Contrary to a number of antivaxxers, who fantasize about a “Nuremberg 2.0” want to so desperately want to see what they view as the forces of righteousness “hang ’em high,” complete with obsessively posting the poster to the old Clint Eastwood Movie by that title, I don’t wish ill upon antivaxxers as persons. Unlike antivaxxers such as, say, Paul Alexander, I don’t fantasize about seeing my enemies dangling from the end of a rope, although I will confess to some amusement when that same antivaxxer starts fantasizing about seeing one of his fellow antivaxxers hang along with all the public health officials and scientists, physicians, and vaccine scientists that he normally fantasizes about hanging. (Hey, I’m only human.) So, when someone like Steve Kirsch, an aging tech bro turned one of the most rabid and ridiculous antivaxxers I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen a lot of antivaxxers over the last two decades), suffers a serious health problem, like a subretinal hemorrhage that causes a serious hit to his vision in one eye, unlike someone like Alexander, I don’t gloat or view it as some sort of deserved retribution. I simply wish him well strictly from the standpoint of his health, hoping that he recovers all or most of the vision in that eye, even as I don’t wish him success from the standpoint of spreading his antivaccine disinformation.
I also see his unfortunate condition as a “teachable moment,” because, as you will see, his fellow antivaxxers are doing what antivaxxers do and blaming his vision loss on COVID-19 vaccines, given that Kirsch did apparently receive the initial series of two doses of the vaccine before he went fully antivax. His fans are also suggesting all sorts of outrageous quackery to him to treat his hemorrhage and vision loss.
Let’s start from the beginning, though. Earlier this week I noticed this post on Kirsch’s Substack, While working on the Czech Republic data I went blind in my right eye, noting that he had been “was just sitting at the computer typing and the text starting getting wavy” and that, “an hour later, most of my vision in my right eye vanished. I may never get it back.” I rarely talk much about my own medical history, but I can kind of relate. I’ve known people who’ve had wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD) whose vision deteriorated, and as a surgeon my vision is very important to me, for obvious reasons.
That’s why, when I developed cataracts last year, one of which had reached the stage where it really needed to be taken care of (something about which I never told my readers), it was truly a scary stretch of time. Fortunately, the surgery went well, with both cataracts replaced with monofocal intraocular lenses set to distance, the surgeries done a week apart. It ended up being life-changing. I now no longer need glasses for absolutely everything, as I did before. To my amazement I’m now even legal to drive without glasses, although I don’t like to and therefore don’t now, because I prefer the extra crispness that my relatively wimpy eyeglasses prescription adds to my vision, particularly at night. However, as a high myope before the surgery (seriously, we’re talking worse than -9.0D), I feel the fear; my ophthalmologist was quite blunt about telling me that, because I had been a high myope, my risk of someday developing a retinal tear or detachment after cataract surgery is much higher than average and that if I ever notice symptoms suggestive of a retinal detachment that I need to call him right away to be evaluated. I took that advice to heart, too, making sure to be seen recently because I had developed a particularly large and annoying floater in one eye. Fortunately, all is well. Although the floater is still annoying, it seems to be getting less prominent; either that, or my brain is adjusting. I was just relieved to learn that this new floater wasn’t a harbinger of something much, much worse.
But enough about me. What about Kirsch? In a followup post, he notes:
I have a subretinal hemorrhage (SRH).
I was just sitting at the computer when it happened, analyzing the Czech Republic data.
And:
It was caused by either a central serous retinopathy (CSR) that burst (which started when I was under a lot of stress with all the work I was doing), or dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD) that progressed to wet AMD.
My UCSD retina specialist (Eric Nudleman) has recommended avoiding surgery and treatment with monthly injections of Vabysmo.
PreserVision vitamins can reduce the chance that dry AMD progresses to wet AMD by 20% which I found out after I was injured. So now you know too.
Vabysmo (faricimab-svoa) is a vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) inhibitor and angiopoietin-2 (Ang-2) inhibitor. In other words, it’s right up my field of expertise in that it an angiogenesis inhibitor, and I used to study angiogenesis inhibition as a treatment for breast cancer. While I’m happy that Kirsch is undergoing science-based treatment for his subretinal hemorrhage, predictably, he’s also seeking out quackery, such as nattokinase, zinc, CoQ10, bromelain, and curcumin. He is, however, being somewhat reasonable about other unproven treatments, such as hyperbaric oxygen and:
I just talked to the CEO of SunPowerLED.
He suggests 2 minutes red LED at 660nm and 1 minute IR LED at 810nm and do that three times a day. He says it’s like going out in the sun with your eyes closed so it should be safe.
But could it bake the blood and make things worse? Has anyone used this with success to clear out the blood?
I doubt that the IR light would “bake the blood vessels,” but it’s not going to clear out the clot, either.
Look, I get it. Subretinal hemorrhage is a horrible injury, and it has a pretty poor prognosis for vision recovery. As Kirsch himself notes, only approximately 11% of its victims regain best-corrected visual acuity in the affected eye better than 6/60. I understand the desperation, at least as much as someone who hasn’t been unfortunate enough to have experienced something like a subretinal hemorrhage. Indeed, Kirsch’s retina looks trashed:
Unsurprisingly, antivaxxers are blaming Kirsch’s misfortune on vaccines:
One fan even wrote a whole Substack entry asking Did The Jab Cause Steve Kirsch’s Sub-Retinal Hematoma? Note the ‘nym, Welcometheeagle88. Nice bit of white supremacist signaling there with the “88.” I mean, come on! Why not let your racist flag fly higher and add the 14 and maybe a RAHOWA. You know you want to. (Yeah, I know all these coded signifiers from my time decades ago debunking Holocaust denial.) Welcometheeagle88 is also, at minimum, a homophobic bigot, as they reveal in discussing a discussion by Real Truther and friends of Kirsch’s predicament:
As you can see the Real Truther’s space is filled with very disingenuous physicians wishing Stevie well. It’s pretty much par for the course for these pro vaccine Kool-Aid drinkers, basically making fun of Stevie but wishing him well at the same time? A side note about this pro vaccine space is that it seems to have an inordinate amount of homosexual physicians and other healthcare providers? It’s really weird, but if your into team Hawk Tuah, this would be the place to come shake your rooster feathers, just say’n. Why is there so much gayness in the provaxx community? It’s like a gay bar with homing beacon device on the roof or something?
My wishing Kirsch well from the perspective of hoping that he recovers as much vision as possible after his subretinal hemorrhage is genuine. So is my opposition to his spreading antivax misinformation. Two things can be true at the same time. But, hey, let your homophobic freak flag fly high, as you’re doing, you bigot.
Whoever this bigot is, they seem to think they’re an expert, even the “#1 VAERS Auditor in the world,” which tells me all I need to know, other than that I might have to take a closer look at the bogus VAERS “analyses” in the future. In the meantime, let me quote you the claimed source of expertise about eyes::
As some might know I used to be a ophthalmology billing extraordinaire billing out for every ophthalmology eye service under the sun. As an HMO Claims Auditor I approved and denied reimbursement for everything too.
That’s nice. Ophthalmology billers and HMO claims auditors are not ophthalmologists, no matter how much expertise they think they might have acquired in ophthalmology. Do they know more about ophthalmology than the average person? Of course. Are they qualified to diagnose causes of something like a subretinal hemorrhage? Nope. Don’t believe me? Well, our homophobic bigot thinks that, unlike what his ophthalmologist told him, Kirsch should really, really have a vitrectomy:
A vitrectomy is done basically to flush out the blood droplets that has now entered into the vitreous. The vitreous is basically like the “clear egg-white” that makes up the volume of your eyeball. Depending on the amount of microscopic blood droplets that has seeped in by a tear or a rupture and whether that blood source has subsided or not would determine if and when you are a candidate for a vitrectomy. In some cases the YAG laser would come in to cauterize the retina and stop the blood droplets from seeping into the vitreous. When the physician is certain no new blood is entering then the decision becomes to let the foreign droplets dissipate on their own, like my Mom’s eyeball, or be more aggressive and go in and flush it out mechanically? Blood in the vitreous is commonly called “floaters” because that’s kind of a description see what people see, or how their vision is, like they are seeing floaters in their vision. To many floaters would be more a like a curtain closing on your vision with just the occasional holes poked in the curtain. Or maybe looking into the distance through a forest of trees?
Sure, hemorrhage into the vitreous can manifest as floaters, but most floaters are not due to hemorrhage. (Remember my particularly annoying floater that led me to see my ophthalmologist again many months after my cataract surgery, just to make sure that the floater wasn’t a harbinger of something vision-threatening, like a retinal tear or detachment?) Also, bad subretinal hemorrhage can “break through” into the vitreous and also manifest as floaters. The two are not synonymous, though. Even my relatively simplistic understanding of these disease entities tells me this, and if any ophthalmologist out there is cringing, let me know and I’ll correct my understanding, because that’s what I do when I make an error, unlike, for instance, most antivaxxers. In any event, while it is true that it is controversial right now what the best treatment for a subretinal hemorrhage is, I would tend to bow to the superior knowledge and experience of Kirsch’s retinal specialist, rather than a racist and homophobic former ophthalmology biller with delusions of grandeur. I’d also advise Kirsch that, if he has doubts about his ophthalmologist’s recommendation, he can always seek a second opinion with another ophthalmologist specializing in retinal diseases. I mean, he is rich. He can afford to go anywhere.
Interestingly, Kirsch might well have had a condition that predisposed him to an ocular complication like this:
Just a few days prior on Tuesday July 23rd in this “Real Truther’s” Twitter-X Space at the 1hr 32min mark, Dr. Janice Kirsch a frienemy and East Bay oncology physician said that Stevie has something called Plasma cell dyscrasias or a hematological disorder(s) known as Waldenström macroglobulinemia.
Dr. Kirsch observed, simply, that Waldenström macroglobulinemia increases the risk for all sorts of retinal diseases, including retinal tears and retinal vein thromboses. She doesn’t seem to mention subretinal hemorrhage, and I’m not sure if Kirsch’s plasma cell dyscrasia was what predisposed him to this horrific ocular event. Waldenström macroglobulinemia is a very indolent plasma cell dyscrasia, and people with this disease can do well for a long time, as Kirsch has. What I do know isthat Welcometheeagle88 is just as antivax as Kirsch:
Yo Stevie!! Do you think the jabs caused your eyeball issue? Will you file a VAERS report? I think you should so I can use your Temporary ID# and Final ID# as part of the world’s only Temp vs Final ID# analysis. It’s part of my Magnum Opus and proof VAERS DOES NOT PUBLISH ALL LEGITIMATE REPORTS RECEIVED! VAERS colludes with manufacturers, throttles and deletes legit reports. VAERS is basically being used to run cover for big pharma. Your VAERS report would be the perfect cap stone on this monumental analysis in the making for nearly three and half years now.
Everything old is new again. The antivax claim that VAERS “covers up” vaccine injuries is a very old one, dating back at least 20 years, if not further.
Predictably, Kirsch’s fans are suggesting even more quackery in his replies on X, the hellscape formerly known as Twitter, and in the comments of his Substack. The usual suspects were all there, but I must confess that this one amused me:
I put your request to a forum I participate in – specifically re matter covid but the memebership is a broad church. One reply to consider:
If anyone here is able to contact Steve, please tell him cayenne – as hot or hotter than he can bear. Even as eye drops could work, and to read the book (recipes included) https://ia801204.us.archive.org/4/items/curing-with-cayenne-the-untold-story/Curing%20with%20Cayenne_%20The%20Untold%20Story.pdf
I would suggest that putting cayenne on an eye that has suffered a subretinal hemorrhage—or even a healthy eye, any eye—is not a good idea. Nor, I suggest, is homeopathy:
“For haemorrhages of varied aetiology, whether traumatic or pathological, the general remedy to help absorption of the extravasated blood is Arnica montana…..
For retinal haemorrhage, after such first aid with Arnica there is likely to be a need for one of the other remedies to control further bleeding and prevent recurrences. Choice of this follow-up remedy would vary with the general constitution of the patient…. The most popular medicines, and with which I have had very definite success, are either snake venoms-specially of Lachesis (a huge and extremely poisonous snake from the Amazon region in Brazil) and of the Rattle Snake (Crotalus horridus) and Phosphorus. I may mention here in passing that Homoeopaths have used snake venoms for more than 150 years. In fact the first experiment with a snake venom; was made by a Homoeopath with Lachesis as long ago as 1828. Subsequent work on snake venoms, with which we are familiar, brings out their haemorrhagic tendencies. “
From Indian Journal of Opthalmology: https://journals.lww.com/ijo/fulltext/1982/30040/role_of_homoeopathy_in_ophthalmological_conditions.15.aspx
Ditto anything that Mark Sircus might suggest:
Well, Steve, the best bet would be hydrogen/oxygen inhalation therapy. Since hydrogen is so small it gets everywhere, to every cell, and takes down oxidative stress and thus inflammation. It is also the best antiaging therapy so you cannot lose. To support that would be using magnesium chloride in the form of a pure magnesium oil product diluted 20 to one and use as eye drops then you might consider using chlorine dioxide. If you want to talk about any of this I am a substack publisher and you can get me privately at [email protected]
You might remember Mark Sircus for his promotion of bleach to treat “vaccine-induced turbo cancer.” There are a lot more suggestions in his comments for various forms of quackery for Kirsch to try. Feel free to peruse them, if you have the stomach for it.
I’d also almost grudgingly admire Kirsch’s dedication to soldier on after his ocular catastrophe, if his dedication weren’t total dedication to the cause of spreading disinformation about vaccines, given that his sudden vision loss occurred while he was working on badly “analyzing” the Czech Republic data. (I discussed just how incompetent his analysis was earlier this week.) I can’t help but notice Kirsch’s usual boast, even after suddenly losing vision in his right eye:
In the meantime, I’ll be working with others to complete the analysis (and the rebuttals to all the attacks) and get it published in the peer-reviewed scientific literature.
My colleagues and I have looked into all the attacks and we find that they all fail to provide a credible alternate hypothesis. They basically say “It could have been SES and you can’t rule it out” or “comorbidities were higher in Moderna in some months!”
Here’s my prediction. The only way Kirsch’s analysis will be published in the “peer-reviewed literature” is if it’s in one of the most bottom-feeding crap journals in the peer-reviewed literature. There’s no way he gets it published in a reputable journal of epidemiology, vaccinology, infectious disease, or other relevant specialty. My guess is that he’ll eventually get it published in James Lyons-Weiler’s fake “journal.” Certainly, it won’t be in any journal indexed in PubMed, particularly given the “expertise” of the people whom he’s seeking to help him while he deals with his vision loss, as one of his “colleagues” writes in his Substack that he is seeking “apprentices”:
Mr. Kirsch is recruiting five “Mini-Me” apprentices to continue analyzing record-level data while recovering. He will train the five in his analytic methods. The criteria Steve Kirsch is looking for are people who:If you want to join Steve Kirsch in his data analysis work, send your cover letter and experience to [email protected].
- Have engineering experience, are fluent in Python, and understand probability.
- Have some written code to show their work, in Github or another venue.
- Read the Steve Kirsch Newsletter and be decidedly familiar with his work.
- Understand and love the work Steve Kirsch and VSRF are doing.
- Are highly motivated to be on Steve Kirsch’s apprentice team.
Notice what’s missing in that list of “apprentices” being sought? First, he asks mainly for engineers and/or coders who “understand probability,” “understand and love” Kirsch’s work, and are “highly motivated” to be on his team. That’s all well and nice, but these are not “experts” in anything other than maybe engineering and coding. Tellingly, Kirsch doesn’t ask for epidemiologists and statisticians who routinely analyze epidemiological data and understand…you know…the epidemiology and statistics needed to correctly analyze the Czech Republic data. Instead, he wants engineers and coders who “understand probability,” because they will continue the crappy analyses designed to “prove” that the Moderna vaccine (and the Pfizer vaccine) kill.
Again, two things can be true at the same time. As an empathetic human being, I hope that Kirsch recovers as much of his vision in his right eye as possible, noting that I am happy that he is listening to a real ophthalmologist rather than quacks and that the quackery he has chosen thus far appears at least not harmful, even if there’s no evidence that any of it will help him recover his vision. One only hopes that he ignores the many recommendations for really bonkers quackery flooding his comments. On the other hand, as an advocate of science-based medicine who has long combatted antivax misinformation, disinformation, pseudoscience, and conspiracy theories, I can still keep pointing out how Kirsch, whether with blindness in one eye or with two good eyes, mangles science, medicine, epidemiology, statistics, and facts.
16 replies on “Steve Kirsch had a subretinal hemmorhage. No, it wasn’t vaccines.”
OK, storytime.
A little over 40 years ago, I was asked to pick some chillies off the tree in the garden of my parents’ then house. After I brought them in, I accidentally rubbed my eye before washing my hands.
It’s the type of mistake you make once. I still haven’t forgotten how excruciating it was, more than four decades later.
Going to the toilet under similar initial conditions is equally memorable.
I’m glad that Orac has had really good results. I also hope that Kirsch does better: you can disagree with a person’s viewpoints and NOT want to see them suffer or be disabled. Perhaps he’ll recover in more ways than physically.
Kirsch recruits apprentices to uncover truths about various pharma plots/ malfeasance by governments and corporations: this sounds quite like Naomi Wolf’s efforts to reveal the “truth” about vaccines ( Daily Clout, War Room and Outspoken Substack, her new book) through analysis of the Pfizer documents. She has 3250 assistants led by Amy Kelly, her COO ( see Daily Clout CV) who appears to have a business background and a BS in something not described. I wonder why.
KIrsch, Wolf and other alt med/ anti-vaxxers simultaneously reject SBM expertise and present themselves as superior, even revolutionary experts: the smartest people in the room. RFK Jr has proposed solutions for addiction, mental illness and learning disabilities : working on organic farms for years, eating pure foods and living without electronic devices. ( Mother Jones this week) without any background in psychology and rehabilitation or education. Personal experience and religious revelation/ cures don’t count. Or using Brian Hooker as a statistician.
Finally, cayenne is regarded as a panacea by many natural health true believers. Gary Null advises his older “patients” to carry a package of cayenne and various supplements just in case they feel a CV event coming on. Instant cure.
Correction: Kelly has a BA.
Although she promotes BS.
When Orac’s article started getting into the quackery promoted by Steve’s supporters, I wondered how long it’d take before someone recommended chlorine dioxide bleach.
The wait was short.
At least no one has suggested rubbing bloodroot salve on the affected eye. Yet.
I really hope Mr. Kirsch knows better than to try and of those – cayenne or bleach – on his poor eye.
Wishing you both good health and better vision.
I would definitely defer to the ophthalmologist and skip all the bogus “cures”.
My spouse had major eye problems due to diabetes and need a lot of eye treatments including some significant surgeries. But she got science based treatments and maintained some vision the rest of her life.
As it happens, I just completed cataract surgeries in both my eyes. They healed well and I have a new prescription. I opted to optimize for short range vision. I’ve had a LOT of trouble reading fine print. And I can’t really enjoy playing the Oculus because everything is a little blurry and wearing it over glasses is uncomfortable.
Also, I need prism correction for distance vision, so I might as well get glasses optimized for that anyway.
The Czech data, like the New Zealand data before, seems to be getting buzz on Tw/X these days. I’ll want to read your other article.
I debated doing something like that. I also debated going for a “premium” trifocal lens, but was put off by the loss of contrast sensitivity and the much higher likelihood of halos and glare around lights at night. Also, I’ve been wearing glasses since I was in second grade and progressives for something like 15 years; so it didn’t bother me if I had to keep wearing them for most activities. One difference is that my ophthalmologist “hit the target” pretty well. I’m about 20/30 for distance without glasses, and most of that is due to residual mild astigmatism. I can watch TV, ride my bike, swim, and, in a pinch, be legal to drive without glasses. My astigmatism was too low to justify a toric lens, but I notice it, making it another reason why I still wear my glasses most of the time.
It is, however, rather glorious to go from having to wear really thick glasses all the time (other than the occasional reading really small print about 2-3″ from my face) to nice, thin glasses that I don’t need all the time.
Someone will try to connect Kirsch’s retinal injury to another anti-vaxxer’s recent diagnosis of ocular melanoma. And anti-vaccinationist James Meehan MD died recently from an oral cancer and his family is blaming the cancer doctors and “the system” here in the US. And Sheila Ealy, another anti-vaccinationist died last week. Judy Mikovitz completely went off the rails last week on the Robertt Scott Bell show with regards to Ealy’s death claiming it was the government that caused her cancer. Oh and Mikovitz claimed the government killed her husband during the pandemic.
Mr Kirsch ( Substack) updates his condition – it’s not good- and asks for suggestions. I hope MDs here will comment and talk sense to him.
Based on the Substack comments I had the stomach to get through, cranks are really battening on Steve to push their favorite woo. Among the suggestions he’s getting: 1) use a grounding mat to get in contact with the earth, 2) utilize the power of his superior mind to direct energy at the problem, 3) address dysfunction in the crystalline structure of water in his body*, and 4) use a pulsed electromagnetic field device to fix his subretinal bleed (there are various PEMF devices that I gather are good for pretty much anything that ails you, but naturally some are much better than others, so you’ve got to use the right one. One commenter urging the use of PEMF is an optometrist who says it’s really good for healing horses’ broken legs** (vets use really powerful PEMF devices, you see), and whose practice also offers “Optometric Clinical Homeopathy”, which sounds like a potentially good backup.
Or maybe trying all the myriad suggestions is the way to go.
In reality Steve has the resources to get second opinions from the best ophthalmologists in the world, so you wonder what he’s doing by polling the nuthatches who make up his audience. Hopefully the urge to show up the Medical Establishment won’t prevent him from utilizing the best evidence-based care available.
*antivaxer and onetime licensed physician Thomas Cowan had a thing about cancer being caused by a “derangement” in the intracellular structure of water due to our “life forces being weak or disturbed”. So there’s another consultant possibility.
**therapy that’s supposed to work great on horses might strongly appeal to folks who swear by equine ivermectin.
Well, he should definitely steer clear of the suggestions of “Dr.” Circus.
I am pretty sure I was the only homosexual healthcare worker on the stage in the Real Truther’s Space that was referenced in the Substack…
Just as an FYI to everyone, the reason there hasn’t been a post since Monday is that I’ve been busy dealing with getting my Mom moved into memory care. When that is taken care of and everything is settled in, I’ll resume posting at least three days a week (I hope). As hard as it is to believe, sometimes life does get in the way of blogging.
Sending best wishes for this move. We will be here when you come back.
Thank you. The move was yesterday. We still need to get a TV and some furniture, but hopefully within the next few days things will settle down and normalize.