actually did take one of the vaccines so he’s not an anti-vaccine activist.
He sounded the alarm when it was obvious that it doesn’t work very well and can be quite deadly.
Orac did write about spike protein:
https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2021/05/31/antivaxxers-and-the-deadly-sars-cov-2-spike-protein/
Concentration is picograms, and spike protein is cleared in a week. If this amount were cytotoxic, every who gets COVID would die immediately (Spike protein is part SARS CoV 2)
[…] soon. Republicans tried to kill it White House ramps up voting rights push amid growing criticism Is “mRNA vaccine inventor” Robert Malone “being erased” for his claims about COVID-19? Rober… Joe Biden Gave a Great Speech on Voting Rights. I Just Wish It Mattered. COVID-19 Outbreaks Hit […]
So let me guess. You have no actual familiarity with textbooks like RNA Vaccines: Methods and Protocols by Thomas Kramps, Knut Elbers (Springer – ISBN-10: 1493964798) where on Page 2 the paper that Dr Malone coauthored with Wolfe et al is described as seminal to the area of mRNA vaccines. A very different situation from the email “inventor” crank who “invented” something I and thousands of other had been using for years before he “invented” it.
Dr Malone is someone of real relevance to the subject . And if you read Kramps, Elbers you would understand just why Dr Malone and others are so worried about potential problems. This is not some well understood attenuated virus vaccine, like VLA2001, this is a new vaccine deliver mechanism which already had a very rocky history of failing to get full regulatory approval in the past.
I also suggest you read up on the regulatory approval process, terminology and approval timelines of the FDA regularly process. All current SARs CoV 2 vaccines in distribution are experimental according to the terminology used in the regulatory process. I also suggest you find the standard informed consent document for all vaccine candidates with the regulator status of current SARs CoV 2 vaccines (emergency use, accelerated Phase II/III trials) and compare it to whatever you might have signed. Very different documents.
I suggest you also read up on Lysenkoism. Required reading when I got my first grounding in science many decades ago. Because what you are doing to Dr Malone seems to me as little more than Lysenkoism. if only inadvertently.
Silly troll. In 1990 I was in a lab that was doing similar work, albeit not with RNA, only DNA. I understand well.
Also, “did seminal work” is not the same thing as “inventing.”?
So as I guessed you are not actually familiar with the relevant literature. Like the standard textbook on the subject of mRNA vaccines I referenced. Enough said.
As for your “seminal” straw-man. Too silly for words.. You made the false connection with the patent troll from the guy who “invented” email. There is no comparison. Malone actually did published work of enough value to be an early foundation of the science that lead to mRNA vaccines. The email guy filed a really stupid patent on technology that been used for more than a decade before he ever first used a computer. A delusional idiot.
So you were in a lab in 1990. whoop dee hoo. I’ve got a good decade on you doing post grad level science. The hard stuff. The stuff with very long white boards filled with very dense squiggles.
What the last 18 months has reminded me of is the old joke told in college back in the 1970’s. Those who are good at math go into physics or engineering. Those who are OK at math go into chemistry. And those who are bad at math go into the bio-sciences. Because in the last 18 months I have not seen so much bad math while reading bio-science papers, well, since I had to research the econometric literature some time back.
On the upside, at least you guys are not as bad at basic math and stats as the sociologists and psychology guys. Now those guys…
Heh. Heheh. Heheheheh.
Many people toil for years in labs and accomplish nothing. What has tfourier accomplished? I mean, besides dense squiggles. A gerbil can do that.
“I have not seen so much bad math while reading bio-science papers”
Can you give a specific example? We’re counting on your long expertise with dense squiggles to enlighten humanity.
I also really wish that F68.10 were here for this one.
@Orac,
Of course you did…
Of course you do…
That’s why nobody ever heard of you until you started trolling doctors who are trying to treat their patients during a pandemic.
@Scientism Dave You refer doctors who give patients badly tested drugs. (Recently, a case of fraud surfaced). This is not helpful at all
I suggest you read facts about Lysenko:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Vavilov
Solzhenitsyn thinks that Vavilov was killed in the camp because Lysenko was still afraid of him.
Orac just says that Malone is wrong. Can you spot the difference ?
As you said “experimental” is procedural term. It is used, even though clinical trial data is in and there hundred million doses have been administrated.
And someone quotes wiki as an authoritative source. The irony..
The most readily accessible discussion of the reality of Lysenkoism was a BBC Horizon documentary in 1974. You can find it if you search. Soyners book is also pretty good. There are also some serious scholarly works on the subject.
As I read it the authors piece here was justifying the editing out of existence from the de-facto online reference work someone whose opinion he disagree with. To those of us old enough to remember how science worked in the Soviet Union and what happened to those who dissented from the authorized narrative (it was not just Lysenkoism) this all sounds eerily familiar. Not quite Zersetzung yet. But this is a very slippery slope.
Did you notice that I actually quoted Solzhenitsyn ? Read him, he is a better source than BBC,
As I said, Lysenko was so afraid of Vavilov that Vaivilov was killed in the camp. Orac just says that Malone is wrong. Spot the difference ?
Read Malones papers, too. He did not mention vaccines, he spoke about gene therapy.
Wikipedia is based on sources. You can check the sources, if you doubt Wikipedia’s assessment. I guess you prefer baseless conspiracy theories.
Oddly, I don’t see Kramps and Elbers waving their hands about dangers of Covid-19 vaccines and complaining about being canceled on Wikipedia.
In looking for references mentioning Kramps and Elbers, I found the following website which cites Wolff, Kariko, Weissman and others as making important discoveries leading to development of mRNA vaccines but doesn’t mention Malone.
http://biochempeg.com/article/194.html
Must be a bunch of Lysenkoists or something.
Certainly a prerequisite for… something.
“Orac” tries their best to deride Malone, then when failing this states: “I don’t really care if he invented MRNA vaccines.” This after just attempting to diminish his contributions using thousands of words.
They then repeat working “in a lab in 1990 “ ad nauseam as if this is somehow relevant(it isn’t ) admitting to be impatient and poorly skilled at research. Half heartedly looked into this very issue(again, by their own admission) and cherry picked things to confirm their bias.
Great refutation. Everyone should really listen to “orac” a faceless blogger that “worked in a lab in 1990” failed as a Wikipedia editor and likes blogging because research is too long and tiring.
If you read the article you might have learned his name, which is on this page. Also, he just did not like that editing Wikipedia is just a time suck.
For a certain value that is not a member of the natural numbers, mind you.
Have actually read Malone’s papers ? He did never mentioned vaccines, but though that we invented great tool for gene therapy
Judge Holden-you are just being a silly billy. Orac is not faceless and his many words are not just for his benefit but for anyone who wants to learn a little or is interested in these matters .
Hi
Regarding the Wikipedia entry you are describing, I checked this myself – the claim that he had been erased from the entry on mRNA vaccines after the Dark Horses podcast- and indeed, when I checked through the Waybackmachine for May his name wasn’t in the article, so I agree that it is incorrect to claim that he has been nefariously erased just because of the podcast.
Is he the ‘inventor of the mRNA vaccine’ (or at least, the technology behind it – I don’t know. I’m not qualified to say. He does appear to be a bone fide scientist with some involvement in it.
Re the Japanese study that was supposed to show spike proteins accumulating in the ovaries – I think it was actually the lipoprotein nanoparticles that make up the vaccine envelope they were looking at rather than the spike protein. I don’t know what, if anything, to make of this study.
But on to the fertility issue (which is really a question that exists independent of Robert Malone). Is not the only correct position you can have that simply no-one knows what the long term effects, if any, on fertility may be? Now, someone might counter – yes but this is a deadly pandemic and there are lots of things that might conceivably happen that there is no evidence for, so why focus on this in particular? And so I would say yes but there is cause for concern over the incidence of menstrual irregularities following the vaccine (and here I’m referencing not only reports I read but the first hand experience of friends and family).
And if the vaccine is causing menstrual irregularities then it isn’t a great leap to have concerns over long term effects on fertility? The counter to that might then be that these irregularities are a temporary systemic response to the vaccine that will simply settle.
I’m raising the issue because I just don’t know. If people have thoughts or evidence as to why this concern is unfounded I’d be grateful and interested to hear,
Thanks
How long would satisfy you, given that you’ve already moved on to a follow-on question? This vaccine objection (to call a spade a spade) is old hat, whether or not you realized it.
“If”.
This is an old antivaxx line of argument. You want us to listen to you? Bring good evidence that this is more than a hypothetical.
[…] that Mr. Malone’s webpage had been taken off the English Wiki for reasons discussed in detail here. On the German wiki page one still finds a discussion on how other scientists contradict Mr. […]
He was a fearmonger
And sure ’twas no wonder
For so was his antivax fan club before
And they both wheeled their barrows
Through streets broad and narrow
Crying, “Toxic spike proteins, alive, alive, oh!”
Alive, alive, oh
Alive, alive, oh
Crying “look out for your ovaries, alive, alive, oh”
He was canceled on Wiki
The psyops weren’t pretty
And that was the end of poor Bobby Malone
But his ghost wheels his barrow
Through streets broad and narrow
Crying, “Toxic spike proteins, alive, alive, oh!”
Interesting that you disparage people with “conspiracy” theorist or “cranks” etc but get triggered by tard. Also interesting that wether or not he is the inventor is pretty much irrelevant considering his considerable credits and participation of the development of this tech. He was all fine and good until he criticized the obvious objective of this casedemic, the vaccine. This from the start has always been about the vaccine. No other options or remedies have been promoted or acknowledged as viable. Anything or one that questions the vax is instantly filed under conspiracy quack. Doesn’t seem very scientific to dismiss all objective qualified caution or criticism in light of this global casedemic. Kerry Mullis would appear to have been in the same boat on the contentious issue of rt- pcr. Interesting that he should pass months before his process became the justification for the destruction of global economies and lives in the name of safety.
Considerable effort goes into debunking these professionals at times like these yet governments and media get a free pass to move the goal posts and rewrite the science every few weeks. Interesting indeed.
1) Kary, not Kerry. 2) Why is it surprising that a 74 year old American man died of heart and respiratory failure? 3) Dr Mullis invented PCR, not RT-PCR. RT-PCR is the modern, much more sensitive and quantitative technique.
Please do not use ableist slurs here.
My mistake and Kary. A friend spells his Kerry. Not surprising about his death, just curious timing. While rt is more sensitive the pcr component remains the same and yes excessive over-cycling has been employed invalidating the entire “test” which it is not.
I merely commented on the hypocrisy of the woke police. A slur is a slur regardless. Picking and choosing which ones are acceptable is ridiculous. All or none. The word chosen (not by me) has one historical use relating to disability, yet as per its definition has many other legitimate applications in our language that are not “ableist”. No worse than crank.
To my last point which has yet to receive a reply, interesting that experts in their field get scrutinized (debunked) while gov and msm get a free pass… science is not black and white. Most science is theoretical and there a multiple opinions on most topics. As per slurs, it is interesting that one scientific perspective is favoured over others given that much of what is considered medical science Is based on indoctrinated education funded primarily by corporate pharmaceutical interests.
Any one claiming science as a singular perspective is ignorant and indoctrinated into that belief system usually because they have spent a small fortune being told how it is and regurgitating that info to get their accreditation.
My point is not to discredit anyone’s opinion but merely that multiple opinions should be considered and debated openly. Not the case these days. Anyone who proposes other approaches or criticizes just about any topic these days is dismissed with the conspiracy theory tag while gov and media despite their contradictions and pseudo science go unchallenged and are even given credibility by most.
Randomly changing ‘nyms is not going to help, Geoff.
@faradaypantsuit Problem is does a drug work, or does it not. This is not a simple question, but opinions are not enough.
Do not take Mullis’ word about RT-PCR. Tests can be tested, too:
Böger B, Fachi MM, Vilhena RO, Cobre AF, Tonin FS, Pontarolo R. Systematic review with meta-analysis of the accuracy of diagnostic tests for COVID-19. Am J Infect Control. 2021 Jan;49(1):21-29. doi: 10.1016/j.ajic.2020.07.011. Epub 2020 Jul 10. PMID: 32659413; PMCID: PMC7350782.
Geoff/faradaypantsuit: “The word chosen (not by me) has one historical use relating to disability, yet as per its definition has many other legitimate applications in our language that are not “ableist”.”
Excuse me?
You chose to use the word. You were not quoting from another source, it was your choice. It is a word that was used to deprive people of their liberty for decades. And the whole “but there are other applications!” is hilariously disingenuous. You used it as an insult, not a technical term in bread baking. You used it as a slur knowing it was a slur.
Why should anyone give any credence to any of your points when you open your statement with that kind of nastiness?
Sigh.
Taking this arguendo, RT-PCR cuts both ways.
Why do you think a casedemic can kill people ?
FDA has EUA or approval for drugs against COVID:
https://www.fda.gov/drugs/emergency-preparedness-drugs/coronavirus-covid-19-drugs
One is actually approved.
Pharma is busily developing antivirals:
Fischer W, Eron JJ, Holman W, Cohen MS, Fang L, Szewczyk LJ, Sheahan TP, Baric R, Mollan KR, Wolfe CR, Duke ER, Azizad MM, Borroto-Esoda K, Wohl DA, Loftis AJ, Alabanza P, Lipansky F, Painter WP. Molnupiravir, an Oral Antiviral Treatment for COVID-19. medRxiv [Preprint]. 2021 Jun 17:2021.06.17.21258639. doi: 10.1101/2021.06.17.21258639. PMID: 34159342; PMCID: PMC8219109.
Another preprint, I am afraid
@Geoff
P.ease work on your writing. Pardon while I make this all one paragraph since your word salad is repeating the same point. You might want to learn rhetoric if you were aiming for emphasis.
You could just say
Then I would ask you (1) what counts as an acceptable viewpoint for debate/investigation, (2) what are some examples of dogma and defense thereof, and (3) how common are these examples and can you estimate that the prevalence of dogma pushers is actually a oroblem?
Next time, Geoff, you do the heavy lifting. This is why no one takes your ilk seriously.
As to Dr Judy Mikovits, lets not believe everything we read before we check the facts, shall we? Ultimately each of us believe what we want to believe. I say dont mess with big phar#ma cuz they seem to hire heavy handed attorneys who will come after you if you expose any fraud. Additionally, I perceive Dr Mikovits as someone who cares about humanity and ultimately wants to do the moral thing. (my opinion) From ScienceMag: Jun. 13, 2012 , 5:12 PM Criminal Charges Dropped Against Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Researcher Judy Mikovits
Judy Mikovits, who faced a series of professional and legal woes after publishing a study in Science more than 2 years ago that linked chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) to a mouse retrovirus, has had a pending criminal case against her dropped. Last November, the district attorney in Washoe County, Nevada, filed a criminal complaint against Mikovits that charged the virologist with illegally taking computer data and related property from her former employer, the Whittemore Peterson Institute for Neuro-Immune Disease (WPI) in Reno, Nevada. In a separate civil court that month, WPI filed suit against Mikovits over her alleged possession of similar material, which included the laboratory notebooks she compiled while doing the CFS research.
On 11 June, the district attorney’s office for Washoe County filed a petition to dismiss the criminal charges against Mikovits without prejudice (which means they can file a related complaint in the future), a clerk to the Justice Court of Reno told ScienceInsider.
Mikovits, who was briefly jailed on the charges, is still defending herself in the civil case, which has taken several bizarre twists, including a judge who had ruled against Mikovits recusing himself. The judge removed himself from the case because he received campaign donations from WPI co-founder Harvey Whittemore, who himself has been criminally charged with making illegal campaign contributions to a federal official. (He pled not guilty on 7 June).
Assistant District Attorney John Helzer, who filed the dismissal, says Whittemore’s legal troubles factored into his decision. “There’s a lot going on with the federal government and different levels that wasn’t occurring when we first became involved with prosecuting this case,” says Helzer. “And we have witness issues that have arisen.”
Science last December retracted the 8 October 2009 CFS paper by Mikovits and co-authors, an action she opposed. Mikovits told ScienceInsider that the only work she has been able to find has been collaborating on a large study funded by the National Institutes of Health that should be the final word on the otherwise dismissed theory that CFS is linked to a mouse retrovirus, XMRV, or its relatives. “Everyone who wanted to work with me
was deterred by the threat of litigation,” Mikovits wrote in an e-mail.
The results of the large study, led by Ian Lipkin of Columbia University, are expected to be revealed in the next few weeks.
Try to keep up, twinkletoes.
The Lipkin study was released back in 2012 and surprise! the evidence showed XMRV did not cause human disease. Even Mikovits agreed with the results, though more recently she seems to have been backtracking.
“Other researchers soon questioned the findings (in Mikovits’ original paper in Science), and over the next 2 years, the paper’s claims fell apart. Researchers showed that XMRV was created accidentally in the lab during mouse experiments; it may never have infected any humans. The authors first retracted two figures and a table from the paper in October 2011. Around the same time, a study by several labs, including WPI itself, showed the findings couldn’t be replicated.”
“Two months later, the entire Science paper was retracted. Mikovits refused to sign the retraction notice, but she took part in another major replication effort. That $2.3 million study, led by Ian Lipkin of Columbia University and funded by the National Institutes of Health, was “the definitive answer,” Mikovits said at a September 2012 press conference where the results were announced. The rigorous study looked for XMRV in blinded blood samples from nearly 300 people, half of whom had the disease, and none had the virus. “There is no evidence that XMRV is a human pathogen,” Mikovits conceded.”
As for the civil suit Whittemore filed against her, Mikovits lost at least the first round.
Her activities in the last 9 years or so have involved trying to justify her bad research, indulging in massive fact-free fearmongering about public health efforts to contain Covid-19 including inane statements about mass deaths to be expected from Covid-19 vaccination (making her a heroine to similarly nutty antivaxers) and conducting a grudge campaign against everyone perceived to have wronged her (pharma, the media, other scientists, Anthony Fauci, the mysterious evildoers who shone bright lights into her home, etc. etc.)
That she’s become a joke in the research world is her own doing.
“Ultimately each of us believe what we want to believe.”
Your willing suspension of disbelief is piled so high, it’s probably visible from Alpha Centauri.
First three, counting all the attempts to again bob for the apple in the original. The statute of limitations seems to have been brought up more than once already, so I’m going with its joining the choir eternal (apparently OK to refer to in Canadian courts).
Please post ONE incident where a “big pharma” lawyer came after someone for exposing fraud. Should be really easy since you imply they do it all the time. Just search LexusNexus or court records.
Did you not read what I did say ? Mikovits treated a patient samples with a drug that activates retroviruses. This a very clearcut fraud.
It was a quote from earlier in the thread. Not my choice of word. I merely commented on the hypocrisy of some slurs being acceptable yet others are not. Pretty simple.
It does however have legitimate uses that don’t relate to disabilities. Wouldn’t be my chose to use it however. I don’t believe slurs have any useful purpose.
You didn’t exactly put much effort into it before marching off to the “casedemic” routine. Maybe if you flesh out the your lone, effectively content-free sentence (which of course did not “trigger” you) you could shop it out to Critical Inquiry or something.
To avoid such confusion in the future it is helpful to put quotes in quotation marks.
I hope that this does not hold you back.
I was trying to make a few points in a reasonably concise manner. Grow up. After only 2 days on this blog and i’m sick of most of you. Bunch of we’re so f in smart hypersensitive triggered children. Very few on this blog act like adults and have constructive conversations. Just blowing people off for having an opinion that you don’t share. Call people whatever you want but when someone points out your hypocrisy you get all triggered. Have a good time in your i’m smarter that all the morons echo chamber. Never seen such a collection of arrogant a holes. You like slurs so much, there’s a few for you. As for my “casedemic routine”, facts. Deal with it. Based on multiple official sources, hyper inflated cases and season flu level deaths thus, casedemic. Now for the”you don’t even know what a pandemic is apparently”remarks Ya i do. And know that it was changed in recent years just as herd immunity def. has changed. And both changes are manipulative bs. For a bunch of smartie pants most of you don’t have a clue about what is going on.
Is Malone right or not? Just a bunch of irrelevant conversation about wether of not he invented mRNA vaxxes. He is obviously a pioneer in the field and has grave concerns about the spike protein. He is not alone. Many other scientific and medical professionals have endured the slander of a bunch of wanna bees like this bunch. This blog seems to be more about a singular perspective of who’s the bigger covid 19 conspiracy quack instead of legitimate conversation about the Indisputable risks of these vaccines. Try and dispute that claim will absolutely make you the covidiot quacks.
Bye Orec. Lots of insolence but not much respect. Enjoy the echo chamber. I came here to try and learn more from what appeared to be some genuine scientists and to learn about Malone.
Have found very few signs of intelligence.
I’ll be here for one more day just to get a few laughs from playpen. Then Bye
@Narad
there ya go Narad. Long winded enough for you?
A flounce is weakened by the announcement of a 24-hour delay.
“the Indisputable risks of these vaccines”
“I came here to try and learn”
Amusing.
The concept of here immunity has been settled science for decades. If you soak enough hay bales with water, the fire stops spreading even if a few in the field are dry. What changes is the level required and that has to do with the characteristics of the disease. Something with a very high R0 like measles requires a high herd immunity rate to effective stop spread. It’s lower for covid.
COVID R0=about 2.5. So 1-1/2.5=60% of the population needs immunity to effectively stop spread
Measles R0=about 18 so 94.4% needs to be immune
Get it now?
Needs more spelling, capitalization, hyphenation, and formatting errors.
You think COVID is casedemic and spike protein is terribly dangerous. How this is possible ? Every COVID virus particle contains many spike proteins.
@ Dangerous Bacon.
“Announcement of a 24 hour delay”? “A flounce”? Typical. Moron. If you are going to use the word “flounce” at least use it properly. Its an action not a person. Land o the infant trolls. Lol
“Indisputable”. Yes, not my opinion, but what do all the adverse effect reporting systems know?
Glad the wake of carnage this vax is leaving amuses you. Sociopath.
I can go to those adverse reporting systems and put in there fifty times a day that the vaccine turned me into a purple elephant…doesn’t make it so.
@Geoff
Now that you’ve taken your ball elsewhere, it’s too bad you won’t learn something about proper writing.
I suspect you’ll come back to lurk; folks like you don’t post screeds and vanish in a huff.
There are tissues and a nice pitcher of cold water just in case you blow another fuse.
“I can go to those adverse reporting systems and put in there fifty times a day that the vaccine turned me into a purple elephant…doesn’t make it so.”
Who’s the conspiracy theorist now?
https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjpmp7/anti-vaxxers-misuse-federal-data-to-falsely-claim-covid-vaccines-are-dangerous
Ooh. Vice. How definitive. What does twitter have to say?
“Hi, I can’t be arsed to assemble a substantive response, and I’m
changing ‘nymsflouncing real soon now.”Oh do shut up. Not enough pretentious latin words for you? Get back in your play pen.
Deep, Pantsuit, deep. Do try to figure out how to reply in context.
Oh, wait. Are you by any chance related to Bryce, Pantsuit?
Try this:
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/ensuringsafety/monitoring/vaers/index.html
“As an early warning system, VAERS cannot prove that a vaccine caused a problem. Specifically, a report to VAERS does not mean that a vaccine caused an adverse event.”
There, there. If a little Latin scares you, no wonder you have a problem with medical knowledge.
“Oh do shut up.”
Hey, it’s the call of the antivax idiot. So familiar with the echo chambers of the typical antivax forums, where pro-health voices can be silenced, the typical antivaxxer reacts with shock and fear when reading facts not vetted by the people who wind up the key in his back and send him off to threaten schoolboards – leading to his eventual desperate demand that the knowledgeable stop informing him. If you have a pet antivaxxer, you can tell the poor dear is under stress when he emits “Shut up” and threatens to run away. Other signs of stress are claims that this is an echo chamber (the antivaxxer is oddly blind – he can’t smell the droppings of his fellow automatons, even when they are liberally strewn around the same thread he is dirtying (to the antivaxxer’s eyes, he’s the only one fighting the good fight (even as he copies word for word the spewings of his compatriots).
After reading this article, I came to one conclusion. If Orac were presented with incontrovertible proof that the spike protein was cytotoxic, it would be so galling that he would go into a denial process. So, it really doesn’t matter what Robert Malone states or not. In Orac’s mind he is a self-promoting quack and beyond redemption.
For the record, I am not an anti-vaxxer per se except the ones so conveniently and quickly manufactured by the large pharma companies. In my opinion, they bought and sold the medical establishment a long time ago.
So a man believes what he wants to believe, and we are all victims of self-confirmation bias. I will wait for the stats, and the long-term side effects. I hope Orac doesn’t believe there are none as that would be impossible to know yet.
You just have to believe big pharma are your friends and have your best interests at heart. For myself, I will take a rain cheque.
For someone who claims not to be an antivaxxer, you sure do sound like an antivaxxer.
Some more than others, perhaps.
I guess that takes care of that.
Actually, pharma payments to doctors are public:
https://projects.propublica.org/docdollars/
Check this, if you think somebody is payed off by Big Pharma
Just today I got a reminder for my annual training on the regulations about offering food or educational materials to health care professionals if you work for pharma.
You offer a doctor, nurse, PA, PT, RT a cup of coffee? Here’s a three page form to fill out that must be submitted to the feds. A pad of post-its with the company name? Here’s a different, longer form to fill out. Pen? Not allowed, period.
These laws exist, they exist for a reason, and even if it makes me nervous about going to conferences and accidentally loaning someone a pen, that’s a price I am happy to pay for transparency.
(Personally I’m forever frustrated by the way people outside any industry lump the sales folks, the technical folks, the folks who make the thing, and management together, as though the technical folks or manufacturing folks get any say at all in things like prices, sales tactics or business management.)
These conspiracy types are all about guilty until proven otherwise, and they accuse others of witch hunts for calling them out on their BS. Without vaccines, the lives of these AVers would cease to have meaning, pathetic really.
” I am not an anti-vaxxer per se except the ones so conveniently and quickly manufactured by the large pharma companies.”
Conveniently? Oh come on.
The people who make the vaccines, the people in the manufacturing plants, the people who do the safety and purity testing, the folks who keep the freezer farms up and working, the people who do all the scheduling, sourcing, and shipping, the people who maintain all the equipment, they would tell you this hasn’t been “quick” or easy or “convenient”.
These people have been busting their tails, working as hard as people have ever worked in a war effort, to get these vaccines made and out to the public.
And the scientists? They’ve been working on this stuff for decades.
Do not start on the whole “big Pharma pulled it out of their hat” nonsense. It’s just lazy.
I’m curious to know what causes people like Dr Malone, who seems to have genuine scientific knowledge and done some early work in the field to come out claiming such things? Is he chasing fame or money? I mean I don’t get it, even Katalin Karikó thanked him in the acknowledgments section of one of her papers! Does he feel he deserves more credit? Does he genuinely believe what he is saying? And if he does, he’s a scientist that knows how the process works, why doesn’t he show the evidence for it?
Malone has announced on Twitter that he picked up a supply of ivermectin at Wal-Mart to treat his long Covid symptoms.
Science!
[…] talking point about Comirnaty appears to have originated with Robert Malone (remember him?), the conspiracy mongering “inventor of mRNA vaccines” who is not. I first saw Malone’s version on—where else?—Mike Adams’ website NaturalNews.com. […]
[…] as far as I can tell, although that doesn’t stop him from ranting about how he is “being erased from Wikipedia” for going against orthodoxy on COVID-19 and mRNA vaccines against the disease. Amusingly, it […]
It’s funny how no one questioned Malone’s credibility until AFTER he started speaking against the jabs…
Actually, his credibility was questioned when he started claiming to the the “inventor of mRNA vaccines.”
Malone claims to have been the first to think of using gene therapy technology for vaccines. Gene therapy wasn’t working, since the proteins were destroyed by the immune system. But the proteins only have to last a short while for vaccines to work.
Maybe he shouldn’t use the word “inventor.” But he certainly was one of the first to think of it. And he knows as much as anyone in the world about genetic vaccines. His opinions should not be ignored.
He says that the genetic covid vaccines were assumed to be safe, NOT proven to be safe. He has many sensible reasons for thinking they might not be safe.
No. He does not have “many sensible reasons” for thinking that the COVID-19 vaccines might not be safe. In this post, I only enumerated some of the nonsense he’s been spewing.
In relation to safety it’s exactly the opposite. Experts in regulatory agencies concluded – not assumed – the vaccines are safe based on the results of large clinical trials. They continue to reevaluate safety and look at data all the time. For example, just yesterday ACIP – the advisory committee on immunization practices – looked in detail at the data about COVID-19 vaccines safety. Here is one of their PowerPoints. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-2021-08-30/03-COVID-Su-508.pdf
There are several.
In contrast, Dr. Malone seems to have assumed from the start that the vaccines are unsafe and continues to stick to his claim ignoring the actual data on the vaccines.
Yes, when his opinions ignore the data they should be ignored. You wouldn’t blindly believe him if he claimed the Earth was flat in the face of data showing otherwise, don’t blindly believe him here.
Just because you disagree doesn’t mean he is spewing nonsense. It is true that the covid spike can cause damage, for example. If you pay careful attention to what he is saying, you would not find it so easy to dismiss.
Advocates of the covid genetic vaccines are obviously motivated to think they are safe. Malone has no personal motives for warning about them. And he is more qualified than almost anyone to have an opinion on this.
A. There is evidence the spike protein on the virus – the live virus, the one the vaccines protect against – causes harm. The evidence on the vaccine, from millions of people, is that they’re safe. Dr. Malone is ignoring that evidence.
B. The view that Dr. Malone, who hitched his reputation to attacking COVID-19 vaccines, is somehow objective on this is problematic. He has a lot more riding on proving the vaccines are bad than Orac – who last year expressed skepticism about the vaccines – has on showing they’re good. Science supporters want out of the pandemic; they hope the vaccines are the answer, but if the data showed otherwise, we would turn elsewhere.
It sounds like you’re very anxious to believe Dr. Malone. the problem is that he has not earned your trust, and in fact, seems to deserve none.
Dorit Reiss, WHY would I be anxious to believe Malone?? I want to believe the vaccines are safe. I got a vaccine and so did most of my close friends and relatives. I don’t want them, or myself, to suffer long term damage!
I think Malone’s opinion should be taken seriously because he is a VERY qualified expert and what he says is reasonable. He is just asking for caution. He is very pro-vaccine.
People who are pro-vaccines don’t share anti-vaccine misinformation. Ignoring the data – which is what he is doing – is not pro-vaccine. Has he explained why he thinks data from hundreds of millions doesn’t count? Has he even listened to ACIP’s report on the data? Has he read the actual evidence? That’s neither pro-vaccine nor serious. Nor what a legitimate expert would do.
Repeating baseless claims about vaccines is not pro-vaccines..
If you think he’s pro-vaccine, you’ve been misled.
Trust the science.
Covid was no worse than the flu. Masks didn’t work. Covid originated in nature. We just need 15 days to slow the spread. One mask works. Two masks work. Warp Speed won’t be able to create a vaccine for years. Any vaccine created under Warp Speed is dangerous, don’t trust it. Vaccine passports will never come. The vaccines created under Warp Speed are safe and effective. Get one dose. Get two doses. Just a third booster shot. The vaccines need to be mandated.
And anyone that spoke in opposition of any of the above points was ridiculed, censored, banned, and/or smeared.
Yeah, trust the science alright.
Dr. Robert Malone may be a bit self indulgent in his claim to fame, but the core of his argument still stands; these vaccines may be dangerous and the public should be informed of these concerns.
You make some random claims, and claim that this is science, Most of them are your own invention.
Nobody (speaking about science side) has said that masks do not work. Question was, are they needed. They are needed because of asymptomatic spread, which was not initially known,
COVID vaccines went eventually trough clinical testing, and were based on new technology. Besides of that, you imply that they actually work.
Nobody has said that one shot would work. Three shot are possible needed. but this depends how many new variants emerge, which in turn depends on vaccination rate.
Countless people said masks did not work. Emperor Fauci went so far as to say they would cause more infection as opposed to inhibiting it. But ok, let’s go with “masks aren’t needed”. My point still stands.
The medical community has lost all credibility. Any time anyone tried to question the efforts being taken, they were for lack of a better term “cancelled” due to misinformation, that more often than not would end up being the accepted information mere months later.
Regardless, we can forget all of the “conspiracies” against lockdowns, masks and vaccine safety / efficacy. For arguments sake, assume the vaccines are 100% safe, 100% effective, and if we were to reach a critical mass of vaccinated individuals, the virus would disappear and the world would rejoice. Obviously this isn’t the case, but let’s just assume it for the sake of this little thought experiment.
Even if that were the case, mandating these vaccines (either directly from the government level, or indirectly via businesses requiring proof of vaccination in order to provide their good or service) is not – and will never be – a solution anyone should ever entertain.
Once this precedent is set, there is no going back. You might trust the current administration, you might believe the vaccines are good and safe, but you do not know what the next mandated medical procedure will be, and you do not know who will be mandating it.
Covid is here to stay. We will never reach “heard immunity”, even with a critical mass of vaccinations. The medical community has sunk to about the same level of credibility as the political at this point.
And it is in large part because of blogs like this, shitting on anyone that dares go against the narrative. You people speak of misinformation, time to take a look in the mirror. You’ve been wrong, countless times, with untold consequences, and you continue to double down.
Is Dr. Robert Malone correct? Maybe. Regardless, is mandating medical procedures “for the greater good” the solution? No. Never.
You’ve tried the hand waiving. You’ve tried speaking to people like they’re idiots. You’ve tried cancelling people. You’ve tried smearing anyone and everyone that raises a question. Maybe its time to take a page from your own “rules for thee, not for me” book and try some compassion, understanding, and perhaps even self reflection into why you have failed so cataclysmically thus far.
Vaccines have been mandated for over a century…get over yourself.
No, they haven’t. Vaccines given to children in schools have always been able to be waived if parents know the proper paperwork to obtain (not that they shouldn’t get those vaccines, the data shows they are tried and tested and all around a good thing. But they are not mandated).
Vaccines required for international travel are in some form mandated, yes, but it is disingenuous to say a country requiring immigrators to be vaccinated before entry is even in the same ballpark as requiring a vaccine in order to keep your job, purchase groceries, vote (as seen in Canada and likely elsewhere), or hold your dying wife’s hand in the hospital as she passes away. My grandfather had so say goodbye to his dying wife over FaceTime. She had dementia and could not understand why people were putting a phone in her face as she took her last breath. While I agree anecdotal evidence to support an argument doesn’t hold water, I believe Im justified in bringing this up to give you some context into why I’ve had enough.
By all means, carry on looking down on people, carry on getting the science wrong time and time again, carry on attempting to silence anyone that has a question or concern (only to unapologetically come out a month later and declare those same concerns yourself under the guise of “the science is always changing!”). I’m not trying to change your mind, I’m just trying to show you why millions of people have given up on the so called “experts”.
The science is changing, yes. Maybe we should allow and even encourage discussion of concerns, possible other treatments, and questions, instead of trying to be the arbiters of truth, as if that is some trivial task. Maybe, if you don’t think something like Ivermectin (for example) is a viable alternative, you could explain your reasons with empathy, instead of laughing and calling people “cranks” that care too much about their “freedumb”. Maybe instead of trying to put everyone in convenient little labeled boxes like “antivaxxer”, you could recognize these issues are multivariate and everyone brings their own unique point of view to the subject. Look where your current tact has gotten you so far.
Don’t mind us bottom dwellers, we’re just silly hillbillies that could never understand. You’ve got it all figured out, clearly.
@Idrather Notsay You may want to give us Fauci citation, with context. He is hardly emperor, he gives medical advice to goverment. It may take it.
There is lots of vaccine disinformation available. So everybody is obviously not cancelled.
COVID will stop when herd immunity is reached. This is possible with vaccinations. Herd immunity rate is much less than 100%, of course.
Next medical to be mandated ? Let us speak it when someone suggests it. Smallpox vaccine was actually mandated. It did not have slippery slope effect.
Perhaps you should consider some vaccine safety information ?Offering it does not mean looking you down, shitting on you, etc. You could actually start a reasoned argument. Tell us why we are wrong.
Do you mean this?
“There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you’re in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better and it might even block a droplet, but it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is. And, often, there are unintended consequences — people keep fiddling with the mask and they keep touching their face.”
If not, I suggest you hawk up your source.
Fauci is on record, multiple times, suggesting that wearing masks could lead to increased infection as people get a false sense of security and as they continuously touch surfaces and their mask back and forth, cross-contaminating their mask. This was pretty well blasted across all news networks, and regurgitated by all local news stations / medical experts for quite some time. I didn’t think this was some fringe piece of evidence I needed to prove, but here is just one example:
“There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you’re in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better and it might even block a droplet, but it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is. And, often, there are unintended consequences — people keep fiddling with the mask and they keep touching their face.” – Fauci on 60 Minutes
Again, the point isn’t that Fauci was wrong. Fauci is allowed to – and indeed expected to be, in the early days of something novel like this – wrong. The point is, countless others said masks were a good idea, and were called conspiracy theorists, science deniers, and so on, and so on. The point is, the narrative we were being told to trust was proven to be wrong, while the narrative we were being told was bunk was proven to be right. As has been the case time and time again.
If you think you can hand the government the power to dictate what medical procedures you must undertake in order to maintain your livelihood “for the greater good” now, and “let us speak it when someone suggests it” in the future when you do decide they are mandating something you disagree with, you’re admitting that it is a possibility but turning a blind eye to it to allow our children to deal with it later. If that is your outlook on this, I don’t think we’ll come to any sort of middle ground.
Again, I am not here to tell you “why [you] are wrong” in regards to whether these vaccines are safe or effective or cause for concern. My argument can be broken down two-fold:
You (in the sense of “medical experts”) have been wrong numerous times, to the detriment of the world, while stating others (that have been proven right, numerous times) should be silenced for spreading misinformation. It is conceivable that you are or will be wrong again, in exceedingly more consequential ways.
Regardless of the safety or efficacy of the current vaccines, or your trust in them, or your belief that a critical mass of vaccinations will result in herd immunity; you can not predict what medical procedures future parties will impose on you or your loved ones (however far down the line), nor can you predict whether or not you will support or agree with those procedures. But, in setting the precedent now, you will have no choice in the future (barring some sort of mass uprising that is already exceedingly difficult to accomplish, and will only become more difficult as time goes on and governments obtain more and more control).
California, Connecticut, Maine, Mississippi, New York, and West Virginia have only medical exemptions for school attendance. This is not intended as a sprawling opportunity for doctors to churn out “the proper paperwork.”
@Idrathernotsay As I said smallpox vaccine was mandated. I know no medical procedures mandated because of it.
Mask supporters called science deniers ? You have rrich fantasy live.
There is lots vaccine disinformation available. It is definitely not suppressed. Butter cannot earn money with your podcasts,which irked many people.
You should actually try to show why antivaxxers are right, and science is wrong. I expect your data.
@Aarno Syvänen, do you know how the Smallpox Vaccine was mandated? People were held down with physical force and had the vaccine injected into them against their will. Children were torn from their parents’ arms. Blacks were rounded up in the streets at gunpoint. Are you saying this was the correct approach?
Further, the vaccine being mandated because of Smallpox is COVID. You are using the precedent set from Smallpox in order to accept mandating the COVID vaccines. You’re proving my point.
Again though, comparing the two is disingenuous. We did not have the capability to track a person’s vaccine status with an app on a smartphone, and deny them employment or access to public goods and services based on their status back then. The limitations being imposed and the reach of government in ensuring they are imposed is completely new ground. The Smallpox vaccine set the precedent for you to argue that this vaccine should be mandated, this vaccine will set the precedent for you to argue any medical procedure should be mandated.
And one day, when you finally come across a procedure you’re not sure of, you won’t have a choice. And you’ll have yourself to thank.
@IdrahterNotsay Vaccine mandates results new vaccine mandates, sure. They have not resulted mandating other medical procedures.
You may be dangerous and the public should be informed of these concerns.
Trump (NOT a scientist. Probably failed high school bio) said it was no worse than the flu. Scientists never said that. Nice try rewriting history.
A single Google search says Fauci thought otherwise. Weird.
https://www.mynews13.com/fl/orlando/news/2020/02/15/disease-expert–flu-a-bigger-risk-in-the-us-than-coronavirus#
Just one of numerous examples, mind you.
@Idrather Notsay Citation from your link:
Fauci is part of the task force that instituted the U.S.’s protocols for handling coronavirus cases, which involves isolation. All of the cases so far are travel-related.
“We have 15 cases that have been identified, isolated, and their contacts have been traced,” he said.
This was February 2020 Then flu seemed indeed to be more dangerous. It changed. You may want to check who was president then, and what he did to prevent COVID.
Right, Fauci was part of a task force, coming from a place of medical expertise, advising people that the flu – at that time – was of far more concern than COVID. While Fauci was stating this, others were trying to get the message out that COVID was something to be taken with extreme caution, that it could indeed be far deadlier than the flu, and they were censored for it. Trump closed the borders, and was called a racist for it.
Regardless. I’m not here to defend Trump, I have many issues with him as well. The point remains; medical experts stuck to one narrative, while others tried to raise concerns in opposition of it, and they were silenced, and the medical experts were proven wrong.
The fault is not theirs for being wrong, science does indeed change. The fault is theirs (and likely many of the people here) for shutting down the conversation, as they (and you) continue to do nearly 2 years later.
Trump did not “close the borders” – what a crock.
Let’s talk about his “plan” to bring thousands of folks back from Europe, where COVID was raging, and funneling them through a small number of airports with zero testing & zero separation of people.
Yeah, that worked out really well.
@ Medical Yeti – Each individual responds to Covid differently. For some, like me, it was like a cold. For others, it can be deadly especially if not treated early.
Have you had your antibody/T-cell levels checked? Many healthcare providers may have immunity from a prior infection/exposure.
Also, the facility where you work, are they using monoclonal antibody treatment? This looks to be a successful treatment and it is FDA approved, if that means anything anymore. I guess it’s better than nothing.
Idrather Notsay- my experience of this whole Covid experience is that rather than there being a silencing of ‘contrary’ opinion there has been a plethora of varying opinion , both scientific and otherwise, coming from a whole variety of sources but in particular , for the general public, the media.
I just woke up from a nap halfway through the Cubs game and was, indeed, reminded.
@C4CP: Yes-one of the facilities uses mABs one doesn’t. I has something to do with pharmacy sourcing, I guess. I’ve had patients have everything from mild diarrhea for a couple days and nothing else all the way to full-blown acute hypoxic respiratory failure. The only common symptom seems to be loss of smell. The rest is patient-specific.
@Idrather Notsay:
Thank you for exposing the rampant inconsistencies of these so-called doctors. You should also look into the wild inconsistencies of weather prediction. Last February, I was warned that going outside without a heavy jacket was dangerous – and now I’m told that people are dying because of heat. If these “weatherman” can’t get their story straight, they should get used to people doubting them.
(note to the slow-at-brain – yes, I’m making fun of the dimwitted “He’d Rather Not Think”)
@Thomas no, thank you for proving my point by not only drawing a ridiculous analogy (meteorologists do not ridicule you for not trusting their predictions, nor do they attempt to silence you for questioning them, not to mention their predictions bare no impact on the freedoms you enjoy. Nobody is going to fire you from your job for not bringing an umbrella to work), while simultaneously demonstrating the arrogance you people have continued to display throughout this entire pandemic. Keep sticking your nose in the air while somehow burying your head in the sand at the same time, the lack of self awareness is astounding.
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