• For 50 years, medicine has waged a misguided war against critical sources of health like salt and sunlight while avoiding discussing the real causes of diseases. Because of this, the dangers of salt are relentlessly focused on despite evidence not supporting them.

• In parallel, the extreme dangers of consuming too little salt are rarely discussed in the medical field—despite dangerously low sodium being one of the most common conditions seen in hospitalized patients, and chronically low sodium greatly increasing one’s risk of dying.

• The war against salt originated from the belief salt raises blood pressure—despite the evidence showing it doesn’t.

• Many of the foundational beliefs around high blood pressure are not supported by the existing data, leading to situations where patients are routinely medicated to blood pressures far below what is safe, significantly reducing their quality of life and increasing their risk of severe injuries or death.

• Salt restriction creates many similar complications to dangerously low blood pressures (e.g., fatigue, lightheadedness, erectile dysfunction). Because of this, many find their health and energy dramatically improves once they start consuming healthy salts.

• This article will cover some of the key dangers associated with salt restriction and strategies for locating the healthiest natural salts.

This newsletter exists to help others, and as a result, I frequently receive correspondences from individuals with pressing questions I want to answer. Unfortunately, due to how long each article takes to write (e.g., I’ve spent most of the last two weeks finishing up the last part of the DMSO neurological series as I believe it’s vital that astonishing data becomes widely accessible), I simply no longer have the time respond to most of those correspondences.

The best solution I’ve been able to come up with is to have monthly open threads where anyone can ask whatever is needed (e.g., any lingering questions from the previous month) and I would make a point to always reply to them (as having them all in a single place makes it easier to get to them and also possible for others with the same question to see that answer).

Each time I do a monthly thread, I try to tag it to a topic I’ve wanted to write about but I do not quite feel is enough for its own article. In this article, I will focus on one my major frustrations with the medical system, the half a century war against salt (which began in 1977 when a Senate Committee published dietary guidelines arguing for reduced sodium consumption despite the existing evidence not supporting this). Since then, like many other bad government policies, it has developed a nearly unstoppable inertia of its own.

Note: in the recent interview I did with Pierre Kory, one of the key points I hoped to illustrate was that on highly contentious issues, middle ground positions often exist which achieve most of what both side is seeking and help everyone—but as things become increasingly politically polarized, both sides dig in and the common sense solutions fade into the background creating an irresolvable quagmire. For example, currently, there is a highly polarizing debate occurring over what should happen to a mother with postpartum depression who murdered her three children, as a large number of people are adamant the death penalty must be imposed while many others have made it clear they deeply emphasize with her stress and hence want an insanity defense to prevail. Yet, few have mentioned the violent psychosis inappropriate psychiatric medications cause (which may have played a key role here) or that much better non-pharmaceutical options exist for treating postpartum depression (e.g., decades ago William Walsh showed postpartum depression and psychosis was often caused by a copper overload that was highly responsive to treatment).

Is Salt Bad For You?

Many people you ask, particularly those in the medical field will tell you salt is bad, and one of the most common pieces of health advice given both inside and outside of medicine is to eat less salt.

Over the years, I’ve heard two main arguments for why salt is bad for you.

First, salt raises blood pressure, and high blood pressure is deadly, so salt is too and should be avoided.

Second, with individuals who have heart failure, eating too many salty foods will create exacerbations of their condition, and as a result, after holidays where people eat those foods (e.g., the 4^th of July) more heart failure patients will be admitted to hospitals for heart failure exacerbations.

Note: excessive sodium causes these exacerbations because an excess amount of fluid accumulates in the body (e.g., because the weakened heart can’t move enough blood to the kidneys to eliminate it), which then overloads other parts of the body (e.g., causing swelling and edema, which, if in the lungs, can be life threatening).

Because of these two things, many in the medical field assume that salt must be bad for you and hence strongly urge patients to avoid it (to the point you often see an elderly patient who loves her salt be aggressively pushed into abandoning it). Unfortunately, the logic behind those two arguments is much less solid than it initially appears.

Blood Pressure

Many things in medicine resulted from what approach to patient care was the most profitable, not the most helpful. In turn, since recurring revenue is a foundational principle of successful businesses, rather than cure patients, a key goal in medicine often ends up being to have as many patients as possible be on lifelong prescriptions.

In most cases, the drugs that are developed and approved have real value for specific situations, but those situations are not enough to cover the exorbitant cost it requires to get a drug to market. As a result, once drugs are approved, the industry will gradually come up with reasons to give them to more and more people (e.g., by relabeling a vast swathe of normal feeling as “depression”). As such, things quickly arrive at the point where many of the industry’s customers experience significantly greater harm than benefit from the pharmaceutical (e.g., while they harm the majority of users and providing minimal benefit to most patients, SSRI antidepressants are also very helpful for a subset of people who take them).

One classic way drug markets are expanded is by creating a drug that treats a number, asserting that the number has to be within a certain range for someone to be healthy, and then once that is enshrined, narrow and narrow the acceptable range so less and less people are “healthy” and hence need the drug (e.g., this happened with cholesterol once statins were invented). Likewise, this characterizes the history of blood pressure management:

Because of this, many people (particularly the elderly) are frequently pushed to excessively low blood pressures which reduces critical blood perfusion for the organs—which is particularly unfortunate as high blood pressure is often a symptom of poor circulation rather than its cause. As such, reducing the remaining circulation by lowering blood pressure then makes them significantly more likely to get a variety of significant issues (e.g., kidney injuries, cognitive impairment, macular degeneration), the most studied of which is lightheadedness or fainting leading to (often devastating) falls. Additionally, blood pressure medications also often greatly reduce one’s quality of life (e.g., by causing fatigue or erectile dysfunction).

Note: for those interested in learning more about the great blood pressure scam (a lot of what we’re taught about blood pressure is less than accurate), it can be read here.

Low Sodium

A corner stone of cementing the blood pressure market has been to make everyone terrified of salt (much in the same way making people terrified of the sun is a cornerstone of the lucrative skin cancer treatment market—despite the fact the deadly skin cancers are actually due to a lack of sunlight).

Remarkably, much like the great dermatology scam (which has been able to make a massive amount of money from removing cancers that almost never become life threatening) the link between blood pressure and salt consumption is actually quite tenuous.

For example, the most detailed review of this subject found that drastic salt reduction typically results in less than a 1% reduction in blood pressure. Likewise, doctors rarely recognize that patients in the hospital are routinely given large amounts of IV 0.9% sodium chloride, in many cases receiving ten times the daily recommended sodium chloride we are supposed to consume—yet their blood pressure often barely rises.

Note: much of the confusion with salt and blood pressure arises from the fact changes from salt-reduction are only seen in a minorities of the population (e.g., certain ethnicities), leading to the average change across everyone being very small. Likewise, a larger Cochrane analysis of this question found that cutting salt by roughly 4.4 grams a day lowered blood pressure by about 5.4/2.8 mmHg in hypertensives but only 2.4/1.0 mmHg in those with normal blood pressure (a rounding error you could achieve by relaxing for a few minutes).

Despite this, patients are often pushed to eliminate all (or almost all) salt from their life “to prevent them from dying.” Beyond this significantly reducing their quality of life (as people like salty foods) it can be dangerous. For example:

•A study of 181 countries found countries with lower salt consumption have shorter life expectancies.

•Low sodium levels (hyponatremia) are strongly correlated with a risk of dying (e.g., the salt consumption target we are recommended to follow increases one’s risk of dying by 25%). Likewise, a common reason for hospital admissions, are symptoms resulting from hyponatremia (as once sodium levels get too low, it can be very dangerous), and 15-20% of hospitalized patients have low sodium levels at admission.

Note: mild hyponatremia is also associated with an increased risk of death—even “mild” low sodium raises five-year mortality by 25%, and in a database of 2.3 million patients it independently predicted death. It also leaves the elderly nearly six times more likely to break a hip in a fall (which is frequently catastrophic).

•Reduced salt consumption, not surprisingly, increases one’s risk of hyponatremia (e.g., one study found salt restriction made hypertensive patients 9.9 times more likely to develop hyponatremia).
Note: in addition to dietary salt reduction, many blood pressure and psychiatric medications put you at risk for dangerously low sodium levels (e.g., SSRI antidepressants make you 3.16 times more likely to). Additionally, certain patients (e.g., those with autonomic nervous issues) are much more sensitive to salt restriction causing hypotension (low blood pressure).

• Low dietary sodium intake causes a 34% increase in cardiovascular disease and death.

•Rapidly lowering blood sodium levels reduces cardiac output and blood pressure in a manner resembling traumatic shock (which frequently raises the heart rate as the heart tries to compensate for insufficient blood). Low salt consumption, in turn, has been repeatedly linked to tachycardia (and atrial fibrillation).

Remarkably, while this is rarely prioritized in medicine, there is simultaneously a well-recognized physiologic mechanism for it. When the body senses insufficient sodium, it defends its blood volume by activating the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system and the sympathetic nervous system—the same stress machinery that raises the heart rate (and patients take blood pressure medications to block). So, in exchange for a tiny blood pressure reduction, salt restriction was found to significantly raise plasma renin, aldosterone, adrenaline, noradrenaline, cholesterol, and triglycerides—trading a trivial drop in one number for a rise in the very hormones and lipids that drive cardiovascular disease. This is worse in the elderly, whose aging kidneys respond poorly to changes in blood sodium and are thus at greater risk for hyponatremia following sodium deprivation.

Note: three of the most common symptoms of hyponatremia (which lead people to go to the Emergency Room) are fatigue, confusion and difficulty concentrating.

•Chronic sodium depletion has been linked to fatigue and insomnia.

•Many readers have reported discovering low salt consumption was the cause of their fatigue and lightheadedness (which has also been proven in a clinical trial which treated postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome with increasing dietary sodium).
Note: chronically low blood pressure (e.g., POTS) has been shown to be one cause of chronic fatigue syndrome,^1,2 and POTS is often treated with increased dietary sodium (e.g. the autonomic disorder consensus guidelines formally recommend it).

•A variety of other health issues (e.g., worsening of diabetes or a stomach hydrochloric acid deficiency) have also been linked to insufficient dietary sodium. For example, a review of 23 trials found low-salt diets consistently produced insulin resistance, and one study induced it in healthy people in as few as 7 days.

•Beyond the acute confusion of hyponatremia, there is now emerging evidence that chronically low sodium intake harms the aging brain. A 2025 longitudinal study of over 1,500 older adults found that those in the lowest sodium intake quintile (around 1,764 mg/day—right about where public health targets try to push people) experienced faster decline in global cognition, especially memory, compared to those eating a moderate amount. Likewise, low sodium intake was also associated with more tau tangles (a hallmark of Alzheimer’s pathology) on autopsy, while high sodium intake was not linked to faster decline in this cohort.
Note: the suppressed causes and treatments of Alzheimer’s disease are discussed further here.

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U-Shaped Curves

Much in the same way I have observed extreme positions on either side of a political issue will frequently cause problems for the society (as they prevent a healthy balance from ever being found), frequently in physiology, a number will be observed which, when improved, appears to correlate with improved health, leading to the assumption as much as possible should be done to improve that number. In many cases however, at some point, the effect reverses, and it becomes harmful to further increase or decrease that number.

For example, with blood pressure, a few data points showed that if it’s too high, it increases one’s risk of death, so this was used to create a linear model which extrapolated that trend to much lower blood pressure values.

Yet, in real life, once blood pressure gets too low, the trend reverses and one’s risk of dying increases rather than decreases.

Likewise, both high and low sodium diets have been shown to increase the risk of death. This U-shaped curve was best demonstrated in a study of chronic kidney disease and heart failure patients:

Further corroborating the U-shaped curve for sodium input, a study of 100,000 adults across 18 countries, found the same U-shape, with the lowest risk of death and cardiovascular events at a moderate intake of roughly 3–5 grams of sodium per day and rising risk at both lower and higher intakes (a pattern a follow-up study further corroborated), along with also finding that higher potassium and a lower sodium-to-potassium ratio predicted lower mortality.

The same U-shape even appears when sodium is measured directly in the blood, where a study of 32,666 patients found mortality was lowest at a serum sodium of 139–144 and rose at both lower and higher levels. Finally, most recently, a 2025 national Chinese cohort of nearly 271,000 adults confirmed the U-shape for cardiovascular mortality, with the lowest risk near 4.6–5.4 grams of sodium per day. Additionally, that study identified much of the increased risk of death from low sodium resulted from elevated heart rates and blood glucose—both well-known (but rarely discussed) effects of salt avoidance.

Sodium in Heart Failure

Due to excessive sodium consumption causing heart failure exacerbations, heart failure patients are often (dogmatically) told to avoid dietary sodium, despite there being many cases of them improving once they add some salt back into their diet (as they had been on the left side of this curve). While this has long been known within the integrative health field, in the last few years, data at last is emerging to support this (along with the U-shaped mortality curve in sodium consumption):

• A 2018 systematic review of 9 trials found no evidence that salt restriction reduced deaths, hospitalizations, or hospital stays in heart failure patients.

• The largest trial to date, (a 2022 one of 806 patients across six countries), found that cutting sodium to under 1,500 mg/day did not reduce deaths, hospitalizations, or emergency visits compared to usual care.

• A 2024 review concluded that across the randomized trials, restricting dietary sodium does not reduce clinical events in heart failure patients—and that strict restriction (1,500 mg/day) offers no advantage over moderate intake, with some data hinting a looser 2,000–3,000 mg/day may carry lower mortality.

• A 2026 meta-analysis of 16 randomized trials (roughly 2,260 heart failure patients) found sodium restriction associated with higher all-cause mortality (a 50% increase) and markedly higher cardiac mortality, with the harm most pronounced in the sickest patients and when restriction was combined with fluid restriction and diuretics.

In light of this data, while American medicine still clings to the low sodium dogma, Europe fortunately is beginning to rescind salt restriction recommendations for heart failure patients.

Zeta Potential Curves

When fluid contains suspended particles (which is true for most fluids in nature), those colloids can either have finely dispersed or clumped together particles. One of the primary determinants of this is the electrical repulsion or attraction between the particles, something quantified by a system’s zeta potential and heavily influenced by the charges present in a solution (e.g, too many positive charges will make fluid components like blood cells clump together and is why the aluminum in vaccinations frequently trigger microstrokes of varying severity). In turn, many diseases result from poor zeta potential, including poor circulation and fluid congestion or edema (e.g., that seen in heart failure).

One critical aspect of zeta potential is that it follows a U-shaped curve in relationship to the amount of a charged ion present, with both too little or too much of it being problematic.

Note: giving IV sodium infusions to hospital patients will frequently greatly improve their condition, something nonchalantly attributed to everyone being “dehydrated” but more accurately due to their blood sodium being too low to adequately support the physiologic zeta potential. Likewise, many people often feel much better after getting outpatient saline infusions at concierge hydration clinics.

This in turn helps to explain why too little salt (e.g., through intentional sodium restriction or unintentional sodium restriction through a diet that puts you into ketosis [which increases sodium excretion]) can be problematic while at the same time high salt diets can be problematic as well.

With high salt diets (the other end of the U-shaped curve), I believe a few points are particularly important to recognize:

1. I’ve had multiple cases where I ate fairly salty foods right before bed, then woke up feeling extremely dry throughout my body with a fast heart rate. Through trial and error I figured out drinking certain waters would help me feel better. Later, from reading Thomas Riddick’s work on zeta potential, I understood what was happening and measured the conductivity in my urine, showing that my kidneys indeed were trying to dump a large amount of sodium and restore my zeta potential. Riddick, tracked many cases where more severe versions of what I experienced resulted in cardiovascular incidents (as poor zeta potential causes blood to clot together and triggers heart arrhythmias as the heart struggles to push this congested blood).
Note: numerous readers here have reported zeta potential restoring protocols has fixed their atrial fibrillation.

2. Riddick (and those who followed him) found that processed foods and many restaurant meals tended to be problematic for zeta potential and hence advised reducing the frequency of their consumption (e.g., I try to minimize eating out because of the congestion I feel after restaurant meals).
Note: since there are so many other harmful things in processed foods, it is very possible many of the issues associated with salty foods are due to something else that is present in it (e.g., seed oils or questionable food additives).

3. Riddick believed one of our key issues with salt was that potassium was better for zeta potential than sodium, so by switching our potassium based sources of salt (e.g., vegetables) for highly salted foods, we were creating an unhealthy balance between the ions. Likewise, modern research has shown adequate potassium alongside sodium is critical for cardiovascular health (e.g., normalizing blood pressure), with a recent trial of 21,000 people finding that simply replacing ordinary salt with a 75% sodium / 25% potassium substitute (not reducing salt intake, just rebalancing it) led to 14% fewer strokes, 13% fewer major cardiovascular events, and 12% fewer deaths.
Note: potassium deficiency causes a variety of issues (e.g., fatigue and muscle cramps) and many practitioners over the years have found supplementary potassium greatly helps their patients.

4. In general, I noticed most of the salt overload issues individuals run into come from eating foods high in refined salt (e.g., salty processed foods) rather than those consuming natural salts. This has led me to suspect that a major issue with salt is either something else present in the processed foods or something specific to processed salts. At this point, my best guesses is that it is due to refined salts:
•Lacking minerals we otherwise need for homeostasis
•Containing other problematic additives (e.g., refined salt tends to clump together so it requires anti-caking agents, many of which adversely affect zeta potential).
•Having a refinement process that introduces unhealthy chemicals to the salt (e.g., sodium carbonate, sodium hydroxide, barium chloride or barium carbonate are used to remove minerals besides sodium from refined salt).
Note: salt bleaching or heating may also be problematic.

Healthy Salt

Since salt is such an integral part of our life, I frequently receive a variety of questions on which type of salt we should consume. In the last part of this article (which exists as an open forum for you to ask any questions you have), I will share what I’ve learned from years of exploration on this topic, which brands of salt we prefer, the other critical steps for ensuring salt is compatible with health and invite each of you to share what you have discovered from your own exploration of salt.

Read more

•No industry, organization, or cause tasked with solving a problem will actually solve it, because the problem disappearing threatens their economic livelihood or political power.

•The pharmaceutical industry has perfected this model: drugs are designed to be taken perpetually rather than cure, side effects create demand for additional drugs, and the entire regulatory apparatus is structured to suppress affordable natural therapies that challenge it.

•SSRIs epitomize this dynamic—massively overprescribed, frequently life-ruining, and nearly impossible to withdraw from—yet for decades, the industry successfully kept all criticism of them out of mainstream discourse.

•Kennedy announced a multiagency federal effort to combat inappropriate SSRI prescribing, train providers in how to correctly taper patients off antidepressants, and provide non-pharmaceutical alternatives.

•This marks the first time in memory a federal health initiative has aimed to help get patients off a major drug class rather than on one.

When I was in high school, I observed a few discouraging events which led me to postulate: “no industry, organization or cause tasked with solving a problem will actually solve it because the problem disappearing threatens their economic livelihood or political power.” Since that time, I have observed more examples than I can count in so many different spheres that I’ve accepted this dynamic is a common feature of society, and likewise, have come across many similar observations by others, my favorite of which was:

Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program—Milton Friedman

Recently a noteworthy exampls of this principle came to my attention after I learned all of the online dating apps had switched from formats which allowed people to find suitable long term partners to ones which prevented people from matching, because if someone found a good match, they would stop paying for the service. Once one company figured this out, they bought out all competitors and shifted them to this predatory model as well (and all the profound consequences it entails).^1,2,3,4,5,6

Note: because online dating has now become so bad, the companies that monopolized the market are starting to lose a lot of users and money, signaling there may be a chance for this cycle to reset itself.¹

This article will focus on how that principle applies to medicine and why I believe beyond greed, complacency also plays a central role in the continual recurrence of this dynamic across societies.

Is Money The Root Of All Evil?

The love of money has long been recognized as one of the most powerful forces for twisting human hearts towards evil. However, I would argue the core issue is that for many people effectively, accumulating money becomes the foundational axiom used to navigate life, causing them to rationalize a variety of unethical positions because their internal algorithm will frequently default to the choice that acquires more money. Recognizing this provides an invaluable tool for understanding the world, as the motivations of others often become far clearer once you view things strictly through what and how they stand to profit from their actions.

Algorithms of Business

In the same way that a default behavior to seek the most profitable choice helps to explain individual actions, businesses also follow a relatively predictable set of behaviors aimed at optimizing profit. In general, most large businesses aim for the following, prioritizing whichever are most feasible:

• Continual growth

• High markups on their product

• The widest possible market

• Market exclusivity (to protect and maximize sales)

• Repeating sales far into the future

The pharmaceutical industry excels in all of these, which helps to explain why they have managed to sustain steady growth for decades, and why one-fifth of all money spent in the United States goes to healthcare despite our country receiving very poor returns on that investment.

Note: annual adult vaccines (which frequently do nothing, particularly because they are often for the wrong strain) are an excellent example of an unsafe, unproven and ineffective product that is pushed on everyone because it fulfills the need for perpetually recurring sales.

Lifelong Patients

A frequently shared meme highlights that members of the medical community frequently face the same dilemma dating companies do.

The more time I’ve spent in medicine, the more I’ve come to appreciate that many principles you see in business are not only replicated in medicine but inevitably will guide medical practice. The entire industry (and regulatory apparatus) is structured around this status quo, so anytime someone tries to deviate from it, countless stakeholders will emerge to oppose it.

This was best demonstrated by a 2018 report which provoked considerable public outrage when it was publicized by the mainstream media:

Note: while I can’t prove this, given how rarely the media will expose pharmaceutical misconduct, I believe the reason it did in this specific case was not to help the public but rather to send a message to the industry (and investors) to avoid curative genomic therapies.

All of this helps explain why the medical industry (and regulators) will only target competing therapies with the potential to meaningfully compete with their bottom line (e.g., we all saw what happened to the off-patent COVID-19 treatments like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin).

Sadly, many even more consequential examples. For example:

•Ultraviolet blood irradiation cured a wide range of otherwise fatal bacterial and viral infections (and many autoimmune disorders), but as it was taking off across American’s hospitals, the American Medical Association tried to buy it, and once they couldn’t, successfully buried it (except in areas like Russia outside their monopoly).

•Sleeping medications have a wide range of issues which cause serious issues for their users, so once an effective (but un-patentable) one which restored people’s sleep and health (frequently to a profound degree) came into use, the FDA launched a relentless campaign that eventually outlawed it (detailed here).

•Oxidative therapies, like chlorine dioxide, when dosed appropriately, have shown remarkable efficacy against a variety of infectious diseases, along with certain ones (e.g., ozone) also showing significant efficacy against a variety of musculoskeletal issues, organ diseases and circulatory disorders. Yet, despite thousand of studies corroborating their use, the FDA treats them as toxic agents with no redeeming value, and any attempts to research these therapies (particularly chlorine dioxide) are obstructed.

•DMSO is safe and essentially free substance that rapidly heals injuries, cures a wide range of common debilitating problems (e.g., all types of pain, spine issues, most skin issues, most eye issues, gastrointestinal inflammation and many autoimmune disorders) along with addressing many otherwise incurable issues (e.g., stroke damage, paralysis, chronic lung disease, and many different neurodegenerative disorders). Yet, despite the life-changing properties of this substance, the FDA fought the public for decades (including at multiple Congressional hearings) to bury it, and as a result, few people know it is anything but an inert solvent widely used in research and to deliver pharmaceuticals (and an interstitial cystitis treatment).

While many other candidates exist too (e.g., many promising cancer therapies were blacklisted by the AMA and FDA), I believe DMSO’s story is likely the clearest case of the FDA suppressing something to maintain the status quo of profitable diseases being incurable (and requiring perpetual lucrative medical care). This is because roughly 15,000 studies (I am gradually compiling) show its efficacy across a wide range of illnesses and I have now received over 7000 thousand testimonials from readers who had a lifelong debilitating issue rapidly resolve with DMSO that are nearly identical to those the FDA received as the public begged them not to ban it.

Medical Sales Funnels

One of the most common critiques of the pharmaceutical industry is that the entire enterprise is a more sophisticated form of the addictive drug model: the drugs that are widely sold are designed to hook people for life and the immense lobbying the industry can afford effectively takes the place of cartel violence to maintain their market monopoly. Furthermore, unlike classic drug enterprises which have to market their products from the shadows, the state sanctioning of their business model makes it possible for them to publicly market the products to the entire society and buy out both the media and government so criticisms of their products are not allowed to be aired.

Note: other common criticisms include several of the largest pharmaceutical companies (e.g., Bayer via IG Farben) having been deeply entwined with Nazi Germany, and that many major pharma firms were once leading marketers and manufacturers of cocaine, methamphetamine, and heroin (Bayer famously marketed heroin as a “non-addictive” wonder drug¹).

Fittingly, the medical profession has largely moved away from the language of “cure.” For centuries, major medical dictionaries either omitted a clear definition of “cure” or defined it only minimally.^1,2 The word is also notably absent from the indexes of core references such as Merck’s Manual and Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine.^1,2 In practice, physicians are strongly discouraged from promising or even declaring a “cure” in many contexts.¹ You cannot be accused of failing to achieve something the profession rarely claims is possible.

Because of this, every successful pharmaceutical lies somewhere along a spectrum of being “addictive” to “ineffective.” Much of this results from the fact the body is designed to maintain homeostasis and resist unnatural alterations of physiology, so the human response to medications is frequently either: for the effect to be temporary, for progressively higher doses to be required, or for the body to shift to an unnatural baseline where it can no longer function without the artificial counterweight of the medication.

Note: sometimes additional steps are involved. For example, acid reflux frequently results from a lack of stomach acid (which prevents the top of the stomach from getting the signal to close) which argues for supplementing meals with stomach acid (that beyond frequently curing reflux, provides numerous other health benefits). However, rather than do this, the preferred approach is to completely suppress stomach acid production so nothing is there to reflux, making it very difficult to stop the medications because once small (insufficient) amounts of acid return, they will reflux and cause heartburn.

Beyond the design of pharmaceutical drugs inevitably producing side effects, those side effects are often actually an upside for the industry because they create additional problems that require other drugs to treat, hence creating a robust “sales funnel.” General practitioners not only provide a steady stream of patient referrals to more expensive medical services, but also give patients tests that convert a significant number into taking common lifelong drugs (which half of American adults are on at least one of¹).

SSRI Antidepressants

From the start, I decided to focus on SSRIs as while they significantly help a subset of patients, I also feel they are one of the worst offenders on the market. Beyond being massively overprescribed, they frequently ruin people’s lives (often in very cruel ways), are often nearly impossible to withdraw from, and have predatory sales funnels that affect large numbers of American women:

Unfortunately, SSRIs languished in the same place many other toxic drugs did: they harmed a significant number of people but the drugs made enough money (one in six adults take psychiatric medications¹) that it was possible for industry to corral the entire government and media into sweeping them under the rug.

To try to shift this, I decided to focus not on the common side effects, but rather the psychotic violence and mass shootings they occasionally cause. My theory was that since so much effort has gone into politicizing mass shootings and gun control, the right would be receptive to the fact SSRIs were triggering many of the shootings being blamed on inadequate gun control, and that this would spur interest into all the other far more common side effects SSRIs cause and make it finally an acceptable topic of discourse.

So, I tried to draft a very clear case for this (along with a follow up explaining the dangers of SSRIs and the corruption that allowed them to come to market) and then put them out immediately following a school shooting which was large enough to become the national media story. That article somehow made it to Tucker Carlson, who then, five weeks later, for the first time in the mainstream media, did a segment on the topic for Fox News.

Following this, as more and more political figures on the right were willing to broach the subject, it became a gradually acceptable topic to discuss (e.g., during his 2024 campaign, RFK Jr. shared that article stating: “Any conversation about gun violence is incomplete if it doesn’t touch on mental health and the suppressed evidence implicating SSRIs in suicide and homicide”).

The successive attention which bubbled up in the alternative media to the frequent side effects of SSRIs (and Secretary Kennedy’s public acknowledgment of it) has gradually brought mainstream attention to this, including at a recent May 4th panel (covered by the press) which began with victims of SSRIs sharing what they have experienced.^1,2

That panel concluded with Secretary Kennedy stating we need to do better, that withdrawing from SSRIs is significantly more difficult than withdrawing from heroin, and announcing that the Federal Government would begin combatting this. He laid out a multiagency national effort to educate health care providers in the dangers of SSRIs (particularly inappropriate prescribing), provide non-pharmaceutical mental health alternatives, and train providers in how to correctly taper off psychiatric medications (along with reimbursing them for doing this).¹

Since that May 4, 2026 announcement,¹ the multiagency effort has continued to advance rather than stall. HHS agencies issued the planned “Dear Colleague” letter emphasizing informed consent and non-drug options, CMS clarified reimbursement so clinicians can be paid for time spent helping patients taper, and SAMHSA began educational webinars and training modules on psychiatric medication risks, deprescribing, and alternatives. In early July a Technical Expert Panel of clinicians, patients, and professional societies met to shape formal clinical guidance on safe tapering of SSRIs and related drugs¹—the first such federal process focused on getting people off a major drug class rather than onto one.

Most remarkably, the profession is responding to these attempts—deprescribing has begun appearing as a formal topic at major psychiatry meetings, including sessions and consensus work at the American Society of Clinical Psychopharmacology’s 2026 gathering this week, where clinicians are now openly discussing when and how to taper patients off psychiatric medications rather than leaving them on them indefinitely.

Most remarkably, the profession is responding and deprescribing has moved into formal sessions at major psychiatry meetings. Shortly after RFK’s announcement, at the American Society of Clinical Psychopharmacology’s 2026 annual meeting, members of the society’s own Deprescribing Task Force held a detailed panel discussion on when and how clinicians should taper patients off psychiatric medications and on the importance of non-drug alternatives such as psychotherapy, lifestyle changes, and collaborative care rather than leaving patients on medication indefinitely:

Note: SSRIs are not the only psychiatric medication with major issues (e.g., there are many serious issues with benzodiazepines which are used for anxiety, insomnia and SSRI side effects).

Despite everything I’ve seen happen over the last four years, I still never believed something like this would happen. For context, in a period when the pharmaceutical industry had much less influence over the FDA, it took more than a decade of activism, leaks and Congressional hearings to simply get a warning label on SSRIs that they could cause suicide. This went miles beyond anything even the most optimistic activists had ever imagined, illustrating why it is so critical to shift the Overton window and make taboo subjects acceptable for regular discussion.

Additionally, it was quite notable that this entire effort goes contrary to the entire foundation of the medical system, as Secretary Kennedy’s ultimate goal was to decrease rather than increase pharmaceutical sales. As such, predictable criticisms of his completely reasonable approach emerged, such as this one from Senator Tina Smith (D-MN):

People I care a whole lot about rely on SSRIs to make their lives work. I don’t know where I would be without SSRIs. RFK Jr. can get his f***ing hands and crazy conspiracy theories out of our medicine cabinets”

Institutional Inertia

Most societies and institutions follow a similar trajectory: initially, they have to be as innovative and dedicated as possible to establish themselves. Once established, their focus shifts to maintaining their position rather than advancing their original mission (e.g., empires throughout history typically last seven generations because they all succumb to this cycle).

This shift commonly translates to the goal moving from solving the issue to providing an “indispensable service” by perpetually managing rather than fixing it. I’ve never forgotten one clip from a documentary²⁹ about soldiers injured by the (completely unnecessary) experimental anthrax vaccine, which much like the COVID vaccine, ended the careers of many promising soldiers despite widespread resistance against the shots.

Conclusion

While financial incentives are the most obvious driver for institutions to abandon their original mission, I (and many others throughout history) have come to believe that plain human complacency and the widespread aversion to change play an equally central (and perhaps even larger) role. Most people would simply rather master a comfortable routine and get paid for it than face the constant uncertainty required to actually solve difficult problems.

When I was much younger, I saw many instances of wealthy people being far less happy than their less fortunate peers and realized that money without purpose was often spiritual poison. I concluded that my purpose would be to learn as much about life as I could, and along that journey, find ways to help others. I gravitated towards medicine because very few things are as complex as the human body (or as meaningful when you can finally figure something out and help heal someone). I was quite shocked to discover not only that inquisitive medical students were the minority, but that the entire educational process was structured to gradually remove that mindset from trainees.

I’ve long wondered what the solution is. On one hand, I hold the idealistic perspective that if people are presented with a better way to practice medicine, supported in enacting it, and shown that they can find the passion for medicine they had long ago lost, they would eagerly embrace it. Conversely, from watching attempt after attempt to reform the medical system fail, I’ve adopted the more cynical perspective that medicine will only change if it faces genuine disruptive competition.

RFK’s approach on mental health hence offers an intriguing third (hybrid) option: provide physicians with a safe, supportive and guided framework to break from the existing mold, while simultaneously rekindling their interest in medicine by seeing the results this previously unconventional approach creates.

It’s hard to describe how much joy this brings me, not only because it offers a better path forward for medicine in general, but also because so many people I was close to have had their lives ruined by SSRIs, and it always felt like there was so much inertia behind the drugs that it would be impossible to ever shift that. We live in a very unusual time, and I want to thank each of you for helping to make what we are now seeing possible.

Author’s note: This is an abridged version of a longer article that goes into greater detail about the above points and the therapies the FDA suppressed to support the medical industry. That article and its additional references can be read here. Additionally, a companion article on the dangers of antidepressants and the natural treatments for depression can be read here, while another on the dangers of benzodiazepines and the natural treatments for anxiety can be read here.

To learn how other readers have benefitted from this publication and the community it has created, their feedback can be viewed here. Additionally, an index of all the articles published in the Forgotten Side of Medicine can be viewed here.

•Proper sleep is one of the most important things for our health, and when it is disrupted, many severe issues consistently emerge (e.g., heart attacks, psychiatric illnesses, car accidents, fatigue, diabetes, cognitive impairment, or dementia).

•Due to the importance of sleep and healthy sleep cycles not being understood, many counterproductive policies exist (e.g., sleep is essential for learning, yet educational programs like medical training sleep-deprive students, and schools wake adolescents up too early).

•One of these, daylight saving time, has been particularly problematic, so decades of attempts have been made to fix it. A law is currently advancing through Congress to do so, but it is mislabeled and will actually make things much worse—unless the public is awakened to what is actually in the bill.

•A similar issue exists with sleeping pills, which are labeled to “fix sleep” but in reality function as sleep-blocking sedatives that create a host of issues, making them among the most dangerous drugs on the market. Many people hence do not know that in 1964, a sleeping medication hit the market that was remarkably effective for a variety of conditions (including insomnia) and hence, unlike sleeping pills, profoundly improved the health of its recipients.

•Because it threatened so many different drug markets, once it reached America in 1990, the FDA, in collusion with the media, launched a ten-year takedown of it, which in many regards was almost identical to what they did to ivermectin. It was successful, and very few people are even aware that this drug exists or that many of the sleeping disorders we face are easily treatable.

•In this article, we will review the data that illustrates the harms of poor sleep, the common causes of poor sleep, and the most effective treatments we have found for sleeping disorders that are still available to the public.

One of the key themes I’ve tried to illustrate throughout this publication is that chronic illness has vastly increased over the last 150 years. Furthermore, again and again, doctors of each generation who observed each successive wave of that increase noticed that the treatments they learned at the start of their careers were much less effective for treating the patients they saw at the conclusion of their careers.

For example, here recent article, I discussed this collective loss of vitality in more detail, and listed what I believed were the primary culprits (which has been quite a challenge as there are now so many unhealthy things in our environment). In addition to listing the key culprits many are familiar with (e.g., the vaccination program has had a horrific impact on our health), I proposed another primary cause of chronic illness was modern life being highly disruptive to the natural rhythms the body depends upon for self-regulation and self-repair.

I believe this concept is relatively under appreciated within Modern Medicine (Allopathy) because, unlike almost any other medical system in history, our scientific approach to understanding the body does not recognize the concept of an innate “health” of the body, and as such, many Allopathic treatments are based around doing what they can to stabilize (e.g., in the ICU) or alter the body (e.g., through a surgery) and then hoping the body eventually works things out from there. In contrast, most other medical systems focus on what can be done to augment this innate capacity for recovery (health) and trust that through doing so, the present issue will resolve itself.

Note: typically the Allopathic approach (forcing the body to assume the state deemed necessary for the patient) is ideal to utilize for acute conditions, whereas the health-augmenting approach is what gets the best results for chronic conditions (something Allopathic medicine is well-known for struggling with).

At this point, I believe there are three reasons why we utilize the Allopathic model (discussed further here) rather than the health-focused model:

•The Allopathic model lends itself to creating a large number of perpetual treatments and diagnostic services for each person. Because this is so lucrative, it inevitably incentivizes its proponents to monopolize the entire medical market and healthcare practitioners to prioritize creating and utilizing its therapies.

•One of the fundamental psychological neuroses that exists in our culture is the need to control things and believe one knows exactly what’s happening. Because of this, our culture tends to default towards adopting methods and models that dominate nature rather than working in harmony with it and refusing to accept the inherent uncertainty that trusting in the path nature takes entails. Trusting in the health of the body to cure illness hence is opposed to the cultural philosophy Allopathy emerged from.

•Knowing if a therapy actually “works” is quite challenging, especially if the change can only be observed over a long time. Because of this, most medical research is based on whether an overt change can be consistently observed within a patient (e.g., lowering their blood pressure) and hoping that change will yield a long-term benefit rather than evaluating the long-term prognosis of people who receive a medical intervention. Because of this, medical research is strongly biased towards evaluating treatments that create an overt change (e.g., pharmaceutical drugs) rather than ones that augment the body’s health and lead toward a gradual recovery. Likewise, it is much easier to diagnose someone by their symptoms (and prescribe drugs to treat those symptoms) than it is to identify the root cause of their disease.

Self Regulating Cycles

The “health” of the body is highly dependent on the normal functioning of a variety of repeating cycles that occur within it. 

For example:

•Practicing slow, smooth, and expansive nasal breathing has a profound impact on one's health and longevity because breathing regulates many different critical physiologic functions.

• Normal exposure to sunlight serves a variety of critical functions for health, and once it is lost, one’s risk of dying doubles, and a variety of other conditions, such as depression set in (discussed further here).

•Beyond its many direct effects, light is also the master signal that sets the body's internal clock. The brain's central clock (the suprachiasmatic nucleus) reads the timing of light and dark through the eyes to decide when to release melatonin, when to raise cortisol, and when to run body temperature up or down. Crucially, morning light shifts this clock earlier and anchors it to the solar day, while light pushed into the evening shifts it later and pulls it out of sync. This is why when we get our light, not merely how much, turns out to matter enormously—which is why many biohackers and integrative physicians find restoring healthy light exposures throughout the day is one of the most important steps individuals can take to restore health (e.g., for metabolic health, insomnia or addressing psychiatric disorders—all of which is detailed here).

•People need regular physical activity, whereas once they become sedentary, a variety of significant health issues arise. In turn, we have all noticed individuals who make a point to walk daily have dramatically improved longevity.

•The mind is designed to alternate between periods of rest and activity. Yet, in our modern era, we have to think constantly, which often occurs in conjunction with significant stressors.

•Humans are meant to alternate between periods of eating and not eating (fasting) rather than continually eating (although the length of the ideal fasting period varies depending upon individual metabolism).

In short, many of the natural rhythms our bodies rely upon for self-regulation are heavily disrupted in modern society, which in turn results in a variety of consistent derangements to normal physiology that are now seen throughout the population.

Note: based on how much we frequently see people’s health improve once they restore their natural rhythms, I now believe their disruption is a primary cause of the widespread health dysfunction we see now.

The Importance of Sleep

Throughout my career, I’ve met countless integrative practitioners who believed that one of the most important things to do when treating a chronic illness is to normalize their patient’s sleep, as this cyclical process is one of the foundational methods the body uses to restore its health. Unfortunately, patients with chronic illnesses tend to have highly disrupted sleep cycles which are often very challenging to correct (e.g., insomnia is fairly common following a COVID-19 vaccine injury).

The important thing to understand about sleep is that it is a tightly regulated cycle which is both highly responsive to signals from the environment and also responsible for maintaining many of the other critical rhythms within the body. 

During sleep, the body cycles through different phases of sleep, each of which performs a critical function (e.g., deep NREM sleep heals the brain and allows toxins to drain out of it through the glymphatics, while REM sleep consolidates memories and allows one to process the emotions of their experiences). A typical sleep cycle goes as follows:

Note: since REM sleep predominates later at night, not sleeping long enough disproportionately disrupts REM sleep.

Matthew Walker is one of the world’s most vocal sleep researchers. In his book Why We Sleep, he argues that some of the most important functions of sleep include:

• Maintaining circulatory health and preventing heart attacks.

• Ensuring proper metabolic health (e.g., sleep deprivation causes hunger, diabetes, and weight gain).

• Ensuring proper immune function (e.g., you are more likely to get the flu if you are sleep deprived).

• Preventing cancer.

• Preventing fatigue and brain fog (which are typically the most overt symptoms we notice from sleep deprivation).

• Remaining awake and alert.

• Healing and restoring the brain (e.g., Alzheimer’s disease is strongly linked to poor sleep).

• Regulating hormonal function and maintaining fertility (e.g., sleep deprivation lowers testosterone levels).

• Processing emotional trauma (e.g., sleep is typically disrupted in PTSD, and PTSD often significantly improves once a drug is given which prevents PTSD from disrupting sleep).

• Integrating one’s sense of reality and accurately interpreting emotional signals from one’s environment.

• Sleep allows the rational mind (the prefrontal cortex) to control counterproductive impulses (e.g., emotional outbursts, or binge eating).

• Maintaining one’s mental health (e.g., it’s well known that a variety of psychiatric conditions, such as bipolar episodes are triggered by periods of sleep deprivation).

• Maintaining one’s sense of reality (e.g., prolonged sleep deprivation can trigger psychosis, and sleep is known to be disturbed in schizophrenic patients).

• Facilitating creativity (e.g., many paradigm-shifting discoveries came from dreams, Thomas Edison was well-known for using dreams to concoct his inventions, and when people are woken up from REM sleep, they often demonstrate a radically improved abstract problem solving capacity).

• Reducing one’s sensitivity to pain (whereas sleep deprivation increases it).

• Facilitating the long-term retention of memories.

I generally agree with this list (and will cite more studies supporting it later in the article). Likewise, I am sure many of you know firsthand how bad you feel when you are sleep deprived. Here are some of my personal experiences with sleep:

•I am fairly sensitive to the baselines within my body and I immediately notice that things within me go awry if I’ve had insufficient sleep. For example, I notice impairments in a variety of neurologic functions (e.g., I become significantly less able to tolerate the cold, my coordination worsens, and it’s much harder for me to maintain my focus in either an intellectual or social task).

•During periods of significant sleep deprivation, I will notice I have fleeting pain within the heart muscle and periodic arrhythmias. This is corroborated by a study that found one night of modest sleep reduction (as little as one or two hours) quickly increased one’s heart rate and blood pressure.

•During periods of insufficient sleep, I experience general mental fogginess that persists until I get a good night's sleep (and sometimes two).

•I have repeatedly observed that one’s recovery from a traumatic brain injury is highly dependent upon whether they get significant sleep after the incident, something I in part attribute to improved venous and lymphatic drainage (e.g., most glymphatic drainage occurs during NREM sleep and when you are lying down, there is much greater venous drainage than while standing). Likewise, research shows that a significant part of the gradual recovery from strokes occurs while sleeping.

•Before high school, I accidentally figured out how to use sleep to facilitate the long-term retention of information. This “lifehack” allowed me to memorize large volumes of information in very little time, and was the main reason I was able to get through the academic system while simultaneously teaching myself a separate curriculum (e.g., I spent more time studying things I was not assigned to learn during medical school than the material I was expected to learn). I mention this because the rules I discovered through experimenting with my “lifehack” matched what Walker’s own data demonstrated (although some of them also went beyond the scope of what Walker looked at).

Note: NREM sleep is responsible for eliminating unnecessary memories, whereas REM sleep processes the day's experiences and reinforces them into long-term memory.

•I tend to gain weight during periods of poor sleep.

Finally, Walker cites many examples of severe consequences occurring after prolonged periods of significant sleep deprivation (e.g., death or psychosis). I have also seen similar things occur. For instance, periodically I will have a patient who comes to me after engaging in an unsafe spiritual practice which involved staying awake for multiple days, after which they developed a permanent psychiatric or spiritual disorder (discussed further here).

Quantifying the Importance of Sleep

Any individual, no matter what age, will exhibit physical ailments, mental health instability, reduced alertness, and impaired memory if their sleep is chronically disrupted.

Even when controlling for factors such as body mass index, gender, race, history of smoking, frequency of exercise, and medications, the lower an older individual’s sleep efficiency score, the higher their mortality risk, the worse their physical health, the more likely they are to suffer from depression, the less energy they report, and the lower their cognitive function, typified by forgetfulness.

Furthermore, it is not only how long you sleep that matters, but how regularly. A 2024 UK Biobank study calculated sleep-regularity scores from over 10 million hours of accelerometer data in nearly 61,000 people and found that the most regular sleepers had a 20-48% lower risk of death from any cause, 16-39% lower cancer mortality, and 22-57% lower cardiometabolic mortality than the most irregular, and that sleep regularity predicted mortality better than sleep duration did.

Immunity

During periods of sleep deprivation, immune system function significantly decreases. Some of the consequences of this include:

Cancer—Numerous studies have found an association between sleep deprivation and cancer (while conversely, others have not—which I believe is due to the difficulty of properly studying this topic). Data supporting the link includes:

•In 2010, using all the available evidence, the WHO classified shift work (one of the most reliable ways to heavily disrupt natural sleep cycles and something many workers in the healthcare field experience) as a probable human carcinogen. This link is also supported by a 2023 review paper.

•An English study of 10,036 people over 50 found that poor sleep resulted in a 33-62% increased risk of cancer.

•A study of 23,620 Europeans found that those who slept for less than 6 hours per day were 43-46% more likely to develop cancer.

•When mice were intentionally sleep deprived, they experienced their speed and size of cancer growth roughly doubled, relative to the well-rested group.

•When healthy young men slept for four hours, compared to nights where they slept eight hours, there was a 72% decrease in their circulating natural killer cells (which are responsible for eliminating cancers).

•Two different studies found sleep apnea (which disrupts healthy sleep) caused a large increase in one’s risk of dying from cancer.

•Existing data shows that sleeping pills (which disrupt normal sleep) are associated with a large increase in one’s risk of cancer.

Note: the increased cancer risk from poor sleep may also be due to disturbances in the body’s normal release of melatonin or insufficient tissue oxygenation.

Infections—individuals who are sick are more likely to develop infections (e.g., most times I get sick are after periods of prolonged poor sleep). Some of the evidence to substantiate this common observation includes:

•Rats that are not allowed to sleep deteriorate and eventually die. When death occurs, it is typically due to sepsis from their gut bacteria.
Note: humans also can develop blood infections from their gut bacteria, but it typically requires circumstances that predispose them to it (e.g., on a central venous catheter as that provides a site bacteria in the blood stream can adhere to, or following a bowel rupture).

•A study determined how much sleep research subjects had had in the last week and then exposed them to the common cold virus (by squirting it in their nose). It found those who had averaged less than 7 hours of sleep were 2.94 times more likely to develop a cold than those who had more than 8 hours. It also found those with poor sleep efficiency (how much of the time bed you are asleep) were 5.50 times more likely to develop a cold than those with good sleep efficiency.

A study of 56,953 nurses found women who slept 5 hours or less were 1.7 times as likely to develop pneumonia over a 4-year period compared to those who slept 8 hours a night.

•A 2002 study compared 14 healthy young men who slept for 7.5-8.5 hours a day to 11 others who restricted their sleep to 4 hours a night for 6 days, after which all 25 received a flu shot. The sleep-deprived group was observed to produce less than half the vaccine antibodies seen in the control group, and this loss continued after normal sleep had been restored

Note: this association has also been seen with other influenza vaccines along with hepatitis A and B vaccines.

•When patients take sleeping medications that interfere with the sleep cycle, they have a significantly increased rate of infections (e.g., one large study found they increased one’s risk of pneumonia by 54% and one’s risk of dying from pneumonia by 32%).

Car Accidents

When people are sleep-deprived they have significant impairments in their attention (which a third of the population is particularly vulnerable to), their reflexes decrease, and they intermittently completely lose their awareness of the environment (e.g., because the brain engages in micro-sleeps). In areas of life where a split second can make all the difference, this can be highly consequential. For instance, when the rates of road accidents are looked at, “drowsy driving” has been found to be as dangerous as drunk driving.

For example, consider this study:

Note: for comparison, those with a blood alcohol content of 0.08 are 4X more likely to crash, whereas those with a BAC of 0.15 are at least 12X more likely to crash.

As teenagers have the greatest need for morning sleep (puberty delays their circadian rhythm, so they naturally become sleepy later at night and need to wake later in the morning), forcing them to school before dawn makes them chronically sleep-deprived. As such:

•A 2024 prospective study found delaying school start by one hour was associated with longer sleep, fewer insomnia symptoms, and improvements in depression, anxiety, stress, and life satisfaction seven months later.

•When a county in Kentucky made schools start an hour later, it resulted in a 16.5% reduction in car accidents with teen drivers (whereas during that period accidents increased by 7.8% in the rest of the state).

•When a Minnesota school district moved their schools’ start time from 7:30 to 8:00 a.m., depending on the district, there was a 6-70% reduction in traffic accidents in drivers 16-18 years of age (which averaged out to a 13% reduction).

•When a Wyoming school district moved their start time from 7:35 to 8:55 a.m., there was a 70% reduction in teen driver car accidents.

Similarly, the loss of focus and coordination created by sleep deprivation also often leads to sports injuries.

Heart Disease

There is a strong link between heart disease and sleep deprivation. For example:

•When the clock shifts forward during daylight saving time (forcing people to wake an hour earlier), a 24% increase in heart attacks was observed the following Monday in one Michigan study, while the fall shift back produced a 21% decrease. Additionally a recent 2024 meta-analysis across ten countries found shifting the clock forward in spring did increase heart attacks (though to a smaller degree, and the size of the increase varied across studies).
Note: the spring shift has also been observed to increase car accidents by 6%.

•This vulnerability to mistimed sleep also is not limited to the clock changes. "Social jet lag," the gap between your body clock on workdays versus free days, behaves like chronic, self-inflicted time-zone travel. A 2026 analysis of over 51,000 UK Biobank participants found those with two or more hours of social jet lag had a 30% higher risk of cardiovascular disease, an effect that persisted even in people getting a normal number of hours of sleep.

•A Harvard Study of 23,000 Greeks discovered that once they abandoned their afternoon naps (siestas), over a six year period, they had a 37% increased risk of dying from heart disease. In working men, this risk increased to 60%.

•A 2011 study of 474,684 people across the globe found that shortened sleep was associated with a 48% increased risk of developing or dying from heart disease over 7-25 years.
Note: this study also found excessive sleeping increased one’s risk for heart disease.

•A Japanese study of 2,282 male workers found that those who slept less than 6 hours a night were 4-5 times more likely to have a coronary event (e.g., a heart attack or prolonged chest pain requiring catheterization or surgery) attack than those who slept between 7-7.9 hours each night.
Note: another study found adults over 45 who sleep less than six hours a night are 200% more likely to have a stroke or heart attack compared to those who only sleep 7-8 hours a night.

•A 2019 study found those with high blood pressure or diabetes who slept less than six hours had twice the risk of dying from heart disease or stroke compared to people who slept six or more hours.

•Sleep deprivation damages the lining of the blood vessels and shuts off the release of growth hormone (which is critical for the health of that lining). This is important, since heart disease is largely due to damage in that lining.

•Insufficient sleep impairs the brain’s control of blood vessel function, hence raising blood pressure.

•Sleep loss increases the levels of the white blood cells, which causes inflammation within the blood vessels.
Note: many of the studies demonstrating the link between sleep deprivation and damage to the blood vessels can be found in the references for this article.

•A study of 23,620 Europeans found that those who slept for less than 6 hours per day were 41% more likely to experience strokes and 44-78% more likely to experience heart attacks.
Note: When I am sleep-deprived, my heart often doesn’t feel right (e.g., the heart muscle hurts or the beat is more irregular), and I hence find myself needing to do some type of meditative practice to compensate for this.

Diabetes and Obesity:

Diabetes is defined by too much sugar being in the bloodstream (e.g., because cells no longer respond to insulin telling them to absorb the sugar or because too much sugary food was eaten). In the case of insufficient sleep:

•Numerous studies (e.g., this one and this one) have found insufficient sleep increases the desire for sugary foods, and increases the tendency to overeat them, along with increasing the hormones that cause hunger.

•Numerous studies (e.g., this one and this one) have found that poor sleep elevates blood glucose levels and decreases insulin sensitivity.

•There is a direct relationship between the health of one’s gut microbiome and the health of one's sleep.

•A study of 23,620 Europeans found that those who slept for less than 6 hours per day were 6-41% more likely to be diabetic.
Note: each time I’ve cited this study, I’ve given a range for the percent increase. This is because after the initial (highest) value, they adjusted it for potential cofounders which weakened the association.

•A meta-analysis found insufficient sleep made children 89% more likely to be obese and adults 59% more likely to be obese.

Note: many of the conditions sleep deprivation worsens are considered to be interrelated (e.g., diabetes greatly increases one’s risk for heart disease, and both heart disease and diabetes greatly increase one’s risk for Alzheimer’s disease). Because of this, the effects of poor sleep are often much greater than initially appreciated.

Lastly, I want to note that since I published the original version of this article, many of these positions are no longer a 'fringe view' within mainstream science. Corroborating this, in October 2025, the American Heart Association issued a formal scientific statement concluding that circadian disruption has substantial effects on cardiometabolic health, that the regularity of sleep timing is as important as its duration, and that people with robust circadian rhythms had a 62% lower prevalence of cardiovascular disease than those with fragmented rhythms.
Note: a major reason I have always believed sleep deprivation is bad for you is because on days when I am forced to do so, I frequently noticed that in the morning when I wake up, my “heart hurts” in a manner that makes me concerned I may be increasing my risk for a cardiac episode down the road.

A Law That Does the Opposite of What People Think

Clock shifts have two major problems. They reduce the critical sleep people get by forcing them to wake an hour early, they jolt the body into a new circadian rhythm, and (as I showed in the previous section), these shifts, beyond being miserable to endure, create significant health problems across the population.

Because of this, I’ve long envied the people who live in Arizona and Hawaii, as both states do not practice daylight saving (which Arizona does to reduce the amount of extreme summer heat AC use and Hawaii does because it has steady light year round) and always hoped something could be done to eliminate it for the rest of us.

I was hence overjoyed to discover that Trump and Musk repeatedly spoke out about ending the clock changes, and more recently, that a law was advancing through Congress to do this. However, when I looked into the law, I found out that it was “controversial” and faced significant opposition from the medical community—leading to my immediate disappointment (but not surprise) they would take a position like this. Since I try to not rush to judgement, I looked into why they held that position I disagreed with, and realized to my surprise I’d actually been tricked into supporting something that went against my own interests (a remarkably common occurrence in politics).

In July, the House passed the Sunshine Protection Act (H.R. 139) by a vote of 308–117, it now sits in the Senate, and Trump has urged its passage. The problem? While it has been branded as “ending the clock change” (which everyone supports) it does so not by ending daylight saving (which again everyone supports), but rather by making it permanent—forcing us to wake up an hour earlier than our bodies want to every single day, putting us permanently out of sync with the natural clock (the sun) our bodies depend upon to stay aligned and guaranteeing dark winter mornings that persist for months. For example, under this law, in much of the country the winter sun wouldn’t rise until well after 8 a.m.; in some cities not until after 9, which, as one sleep physician noted, would mean children sitting in school for two hours before sunrise.
Note: given how much generational damage was already done to America’s children with masking and remote learning, I feel now is really the time we want to be enacting policies that help their education rather than undermine it.

As such, while I have major disagreements with many of the positions taken by major medical associations (e.g., vaccines), I am in complete agreement with the conclusion of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (and American Medical Association) that permanent standard time (0 daylight saving) is the healthiest choice, precisely because morning light anchors the circadian system while evening-shifted light disrupts it. Furthermore, it’s also worth highlighting that in 1974 the U.S. adopted permanent daylight saving time, and it proved so unpopular (e.g., with dark 9 a.m. sunrises and widely reported deaths of children walking to school in the dark— including eight in Florida in the first weeks) that within a few months, public support rapidly plummeted from 79% to 42% and Congress repealed the law within a year.

Why then is the worse option the one advancing? On the House floor, the bill’s champions sold it as a boon to the evening economy — more daylight for people to “attend concerts and sporting events, attract customers to their retail businesses” — and the committee hearing that fed the bill was focused on the tourism industry (e.g., the golf industry has openly celebrated it as a win). So once again, a policy that aligns with the businesses profiting (from after-work spending), is dressed up as relief from an annoyance, while every institution that depends on people functioning (in the morning) quietly absorbs the cost.
Note: since the tech industry is much larger than the hospitality industry, my hope is that they will recognize the impact on productivity this law will create (e.g., a major 2024 study of hour-by-hour GitHub activity from over 174,000 programmers worldwide found that the spring clock change produced a sharp drop in output in the early-morning working hours — a decline that, hour-for-hour, persisted into the second week after the switch), and then outmuscle the smaller industries pushing for permanent daylight saving.

Fortunately, this bill is far from a done deal, which means our voices have a critical opportunity to be heard. In the Senate, the effort to stop it is being led by Tom Cotton of Arkansas, the chamber’s No. 3 Republican (and normally a close Trump ally), who has vowed to block the bill and declared he will “always oppose” year-round daylight saving time. Furthermore, Senators from both parties in the Midwest and northern states (including Senate Majority Leader John Thune) have voiced their opposition to it as they are the most vulnerable to the winter sun rising later (e.g., 87% of Americans would see winter sunrises after 8:00 a.m., sending children to school and workers to their jobs in hours of darkness).

Fortunately, a competing measure, the Sunshine for Our Kids Act, would solve the actual problem by making standard time permanent. An amendment to replace the Sunshine Protection Act with that language was offered in the Rules Committee and defeated only on a party-line 4–6 vote, while the procedural rule that blocked any such change on the House floor itself passed by the narrowest of margins (215–211)—again showing that things are close enough that your voice can still make a difference in tipping public policy toward health.
Note: options also exist to address this on a state level, but outside of my state, I have no idea on the legislative feasibility of this (so I favor the national option unless that becomes impossible and can only be achieved by so many states not practicing daylight saving it needs to become a national standard).

In short, I rarely ask readers to contact their representatives. But since this bill is still in the Senate and close, if you've reached the same conclusion I have (or wish to help people living in the Midwest), please consider contacting your senators (which you can do here, ideally by phone tomorrow) and ask them to oppose permanent daylight saving and make standard time permanent instead. Likewise, if you have additional time, it will likely be prudent to contact your house representative so the correct bill can advance forward.

Learning:

One of the most important functions of sleep is that it determines which memories from the previous day should be retained (the rest are “eliminated” during NREM sleep) and then integrates them into long-term memory during REM sleep (e.g., see this study and this review article). Furthermore, it also integrates tasks the body had difficulty with during the day. For example, consider this anecdote which was shared with Walker:

As a pianist,” he said, “I have an experience that seems far too frequent to be chance. I will be practicing a particular piece, even late into the evening, and I cannot seem to master it. Often, I make the same mistake at the same place in a particular movement. I go to bed frustrated. But when I wake up the next morning and sit back down at the piano, I can just play, perfectly.”

Walker has focused on this area and conducted a large volume of research (which can be found here) that demonstrates sleep is essential for all aspects of learning. For example:

•Numerous studies (e.g., this one,  this one) have demonstrated that sleep is responsible for developing fine motor skills (e.g., being able to quickly and smoothly perform a task that requires significant coordination) and that the integration is facilitated by NREM 2 sleep (especially what occurs in the last two hours of an eight-hour night of sleep).

•Numerous studies (e.g., this one) have demonstrated that sleep transfers short-term memory to long-term memory, while sleep deprivation has been repeatedly shown to impair retention.

•Sleep plays a key role in episodic memory (one’s memory of events that happened that day) and in memory consolidation.
Note: ecstasy and cocaine usage are associated with poor sleep and impaired memory.

•Prolonged wake time impairs learning, while healthy sleep restores it.

•Impaired sleep has been shown to account for the difficulty older adults often have retaining new memories.

It is thus unfortunate that the academic system (and particularly medical training) instead encourages periods of prolonged sleep deprivation.

Mental Health:

There is a longstanding association between psychiatric disorders and impaired sleep (e.g., as mentioned above, schizophrenia and psychosis are linked to poor sleep) that goes in both directions (psychiatric illness disrupts sleep, but disrupted sleep and unstable circadian timing also drive emotional dysregulation, and in more cases than I and many colleagues can count were the trigger for significant psychiatric episodes).
Note: reduced sleep can tip a bipolar patient into mania, and this is reliable enough that sleep deprivation has been used experimentally to induce mania in bipolar patients.

In turn, my more integrative psychiatrist colleagues consider optimizing sleep to be one of the most important things they can do for their patients. To illustrate:

•Sleep deprivation increases emotional reactivity and impulsivity, and engaging in risky activity (e.g., gambling).  Conversely, healthy sleep decreases one’s reactivity to traumatic experiences.

•Poor sleep has been shown to significantly increase one’s autonomic response to unpleasant things in their environment (e.g., they become more easily upset by them).

•Sleep helps calibrate an appropriate degree of reactivity to stimuli in one’s environment.

•Studies (e.g., this one and this one) show that poor sleep predisposes one to anxiety.

•Sleep loss makes individuals less able to accurately interpret non-verbal expressions, (e.g., see this study), which causes them to feel more threatened by those they encounter) and amplifies basic emotional reactivity, thereby increasing negative mood states (e.g., anxiety, depression, suicidality).  Conversely, healthy sleep improves positive mood states and decreases emotional reactivity.

•Sleep loss has been shown to cause social withdrawal and loneliness.

•Sleep loss makes individuals less willing to help others the next day, and when the daylight saving transition occurs, donations to charity decrease.
Note: one of the interesting things I learned from Walker is that Arizona and Hawaii don’t follow daylight saving (which explains why their timezone “changes” half of the year). In hindsight, it would have been nice to have lived in one of those states while I was in school because I always noticed I did not feel good whenever daylight saving began.

•It is well known in psychiatry that bipolar episodes are triggered by sleep deprivation. One study that artificially created this situation found impaired sleep worsened a patient’s bipolar disorder.

Note: individuals with psychiatric disorders also frequently have impaired memory retention (another symptom of sleep deprivation) which may prevent them from retaining the lessons of psychotherapy sessions.

Cognitive Impairment:

As many of you know from personal experience, sleep loss is well recognized to cause brain fog and cognitive impairment (e.g., this study demonstrated sleep depriving test subjects worsened their auditory processing and responses on neurophysiological tests).

This process is particularly consequential in the elderly (who are widely recognized to be more susceptible to memory loss and cognitive impairment), and likewise more likely to suffer from impaired sleep as they age.

As this review paper shows, a significant body of research hence ties poor sleep (especially if chronic) to dementia. For example:

•A study compared 105 older women with sleep-disordered breathing (which impairs sleep) to 193 without it and found that sleep-impaired individuals were 71% more likely to develop mild cognitive impairment and 104% more likely to develop dementia.

•In one study, 737 older adults initially without dementia received annual measurements of their sleep quality, their cognition, and the presence of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). After 6 years, individuals with poor sleep (high sleep fragmentation) were found to have a 22% increase in their risk of AD, with those who had the worst sleep fragmentation having a 50% increase.

•A study recruited 346 patients with normal cognition, averaging 75.9 years of age, 80 of whom had insomnia.  It found those with insomnia were 139% more likely to develop AD.

•A 2026 study drawing on the long-running cohort tracked over 2,000 dementia-free older adults (average age 79) using wearable monitors, and found that those with weaker, more fragmented circadian rest-activity rhythms, and a later daily activity peak, were significantly more likely to develop dementia, independent of how much they slept.

•Sleeping disorders are very common in AD. For example one study found that the seven most common sleeping disorders occurred in between 50.0% to 65.5% of those with AD (which was 2.0-4.46 as frequent as that seen in patients without AD).

Furthermore, many studies have directly tied poor sleep to the pathogenesis of AD. For example:

•A remarkable 2020 study of 32 individuals without cognitive impairment who received an average of 6.1 months of sleep assessments and 3.7 years of PET scans (a non-invasive way to measure Alzheimer’s plaques in the brain) found that disrupted sleep caused an accelerated accumulation of Alzheimer’s plaque and forecasted the development of dementia. These results are very important as most adults at this stage do not recognize the damage accumulating in their brain which will inevitably lead to dementia.
Note: one of the unfortunate things about AD is that the presence of one of the misshapen proteins found in it (tau) has been linked to impaired sleep quality, while the other, β-amyloid has been linked to losing the ability to recognize one is suffering from impaired sleep. These facts, combined with the 2020 study help to illustrate why AD can be so insidious and seem inevitable once it’s snuck up on someone. Likewise, in the same way poor sleep impairs the retention of long-term memory, AD disease plaques do as well—all of which illustrates how many chronic illnesses have a “momentum” and are much easier to cure the earlier in their progression you try to shift one’s momentum back towards health.

•Deep sleep has been shown to mitigate the cognitive impairment created by Alzheimer’s plaques.

•The only method that has ever been proven to reverse AD (discussed further here) places a heavy emphasis on restoring healthy sleep.

It is thus remarkable that sleep is rarely considered in the field of AD, given that AD is one of the most costly diseases in society. Unfortunately, like many other areas in medicine, all of that knowledge has been buried, and for decades we’ve instead spent billions of dollars each year on (flawed) research to develop incredibly expensive drugs which, at best, may slow the progression of AD (which simultaneously have a wide range of severe side effects such as causing brain swelling and brain bleeding in 41% of those who receive them).

Note: this article only scratches the surface of the research on the benefits of sleep (e.g., women sleeping less than 8 hours have a 17% reduction in follicular-stimulating hormone, are 30% more likely to have abnormal menstrual cycles, and may have reduced fertility, relative to those obtaining sufficient sleep). However, I hope what I presented here sufficed to make the point that sleep is very important.

The Sleep Crisis

“Adequate sleep” in turn requires one to achieve all of the following:

•Have enough time set aside to sleep.

•Being able to fall asleep once you are in bed (as if you lie awake for 2 hours of a “8” hour sleep, you are only actually sleeping for 6 hours).

•Making sure your brain actually enters each phase of sleep once you are no longer awake.

That said, it should be noted significant debate exists as to exactly what constitutes enough sleep. It is generally agreed that normal adults need between 7-9 hours a night (whereas many, myself included believe 7 hours a night is too low). Furthermore, the amount humans need varies with age and to some extent by individual.

Existing data shows the developing infant sleeps, and according to Walker, at approximately 23 weeks of pregnancy, the brain has developed the capacity for NREM and REM sleep (he argues the “kicks” a fetus produces are a product of the sleep paralysis circuits for REM sleep not yet being developed). At this stage, the infant initially spends roughly 6 hours in REM sleep, 6 in NREM, and 12 hours in something in between them, while later in the third trimester, the fetus begins to be awake for 2-3 hours a day, and in the last two weeks, REM significantly increases (9 hours in the second to last week and 12 hours in the final week).

Since sleep is crucial for the development of the brain, increased needs persist through childhood (i.e., between 4-12 months they need 12-16 hours, between 1-2 years they need 11-14 hours, between 3-5 years they need 10-13 hours, between 6-12 years they need 9-12 hours and between 13-18 years, they need 8-10 hours).
Note: early morning waking should not automatically be read as proof that a person needs less sleep or is simply a "morning person." What matters is whether they wake refreshed after an adequate sleep opportunity, or wake prematurely (tired, irritable, anxious, unable to fall back asleep), as that can reflect an advanced circadian phase, depression or anxiety, alcohol or medication effects, sleep-disordered breathing, pain, reflux, nocturia, restless legs, environmental light, or simply a bedtime that's too early for that person's sleep drive. In children especially, fragmented sleep from an unrecognized airway problem often shows up not as daytime sleepiness but as inattention, hyperactivity, or declining school performance.
Note: these same disruptions are often involved in a variety of debilitating adult chronic illnesses (e.g., fibromyalgia, or as I showed above Alzheimer’s).

Lastly, the timing problem is not the same at every age. Young children often become sleepy early and may naturally wake early, whereas puberty produces a biological delay in the circadian rhythm (teenagers tend to become sleepy later at night and need to sleep later in the morning). So, “waking up early” can be healthy for one child, developmentally inappropriate for another, and a sign of fragmented or insufficient sleep in a third, again illustrating the perils of forcing everyone to follow a single homogenous standard.

Sadly, regardless of the metric you use for adequate sleep, it’s clear we get nowhere near that much sleep, which in turn likely plays a key role in the widespread illness throughout our society.

For example, a Gallup poll, released April 15, found 57% of Americans say they would feel better if they could get more sleep, while only 42% say they are getting as much sleep as they need. More concerningly, these numbers have continued to worsen as the years go by (which I believe is a symptom of the fact we are being forced into a feudalistic economy that overworks everyone so they can never challenge the system).

Furthermore:

•35.5% of American adults report they sleep less than 7 hours per night.
Note: this figure varies greatly by state (e.g., Hawaii is the highest at 45.6%).

•Roughly 30% of adults have symptoms of insomnia, with 14.5% experiencing insomnia all (or most days) of the month and 10% having insomnia which impacts their daily activities.

•13.5% of adults report feeling tired or exhausted most days.
Note: according to Walker, ten days of deficient sleep (6 hours a night) produced an equivalent impairment to that seen after one stays awake for 24 hours). Sadly, both of these are frequently seen in our society (e.g., in university students and medical trainees).

•Sleep apnea (which significantly impairs the sleep cycle) impacts 9%–38% of the general population.

•Poor sleep (e.g., insomnia, early awakening, or not feeling rested) is even more common in the elderly (who have the greatest need for sleep). For example, a 1995 study of over 9,000 individuals 65 or older found less than 20% rarely or never had sleep issues, while more than 50% reported sleep issues most of the time (e.g., 23-34% had symptoms of insomnia). That study in turn found that many of the consequences of poor sleep discussed earlier were elevated in those with sleep disturbances. More current estimates find that 30-48% of the elderly experience symptoms of insomnia and between 12-20% have insomnia disorders.

•As we age, we become less able to spend all of our time in bed being asleep:

•Likewise, we become more likely to awaken multiple times each night (e.g., due to age-related incontinence):

Given that the elderly are the most vulnerable to deficient sleep (and the least able to initiate the restorative sleep cycle while sleeping due to things like the development of AD), these changes with age are quite unfortunate and again illustrate why healthy sleep should be prioritized.

Sleep Disruptors

Unfortunately, in addition to us not having enough time to sleep, a variety of things in our environment either disrupt our ability to stay asleep, or more insidiously, our brain’s ability to perform the vital functions of healthy sleep while we are sleeping.

Some of the biggest offenders include:

•Modern technology has created a variety of unnatural signals from the environment which interfere with the body’s normal regulation of sleep.
Note: undoing this is the basis of using sleep hygiene practices to fix the sleep cycle, which will be discussed later in the article.

•Habitually consuming long-acting substances that block our ability to sleep (e.g., caffeine or alcohol).

•A wide range of commonly used pharmaceuticals being heavily disruptive to sleep (e.g., decongestants, asthma inhalers, common blood pressure and diabetes medications, antidepressants, opioids, prostate medications, stimulants, corticosteroids).
Note: many pharmaceuticals are neurotoxic and sleep disruption is a common consequence of being injured by them. One of the most notorious examples was the 2009 (emergency) swine flu vaccine causing a significant number of its recipients to develop narcolepsy (one of the worst sleep disorders), particularly since this link was later acknowledged by the medical authorities.

Sleeping Pills

Because of the immense problems our society faces from sleeping issues, a massive “treatment” market exists. Unfortunately, like many things in modern medicine, the more money we put into the problem, the worse it becomes. To illustrate:

Despite a nearly $65 billion a year (and growing) sleep aid market, 50-70 million American’s suffer from sleep disorders and many more experience the physical and mental toll lack of sleep can have on the body and brain on any given day. Globally, the “sleep economy,” which includes everything from beds and pillows to medical devices, rings in at a whopping $432 billion a year. In 2020 alone more than half of Americans say their sleep worsened due to the pandemic, and 76% of American’s admitted to purchasing a sleep aid to help them fall asleep, stay asleep or improve the quality of sleep had at night.

The entire scam comes down to the fact most sleeping pills are sedatives, not sleep aids. What this means is that once you take them, you are no longer conscious, but since this is done through sedating the brain, its ability to initiate restorative sleep functions is greatly impaired. As a result, people who take sleeping pills effectively have greatly reduced sleep, and in turn, are both tired throughout the day (because they did not have a restorative night of sleep) and are at high risk of developing a wide range of health issues associated with poor sleep.

For example, one study found people who used sleeping pills were twice as likely to die as those who did not (and three times more likely if they were daily users). Worse still, another study that compared 10,529 sleeping pill users to 23,676 controls, found that over the course of 2.5 years, the sleeping pill users (depending on how many pills they took) were 3.6-5.4 times more likely to die, and for those who took at least 18 pills a year, they had a 7-99% increased risk of dying from cancer. This in turn, led the authors to conclude that in 2010, prescription sleeping pills “may have been associated with 320,000-507,000 excess deaths within the USA alone.”

Most prescription sleeping pills (e.g., Ambien) are classified as “sedative hypnotics” and are fairly similar to the benzodiazepine medications commonly used for anxiety (e.g., Valium). The problem with these drugs is that they are highly addictive, but unfortunately, despite the fact they are only supposed to be used in the short term, individuals typically end up being permanently on them (at which point they can’t withdraw from them). Conversely, over the counter sleeping pills (e.g., Benadryl or Unisom) are typically antihistamines, and unfortunately are also sedatives that damage the sleep cycle (e.g., I once had a medical student who habitually used Unisom and then had to drop out because they gradually became psychotic). For those interested, the profound dangers of benzodiazepines (and related drugs) is discussed in more detail here.

Note: alcohol has a similar mechanism to benzodiazapines, which may explain why it is an addictive sedative that inhibits the sleep cycle.

Remarkably, despite sleeping pills being the typical treatment for insomnia, the actual first-line treatment for chronic insomnia recommended by sleep-medicine guidelines is cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia.

Gamma-Hydroxy-Butarate

While most of the sleeping medications are unsafe and ineffective drugs that are best avoided, one actually worked and frequently produced miraculous results. In turn, I know of numerous cases where my colleagues prescribed it to chronically ill patients with challenging conditions (e.g., non-restorative sleep is one of the classic symptoms of fibromyalgia) who almost completely recovered once they received it.

That drug, originally developed in 1874, is gamma-hydroxybutyrate, and in 1964, it began to be marketed in Europe as an intravenous anesthetic but never quite caught on due to its unusual properties. On one hand, it is an ideal anesthetic as:

•It slows the heart rate without creating a loss of blood pressure.
•It doesn’t irritate the veins.
•It doesn’t suppress the respiratory centers in the brain.
•It relaxes the muscles.
•It induces sleep without reducing oxygen consumption.
•It protects tissue from injury due to blood loss (e.g., during hemorrhagic shock) or from reperfusion injuries after a temporary loss of the blood supply.
•It permits an easy reduction and maintenance of the body temperature and reduces the metabolic demands of the brain.

Conversely:

•Its duration of action is somewhat unpredictable.
•The central nervous system remains active (and hence the autonomic nervous system will regulate the body in response to external stimuli).
•In adults (not children) it is insufficient for total anesthesia and hence normally needs to be used with another anesthetic (which is given at a lower dose).

Because of this, while it was much safer than a typical anesthetic, it was not practical to use during surgeries and was much more appropriate for use in the intensive care unit.

Over the decades that followed, a wide range of research was done on this substance, where it was discovered it had a variety of other extraordinary properties and very low toxicity (e.g., it metabolized to succinate and then water within the mitochondria, its LD50 was 4.28 grams/kg, no deaths have ever been conclusively attributed to it, and when humans have been kept asleep for 24 hours on it or rats for 5 days, they recover immediately once it wears off).

The most apparent benefit was that it was a powerful (and consistent) sleep aid that immediately put the recipient deep into the sleep cycle, resulting in the benefits of those cycles being restored for many who had previously lost them, and the individual waking up feeling completely refreshed and energized. Furthermore, it frequently could allow people to feel fully refreshed after just a 3-4 hour sleep, was unlikely to be addictive, and did not suppress the reticular activation system.
Note: while its benefits have been clearly demonstrated for those with sleeping disorders, its effect on the sleep of relatively healthy individuals is much less understood.

As scientists (and then members of the public) began exploring the drug, according to Ward Dean MD (who provided extensive references to support his claims), they found a variety of benefits from GHB including:

•It dramatically increased the levels of growth hormone (e.g., 2.4 grams given intravenously, in 30 minutes, caused a 16-fold increase in GH levels). As growth hormone heals and repairs the body (but greatly declines with age), this resulted in many previously frail elderly patients on GHB having significantly increased strength, stamina, muscle mass, and function, while in younger patients, significant improvement was seen in their healing from musculoskeletal injuries.
Note: I know one doctor who gave GHB to their adolescent son to increase his growth, and it did appear to work (and it did not have any side effects).

•It produced remarkable results in the treatment of a variety of addictions, particularly opioids (e.g., see this study), alcohol (e.g., see the results of this study), and benzodiazepines, along with helping mitigate the withdrawals from each of these substances. Conversely, GHB was not addictive.

•It increased dopamine levels within the substancia niagra (thereby counteracting the effects of Parkinson’s disease).

•It aided childbirth by relaxing the mother, dilating the cervix, and protecting the fetus from respiratory depression (which for context revolutionizes labor and delivery).

•It had a variety of aphrodisiac effects, such as making people much more comfortable with sexual intimacy, dramatically increasing their sensitivity to touching or being touched, improving male erectile capacity and premature ejaculation, and increasing capacity for female orgasms.

•Helping individuals address subjects they are otherwise inhibited from exploring during therapy (thereby allowing therapeutic breakthroughs to happen). GHB was also found to be particularly helpful for couples therapy.

•Having a disinhibiting effect like alcohol but making individuals friendly rather than aggressive.

•It temporarily helped with anxiety but without many of the side effects seen with benzodiazepines. Similarly, in France, it was frequently used by students who had to pass an exam or give a public presentation.

Given these remarkable benefits and the decades of research supporting its use, why has no one ever heard of it?

The Ivermectin of Sleep Medicines

In this publication, I have tried to illustrate how frequently the medical industry recruits the public relations (PR) industry to concoct a campaign that guarantees them lucrative profits at the expense of everyone’s health.

For example, I recently highlighted how the dermatology profession rebranded themselves as skin-cancer fighters (an incredibly lucrative business that transformed dermatology from one of the least desirable to the most desirable specialities) through spreading as much hysteria about skin cancer and the dangers of sunlight as possible. This was really bad because sunlight is essential for physical and mental health (e.g., avoiding it doubles one’s risk of dying), and a lack of sunlight causes rather than prevents the deadliest skin cancer (which is why billions of dollars later, skin cancer deaths are relatively unchanged).

Likewise, as many of you know, throughout COVID-19, the FDA covered up the clear and unambiguous evidence demonstrating the benefits of ivermectin for COVID-19, creating a hysteria about it (and hydroxychloroquine’s) dangers despite them both being incredibly safe drugs, as well as doing all that it could to block ivermectin from being used in the USA (which was later defeated in court).

In the case of GHB, in the early 1990s, it began entering the USA as a supplement (largely due to bodybuilders recognizing the value of it increasing growth hormone in the body). Before long, the FDA decided they needed to stop it, and became very interested in publicizing the adverse reactions that occurred to it, and in no time, discovered 57 calls to poison control about it (which the CDC heavily publicized), including 9 which resulted in ICU admissions (but 0 of which are fatal). This in turn, is very similar to the epidemic of poison control calls for ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine deaths we saw throughout COVID-19 (all of which were later shown to be a hoax—for example, the photos of people lining up at the ERs that were supposedly overloaded with ivermectin poisonings were actually old images of individuals lining up for COVID-19 vaccines).

Note: one of the unusual properties of GHB is its short half-life (it typically wears off in 3-4 hours). Because of this, individuals who take a high dose of it (especially if it is combined with alcohol or a benzodiazepine) will fall into a deep slumber with slowed but expansive breathing they cannot be woken from until the drug wears off (which can be mistaken for a coma). In turn, there were many cases of individuals passing out on GHB, and then being brought to the hospital by panicked relatives and then briefly intubated (by doctors who did not understand what was going on and following protocols intubated a non-responsive patient), including instances where someone woke up fully alert as they were about to be intubated and leaving (along with at least one case where they were then forcefully intubated).

In response to this “epidemic” the FDA decided to release an urgent press release.

Then on the basis of the authority “bestowed” by this press release (which was full of deceptive inaccuracies), the FDA banned GHB in the country, threatened compounding pharmacies into no longer supplying it, and began raiding people who were supplying it (which they did not have the legal authority to do). Many of these arrests eventually went to the courts, where the FDA engaged in a series of highly unscrupulous tactics. For example, when attempting to prosecute individuals for supplying GHB, they argued that there was “no evidence” GHB had any valid use or had any evidence of safety, but simultaneously, they refused to let the courts admit the decades of evidence arguing otherwise or the fact there were 15 investigational new drug applications which had been submitted to them for GHB (each of which indicated a lot of that evidence actually existed). For reference, those INDs were for:

Note: this is similar to how there was “no evidence” ivermectin worked for COVID-19 despite the fact dozens of trials had proven otherwise.

Because of how egregious the FDA's tactics were (e.g., prosecutorial misconduct, withholding evidence from the defense, lacking a legal basis for the prosecution, entrapment, or illegal searches and seizures), the higher courts gradually sided with the defendants and began overturning the convictions. The FDA in turn, switched to trying to persuade the state legislatures to outlaw GHB (as politically it was not possible for the FDA to do so at a Federal level).

Note: at the same time this was happening, the FDA was also silencing thousands of SSRI antidepressant victims (the recently released Prozac was one of the most complained about drugs in FDA history), silencing its own employees who tried to speak out, producing fraudulent research to protect the drugs and defying Congressional oversight of their conduct with the SSRIs. I previously wrote an article documenting that saga because I felt it represented one of the best case precedents to predict what they will do with the COVID vaccines. Likewise, as I’ve shown throughout the DMSO series, despite clear evidence DMSO safely treated a variety of debilitating conditions medicine could not help, the FDA fought for decades (including against Congress) to keep DMSO away from the public (and ultimately only “lost” because of a law legalizing all natural supplements).

As Rohypnol (“Roofies”) had recently entered the United States and fear was beginning to build over its use as a date rape drug (since it both made the recipient unable to resist the assault and likely to forget it), the fear of Roofies was juxtaposed onto GHB. In turn, the media began trumpeting that America was facing a wave of rapes from a silent, odorless, and colorless drug that made one helpless to resist or even remember sexual assault. In parallel, these (likely focus-group tested) words began flooding those stories about GHB: "dangerous," "potentially lethal," "hallucinogenic," "addictive," "illegal," "designer," "date-rape" "drug."

Before long, a few young women were identified who had been date-raped while on GHB and then died afterward from the drug's side effects. The media did all that it could to fan the hysteria (e.g., see this Time article or this San Francisco Chronicle article or consider these patently false quotes):

A lot of people [GHB users] have heart attacks, go into cardiac arrest." —Sgt. Michael Lewis, Atlanta Police.

• "GHB, the new back-room drug on the party scene, can kill without warning." — Steven Frazier, CNN

• "GHB slows breathing — cuts off oxygen. A blackout can be brief —can be forever." —David Lewis, CNN

Note: one of the most extraordinary ones was the Tennessee Bar Association publishing an alleged affidavit from the medical examiner who performed Elvis’s autopsy claiming GHB killed him (although once questioned, they stated it was just an “academic exercise”).

Using this fear campaign, the FDA gradually convinced individual states to ban it, and in 2000, in honor of two GHB victims, Congress passed the “Hillory J. Farias and Samantha Reid Date-Rape Drug Prohibition Act of 2000." That law made GHB a Schedule I drug (whereas cocaine for example, is a Schedule II drug), thereby bypassing the protections GHB had from the 1994 DSHEA Act (as GHB is produced naturally within the body and found in small amounts within meat and wine). Remarkably however, the (“emergency”) law also included a special exemption for a pharmaceutical preparation of GHB, which was instead made a schedule III drug (which violates the entire basis for the scheduling as something can only be a schedule I if there is no accepted medical use for it).
Note: this scheduling also made it very difficult to conduct future research on GHB.

Most remarkably:

In Hawaii, GHB was legally classed as a date-rape drug, while Rohypnol® (a highly potent, commercial benzodiazepine drug, similar to Valium and Xanax) was quietly dropped from the legislation at the last minute, apparently due to pressure applied by its manufacturer, Hoffman-La Roche. This occurred despite the fact that Rohypnol is widely acknowledged to be used for date-rape purposes (It is far more potent than GHB, and because a smaller dose is required, far easier to slip into someone's drink unnoticed.) With no equivalent force willing to stand up for GHB, it never stood a chance.

Note: Rohypnol (which was never brought to the market in America but was in many other countries), thanks to Roche remains a schedule IV drug (like Valium and Xanax) and is not mentioned in any of the state or Federal anti-date rape drug laws that swept through America.

In looking at these events, there are three important things to take note of.

First, the entire epidemic was made up of:

•A safety database (used for monitoring these types of things) found GHB accounted for less than 0.1% of the drugs mentioned in Emergency Department reports.

•In 2006, after the English Police examined 120 cases of sexual assault, they determined 119 of them involved alcohol (often at dangerous levels), 57 had taken an illegal or controlled prescription drug (e.g., cocaine), and only 2 had received GHB (which may or may not have played a role in the assault).

•A 2010 literature review determined that GHB had been detected in between 0.2-4.4% of reported sexual assaults and hence was not causing the rape epidemic the media’s hysteria had suggested.

Note: the most detailed account I have found about the (tiny) GHB epidemic can be found here.

Second, it didn’t make any sense as:

•GHB was very salty and hence easy to taste (rather than being a stealth rape drug), especially at a dose which would be sufficient to sedate someone.

•If GHB actually was an effective date rape drug, the last thing you would want to do would be to widely advertise it to potential rapists.

•Most of the claims made about GHB overtly contradicted the decades of research on it (e.g., minor muscle movements made on the drug were labeled as seizures despite EEG studies repeatedly showing they were not accompanied by seizure motion in the brain, while the brief deep sleep it caused was labeled as “comas”).

•In lieu of evidence, the media unquestionably repeated the government’s talking points.

Finally, each widely publicized GHB victim (none of whom were ever sexually assaulted) had a story inconsistent with GHB being their cause of death alongside a clear cause of death besides GHB (e.g., a blood clot in the heart and a family history of fatal heart defects or accidentally being dropped on the head while asleep). This includes the two date-rape victims the act that outlawed GHB was named after. Likewise, the small number of case reports that were used to portray GHB as dangerous presented a very weak case that it was. In contrast, large numbers of victims exist for many of the lucrative drugs on the market, but we never hear about them because their manufacturers sponsor both the media and political class. Consider for example a recent segment Comedia Jimmy Dore did on the GHB story:

Note: much of the previous two sections were sourced from the book Dean Ward M.D. wrote about GHB, some of which can be found in a shorter statement he made.

The Aftermath

Because of this debacle, it became much more difficult to get GHB, and many leading integrative doctors at the time were disgusted with the FDA as they saw how much GHB benefitted their patients and treated a variety of immensely challenging illnesses. For example, one of my (somewhat-renowned) colleagues is fairly left-wing and reflexively denies the notion any type of coordinated conspiracy could ever exist, but even he is outraged over what happened with GHB and believes the stories of GHB rapes were a complete hoax.

In my own case, I periodically have patients request it from me, and I sadly have to explain that were I to help them obtain it, I could get in far more trouble than if I were to become a humble cocaine dealer. However, while GHB was outlawed, the pharmaceutical preparation, sodium oxybate (Xyrem) was not.
Note: other salts of GHB (e.g., potassium oxybate) with slightly differing properties also exist.

Unfortunately, due to the unique situation its dual classification has provided it, Xyrem is extremely expensive (it costs about $60,000 to $100,000 a year for it), most doctors can’t prescribe it, and it is very difficult to qualify for a prescription of it as one must meet the criteria for severe narcolepsy. Nonetheless, because of how life changing it is, people still choose to go through the hassle of getting it and then paying for it out of pocket (as insurance often won’t cover it).
Note: I do not know of any other easy to synthesize (and over a century old) pharmaceutical drugs which commands an equivalent price. For example, while cocaine is an expensive drug, Xyrem costs significantly more than a typical addict spends on it in a year.

Consider this email, for example, from a reader who was in the tiny minority of patients who actually got a prescription for it:

I’m an EDS patient who was catastrophically injured in 2010 by two weeks of Cytomel. I stopped sleeping naturally and have never regained the ability.

Over these years the sedatives have multiplied, and now no class of drug will put me to sleep.

Desperate, I tried the Xyrem in the garage I’d feared. Prescribed by a terribly kind doctor who understood (now retired), it is a miracle. Real sleep every night, as good as my natural sleep 15 years ago.

I have 1 month of this medication. I am an approved patient in the Xyways registry. Any approved prescriber could fax a script for me

[3g 2x/night] and I would have it within a week. But for all my looking, I cannot find such a person.

When this month ends, I cannot/will not go back to the the horror of not sleeping. I loved my life when I slept and could be joyful and productive once again. But for want of someone to prescribe...

Please, please help.

Since strong evidence exists to support the use of GHB for many other conditions (e.g., it's a safe and highly effective treatment for alcohol addiction and data shows it cures spasmodic dysphonia—the condition affecting RFK Jr.’s voice), many people have tried to get the FDA to change their position that it’s just a “dangerous date-rape drug” over the years. Consider for a moment what happened with fibromyalgia (a condition which is conventionally incurable and affects at least 4 million Americans):

Multiple trials have shown sodium oxybate to be effective in treating important symptoms of fibromyalgia, such as pain and poor sleep structure. However, in 2010, the FDA voted unanimously against this indication, with commenters citing its potential for abuse as a street drug.

Note: the only other thing GHB has been approved for (in 2021 after years of lobbying) is the treatment of idiopathic hypersonmnia, a condition similar to narcolepsy.

Since GHB is easy to synthesize and it essentially allows people to become drunk without the hangover (while simultaneously functioning as an effective aphrodisiac), it became very popular in the rave scene (where to some extent, it is still used). Likewise, since some patient populations who are dealing with significant challenges (e.g., due to PTSD) find GHB greatly helps them, I periodically hear of them finding a way to get it.

Note: the fact that GHB is a superior alternative to alcohol suggests that the alcohol industry was also threatened by its availability.

Over the years, I’ve talked to numerous people who used or prescribed it. Collectively, they’ve told me:

“I don’t think it’s a very effective date rape drug—alcohol is much more powerful.”

“When you are on GHB, touch feels incredible and groups of people often just want to hold each other.”

“I have seen a few people who repeatedly used it become somewhat addicted to it.”

“Most of the issues with GHB come from people around you not being warned you might pass out for a few hours, it being dosed inappropriately, or mixing it with alcohol, benzodiazepines or antihistamines.”

“I’ve never had an issue with it.”

“It is incredibly helpful for sleep, so I use my limited supply when I really need to be well-rested and clear-headed the next day.”

“It is a remarkable drug, but I have seen it cause memory loss, addiction, airway issues, and mood depression in people who use it so it needs to prescribed appropriately.”

“The effect is very different depending on the dose you use.”

“The growth hormone release is a big deal.”

“Make sure you never use it while driving.”

Note: many of these also match what Ward Dean M.D. believed.

Conversely, when I’ve looked into anonymous online reports, I’ve found many had remarkably positive experiences, while others reported negative experiences which while bad, were not as bad as the things I often see the traditional sleeping pills cause, but nonetheless indicate that GHB needs to be used responsibly under the supervision of a doctor who what they are doing. For this reason, it is my sincere hope the our new FDA will consider creating a pilot program to make GHB available to patients with insomnia under a strict monitoring and verification program (e.g., using AI to ensure only the patient is using the prescription and doing so in a 100% safe manner), as were this to be done, it would be much safer than the existing options being used and transform the lives of its recipients.

Overall, one of the most extraordinary things about the GHB saga is that its many of benefits discovered over the decades of research it received were then subsequently discovered by the sleep research community to result from healthy sleep. This again illustrates how often the research we really need already exists but was simply buried due to it being inconvenient for industry. Fortunately however, now that we are at last in an era where forgotten medical truths are being unearthed, more and more are learning about them—for example, recently Joe Rogan and Jimmy Dore discussed the GHB story in front of millions of listeners:

More than anything else, I believe the GHB story demonstrates the importance of not being overly biased. For example, while many doctors hold a strong prejudice against any “natural” (e.g., non-drug) therapy, I am the opposite and typically avoid using pharmaceutical drugs because of how frequently I find their harms outweigh their benefits. Nonetheless, I periodically find extraordinary drugs (e.g., DMSO) I give a hard look at and end up using throughout my medical practice. Sadly, as the war against ivermectin showed the world, the primary motivation behind most of medicine is money, and as a result, whenever a true miracle drug is discovered (that competes with existing drugs), medicine moves to bury it, regardless of how much evidence there is in support of it.

Sleep Hygiene

While GHB is challenging to obtain (options are discussed further below), there are also many other options for improving sleep. One of the most tried and true ones is to change the signals your body receives so it can go to asleep on its own.

Briefly, three processes are at work:

1. Throughout the day, the brain metabolizes ATP to into adenosine as energy is harvested from ATP. When there is an excessive amount of adenosine in the brain, it provides a signal to feel tired and initiate the sleep cycle (presumably because it serves as a proxy for other metabolic waste products).

2. The body has a cyclic pattern it goes through during the day known as the circadian rhythm. For example, consider what happens to its temperature:

This rhythm is self sustaining, signals to the body when to go to sleep, and also responds to environmental cues. Because of this, the ideal thing is to go to sleep at the same time each day and have the daily signals your body receives be consistent in their timing and match those that would tell it to go to sleep at the correct time (e.g., at 10pm each day). Unfortunately, modern life continually prevents that from happening, and as a result, we often get signals from our circadian rhythm to be asleep when we should be awake.

3. Sleep is an active energy intensive process. Because of this, if the drive for sleep is weak and significant barriers to sleep exist (e.g., age related damage to the parts of the brain which initiate sleep), it’s often not possible (or quite difficult) to get to sleep, which in turn creates a downhill spiral (because deficient sleep further worsens the brains ability to maintain its health).
Note: one of the most common barriers to sleeping I encounter in patients are fluid obstructions within it (many of which respond to treatments which restore the physiologic zeta potential and hence increase circulation throughout the body; unfortunately for elderly, the physiologic zeta worsens with age). Likewise, I often find EMFs (possibly due to their adverse effect on zeta potential or their inhibition of the memory encoding process) create a significant barrier to sleep for some. Because of this, more sensitive patients find reducing their exposure (e.g., by flipping circuit breakers at night, disabling WIFI, putting the phone near your bed on airplane mode, living in a low EMF area, or camping in an EMF dead zone) greatly helps their sleep.

Treating insomnia hence is a product of improving one or more of these and hoping that gets you to sleep.

Note: additional issues need to be considered if the problem instead is an inability to stay asleep (e.g., reactive hypoglycemia).

Caffeine and Alcohol:

Both caffeine and alcohol are highly disruptive to sleep. In the case of caffeine, it works by blocking the adenosine receptors in the brain (hence eliminating the pressure you feel to be tired as a result of the brain having built up metabolic waste products during the day it needs sleep and the gylmphatics to clear out). In the case of alcohol, like sleeping pills, it functions as a sedative which is highly disruptive the actual sleep cycle (hence why people wake up not feeling clear in the head after a night of drinking and why drinking greatly impairs your ability to memorize whatever you’ve studied).

Note: at a young age, I noticed each of these substances negative impact the health of the adults around me, so I avoided them completely, and I believe that gave me a major leg up in life.

The important thing to understand about each substance is that it takes a while for the liver to metabolize and eliminate them, and furthermore, that the rate of elimination varies person to person. Because of this, people often still have the substances active in their blood stream at the time they are trying to get to sleep (e.g., slower metabolizers are kept awake in bed by an afternoon cup of coffee, while moderate metabolizers have their sleep disrupted by an evening glass of wine). Furthermore, for most people liver metabolism declines with age (which is another reason why sleeping issues are so prevalent in the elderly).

Lastly, one of the most intriguing data points I’ve seen about the effects of caffeine came from this NASA study:

Temperature:

Note: I know someone who shared with me that the most restorative period of their life was when they spent the winter in a snowy mountain cabin without gas or electricity, and that each night they went to sleep in front of a fire (so they didn’t freeze), then woke up in the middle of the night from the cold (because the fire went out) at which point they restarted the fire and went back to sleep. While this is a bit extreme, it helps illustrates how different modern life is from what the human body experienced throughout most of human history.

One of the most consistent signs in the environment to sleep is the temperature dropping at night. For this reason, people often find cooling the body (which warm baths ultimately do once you get out as they bring core blood to the surface which is then cooled as the bathwater evaporates off your skin) helpful for putting them to sleep. Likewise, the body’s temperature drops by 1-2 degrees when you sleep, and people often find sleeping in a cooler room helps them get to sleep (whereas many, myself included) have a great deal of difficulty sleeping in hot rooms (so I’ve learned to make sure I never run into this issue when I travel).

Because of this, people struggling with insomnia are often advised to make their rooms colder (e.g., according to Walker, assuming standard bedding and clothing, the ideal bedroom temperature for sleep is around 65 degrees F° [18.3°C]).

Note: one of the most interesting approaches to overcoming the temperature barrier for sleep was a study that found using a customized suit to externally drop people’s temperature made it much easier for them to sleep (especially in the elderly). Since that time, a variety of devices have been made which replicate this process and many report significantly improve sleep.

Light:

Your brain evolved to have the light present in the early morning (blue) wake you up, while the light present at the end of the day (red) signals you to sleep. Since we are continually exposed to blue light (most electronic screens give them off—which I believe was done intentionally to make them more addictive), we have widespread issues with sleep cycle dysregulation (as blue light stops the pineal gland from secreting melatonin). 
Note: I periodically encounter people whose sleeping issues seem to be coming from issues within the pineal gland or the hypothalamus (e.g., due to microstrokes) and require something to directly heal that gland (e.g., restoring the zeta potential and hence blood flow to the gland).

To address the unnatural light issue, people suggest:

•Using blue light filters on all electronic devices. I think f.lux is the easiest option for computers, while with cell phones, a variety of apps exist (however, the default settings in the phones typically do not remove blue light from the screens). You can also put blue light-blocking material directly on screens or wear blue light blocking glasses.
Note: the rest of the body (especially the middle of the forehead above the nose) is also somewhat sensitive to light so some cases, this needs to be addressed as well (e.g., if I can’t eliminate a light, I will sleep in sheets that block the light from contacting the rest of my body.

•Change the lighting in your house. Most people believe halogen lamps and incandescent bulbs are the best options, while fluorescents are the worst, followed by LEDs with a low amount of blue light (many have a lot of blue light). Some people like to use red lights in the house at night too. Unfortunately, in recent years there has been a gradual push to phase out these healthier lights and replace them with unhealthy energy efficient ones (which has made incandescent bulbs more difficult to obtain).

Note: my favorite lighting option I ever came across was the traditional sodium-vapor lamps (the orange street lights). Unfortunately, these are gradually being replaced with toxic LED street lamps that emit large amounts of blue light (which, amazingly, even the AMA said was a bad idea).

•Do everything you can to reduce the light in your room (e.g., no electronics that blink) and, if possible lightproof everything (e.g., use effective blackout curtains that can entirely block the light in each room). I have incredible difficulty sleeping in poorly light-proofed rooms, which is one of the primary reasons I do not travel as much now.

•If your circadian rhythm has been disrupted (e.g., from traveling to another time zone), having melatonin a few hours before bed can help reset your circadian rhythm to the correct time.

Note: many melatonin supplements on the market do not contain the melatonin they claim to. Additionally, we have observed that long term continual usage of melatonin can lead to a variety of other problems, something we suspect is due to the pineal gland becoming dysregulated (due to an excess of melatonin in the system) and hence no longer performing its normal secretion of melatonin throughout the day. For this reason, I believe melatonin should be applied in a targeted and judicious manner rather than it being a supplement that is always taken for sleep.

Behavioral:

•You need to have your bedroom be a place that is psychologically associated with sleeping (this can include physical intimacy). Sleep hygienists generally advise minimizing the number of non-sleep-related things in your bedroom (e.g., a TV or desktop computer) and avoiding intellectual activity or social media in your bedroom.

•You need to have a set time to wake up and sleep each day. The body adapts to a rhythm, and if you keep changing that time, the body has much greater difficulty falling asleep.
Note: many people find cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to be extremely helpful for insomnia and there is now significant evidence to support it being a first line therapy.

•You need to allow your mind to wind down before sleep. If you can give yourself at least a 1-2 hour buffer between screens and other mentally taxing or emotionally stressful activities before sleep, that is ideal. For many people, this is the single most important thing for ensuring healthy sleep (especially those with unaddressed anxiety), and an area where CBT can be extremely helpful.

•Do not spend too long on a computer or sitting at one time. At some point, you will pass a critical threshold where it becomes quite difficult to sleep (which I acknowledge can often be challenging—this has happened to me quite a few times while working on an upcoming article).

•Having more physical activity during the day often makes it much easier for people to fall asleep at night. I believe this is primarily due to the increased fluid circulation in the body those activities create.
Note: many people consider this to be the single most important thing for preventing insomnia—and sadly modern life prevents many of us from having access to it.

•Use good earplugs at night.

•Avoiding eating later in the night.
Note: conversely, if your blood sugar drops at night (which can cause you to wake up in a state of sympathetic activation), eating a slowly digesting carbohydrate can often be very helpful for keeping you asleep.

•Lastly, while this is not behavioral per say, for many individuals, it can take a lot of time to clear caffeine from their bodies, so foods like coffee should not be eaten later in the day (and with exceptionally sensitive people, other things with small amounts of caffeine like chocolate must not be eaten later in the day either).

Note: sleep specialists often recommend keeping a sleep journal where you log both how much sleep you are getting and what you did throughout the day. When you have this type of a journal it can frequently help you identify what is contributing to your insomnia (e.g., certain foods).

Legal Sleep Aids

Over the years, we’ve looked at a lot of different options for fixing sleep, and as the years have gone by, my perspectives on what to do for insomnia have evolved. For example, I’ve long believed that sleep apnea is something which needs to be checked for (due to how disruptive it is to sleep) but as the years have gone by, I’ve become of the opinion CPAPs are not an ideal way to treat it (as while helpful for addressing this critically important issue, they are simultaneously disruptive to the body).

In the last part of this article I will discuss our preferred approaches for treating sleep issues (e.g., which supplements, devices, and pharmaceutical drugs help), some of the aspects of insomnia I believe are the most important to focus upon (but are not acknowledged within the orthodoxy), my preferred devices for improving sleep (or making partners able to comfortably share beds) along with highlighting a few additional resources for those wishing to learn more about GHB and how to obtain it.

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• Modern medicine is built around costly, narrowly approved drugs that treat (but rarely cure) specific disease franchises, with regulatory approval correlating more strongly with money spent than with real therapeutic value.

• To enforce this, for over a century the same institutions, backed by vast fortunes, have repeatedly sidelined broader or cheaper therapies that threatened those franchises.

• The same playbook is used again and again—once a therapy threatens a market, claims of “no evidence” or doctored research amplified by the media will allow regulators to clamp down on the “dangerous and unproven” therapy until it becomes forgotten to history.

• In this article, I will illustrate how the exact same playbook was used again and again on numerous transformative medical discoveries endorsed by leading physicians of the era, resulting in nearly every one (e.g., UVBI and numerous cancer treatments) becoming largely forgotten despite immense evidence behind them.

• This same playbook was used throughout COVID-19 to eliminate the off-patent therapies that threatened the boondoggle. One of these, chlorine dioxide, was not only repeatedly shown to eliminate COVID outbreaks, but also to do the same with malaria, where it likewise was banned.

• Pierre Kory and Jenna McCarthy’s recent book The War on Chlorine Dioxide provides a critical body of evidence that chlorine dioxide has treated a myriad of challenging conditions, and that each time it did, a robust censorship apparatus erased those discoveries and retaliated against the discovers—providing a poignant illustration of the medical monopoly in action.

While medicine has produced remarkable and life-changing results for a variety of challenging conditions, the present reality of our medical system is that:

•Large amounts of research dollars are collected each year to seek out solutions for incurable diseases creating immense suffering for many patients with “incurable” conditions.

•Since many diseases lack satisfactory treatments, patients and health care systems begrudgingly accept paying for and using the unsatisfactory treatments that are available.

•When medicine is ultimately unable to address a condition patients have, this is justified under the logic “we tried everything we had and nothing more could be done” (e.g., for a hospitalized patient, or more recently, for a disabled patient being funneled into medically assisted dying).

Our medical system, in turn, is structured so that:

•For a therapy to enter regular use (and particularly for it to be paid for) it must secure a regulatory approval.

•Regulatory approvals require a body of preclinical science (which if often the results of years of public research dollars), a mechanistic basis (that typically draws upon those studies), costly large randomized controlled trials and effective regulatory lobbying (all of which results in drugs now typically costing 1-2 billion dollars to bring to market^1,2,3). However, while there is a strong correlation between spending money to secure an approval and receiving it, a much weaker correlation exists between the intrinsic value of a treatment and its approval (resulting in many unsafe drugs being approved that provide negligible benefits).

•Once a drug is brought to market, payers will pay vast sums of money for the treatment, in part to cover the cost of bringing it to market.

•The regulatory approval process typically rewards drugs having a specific mechanism for a specific disease. Because of this, each disease becomes a lucrative franchise that is reserved for a limited number of pharmaceuticals (which utilize a limited number of approved mechanisms) that in most cases provide an unsatisfactory treatment, making it possible to reuse the franchise in the future with a new class of drugs once the patents on the original ones run out.
Note: “franchise” is a term routinely used in the pharmaceutical industry.

•While the rules for getting an FDA approval are quite strict, once approved, the rules for using an approved drug for something else are quite lax, and as such, pharmaceutical drugs are routinely used to treat conditions they lack evidence for treating.

If you take a step back, this entire paradigm relies upon two things:

1. The belief that a substance, by virtue of being labeled as a pharmaceutical (through regulatory approval), is “real medicine” that works (and must have extensive credible evidence behind it).

2. For each of these disease franchises to remain incurable so that an endless funnel of money can go into bringing us closer to a cure (which occasionally new pharmaceuticals accomplish, but typically do not).

Many hence find the existing paradigm extremely frustrating, in part because of how much money it sucks up (which has now hit the point socialist medical systems are pursuing medically assisted dying to balance their budgets), and in part because of how much the people with these “incurable” diseases suffer year after year after year.

A History of Medicine

Understanding where the current paradigm comes from requires understanding the history of medicine.

In the earliest recorded history, disease was widely attributed to supernatural causes (e.g., angry gods, demons, ancestral spirits, curses, or soul loss) and medicine typically involved shamans, priests, or medicine men using rituals, incantations, charms, amulets, sacrifices, and exorcisms, often combined with herbal remedies or basic surgery (e.g., trepanation to release evil energy from the head).
Note: while these supernatural approaches have still been largely discarded, some are still utilized by spiritual healers and indigenous traditions (e.g., Native American and Amazonian shamans) and every now and then, I hear of someone treating a fairly challenging illness with one.

Around the time of Christ (400 BC - 100 AD) a new perspective entered the world that led to medical systems across numerous major civilizations concluding illness resulted from innate qualities within the body being out of balance or obstructed (e.g., the four humors, yin and yang, the five elements, the doshas etc) and hence that healing arose from harmoniously rebalancing them. Due to the success of this approach, it supplemented and then gradually displaced old approaches like human sacrifice.
Note: certain points of evidence suggest the “balance” school of medicine originated from a much older society that predated recorded history (e.g., it’s referenced in the opening of the original text of Chinese of medicine and Graham Hancock has built an extensive case an older advanced civilization was mostly but not completely erased by a planetary disaster).

After the classical balance systems became established, they remained the dominant medical framework for well over a thousand years. In Rome, Galen (129-216 AD) then refined Greek humoral theory with extensive anatomy and physiology derived from animal dissections and experiments (human ones were illegal), causing the synthesis of the four humors with detailed organ function and bodily structure to become the authoritative medical model across Europe and then the Islamic world.

The Renaissance (roughly 1300–1600) and the Scientific Revolution that overlapped and followed it (roughly 1500–1700) produced major anatomical and physiological discoveries (most notably William Harvey’s 1628 demonstration that blood circulates in a closed circuit pumped by the heart) as well as philosophical shifts such as Descartes’ separation of mind (or soul) from body. Together these developments encouraged a new view of the body as a mechanical structure governed by physical laws and amenable to external analysis and intervention.

This gave birth to “heroic medicine” which used invasive methods, mineral remedies and toxic remedies (e.g. mercury, opium and antimony) to powerfully shift the body in the belief that would achieve health (with this school of medicine eventually coming to be known by many as “allopathy,” after the founder of homeopathy in 1810 critically coined this term to denote that this system worked by forcefully producing effects opposite to the symptoms of the disease).

Between the 1850s-1880s, advances in germ theory (Pasteur and Koch), cellular pathology (Virchow), controlled laboratory methods, and clinical observation shifted the understanding of disease toward specific, measurable causes such as microorganisms, cellular damage, chemical imbalances, and structural failures. The body was hence increasingly viewed as a complex biological machine that could be diagnosed and fixed through targeted interventions and in the early 1900s, this mechanistic approach had become the prevailing paradigm in Western medicine, after which it spread globally.

However, since allopathy had major shortcomings (e.g., it failed to treat many diseases, its remedies—particularly mercury and early vaccines like smallpox—created a horrendous wave of illnesses never seen before, and patients often died from allopathic methods), in the 1800s a variety of other medical schools emerged that gradually outcompeted allopathic medicine (homeopathy, osteopathy, “the eclectic” naturopathic school of medicine and to a lesser extent chiropractic—with doctors at the time often also being licensed in many of these schools).

Medical Monopolization

The American Medical Association, founded in 1847 partly to counter the newly established American Institute of Homeopathy, for decades remained relatively weak in membership and finances (as most MDs in the country did not wish to join the AMA and homeopaths were far more prosperous due to them being preferred by the wealthy and most educated). However, two developments changed that trajectory.

First, internal reorganization of the AMA itself. In 1899 George H. Simmons became general manager (and later editor of the AMA’s widely read medical journal JAMA). Under Simmons and his successor Morris Fishbein (editor roughly 1924–1950), the association professionalized its operations, expanded membership dramatically, and created revenue streams tied to pharmaceutical advertising. The AMA Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry (1905) introduced a “Seal of Acceptance” program: companies disclosed ingredients and limited certain claims in exchange for the right to advertise in AMA publications.
Note: a friend knew Morris Fishbein’s secretary and shared with me the secretary witnessed highly unethical behavior from him consistent with his unscrupulous behaviors highlighted throughout this article.

Advertising revenue (according to the most commonly cited source) rose from roughly $34,000 in 1899 to $150,000 by 1909, while membership grew from about 8,000 to over 70,000. Critics at the time called the arrangement commercially self-serving but the AMA nevertheless gained resources and visibility.
Note: in many later accounts of the events, the AMA’s activities were characterized as monopolistic blackmail (with the AMA having a lengthy conflict with the founder of Abbott Laboratories), and while that seems likely given the AMA’s other activities, I have not located any sources from the time that substantiated overt blackmail occurred.

Likewise, the AMA had earlier used a “consultation clause” in its code of ethics that forbade members from associating with homeopaths (or other “irregulars”), with expulsion from local societies sometimes resulting in loss of licensure. Even after the clause was formally removed in 1901, homeopaths could join only by renouncing homeopathy in practice.

Second, there was a concerted push for higher educational and licensing standards. The AMA’s Council on Medical Education (established 1904) began rating schools. In 1910 the Carnegie Foundation published Abraham Flexner’s “Medical Education in the United States and Canada.” Flexner, working with input from AMA reformers (including close consultation with Nathan Colwell of the AMA Council and correspondence that treated the report as “ammunition” for the AMA while publicly distancing the collaboration), harshly criticized proprietary, under-resourced, and most sectarian schools—including the majority of the roughly 20–22 homeopathic colleges then operating—for inadequate laboratories, weak science prerequisites, and commercial incentives. State licensing boards increasingly aligned with these ratings. The result was rapid closure or conversion of many competing schools; by the 1930s the number of U.S. medical schools had fallen sharply (with Women’s and Black medical colleges disproportionately affected), homeopathic schools had dwindled to two by 1923, and the remaining institutions were almost entirely scientific and allopathic in orientation.
Note: a case can be made Flexner did this not to monopolize medicine, but simply to address poor standards in medical schools across the country, but many of his “standards” were based upon an allopathic worldview that placed a much greater weight on subjects like anatomy than homeopathic medical schools (where a precise knowledge of anatomy was not necessary to practice the discipline). That said, from having spoken to (now deceased) people directly familiar with the events at the time, they felt Flexner approached the non-allopathic schools with the intent of discrediting them.

Rockefeller philanthropy supplied key capital for the new model. The Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (organized 1901) and the General Education Board directed tens of millions of dollars (enormous sums at the time) toward laboratory-based research, full-time faculty systems, and university-affiliated schools that met Flexner-style criteria. Frederick T. Gates, Rockefeller’s principal philanthropic adviser, viewed scientific medicine as a strategic social investment: it promised healthier, more productive workers and framed disease as a technical and biological problem rather than a social or environmental one. Rockefeller funding hence favored institutions that aligned with this biomedical approach; support for homeopathic or other sectarian emphases was withdrawn.
Note: E. Richard Brown’s critical Rockefeller Medicine Men (1979), provides the most detailed summary of what occurred here, but argues it was class-aligned philanthropy rather than a simple personal profit scheme and was framed by Gates as long-term institutional shaping, not a direct buyout of the AMA. That book and this article are the primary sources for the above section.

Finally, recently made available primary sources shed further light on exactly what happened. In 1911 Gates prepared five private “Notes on Homeopathy” reports exclusively for John D. Rockefeller Sr. These documents (now available through the Rockefeller Archive Center) harshly criticized homeopathy and its founder Samuel Hahnemann while praising William Osler and laboratory-based scientific medicine. Critics however noted that Gates overstated the reach of germ theory, misrepresented Hahnemann’s views on the body’s self-healing capacities, and asserted that homeopathy had never cured a single patient (despite hospital mortality data at the time indicating otherwise and Osler’s having publicly expressed respect for homeopathy). So, despite Rockefeller’s lifelong personal reliance on homeopathic physicians for decades and his repeated instructions that homeopathic institutions should receive “fair, courteous, and liberal treatment” equal to allopathic ones, the foundations under Gates’s influence (and later under John D. Rockefeller Jr.) provided no grants to any institution bearing the word “homeopathic” in its name. Abraham Flexner himself was later hired by the (Rockefeller) General Education Board to help implement the report’s recommendations, further concentrating societal resources behind the scientific model. Homeopathic schools, starved of capital and forced by licensing exams and equipment requirements to dilute their curricula, either closed or abandoned rigorous homeopathic training and by mid-century none remained.
Note: I believe the reason the medical system (and scientific community) has been so strongly opposed to homeopathy is because it was the initial opponent the AMA had to vanquish to establish their monopoly—illustrating how often large actions create unintended consequences (as Rockefeller explicitly stated he did not want the status quo that followed).

In short, the combined effect of AMA organizational power, state licensing leverage, Flexner’s influence, foundation capital, and the deliberate withholding of support from competing systems monopolized medical education and practice by the science-focused allopathic model as alternative systems lost schools, licenses, and institutional legitimacy. Then, once the monopoly was established, the same institutions that had raised barriers to entry could define what counted as “real medicine,” what research received funding, and which therapies were branded quackery. Later federal drug regulation (e.g., the FDA) operated within this already-consolidated professional and educational framework.

When the above events are recounted, they are typically portrayed as the Rockefellers and the AMA attempting to monopolize medicine, both so that MDs could earn more (shifting them from being some of the lowest to highest paid members of society) and because Rockefeller had recognized that immense amounts of money could be made from the new scientific model of medicine (which is why he sought to enshrine it as the gold standard). I am inclined toward these arguments, both because Rockefeller and Carnegie had a history of brutal and methodical suppression of competitors when they established their respective monopolies in oil and steel (Rockefeller’s largely secret and conspiratorial, Carnegie’s more open) and because after their “philanthropy” medicine rapidly became a far more profitable enterprise. However, strictly on the basis of what the available sources substantiate, the outcome could instead be explained as a combination of unfortunate factors (most notably Rockefeller placing Frederick T. Gates in charge of his philanthropy), the broader institutional momentum that already favored laboratory-based scientific medicine and unscrupulous individuals quickly recognizing the immense profit potential of science-focused medicine.

Note: in the 1970s police raided and arrested Chinese immigrants practicing acupuncture (which was in high demand from the community).^1,2,3,4 I vividly remember despondently asking someone who witnessed a raid “why are they doing this?” to which he said “the Rockefellers…control everything,” illustrating that this viewpoint has existed for a long time.

The AMA’s Monopolization of Medicine

Based on the events that happened, I believe it is fair to say the heads of the AMA quickly realized the immense financial value of restricting the practice of American medicine to allopathy. Furthermore, I believe they also recognized that it was in their financial interest to gain ownership (or at least a cut) of the therapies allopathic physicians could utilize at scale that could treat a wide variety of diseases, as beyond this being the most logical course of action for them to take if profit was the priority, numerous cases studies demonstrated it occurred.

Ultraviolet Blood Irradiation

Building upon the recognition prolonged sun bathing could cure severe infections (e.g., the 1918 influenza or tuberculosis) and that UV light was antimicrobial, in 1927, Emmett K. Knott discovered directly the blood to UV light cured a variety of otherwise fatal infections, and once he finally convinced doctors to try it, it was rapidly adopted across America’s hospitals because of how consistently it treated a myriad of challenging conditions including sepsis, pneumonia (including viral pneumonias), kidney disorders, asthma, polio, botulism, rheumatic fever, and viral hepatitis.

The pioneers of UVBI, in turn documented their work in a significant body of literature: 50 papers by 20 different authors (published in 18 different medical journals) covering over 3000 patients with 36 different diseases, all of which found remarkable UVBI benefits. In tandem, these results led to UVBI being promoted in mainstream media (e.g., The New York Times and Time Magazine).

The AMA then attempted to extort Knott by offering to conduct a study validating UVBI for $100,000 (approximately $1.4 million today) and to purchase the rights to Knott’s device in return for a small sales cut. After Knott refused (as did physicians across America advocating for UVBI—one of whom documented this in their records), the AMA decided to do the study anyway. It was overseen by a friend of the AMA director (who was designing a competing device) and curiously, prior to being done, JAMA announced it was likely to fail. The study had various issues (e.g., no one could inspect the machine, when returned they discovered a film had blocked UV light from reaching blood, it only had 68 test subjects, many cases were conditions UVBI wasn’t used for). Nonetheless, no adverse events occurred, no one died (despite many having dangerous conditions), and many patients experienced significant improvement.

Despite this, the 1952 study concluded:

“We have concluded that none of our patients derived benefit from the irradiation of blood with the Knott hemo-irradiator.”

Because of this “definitive study,” hospitals across America quickly abandoned UVBI and became fully committed to emerging antibiotic therapy. The large body of literature the pioneers produced was forgotten, Knott stopped producing his machine and then died in 1961.

Note: while the AMA successfully buried UVBI in the United States, it has been extensively used in Germany, Russia (and now China), with a large body of data showing it treats a wide of range of challenging and “incurable” conditions. One of the key reasons why I greatly dislike the AMA is because of how effective yet unknown UVBI is.

Krebiozen

Andrew Ivy, at the end of World War II, was arguably the most famous and influential doctor in America, to the point that the American Medical Association sent him as their representative to Nuremberg, where he helped draft the Nuremberg Code. In 1949 he was introduced to Krebiozen, a promising cancer therapy, and after seeing the evidence, became its leading proponent. Then, in 1951, while he was still testing it, a sensational press release went out claiming a major breakthrough, which immediately turned the medical community against him.

The AMA, recognizing its value, threatened the inventors to sell them the rights. When they refused, the AMA conducted a fabricated study to debunk it, hoping to bankrupt them and gain ownership. This was later corroberated by examining the actual records of the AMA study and by a co-conspirator plus another witness who testified under oath before the Illinois legislature about the criminal conspiracy AMA leaders had shared with him.

Ivy kept collecting data, including miraculous results for key politicians, and eventually showed in over 4,200 patients that Krebiozen had a 50-70% success rate depending on the metric used (but nonetheless, the AMA and then the National Cancer Institute continue to denounce Krebiozen).

When Ivy applied for approval, the FDA stonewalled them and eventually produced spectrographic data claiming Krebiozen was just a common worthless metabolite. Before long it was revealed the FDA had fabricated that data, leading to Senator Paul Douglas telling the Senate on December 6, 1963: “It is a terrible thing that we cannot really trust either the Food and Drug Administration or the National Cancer Institute.”

The FDA then used its new authority from the 1962 Kefauver-Harris Amendment to ban Krebiozen from being shipped across state lines on June 7, 1963, which led to large protests in front of the White House. They were on the verge of winning over Kennedy when he was assassinated on November 22, 1963, and Johnson could not be persuaded. Unable to get Krebiozen, many of those patients then died.

In 1973 Illinois outlawed it, and not long after, like so many other alternative cancer treatments of that era, it was forgotten. Fortunately, William Kronick, a well-known television producer, made an impartial program that documented this forgotten history and the FDA’s gross malfeasance throughout it.

Note: Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes also interviewed Dr. Ivy in 1957 (but I have not been able to find a copy of this TV program). Krebiozen was also featured in national magazines like Pageant, Argosy, and Inside Story.

The Koch Catalysts

Dr. William F. Koch was a chemist and physician who made a variety of discoveries (e.g., regarding the parathyroid gland) that were published in major journals. Eventually, suspecting cancer resulted from an abnormal (non-oxidative) respiratory cycle in cells and that natural catalysts existed in the body which could prevent this from occurring, he isolated those catalysts and observed remarkable recoveries in terminal cancer patients (and likewise, from the 1920s to 1940s other physicians corroborated these results).

Note: in addition to hearing many successful stories about Koch’s catalysts, I had direct experience utilizing two of them, and found they worked (and for conditions beyond just cancer)—making it quite frustrating this therapy was erased from history.

According to accounts from Koch and his supporters, AMA representatives approached Koch and attempted to acquire the rights to Glyoxylide which Koch refused as he wanted it to be easily available to humanity. In retaliation, Morris Fishbein, the powerful editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, repeatedly denounced Koch as a quack in the pages of JAMA and used the full weight of the Association to destroy his reputation.

The FDA followed suit and pursued him aggressively, filing criminal misbranding charges (claiming his preparations were inert and worthless) and tying him up in lengthy court battles that spanned years. In two major trials (in 1943 and 1946) the defense presented numerous patient testimonies of dramatic recoveries (including many who’d been given months or weeks to live prior to the catalysts), with both ended without a conviction (a hung jury and a mistrial) with and leading to the cases being dismissed, and a few years later Koch moved to Brazil.

Note: In many accounts of the Rife technology (another therapy I’ve extensively utilized), it is claimed the AMA made a similar buyout offer to Rife, which he declined. After that, the AMA blacklisted the technology and the physicians using it. Rife’s company was hit with a costly lawsuit that effectively bankrupted it; the San Diego Medical Society warned doctors using the machines that they could lose their licenses, causing many to surrender the equipment; the FDA later investigated doctors using Rife technology and often confiscated their devices; and much of Rife’s work was lost when his laboratory burned down in a suspicious fire. While the AMA’s abrupt campaign against Rife after the technology had been gaining traction is well documented, no primary sources corroborate the alleged buyout attempt itself. This could mean the buyout story was added later to strengthen a suppression narrative, or simply that direct proof of that kind of covert blackmail is hard to come by.

Since it worked, the “doctored study” method used against UVBI and Krebiozen was applied to other therapies as well. In the 1970s the FDA aggressively campaigned against laetrile (amygdalin, claimed to selectively release cyanide in cancer cells), resulting in widespread confiscations and patients seeking it through back channels such as Mexican clinics. Amid intense public pressure to study it, Sloan-Kettering Institute assigned its renowned researcher Kanematsu Sugiura to test the substance. He conducted nine experiments across three spontaneous mouse-tumor systems and obtained consistently positive results, particularly inhibition of lung metastases. After NCI officials expressed doubt, further collaborative tests with other researchers (including a joint study with a skeptical researcher) were run; several of these also confirmed the metastasis reduction. Sugiura’s findings were nevertheless suppressed in the final 1978 published paper, which framed the overall outcome as negative, Sugiura’s positive results were attributed to a “unconscious bias,” and the NCI gagged on the topic thereafter. The cover-up was chronicled by Ralph W. Moss, the institute’s public affairs officer, who refused orders to falsify reports, organized an internal group (Second Opinion) to expose the discrepancies, and was fired.^1,2

Note: The FDA’s primary soundbite for attacking laetrile was the risk of cyanide poisoning. While this toxicity was occasionally observed with oral use (due to gut bacteria releasing cyanide from the compound), it was never reported with intravenous or topical (DMSO) administration that bypassed the gut. Many practitioners over the years—including some with whom I currently correspond—have described these non-oral routes (topical with DMSO or IV) as remarkably effective against cancer, particularly when intravenous laetrile was combined with intravenous DMSO.

Lastly, the NCI’s use of this tactic against alternative cancer therapies was not unique to laetrile. With hydrazine sulfate, Dr. Joseph Gold had reported 40–50% positive results in properly conducted studies; the NCI’s own trials produced essentially zero benefit after patients were given substances Gold had repeatedly warned would cancel the effect. With Burzynski’s antineoplastons, the NCI diluted the compounds in its trials to the point of ineffectiveness while the FDA pursued an aggressive multi-year legal campaign against him. Finally, with Hoxsey, rather than running a controlled clinical trial, the NCI and FDA simply reviewed the case records he submitted, declared the documentation inadequate, and used those incomplete reviews to brand the therapy worthless (all of three of which, along with the other cancer stories were detailed here).

Likewise during COVID, to counter the wave of independent studies and clinical experience showing that inexpensive generic drugs like hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) and ivermectin could treat COVID-19, this playbook was run at scale, as doctored studies were published in the leading journals, then amplified in unison by the mainstream media, successfully convincing both the medical community and governing bodies these results were “the science.”

As a result, fabricated or systematically manipulated results were routinely published, the most notorious of which were the May 2020 Surgisphere-based papers in The Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine that claimed HCQ dramatically increased mortality and arrhythmias on the basis of a massive multinational registry (successfully stopping HCQ trials around the world). However, their underlying data was so implausible the papers were retracted within weeks (after the authors could no longer vouch for the data), after which independent investigators determined the dataset had effectively been concocted out of thin air. Yet despite all of that, the episode still triggered worldwide HCQ trial pauses and policy shifts against HCQ.^1,2,3,4

Likewise, the “Big Six” (later Big Seven) large ivermectin trials that hit JAMA, the NEJM and other high-impact outlets were riddled with design and conduct flaws engineered to guarantee failure: dosing too late, too low and far too short a duration, administration on an empty stomach, arbitrary weight-based dose caps that under-dosed high-risk patients, failure to exclude concurrent ivermectin use in control groups, mid-trial endpoint changes, long publication delays, and refusal to share individual patient data.
The Oxford’s PRINCIPLE trial went further, quietly reporting a statistically significant two-day faster recovery plus large reductions in hospitalization and Long COVID as a negative result by inventing a statistical threshold the same investigators had never applied to their own molnupiravir or budesonide arms.

Worst of all, in addition to fabricating data to show HCQ was toxic, patients were deliberately overdosed to provide that data. In the UK RECOVERY trial and the WHO SOLIDARITY trial, elderly hospitalized patients received HCQ at roughly 2,400 mg on day one followed by 800 mg daily. This was several times a standard therapeutic dose, above the threshold the UK’s own toxicology database flags as potentially lethal and resulted in markedly higher death rates (which were then used to prove HCQ was dangerous). Finally, a parallel Brazilian high-dose study had to be halted when nearly 39 % of patients in the extreme-dose arm died — and was nonetheless published in JAMA and in tandem with the Surgisphere trials. All of this, in turn, successfully convinced a large portion of the medical community one of the safer drugs in their arsenal many had routinely used for years was actually a deadly poison no one had noticed in the 65 years it had been on the market.

Note: all of this is discussed in much greater detail in Pierre Kory’s book The War on Ivermectin.

The FDA’s Monopolization of Medicine

In many of the previous campaigns, the FDA served as the enforcer once the AMA had successfully convinced the FDA or NCI (National Cancer Institute) that a therapy was “dangerous quackery.” However, after the passage of a 1962 law that gave the FDA broad powers to both approve and police medicine in the United States (which was done to prevent a subsequent thalidomide disaster), the FDA began enacting similar campaigns without an initial public instigation by the AMA (which for DMSO, I covered in detail here).

Note: this hence raises major questions as to who was behind this (e.g., was it always the Rockefellers or did the AMA heavily influence the FDA behind the scenes). While a consistent playbook can be seen throughout each of the cases I studied, the instigating party varied significantly (e.g., the AMA did not denounce DMSO until after the FDA went after it, and while DMSO eventually became a threat to the pharmaceutical industry, at the time the FDA did so, major pharmaceutical companies were heavily invested in bringing it to market).

When DMSO was discovered in 1961, due to how effective it was at treating a myriad of challenging conditions, it rapidly caught on, soon was being used throughout Oregon, and attracted major interest from both pharmaceutical companies (e.g., six of the world’s largest companies including Merck invested heavily in clinical trials) and the public as the media stories aired depicting it as a potential wonder drug.

Initially the FDA was very receptive to approving DMSO, but at a 1964 meeting (with the FDA scientist who stopped thalidomide), she both expressed that the FDA wanted to do everything possible to permit further testing of DMSO, but also that they were worried about being overwhelmed by a large number of DMSO drug applications (due to the immense demand for DMSO and its vast number of uses), so they wanted more animal data before continuing human trials (despite extensive animal and human safety data already being there). A year later, the trial data was there for tens of thousands of patients, drug applications were submitted by major companies to the FDA, a DMSO symposium was held and demand for DMSO continued to increase resulting in over 100,000 members of the public bypassing the trials and just using it for themselves.

As the FDA was deliberating over what to do, in September (immediately after receiving the applications), one subject in a trial who’d been taking many other medications had an anaphylactic reaction (which was never linked to DMSO and has never been seen since), after which the FDA began terminating INDs. Following this, in November, a few animal reports emerged that DMSO could alter the refractive index in certain animal species (something never observed in over 37,000 human test subjects or any member of the public using DMSO), at which point the FDA immediately outlawed all DMSO testing and sent out a telegram to all embassies stating to the world DMSO could make you blind, at which point the press parroted the line the FDA had saved us from a thalidomide like disaster.

Following this, the FDA began sending agents to investigate the pioneering DMSO researchers to acquire incriminating records (often in an illegal manner) and the FDA under its new leadership (the director wanted to brand himself as a “tough commissioner” who kept the medical community in line to help the public) shifted to a posture of aggressively policing the use of unapproved substances and blacklisting scientists who conducted research the FDA did not approve of.

While this approach initially worked, a large number of scientists rebelled and began holding symposiums attesting to DMSO’s efficacy in a large number of conditions, public pressure on the FDA never stopped, and countries around the world became disillusioned with the FDA’s persecution of DMSO and resumed using it themselves. In the midst of this, an October 1967 study was conducted where prisoners were exposed to DMSO doses 3-30 times higher than what anyone would ever use (achieved by covering their entire body in DMSO gel daily for 14 or 90 days) and subjected to an extensive battery of tests—all of which found DMSO was completely safe (including for the eyes). Finally, in 1978, facing Congressional pressure, the FDA eventually approved DMSO for one indication, interstitial cystitis and at 1980 hearings, promised they would not put roadblocks to future applications, and that unlike interstitial cystitis (which had “well controlled evidence”) there simply was not yet sufficient evidence to approve the other applications.

As you might guess, in the nearly fifty years that followed, the FDA never approved a single DMSO drug application.

However, in 1994, in response to growing public outrage over the FDA’s suppression of natural medicine (e.g., gunpoint raids to confiscate vitamins), Congress passed a law that removed the FDA’s jurisdiction over natural supplements, and because of this, DMSO gradually became accessible again (and then due to the traction the series I wrote on it achieved, has begun returning to the popularity it had reached in the 1980s prior to the FDA erasing the public’s memory of it).

Note: one of the most interesting facets of this saga was that a journalist who interviewed numerous successive FDA commissioners discovered most of them knew almost nothing about DMSO beyond the FDA’s soundbites (despite DMSO being the most controversial drug in America for well over a decade)—not unlike how Fauci’s private diary and Scott Atlas’s memoir showed he knew very little about the current science on COVID-19. Remarkably, two years after leaving office in 1969, President Johnson (who appointed the FDA commissioner who went to war with DMSO) reached out to Stanley Jacob (the pioneer of DMSO) for help as he’d realized he needed DMSO for his own health.

Lastly, the FDA has engaged in similar tactics against a variety of other therapies which threatened established medical franchises. For example, after a natural low-cost revolutionary sleep aid was discovered (which unlike most options not only worked but also restored health rather than destroying it—as most sleeping pills sedate the brain and suppress restorative sleep), despite a vast body of scientific literature demonstrating its value for a variety of challenging conditions, the FDA went to war with it. Branding it as a dangerous date rape drug (despite there never being an evidence this was an issue), the FDA eventually convinced the Congress to outlaw this natural substance in 2000 (excluding allowing one extremely expensively formulation to be sold at the FDA’s discretion for a small number of sleep disorders).

Note: the reason I have not extensively discussed many of these therapies is because I believe providing extensive evidence for easily accessible ones (which takes a lot of time and I am still far from completing the initial round of) is the most effective way I can “make things better.”

Oxidative Therapies

One of the simplest chemical reactions is oxidation—the loss of electrons. This process frequently involves oxygen (or another oxidizing agent) accepting those electrons, often releasing energy in the process (combustion is a classic example of rapid oxidation). Animal cells, in turn, generate most of their energy through controlled oxidation in the mitochondria. In contrast, many microorganisms lack the same protective systems and antioxidant defenses found in human cells, making them especially vulnerable to oxidizing agents and as a result, a wide range of effective disinfectants work by oxidation. Some (such as dilute hydrogen peroxide) are relatively non-toxic to humans, while others that employ stronger oxidants like chlorine (e.g., bleach) are more damaging to cells because they both oxidize and chlorinate organic molecules.

Because of this, a variety of oxidizing disinfectants have been studies for their ability to eliminate virtually every known pathogen, in a test tube, topically over infections, and in many cases, once put directly into the body. In the process of doing that, it was observed that not only were infections treated, but a variety of non-infectious diseases also improved.

Of the oxidizing therapies, the most well-studied one is ozone (three oxygen atoms bonded together) and due to the breadth of what its applications can address, has been extensively studied (outside of the United States) for its use in a variety of conditions. Because of this, like I did with DMSO, I have been working day in and day out to compile and summarize every published ozone study as very few people are aware of the vast body of literature supporting its use.

To put this in context, from the first ten thousand studies I’ve reviewed, infectious disease (bacterial, viral, fungal, and surgical, spanning virtually every organ system in the body) was by a wide margin the most commonly studied application (as appropriately administered ozone typically resolved them). However, beyond that, ozone was repeatedly studied (and frequently reported to help) in chronic wounds and non-healing ulcers, surgical and post-operative recovery, a wide range of dental conditions, pain and musculoskeletal conditions (e.g., osteoarthritis, disc herniation, and low back pain), gastrointestinal and liver disease, respiratory illness, and cardiovascular conditions—much of which I believe results from ozone’s ability to restore microcirculation. Finally, many other areas have repeatedly been reported to respond to ozone as well, such as diabetes, cancer, dermatology, neurology, obstetrics and infertility, urology, and eye disease (along with sporadic but favorable studies on conditions as varied as thyroid disorders and osteoporosis).

However, in almost all cases if you bring up the subject of ozone, most people (having no idea these uses exist), they will fall back to the soundbite “ozone is a toxic gas” or to quote the FDA’s Federal Regulations:

Ozone is a toxic gas with no known useful medical application in specific, adjunctive, or preventive therapy. In order for ozone to be effective as a germicide, it must be present in a concentration far greater than that which can be safely tolerated by man and animals.

Note: ozone’s toxicity results from it being irritating to the lung’s mucous membranes (which is why medical ozone is never administered via inhalation) and because ozone is used as a surrogate marker for air pollution due to the fact the same process which generates toxic smog also produces ozone (something that does not occur when medical ozone is generated). Lastly, with all oxidative therapies, a therapeutic dose exists, and in nearly all cases where someone responds negative to them, it was due to that dose being exceeded.

The War on Chlorine Dioxide

One of the more recent additions to the oxidative therapy family is chlorine dioxide (ClO₂), a highly potent disinfectant routinely used as a non-toxic alternative to chlorine across water treatment, food and beverage processing, and hospital sterilization across the world. The EPA registered it for food and water use in 1967 and by the 1980s was recommending it over chlorine, largely because as unlike chlorine, it doesn’t generate carcinogenic trihalomethane byproducts when it reacts with organic matter.

Since ClO₂ is typically generated from sodium chlorite NaClO₂, once it started being successfully used as a medical therapy, the FDA (along with the media and virtually every other health agency) adopted the it was “toxic bleach,” likely owing to the fact bleach (sodium hypochlorite) had a similar name and formula (NaClO)—despite the two acting completely differently. So, much in the same way DMSO research was globally halted because it would “make people blind” (despite improvements in vision consistently being observed after DMSO use), the fact people were being “poisoned with bleach” (despite no evidence demonstrating this) was used to do the same to CDS—creating the curious situation where oral CDS is branded toxic when taken medically but not when used to purify what you then eat and drink.
Note: I have encountered numerous people who had temporary issues from excessive CDS doses. For this reason, I advise individuals to drop or lower their dose when reactions occur (whereas others view this as a sign “beneficial detoxification” is occurring and advocate for continuing).

Positive experienced with CDS and Pierre Kory learning CDS had faced a similar pattern of suppression to ivermectin inspired him to write a book on the topic, which in addition to documenting many of the proven uses for CDS, provides one of the most well documented example of how the medical system colluded to suppress a therapy that threatened multiple franchises.

Note: this book is not on Amazon and can only be ordered here.

From the book, I learned CDS therapeutic research began after an accidental discovery in the mid-1970s, when an inventor searching for a non-corrosive sterilizer for his ultrasonic cleaning tanks noticed that a persistent irritation on his hands cleared after he’d handled a chlorine-dioxide-disinfected tank. He and his family became the guinea pigs, and he went on to show it worked for a wide range of topical and mucosal applications such as wound healing, acne, warts, moles, nail fungus, scalp itch and other skin irritations, dental and oral care (including tooth whitening), and animal infections such as bovine mastitis—work the FDA supported rather than obstructed (e.g., the inventor described the agency as “a bit of a help”). Over the following decades he and his companies, conducted more than 300 studies and published 42 papers, and he secured patents along the way—beginning with his foundational 1977–78 method patent (Germ Killing Composition and Method, #4,084,747), which made small-scale personal ClO₂ production possible, extending across the 30-plus patents he held on chlorine dioxide products, and culminating late in life in a method for injecting tumors directly with chlorine dioxide.

In parallel, an unnamed defense scientist Kory interviewed shared that he learned of CDS in (frequently classified) government projects where he used it to sterilize food and medical instruments for NASA, inactivate nerve gas (with NaClO₂) and then learned through a defector the Soviets viewed it as “the ultimate antidote to all bioweapons.”
Note: when Jim Humble’s book on MMS (CDS) came out, a friend asked me to review it, after which I told her “this would probably be very helpful if a bioweapon was ever released,” which I later realized meant that it threatened too many franchises.

Later, when working on a steel project in Nigeria, he was asked to help contain a cholera outbreak, and after consulting a firm renowned for designing municipal water systems, deployed a treatment system that used chlorine dioxide in its post-treatment. This quickly contained the cholera as intended—but then local doctors reported that the water was also curing the town’s malaria, which made no sense to him, since malaria is mosquito-borne rather than waterborne. So, he flew in a blood-disease colleague, who confirmed under the microscope that the drinking-water concentrations of chlorine dioxide cleared the parasite from the bloodstream within hours. Before long he was deluged with people traveling from around the region to collect as much of the water as they could, which they also reported cured a host of other conditions besides malaria. After the Nigerian health minister came to verify the findings, the scientist was flown to neighboring Ghana to meet its king—himself a physician trained at London’s premier school of tropical medicine—who, rather than embrace the discovery, ordered him to cease the work: malaria, the king argued, was keeping the population in check, and eliminating it before the region’s high birth rate could be addressed risked a future famine. His team and equipment were then expelled from the country.
Note: while that account (and others in his book) relies upon individual testimony given to Dr. Kory that cannot be independently verified, as I show here, numerous lines of evidence corroborate that the ruling class has actively pursued population control, and that in multiples cases this was done with vaccines.

Not giving up, he shared that he began mailing sodium chlorite samples to engineers and expeditioners around the world including Jim Humble, who in 1996, while leading a mining expedition through the jungles of Guyana, had two crew members fall gravely ill with suspected malaria. With no medicine on hand, days from help and nothing to lose, he gave them drops of the sodium chlorite he’d received and within hours both had recovered. Struck by this, Humble began experimenting on himself and other locals with malaria, saw the same result, and worked out that when sodium chlorite meets stomach acid it forms chlorine dioxide. He then discovered it also treated many other conditions (e.g., typhoid, dengue and HIV) and in 2006 published a book. However, once word of the malaria cure reached Guyana’s government, Humble was ordered out of the country within a day, after (by his account) as the nation’s main pharmaceutical supplier threatened to cut off drug donations to the capital’s hospital if the cure became public.

Note: when Africa was being overrun with Ebola in 2014, ozone advocates Robert Rowen MD and Howard Robins DPM, at the president’s invitation, went to Sierra Leone on a medical mission trip and publicly chronicled what occurred as the trip progressed. There, they trained well over a hundred doctors and staff (including at the government Ebola treatment center) on how to administer ozone, but despite the president’s support, were abruptly blocked by the health ministry from applying it officially to patients for “unknown reasons” (that they suspected resulted from pharmaceutical pressure as numerous novel ebola therapies were being tested at the time). As there was no approved treatment for Ebola (and the majority of cases were fatal), healthcare workers treating patients (who were not always bound by the same government restrictions) eagerly sought ozone and in the documented ebola cases where it was used, recipients fully recovered (along with ozone appearing to prevent ebola exposures from developing into disease).^1,2,3

Later, Dr. Enno Freye and his team tested a sublingual chlorine dioxide formulation on 500 malaria patients in Cameroon, reporting complete reversal of symptoms within two days. While traveling to launch a follow-up trial in Senegal, according to Freye (in an interview with Pierre Kory), he was arrested at Rome’s airport after cocaine turned up in a package handed to him by the officials funding the study, and was imprisoned in Italy for three years.
Note: while I was able to find corroboration online for certain parts of Freye’s story,^1,2 I was not able to find any verification he was imprisoned.

In Freye’s absence, the study was retracted as having “never actually been conducted,” he was stripped of his adjunct professorship, and regulators pressured the manufacturer into pulling the product.

Note: Freye attributed his prosecution to pharmaceutical interests protecting the malaria-vaccine franchise. His Cameroon work and Senegal trial, in turn, coincided with the final push behind RTS,S (Mosquirix), the GSK malaria vaccine developed over three decades¹ at a cost exceeding $750 million¹ and funded largely by GSK and the Gates Foundation, which poured more than $200 million^1,2 into its late-stage development between 2001 and 2015 before the WHO recommended it for African children in 2021¹—despite a Phase 3 trial in which efficacy against clinical malaria waned to roughly 39% over four years¹ (undetectable by year three in earlier pooled data¹), and which flagged three safety signals its own investigators couldn’t dismiss: excess meningitis and cerebral malaria in vaccinated children, and a doubling of all-cause mortality in vaccinated girls.^1,2

Other forgotten malaria trials highlighted in the War on Chlorine Dioxide include a 1982 report of malaria disappearing from a Nigerian town after a chlorine dioxide water unit was installed, and the field records of Jim Humble and the practitioners he trained, who between them claimed to have treated well over a hundred thousand cases. But the most striking was what happened with the Red Cross trial in Uganda.

In 2012, Klaas Proesmans, then CEO of the Water Reference Center (a research arm of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies), oversaw a study in Iganga, Uganda, examining the effect that sodium chlorite–purified water had on malaria patients. Researchers identified 154 patients who tested positive for malaria by finger-prick microscopy, gave each cups of the treated water, and re-tested daily. Within 24 to 48 hours, all 154 were malaria-free, with no reported side effects. As word of its success spread, the Ugandan Red Cross and the IFRC issued statements denying any official involvement and insisting no trial had taken place—while simultaneously conceding it had, by claiming their staff had been “duped” into giving patients “poison.” Most importantly, unlike the other malariga accounts, which rest largely on witness testimony (which you can never be certain of), this one was filmed start to finish (the protocol called for one of Uganda’s top filmmakers to document the entire trial) and in the footage below, Proesmans, who later denied it, states on camera that the study produced “100% cured people... within 24 hours to 48 hours.”

Note: as you might guess, the above documentary was deleted from YouTube

COVID-19 and CDS

I have long observed that people who ascend into power tend to lack creativity, and so once a playbook has been established, it gets reused ad infinitum. As such, their predatory practices are typically first tested on a marginalized group that lacks broad public support, then once no meaningful protest follows, the conduct hardens into an acceptable standard and is replicated on the general population.

This, for example, is how I was able to predict what would happen during COVID-19—as a similar dynamic had already played out during Fauci’s AIDS crisis, where treatments that physicians around the country reported were saving patients’ lives were stonewalled, while a toxic and largely ineffective antiviral was pushed through (which was justified by the ever-mounting deaths of the untreated patients).

As such, it was no surprise that once researchers around the world discovered chlorine dioxide treated COVID, what we saw with malaria pattern repeated. In July 2020, Bolivia, then suffering one of the highest COVID mortality rates in South America, grew tired of waiting on the WHO for a solution and passed a law legalizing oral chlorine dioxide, which its military and universities produced and distributed under protocol. Within six months the country’s outcomes were among the best on the continent. Yet, the Ministry of Health, citing the WHO, PAHO, FDA, and EMA, subsequently issued a statement condemning the law and declaring the compound unsafe, and the actual program data were never properly published. The published evidence Kory assembles points the same way regardless—a retrospective study in which 90% of 1,163 relatives living with infected patients took CDS prophylactically and reported no symptoms, a chart review of more than 1,100 outpatients reporting a 99% recovery rate with only mild and transient side effects, an Ecuadorian physicians’ report of 97% symptom resolution within four days, and more than 14,000 PCR-confirmed cases treated across Latin America by over 3,000 COMUSAV doctors with no serious adverse events reported—all of which was observational rather than randomized, since the controlled trials, as we’ve seen, were blocked.

Likewise, everywhere it worked, the people behind it faced retaliation. In Peru, the Chief of the COVID Command in an entire region was fired in 2020 for treating patients with chlorine dioxide, and a health official openly laughed at the idea of even studying it. In Mexico, a surgeon who reported a 99.6% success rate across 3,000 patients had his hospital’s COVID unit shut down. Once COVID started, Mark Grenon and his sons, who had spent a decade distributing CDS, were pursued by the DOJ at the FDA’s request, extradited from Colombia, and sentenced to years in federal prison. Similarly, the studies that might have settled the question were simply not permitted: a University of Colorado trial was rejected because “the FDA prohibits such research,” a Bolivian army-led randomized, double-blind trial that had already cleared two bioethics committees was denied without explanation by the country’s drug regulator, and a multi-country study collapsed after regulators in eleven nations issued warnings and bans (e.g., for “toxic bleach”) that made patient recruitment impossible.

It also bears mentioning that when Trump broached using internal UV for COVID by referencing a device Cedars-Sinai had shown improved COVID by putting UV light in the lungs by stating:

Supposing we hit the body with a tremendous — whether it`s ultraviolet or just very powerful light..And then I said supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way, and I think you said you’re going to test that too. Sounds interesting.

TRUMP: Right. And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that.

The media immediately repurposed their CDS soundbites to claim Trump told everyone to inject bleach—and despite the fact this was never stated, the claim repeats to this day (e.g., the Biden campaign used it during the 2024 election and online commentators recently used it to dismiss criticisms of Fauci).

Beyond the fact independent investigators (myself included) successfully used UVBI to treat COVID-19 and that Russia, in clinical trials, demonstrated UVBI treated COVID-19, there is one even more remarkable aspect of this episode.

The one internal use of CDS the FDA has permitted to advance to testing is a NP001, an IV sodium chlorite formulation that in two placebo-controlled Phase 2 trials, extended survival in ALS patients (by nearly two years in the non-progressor subgroup),^1,2,3 and for which Neuvivo filed for FDA approval in 2024. On its face it seems astonishing that the agency would forbid oral chlorine dioxide as “poison” or “toxic bleach” while permitting the same compound to be dripped (injected) into the bloodstream at higher doses. But if you take a step back, it makes perfect sense: NP001 is a costly, patented pharmaceutical that patients cannot make or obtain themselves, and its narrow ALS indication threatens no existing franchise—whereas cheap oral CDS, taken at home for anything, threatens many drugs which have already “paid to play.”

Likewise, while UVBI has never received FDA approval despite many attempts and successful trials, (less safe) extracorporeal photopheresis (UVBI of the white blood cells with a photosensitizer) is a well established therapy for T-cell lymphoma that is also sometimes used for refractory psoriasis (and costs 5-50 times as much as UVBI). Similarly, while DMSO alone has still not been approved for any condition besides interstitial cystitis, many different proprietary pharmaceutical therapies containing DMSO have been approved for a wide range of specific conditions.

Note: In The War on Chlorine Dioxide, Kory also details CDS’s reported use across a range of other difficult conditions—from herpes, sinusitis, and stubborn fungal infections to non-healing diabetic wounds, Fournier’s gangrene, autism and several metastatic cancers that had failed conventional therapy along with the vast community of users that has been created by the tireless work of individuals whose lives were changed by the therapy (many of whom faced significant persecution for promoting it). Due to the reactivity many patients I work with have to stronger doses of any agent, my use of CDS has been restricted to temporary use for infections (where I’ve repeatedly seen it work) rather than longterm use at higher doses for systemic issues (as I use other therapies for those cases).

Conclusion

Throughout this publication, I have argued that science’s priorities are fundamentally misplaced, as while it is a wonderful tool for elucidating the truth, once its focus shifts from discerning the truth to supporting a prevailing interest (which is almost inevitable once scientific research becomes too costly to conduct and too much money rides on the outcome of a study), the data is worthless.

For example, we require large randomized controlled trials (which cost tens of millions of dollars) for drug approvals under the logic they can eliminate small biases or measurement errors, yet ignore the fact small observational trials any clinician can independently conduct have been found to find the same results for clinically meaningful results and that large RCTs have been shown to doctor results so that they support their sponsors (e.g., artificially inflating safety and efficacy). Likewise, the FDA has long justified the tight control they exert over the need to protect the public from “the next thalidomide,” yet, as we saw with the COVID vaccines, they ignored a tsunami of red flags that were so common over half of the American public could see them (which has caused a generational loss of trust in the public health authorities). Instead, as internal documents show, gagged their own scientists who pointed out the data showed those dangers so that they could continue to claim the COVID-19 vaccine was safe so that they could push outdated and unproven COVID boosters that were unlikely to work and in many cases not even needed (e.g., children had no risk of dying from COVID).

In short, we have a medical system where we pay vast amounts of money for research pharmaceutical companies use to create costly pharmaceuticals we not only directly pay for, but also pay for both the harm they cause and the social cost of millions of Americans who live with the debilitating illnesses medicine cannot address. As a result, the costs of medicine keep going up, and the massive monopoly forecast by Rockefeller’s critics has grown to the point many of our institutions are wholly dependent upon perpetuating it regardless of the human and financial cost doing so entails.

As we circle back to where this all began, I’ve long been struck by the fact many of the therapies I use and try to bring public attention were discovered in America roughly a century ago, as this was a time when technology had advanced to the point many remarkable medical innovations became possible, but the censorship apparatus had not yet matured to the point medical researchers had a real fear of retribution if they studied novel therapies which could disrupt existing disease franchises, and research had not yet been siloed into narrow biomolecular pathways which could produce profitable drugs for specific franchises.

Somewhat analogously, many of the most remarkable and paradigm shifting discoveries in science were made by independent researchers who funded their own work and studied it outside of the scientific community. Now however, since so much money goes into scientific research and so many careers depend upon the status quo, novel paradigm shifting discoveries are quite rare, and as Nature recently highlighted, novel science which disrupts existing orthodoxies has rapidly dwindled.

It is for this reason that I think it is so important documented records like what Pierre Kory and Jenna McCarthy (who also writes on Substack) detailed in the War On Chlorine Dioxide are so important, as until we expose how again and again the medical cartel has used the same predatory playbook on us, it will continue to escalate far past what we saw during COVID-19. Imagine for a moment what the world would be like if our ever-evolving scientific apparatus was instead focused on discoveries which benefitted humanity and addressed our real needs rather than sustaining each disease franchise.

The therapies I regularly discuss here were discovered in America roughly a century ago with what is now fairly primitive technology. Yet, if that much was possible then, before we understood a fraction of what we now do, the real question is not whether medicine could produce miracles today. It’s why it doesn’t and why our scientific apparatus has shifted its focus from helping people to sustaining each disease franchise (which includes burying any potential competition).

It is for that reason that documented records like the one Pierre Kory and Jenna McCarthy (who also writes on Substack and helped make the book more accessible to a broader audience) assembled in The War on Chlorine Dioxide matter so much. Until we drag this playbook into the open — the way their book has — it will keep escalating far past what we saw during COVID-19.

To learn how other readers have benefitted from this publication and the community it has created, their feedback can be viewed here. Additionally, an index of all the articles published in the Forgotten Side of Medicine can be viewed here.

• The vaccine industry has largely escaped scrutiny because of the belief that “vaccines are safe and effective”—a slogan that treats every vaccine as an identical good and discourages any examination of how vaccines are actually made or how sharply their individual risks and benefits differ.

• Here I will review the foundational principles of vaccine design and the clinical implications that I believe are essential for understanding why these products so often fail to live up to their promises and have major safety issues.

• Building upon this, I will show how the actual risks and benefits of a vaccine can be calculated (something medicine almost never computes) and why many commonly administered ones rest on very shaky ground that makes it hard to ever justify giving them to anyone.

• I will also review numerous core principles of immunology that virtually never enter the vaccine discussion and help to explain why vaccines cause so many different immunological issues.

• With this framework, I will provide a guide to assist you in determining the risks and benefit of each vaccine on the CDC schedule and tools for identifying the most toxic and unecessary ones.

• Medicine’s religious focus on vaccines has covered up the fact many safe natural alternatives to vaccines exist which can prevent a variety of complex illnesses. Likewise, much in the same way a few vaccines have been used to treat challenging chronic conditions (e.g., cancer, diabetes, shingles, fibromyalgia), forgotten natural therapies have been as well that both eliminate chronic debilitating illnesses, and provide completely safe methods to make populations immune to problematic infectious diseases.

I’ve held a longstanding belief that regardless of how strongly I feel about one side of a debate, effort should be made to understand both sides of an argument, as normally, valid points are raised by both parties and you can provide a much more effective and persuasive case for your position if you are able to clearly elucidate how the other has gone awry rather than simply dig into your pre-existing position.

So, despite my strong personal objections to vaccination and my belief their harms greatly outweigh their benefits, I have spent a lot of time trying to understand the case for vaccination, and more importantly how it varies for each vaccine (as some are much more egregious than others). Unfortunately, much in the same way medicine’s mantra is “all vaccines are safe and effective” (an extremely nebulous statement) the vaccine brand is treated as a homogenous entity where every single one is “good” simply by virtue of being a vaccine, and as such, surprisingly little information is available to objectively assess the merits of each individual vaccine—rather, all complications of vaccines are treated as being unrelated to the vaccine unless extraordinary efforts are gone to establish them, whereas extremely whimsical assumptions are made to establish their benefits and any complication of any infectious disease is nearly always attributed to the individual (or those around them) not vaccinating.

Because of this, one of the most common questions I receive is “which vaccines should I give my children” as parents who have become skeptical of vaccination essentially have nothing to go off besides a general distrust of vaccination and fearmongering from the medical community over the dangers of not vaccinating.

At the same time, this paradigm is somewhat understandable, as calculating the benefit and risks of a vaccine is quite challenging, as it requires you to know the following:

One of the many aggravating things I’ve long noticed about the vaccine program is that the information needed to make this calculation is never made readily available. For example, a few years ago, someone shaping public policy asked me if COVID was more dangerous than the flu. Answering this required me to know how deadly each was, and as I showed here, I eventually discovered no one actually knows how deadly the flu is (the estimates vary widely, and fatalities are typically less than 0.1% of cases that progress enough to become symptomatic)—something I found quite surprising, given that the CDC dedicates a large portion of their resources each year to expounding the dangers of the flu so we will vaccinate.

In turn, rather than objectively showing the risks and benefits of a vaccine, the medical community focuses on a few components of the above equation to create the impression there is a massive danger from not vaccinating (e.g., Merck convinced women around the country to be terrified of cervical cancer despite it being fairly rare) and that there is minimal risk from vaccinating, or in lieu of that theoretical arguments lacking data which suggest vaccination has merit. For example, the HPV vaccine, by increasing the immune system’s attack on HPV, could potentially reduce cervical cancer, but trial data that directly showed this was never provided, and it is unclear from the existing data sets that have followed decades of Gardasil if the vaccine increased, decreased or had no effect on (the rare to begin with) cervical cancer rates.

As such, we have a reality where the case for many of the vaccines on the schedule is quite weak, and many are for more likely to injure you than the actual infection—but despite this being readily apparent to an outside observer (particularly one who has been injured), most medical professionals carry a diametrically opposed world view which firmly believes vaccines are safe, effective, and necessary and are almost never willing to research the actual risks and benefits of a vaccine.

Note: during medical training, students are expected to memorize a massive amount of information and repeat it verbatim to the doctors supervising them (without showing any doubt or skepticism in it). Because of this, extremely complex subjects with vast nuance are distilled into simple facts or “if A then B” statements they are effectively forced to commit to memory rather than taking far more time to explore and question, after which the social status attached to being a doctor and medical expert cements the validity of their approach (memorizing accepted medical facts without critically examining them), particularly since “cognitive dissonance” makes doctors reluctant to consider what they worked so hard to learn was wrong or that they had injured their patients. This dynamic understandably makes many people loathe physicians who are close minded to facts which fall outside their training, but I feel the system was designed so that nearly anyone who goes through that training would think in this manner, so rather than resent those doctors, I primarily extend gratitude for the physicians whose minds are evolved enough to have the flexibility to break through this conditioning.

In short, we essentially have a system where we are expected to follow science (with legal penalties for not doing so) but rather than “science” being the result of an objective and critical examination of data, we instead are expected to trust the perspectives of experts who have evaluated that data but will not make it available to us (e.g., Steve Kirsch and ICAN spent years going to great lengths to get the government data on COVID vaccine injury and efficacy, often having to rely upon leakers, because governments simply would not provide any data which undermined the justification for the vaccination program).

Somewhat ironically, Fauci (who had proclaimed he “represented science” to frame any questions of his positions as “attacks on science”) recently provided an excellent metaphor of this dynamic, as in response to over a hundred questions, Fauci pled the fifth.

Additionally, after I sent out Thursday’s article on Fauci’s testimony, I was informed about something else I felt I had to share about it:

Hepatitis B

One of the more egregious vaccinations on the schedule is newborn hepatitis B, so when I learned Trump wanted it off the schedule, to help with that effort, I spent a lot of time, via official sources, trying to calculate the actual risks and benefits of the newborn hepatitis B vaccination (which I detailed here). To summarize that article:

Since hepatitis B is transmitted through blood to blood contact (e.g., sharing drug needles or unprotected sex), it’s difficult to justify giving it to newborns who will never do any of that. So, presently, the justifications are as follows:

1. It will prevent newborn infants from catching hepatitis B from their mothers during delivery when their immune system is too weak to resist the infection.
2. It will prevent young children from catching hepatitis B, either from family members or outside (e.g., touching an infected drug needle in a playground).
3. If an infant gets a hepatitis B infection, they run a real risk of it becoming a chronic hepatitis B infection (which causes a variety of problems including liver failure).
4. Hepatitis B vaccination has caused a massive drop in acute hepatitis B cases in adults, and hence creates a massive drop in chronic hepatitis B in infants.

The problems with the first (primary) argument are:
•Pregnant mothers are routinely screened for hepatitis B, so a benefit can only be found in the odd cases where the test is either not done or has a false negative.
•It is not guaranteed a child will catch hepatitis B from their mother, and giving the vaccine to a child at birth born to a hepatitis B positive mother only partially protects them from catching the disease (which is why it is typically is given alongside antibodies designed to increase the likelihood of preventing transmission).
•Hepatitis B is fairly rare outside of a few key demographics (e.g., Southeast Asian immigrants—which was a real issue following the influx of Vietnam War refugees).
•The form of hepatitis B which is more likely to transmit to infants is fairly rare, and something the vaccine is significantly less effective against.

In turn, when I looked through all the available official (e.g., CDC) data (which likely overestimates the need for vaccine), I discovered a significant number of data points which should have been worked out to assess the benefit of the vaccine never were, but if you took the mid-point of the ranges given for each of those coincidences lining up, you had to vaccinate roughly 1 million infants to prevent 1 case of mother to infant hepatitis B transmission, and 6.5 million infants to prevent one case of chronic hepatitis B—which means you cannot justify the program unless the vaccine has a less than 1 in 10 million chance of causing a severe injury.

However, while I watched the coverage of this discussion, the media simply amplified things like doctors stating there was no evidence the vaccine caused harm, a Vietnamese doctor who got hepatitis B from her parents testifying at the ACIP committee meeting she would have given anything to have been given the vaccine at birth and not have to live with hepatitis B, or Senator Cassidy discussing the horrors of chronic hepatitis B and citing wildly incorrect figures and the likelihood it would transmit to the infant.

Similarly, the other justifications for newborn vaccination are equally unfounded:

•In one study of 274 children who pricked themselves with drug needles in a playground (which is a rare occurrance), none developed hepatitis B (including cases from known carriers), in a review of studies spanning 1,565 instances, only one needlestick was potentially linked to catching hepatitis B, and throughout the literature, I could only find one case of this ever conclusively happening (making this significantly rarer than being hit by lightning).

•The decline in acute hepatitis B following adult vaccination was also seen with Hepatitis C (which is not vaccinated for but spreads in a similar manner as hepatitis B) suggesting other public health policies may account for the decline.

•Despite decades of the program, there has been no decrease in chronic hepatitis B (the ultimate justification for the program). This, I suspect, results from the fact a small portion of people do not respond to the vaccine, and those individuals who progress from acute to chronic hepatitis B share the same underlying immune dysfunction (effectively making it impossible for vaccination to achieve its ultimate goal as it cannot protect those who need protection)—a recurring issue with vaccination seen ever since the original smallpox vaccines.

Note: many suspect the newborn hepatitis B program was mass introduced to provide a larger market for Merck than homosexuals and IV drug addicts at risk for Hepatitis B or to prevent newborn hepatitis B transmission in Vietnamese refugees (both of which are plausible). However, an ACIP insider shared with me it was actually done to reduce Hepatitis B transmission in inner city youth engaged in risky behaviors (which was a public health issue) under the theory that they were unlikely to come in for vaccination appointments, so a blanket newborn hospital immunization policy was the only thing that could reach them, with newborn transmission then being concocted to justify that blanket policy.

Given this low benefit, extensive safety research should have been conducted to ascertain its safety and if it meets the “1 in 10 million threshold.” However, despite decades of pleas for this to happen (including from the IOM), other than studies tracking symptoms for 4-5 days after vaccination (where depending upon the symptom, 10-30% of recipients experience them, including some that can be quite serious in a neonatal context) nothing has been done.

At the same time, many datasets have shown there are more deaths each year immediately following the vaccine than (far less serious) cases of newborn hepatitis B transmission, and that many autoimmune diseases (particularly MS) have been repeatedly observed to follow the vaccine as its antigen matches human myelin (e.g., a buried 2005 study found that 60% of its recipients also developed immune reactivity to the myelin coating their nerves—which in the majority of cases persisted for over 6 months, while an unpublished 1999 study found newborn hepatitis B vaccination increased the risk of autism by 12.35X—with many other studies finding a comparable increase in developmental disability).

Corroborating this, a 1999 Congressional hearing featured many witnesses severely injured by the injection and a 1999 ABC investigation (aired prior to the pharmaceutical industry buying out the media in an era where segments on vaccine injury were routinely aired) highlighted many of the dangers of the hepatitis B vaccine:

Yet, despite all of this and the newborn hepatitis B vaccine long being one of the most unpopular vaccines, the medical community has continually circled wagons around it, has almost no knowledge of any of the previously mentioned data (rather they view hepatitis B vaccination as one of public health’s crowning achievements) and over the years, I’ve heard numerous reports from parents (and readers here) who gave birth at a hospital of their child either being vaccinated against their consent while separated from the mother (with developmental disability following in some cases) or being threatened with CPS involvement if they did not vaccinate.

In short, the hepatitis B example demonstrates that the medical community does not accurately provide the risks and benefits of vaccination, and were they to do so, parents would likely decline many vaccines.

Justifications for Vaccination

Our society has a very weird obsession with vaccination, many (myself) included have likened to a dogmatic religion. I believe this ultimately results from:

•After Christianity stopped being the shared foundation of our society, something had to fill the void, and “science” stepped in—shifting from a method for uncovering reality into a dogmatic pseudo-religion that claims exclusive ownership of truth (often for money and power). Medicine became a core pillar of that system as it offered the modern version of miracles (against death and disease), and vaccines took on the role of the ritual that marks you as one of the faithful by baptizing you into the faith.

•Much of the credibility and social status of Western medicine (and arguably the Western order itself) rests on the story that science and medicine conquered the dark ages of disease and lifted us out of the primitive conditions that kept everyone trapped in sickness and early death. Admitting that vaccines were actually counterproductive would therefore be existential suicide for the medical profession.

•In the early days of medicine (when infectious disease ran rampant due to poor sanitation and living conditions), there were very few options for treating them, and the main ones that existed—serums and vaccines—had major issues (e.g., partial efficacy and severe toxicity) that made them far from perfect From having read through all the historical documentation, I believe the physicians and public health officers of that time regretted the harm those early treatments caused, but gradually felt forced to adopt a callous attitude that viewed the harm as a necessary sacrifice for the benefit those therapies created, and once this mentality cemented, it persisted long after the need for those therapies had disappeared (e.g., diphtheria used to be a major killer—now it’s non-existent but we still vaccinate for it) and much better solutions had appeared.
Note: likewise, I believe the reason why allergies are the one accepted contraindication to vaccination is due to the fact allergic reactions (to the early unpurified vaccinations) was a major recurring issue (and at some point in the future I will publish all the examples and studies Sir Graham Wilson collected on this).

•Governments tend to excel at top down measures their force and power can be leveraged to administer rather than bottom up grass roots approaches (which are often necessary to fix the health of the society). Vaccines are the quintessential top-down approach as they provide the promise a tangible health benefit can be achieved through the tools at their disposal (and as mandates are needed, feed into the need for power and control that inevitably emerges in governance). Because of this, you see a surprising number of people in government and public health get sucked into the belief “all our health problems would go away if we just vaccinated more people” whose focus largely shifts towards whatever can be done to increase vaccination rates (even in instances where the vaccine fails to live up to its initial promises and the goalposts have to keep being moved).
Note: a recurring theme in government is that they will be tasked with solving a problem but only have an imperfect solution available. In these cases, rather than improve the solution, they will use the power of the state to force the solution to “work” in manner akin to using a hammer to pound a square peg through a round hole.

•While most infectious diseases we vaccinate for can be treated with conventional or natural methods, in many cases, parents do not know how to spot the early signs of the disease or have immediate access to effective therapies. As such, I always consider that while this point does not apply to me, for many others who lack the resources I am fortunate to have, vaccines do provide a critical safety net (although I could see AI greatly reducing the value of this as the early red flags are easy for it to detect if queried).

•In some cases, vaccine arguably provided a public health benefit (particularly if their harms are ignored), so per the inevitable human tendency to confirmation bias, these positive aspects of these examples are always focused on rather than the litany of forgotten failures and catastrophes^1,2 seen throughout the history of immunization.

Note: a case can also be made the justification for vaccination is far more malignant (e.g., reducing fertility, causing chronic illness that creates lifelong medical customers, it being a religious sacrifice mirroring that seen in other societies like the Aztecs or blunting the consciousness of children so they are easier to control), but ultimately, I have no way to know why things are the way they are.

Producing Vaccines

Many of the problems with vaccines are ultimately inherent to their design. Unfortunately, much in the same way the immune system is one of the least understood parts of the body (often being referred to as “the last frontier” in medicine), most people, including doctors, have a very cursory understanding of how vaccines work.
Note: I believe this knowledge gap largely results from immunologic research being focused on creating profitable pharmaceuticals (vaccines, cancer immunotherapies and autoimmunity suppressing drugs) rather than actually understanding the immune system.

When the body is exposed to a foreign threat, it generally first encounters the innate immune system (barriers that keep pathogens from entering plus non-specific responses like fever and inflammation), which either clears the threat or slows it down. In tandem, an adaptive immune response is initiated that takes time to build (an immune cell with a randomly generated receptor that matches the threat must encounter it, become activated, and then produce enough copies of itself to control the infection). The duration and severity of illness are largely dependent on how long that adaptive response takes to become effective. Finally, once this adaptive response forms, it can reactivate much more quickly each time, so the initial phase (and hence the duration of illness) is much shorter.

The theory behind vaccination, in turn, is that if the unique molecular code of the threat (its antigen) can be introduced to the body without an actual pathologic infection, the adaptive immunity can be created without any actual danger or illness, so when the actual infection occurs, it will be rapidly neutralized.

Making vaccines hence requires producing a suitable antigen and introducing it into the body. Unfortunately, there are a few major challenges with doing this.

First, antigens are costly to produce, particularly at a scale which will elicit a reliable immune response (which often requires introducing toxic adjuvants).

Second, producing antigens normally involves culturing microrganisms, and hence often introduces a wide range of biological contaminants which are difficult to remove (and when not removed, often leads to catastrophic “hot lots”). Likewise, the chemicals needed to inactivate the toxic components of the vaccine (e.g., a virus or toxin) are often also toxic to the body.

Third, the antigens that effectively stimulate an immune response also often stimulate an immune response against human tissue (e.g., in addition to the previously mentioned hepatitis B vaccine, this was a major issue with the HPV vaccine Gardasil and the COVID vaccines).

Fourth, some antigens are inherently toxic to the body. The best example of this was the COVID-19 spike protein (which through natural infections, long COVID or vaccine injuries) wrecked havoc throughout the body (particularly when mass produced by the vaccine), but has also been seen in with other vaccines (e.g., the soup of poorly filtered pertussis and anthrax vaccines caused a lot of issues). Likewise, if an antigenic toxin (e.g., from tetanus or diphtheria) added to the body with a vaccine is not sufficiently deactivated, that toxin can injure or kill the recipient (which as I showed in a previous article has happened numerous times in the past).

Finally, the immune system behaves very differently when a pathogen contacts it at the surface (where a sterilizing response that often blocks transmission forms) versus deep inside the body (which often only reduces symptoms rather than preventing infection and transmission and often provokes a far more severe immune response). As such, classical injected vaccines frequently fail to prevent disease transmission, whereas the much rarer ones designed to create mucosal (IgA) immunity (e.g., intranasal sprays, and certain live virus preparations), accomplish this—all of which is discussed here.

However, despite this being well-known at the start of the COVID-19 vaccine campaign, it took a long time to acknowledge the wrong design was chosen (e.g., it was only after the vaccines had been on the market for a year that Bill Gates publicly admitted a sterilizing vaccine which blocked transmission should have been chosen).
Note: another vaccine which is frequently falsely asserted to prevent transmission is the TDaP pertussis vaccine (to the point ICAN successfully got an repulsive ad-campaign pulled which scared parents into forbidding unvaccinated relatives from visiting their infants—something many grandparents I know fell victim too). This failure is due to the fact TDaP counteracts the toxin which causes whooping cough rather than bacterial colonization—creating asymptomatic spreaders), and in turn, many pertussis outbreaks have been observed within vaccinated populations. That said, I am hesitant to attack this facet of the vaccine, as TDaP only came to market as a replacement for the far more toxic TDwP (which prevented transmission) because of years of lawsuits and lobbying by the vaccine safety community, and things would be much worse if TDwP was still on the market.

Before we go further, it’s important to underscore that most members of the medical profession are not aware of how vaccines are made, and hence do not have the context to understand why the “safe and effective” products will inevitably have issues. Instead, due to the religious aura surrounding vaccines, their mental exploration of this subject typically doesn’t go beyond “safe and effective.”

Antigen Production

Over the years, a variety of increasingly genetically engineered approaches have been created to create the needed antigens. The six main ones are:

1. Growing large amounts of the infectious organism, doing something to “kill” it (or neutralize the toxoid), and then attempting to filter away everything besides the desired antigens of the organism or its neutralized toxin (which is how most vaccines for bacterial infections are produced). In conjugate vaccines, these antigens are then bound to a carrier to improve the immune response in children.

2. Culturing a virus in a medium (e.g., annual flu vaccines are grown in eggs while the polio vaccine is grown in monkey kidney cells) and then inactivating the antigen containing virus by exposing it to a chemical. In most cases, this takes a while, which helps to explain why the annual flu vaccine is almost always for a different strain than the one that actually emerges (as they have to start producing the vaccine long before the dominant flu strain is known and hence must rely on their best guess to determine what the strain is).
Note: a major problem with this approach is that beyond the inactivating agent (e.g., formaldehyde) being toxic, a balance needs to be struck where enough is given to sufficiently inactivate the virus (so it does not cause illness) but not have too much be given (as once the virus is too damaged, its antigen are no longer recognizable to the immune system). For example, major issues emerged with the early the polio vaccines due to not enough formaldehyde being used and vaccine recipients hence being injected with live polio virus.

3. Genetically modifying an organism to produce the target antigen sequence, then killing the organism and extracting the antigen sequence. For example, both the HPV vaccine and the hepatitis B vaccine antigens are made from genetically modified baker yeasts. Newer approaches, such as growing the antigen from plants or insect cells (e.g., Novavax was made from moth cells), are also now beginning to enter use. In some cases (e.g., with the HPV vaccine) these antigens then spontaneously assemble into spherical virus like particles (VLPs).

4. Modifying an organism so that it remains capable of reproducing within the body, but is less likely to cause a severe illness. Some of the common live attenuated vaccines include the measles mumps and rubella vaccine, certain flu vaccines (e.g., the nasal ones), the chickenpox and shingles vaccines, and the live oral polio one (which is not given in the United States). A few bacterial ones also exist (e.g., for tuberculosis or typhoid fever). While typically the most effective, these vaccine are met with some skepticism by conventional medicine because they can cause illness in individuals with suppressed immune systems and shed. Additionally, I believe the nature of their production causes these vaccines to be commonly contaminated with other unwanted agents (e.g., pathologic viruses) and in some cases, they independently cause problems (e.g., Andrew Wakefield’s original controversial research linking MMR to autism showed significant gut inflammation was present and that this was potentially triggered by the vaccine measles virus).
Note: self-spreading vaccines (either of easily transmittable live viral vaccines or replicating viruses modified to carry an antigen) that transmit between hosts and replicate inside them have been developed and proposed for mass vaccinating animal populations, but none have been licensed.

5. Modifying a relatively harmless virus to also carry a target antigen sequence (e.g., the spike protein), mass producing it in a cell culture, and then injecting it into the body. The most well known examples of this were AstraZeneca, J&J’s, Russia’s (Sputnik), and China’s Convidecia COVID-19 vaccines.
Note: typically (with the exception of an ebola vaccine and a few animal ones) these are designed to not replicate within the body.

6. Transfecting human cells with mRNA which causes them to produce the target vaccine antigen until the mRNA goes away (which can take a long time as mRNA in the COVID vaccines was engineered to resist being broken down). Unfortunately there a massive number of problems with this approach (e.g., immune suppression and shedding to those not vaccinated) which strongly argue against the longterm adoption of this technology.
Note: self-amplifying mRNA technology (where the mRNA reproduces in cells requiring much lower initial vaccines doses) has also been developed (with a few approved COVID-19 ones existing).

(7). Transfecting a cell’s nucleus with a bacterial plasmid DNA (either by including a DNA nuclear targeting sequence such as the 72-bp SV40 enhancer region, or simply waiting until the cell divides and the nuclear envelope temporarily opens). Once inside the nucleus, the cell’s transcription machinery produces mRNA from the plasmid, which is then translated into the target vaccine antigen. Because of the theoretical risk of genomic integration, this approach has been viewed as riskier than mRNA or protein-based methods. So while extensively studied (with quite a few in development), only one DNA vaccine have been approved for human use so far (India’s ZyCoV-D COVID-19 vaccine), although numerous animal ones exist (making this not be one of the primary six approaches).
Note: I felt I had to mention this because when Kevin McKernan sequenced the COVID vaccines, he discovered DNA plasmids from the manufacturing process were present that contained the 72-bp SV40 enhancer region and argued were likely getting into the DNA and indefinitely producing spike protein—which critics said was impossible. It hence is astonishing this is actually a well established vaccine technology.

Lastly, while not technically a vaccine, one recent approach that is now used for preventing RSV in healthy infants is to inject a longstanding antibody which binds the virus (neutralizing it) and hence provides protection for a prolonged period (e.g., the RSV season).

The essential challenge all of these approaches face is that enough of the costly antigen needs to be produced for the immune system to develop a durable immune response to it. The original solution the vaccination field developed was to mix the antigen with a much cheaper additive which enhanced the immune response to the antigen, thereby making less of the costly antigen needed. Unfortunately, those adjuvants tended to overstimulate the immune system (producing off-target autoimmunity to tissues besides the target antigen). For example, in addition to the hepatitis B vaccine myelin issue mentioned above (where the immune system becomes programmed to attack tissue resembling the vaccine’s antigen), a classic study in this field showed that mice developed allergies to pollens that were in the air at the time of their pertussis vaccination (as the excessive immune stimulation primed the immune system to become permanently reactive to whatever was present at the time).

Note: I believe one of the primary issues with most vaccines is the tendency of their aluminum adjuvants (or spike proteins) to cause microstrokes by disrupting the body’s zeta potential and create autoimmune disorders. In turn, a textbook has been written on how aluminum causes autoimmune disorders, while other papers have shown how the immune system shuttles it into the brain after vaccination. While I cannot prove this, I have long believed the reason why aluminum functions as such an effective stimulus for the immune system is due to its strong ability to destroy the physiologic zeta potential, as this is something that would also occur in most infections and hence serve as a nonspecific signal to the immune system and something that could be detected from far away (due to how it distorts the water of the body). Amongst the aluminum adjuvants, the one used in Gardasil was the most problematic (as a strong stimulus was needed to overcome the body’s resistance to developing immunity to things matching the vaccine antigen), and in turn, disabling autoimmune conditions frequently followed the vaccine (making it the most harmful vaccine on the market until the COVID vaccines were released).

As time has passed, the vaccine field has moved towards using genetic engineering to efficiently produce the target antigen, either outside the body (e.g., in yeast cells) or within the body through some type of self replicating technology (e.g., the viral vectors or mRNA technology). As these approaches are highly unnatural, we are in turn continually discovering new consequences of them.

For example, the mRNA technology overproduces spike protein within cells, leading to it being forced out onto the surface of the cells, at which point the immune system not only recognizes it but the entire cell as a threat, which in turn helps to explain why profound tissue abnormalities were detected in autopsies of those who died from the vaccines experienced things such as tissue destruction due to immune cell infiltration that examiners described as:

This combination of multifocal, T-lymphocyte-dominated pathology that clearly reflects the process of immunological self-attack is without precedent.

Furthermore, while many issues exist with each of these approaches for designing vaccines, the core issue all single antigen vaccines share is that they produce an excessive immune response to a single antigen, rather than a moderate immune response to a wide variety of antigens (which is what happens during a natural infection).

Single Antigen Vaccines

Typically, the immune system does not produce an excessive immune response to a single antigen. However, if enough of it is put into the body or the body is exposed to adjuvants which provoke it into responding, it will. In turn, there are a few key issues with doing this:

First, the simplest type of mutation which occurs in nature is the changing of a protein sequence. Since protein (antigen) sequences have to match for an immune response to occur, creating a strong immune response to a single antigen immediately creates a selective pressure that causes the pathogen to evolve into something which no longer has the matching antigen. In contrast, since natural immune responses typically target multiple antigens within a pathogen, it is much harder for them to evolve resistance to it as even if one antigen changes, the immune system can still target the other antigens it was primed to react to and eliminate that partially resistant strain before it can reproduce and become the dominant one.

Because of this, a recurring theme of vaccination is that when they actually work, they will rapidly trigger the evolution of vaccine resistant strains and a selective pressure is exerted for the resistant strains to become the dominant one. In the case of COVID, this was particularly pronounced as the rapidly mutating virus shifted faster than it was possible to develop new vaccines and bring them to market, and the selective pressure the vaccines exerted caused many new variants to emerge once the vaccine had hit the market.

As such, when leaked documents were revealed in December 2020 of Europe’s regulatory review of the Pfizer vaccine, one of the things Europe’s EMA highlighted was that the circulating strain of COVID-19 was now slightly different from the one the vaccine had been designed for:

The Spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 undergo mutations, and it thus critically important to investigate the biological significance of these variants in relation to the development of Spike-based covid-19 vaccine candidates. For example, Korber et al. 2020 present evidence that there are now more SARS-CoV-2 viruses circulating in the human population globally that have the G614 form of the Spike protein versus the D614 form that was originally identified from the first human cases in Wuhan, China. Further, Li et al., states that as of May 6, 2020, 329 naturally occurring variants in Spike protein have been reported in the public domain. The applicant is asked to discuss how the chosen Spike antigen variant in BNT162b2 relates to the Spike variants currently on the dominant SARS-CoV-2 viruses circulating in the human population ([confidential information deleted]).^1,2

Likewise, once the COVID vaccine hit the market and a selective pressure was created, we rapidly saw the emergence of variant after variant, which the government tried to either ignore (resulting in the absurdity of mandates for vaccines to viruses that no longer existed) or rushing boosters to market as quickly as possible in the hope they could catch the strains before they disappeared, eventually resulting in (mandated) BA.4/5 bivalent boosters being approved on the basis of results from 8 mice, something the recent head of the FDA repeatedly criticized in 2022.^1,2,3,4

This ties into one of the more appalling revelations in Fauci’s diary where he states the head of the CDC wanted to disclose the (untested) boosters did not work (as the virus had already mutated), but the White House gagged her to ensure the booster campaign could continue (which Fauci supported).

As such, a large portion of the American public lost confidence in the vaccine program, as they were promised the vaccines would fully protect them against COVID, but in reality, even with numerous boosters, they kept getting sick.

Furthermore, it should be noted that this issue is not unique to the COVID vaccines, as mutations have been observed in many other commonly circulating organisms after their vaccines hit the market. For example, the pneumococcal vaccine keeps on having to be updated with more and more antigens to cover the existing variants (where in 2000, one covering 7 strains was introduced, in 2009, a 10 strain one came out, in 2010 a 13 strain one came out, in 2021 a 15 and then 20 strain one came out, and in 2024, a 21 strain one was brought to market). Likewise, similar changes in vaccine efficacy have also been observed with Neisseria meningitidis, Haemophilus influenzae, HPV, pertussis, and to a lesser extent rotavirus (as the original designs used a limited number of antigens).
Note: In addition to these evolutionary changes that can weaken vaccine effectiveness against specific strains, they frequently alter how the pathogen behaves or which groups it affects (e.g., Delta and Omicron being more transmissible than the ancestral COVID-19 strain, non-vaccine pneumococcal serotypes rising with higher antibiotic resistance rates within those serotypes, and invasive Haemophilus influenzae disease shifting from predominantly childhood Hib to nontypeable and other non-b strains that mainly affect adults).

Original Antigenic Sin (OAS)

One of the unscientific beliefs which existing with the science of vaccinology is that the immune system has an unlimited ability to adapt to antigens, so an endless number of vaccines can be given, which in each instance enhance the immune systems ability to further respond to more threats.

The problem with this belief is that the immune system has a finite ability to respond to new infections, so if it becomes locked onto one (due to the immune response being excessively stimulated to target a vaccine antigen sequence), it loses the ability to respond to other strains it naturally encounters. Because of this, a recurring theme seen with vaccines carrying a low number of antigens is that they not only trigger the evolution of variants resistant to the vaccine but also reduce the body’s ability to respond to these variants.

For example, one of the most egregious examples occurred when one of the WHO’s top vaccine researchers discovered that giving the DTwP vaccine in a region of Africa where people frequently died of infectious diseases caused children to be 5 times as likely to die (boys were 3.93 times and girls were 9.98 times more likely to die)—which did not result in any changes to the “lifesaving” vaccine program.

Conversely, in many cases, live vaccines (which contain many different antigens) do the opposite and provide a broad non-specific stimulation of the immune system, which while harmful in fairly clean environments (e.g., the inflammation MMR creates may be a catalyst for autistic regressions), is quite helpful in less sanitary environments where infectious diseases are a common cause of death (e.g., the MMR and tuberculosis vaccines are some of the only vaccines I know of which have been shown to cause a clear mortality benefit as they reduce the risk of dying from other infections—with reductions in death ranging from 38-86%).

Further underscoring how little is understood about the immune system, this cuts both ways. Many of the viral infections of childhood have been repeatedly found to provide a critical development of the immune system that can stave off deadly diseases later in life. For example, not having a chickenpox infection increases your risk of brain cancer later in life,^1,2,3,4 not having a mumps infection increases your subsequent risk of ovarian cancer,^1,2,3 (as did not having a measles, rubella, or chickenpox infection¹) and previous infections of influenza, measles, mumps, or chickenpox were found to decrease one’s risk of malignant melanoma.¹,² Likewise, a 2015 Japanese study, found previously having measles (especially when also previously having mumps) was associated with an 8–20% lower risks of death from cardiovascular disease, heart attacks, and stroke.

Finally, in many cases, populations rely upon shedding of a longstanding virus to stimulate everyone’s immune system and create herd immunity, which is why after the chickenpox vaccine was launched (which the CDC eagerly expected to eliminate shingles), shingles instead permanently increased (resulting in the CDC gagging the researcher they assigned to monitor this) and at the time the MMR vaccine was launched, measles had become a largely innocuous disease as the population was fully resistant to it due to population wide shedding creating herd immunity (which was then destroyed through the introduction of the vaccine). Given how small the benefits of vaccination are, this data suggests the benefits of vaccination may be outweighed by the chronic diseases the absence of the viral infections causes.
Note: this 1969 episode of the Brady Bunch (aired when measles deaths had dropped almost to 0 deaths annually) illustrates how much our conception of this disease shifted in the post vaccination era where it is effectively a national emergency if everyone is not vaccinated.

The immune suppression of OAS, in turn, has been best demonstrated with the influenza and COVID vaccines, particularly when the existing vaccine does not match the circulating strain (which is an extremely common occurrence). For example:

•A 2009 study found that vaccinating mice for influenza removed their ability to develop resistance to pandemic influenza following previous exposure to normal influenza. Compared to unvaccinated mice, vaccinated mice continued to lose body weight after a pandemic influenza infection and had 100-fold higher lung virus titers on day 7 [this increases transmission] post-infection and more severe histopathological changes.

•A 2010 review of four studies found that recipients of a seasonal influenza vaccine had a significantly increased risk (ranging from a 40% to 150% increase) of subsequently developing severe pandemic influenza (which unlike normal influenza could hospitalize you).

•A 2010 study of the severe pandemic influenza found that active duty members of the military were more likely to have received influenza vaccination than were those without H1N1 virus infection.

•This 2012 study conducted between 1999-2007 of 261 children 6 months to 18 years old who developed laboratory-confirmed influenza found that infected children were 267% more likely to be hospitalized if they had previously received an influenza vaccine.

•A 2012 study randomized 69 children to receive an inactive influenza vaccination, and 46 to receive a placebo. Of those vaccinated, 29.0% developed an infection with a non-influenza upper respiratory virus, whereas 3.4% of those who were not vaccinated developed an upper respiratory infection from a non-influenza virus.

•A 2013 study found receiving an influenza vaccination two years in a row increased rather than decreased the likelihood of developing influenza by 45% (ranging from 6% to 148% depending on one’s age).

Note: there is very little evidence influenza vaccination provides any benefit. For example, this 2013 Cochrane review (which represents the most objective and comprehensive evaluation of the existing evidence) found there is no benefit in giving them to children, this 2012 review found there was no benefit to patients if healthcare workers received them (nonetheless they are still mandated for most healthcare workers) and this 2006 study found our national vaccine program had provided no reduction in influenza for the United States. Nonetheless, much like the DPT study, these results have had no effect on halting the momentum behind the vaccine program, as once a vaccine is approved, the religious faith behind them makes it nearly impossible to withdraw them from the market.

Finally, we also witnessed throughout COVID-19, as we’ve all seen that those who were repeatedly vaccinated kept on getting COVID, whereas those who got the infection naturally developed a durable immunity. This was best shown by the Cleveland Clinic’s study of 51011 people, which found the more (single antigen) vaccines one got, the more likely they were to get COVID-19.

Note: OAS is particularly bad with the COVID vaccines because their continual production of spike protein in the body triggers a variety of immunosuppressive changes in the body.

Likewise, three years after that study was published, in a 53,402 person study, the Cleveland clinic showed the same issue occurred with flu vaccines:

Note: in tandem with OAS, vaccine efficacy often wanes (requiring repeated reboosting to maintain immune function). For example, the COVID-19 vaccine’s efficacy wanes approximately three months after the most recent injection, while with the hepatitis B vaccine, its efficacy largely wanes by the time an infant will be old enough to be exposed to unprotected sex or drug needles.

Th1 and Th2 Responses

An introductory principle in immunology is that there is a constant balance between the Th1 (cell mediated or cytotoxic) immune response and the Th2 (humoral or antibody) immune response as the Th1 response releases IFN-γ which effectively suppresses the Th2 response, and the Th2 response releases IL-4 and IL-13, both of which effectively suppress the Th1 response.  The Th1 response tends to be excellent at dealing with intercellular pathogens and cancers, while the Th2 response tends to be excellent at dealing with pathogenic substances such as toxoids, parasites and encapsulated bacteria that are outside cells or on their surfaces. The balance between Th1 and Th2 is frequently discussed within the hygiene hypothesis, which posits many of our chronic diseases arise from an imbalance between these two systems due to modern sterile living conditions.

Classical vaccinations (those with a small number of antigens and an adjuvant such as aluminum) tend to excessively increase the Th2 response (e.g., see this study on the DPT vaccine). Likewise, there are a variety of effective conventional and alternative medical therapies that elevate the Th1 response and suppress the Th2 response which are often used to treat complications from vaccinations, cancers, or viral infections.

Because of this, you typically observe the best results for single antigen vaccines which are directed against toxoids or encapsulated bacteria. However, at the same time, as the previous section shows, these vaccines often stop working because they place selective pressure on the organism to evolve resistance. This is best demonstrated with the pneumococcal vaccine, which as the years have gone by, has had to have more and more antigens added to it so that the existing strains are still covered by the vaccine.

Note: live viral vaccines tend to give a more natural and functional immune response with both a Th1 and Th2 response (e.g., see this study on the MMR vaccine).

Therapeutic Vaccines

One of the strongest cases for vaccination exists for vaccines which are given once a disease is already present (for the purpose of eliminating or reducing it) rather than beforehand to prevent a disease. This is because there is no longer a small unquantifiable benefit (the chance of getting the infection within the period of time the vaccine remains effective times how severe that infection is likely to be) counterbalancing the known risks of the vaccine.

The quintessential example of this is rabies, as while the rabies vaccine is harmful and has a long history of causing neurological damage,^1,2 (with the Supreme Court, in a 2011 opinion, recognizing some of the earlier and more toxic rabies vaccines as being “unavoidably unsafe”) an untreated rabies infection is worse (typically being 100% fatal). Since rabies infections following a bite take a while to develop, it hence it possible to prevent the ensuing rabies infection by giving a vaccine after the bite (with the vaccine typically working), thereby justifying the harm the vaccine will cause.
Note: even this example is not completely clearcut, as no data exists to establish what percent of rabies infections will progress to the certainly fatal symptomatic cases, in many cases vaccines are given without knowing if the animal was actually rabid (which has led to people I know who unnecessarily received the vaccine after a bite seriously regretting the decision due to the complications they experienced). Furthermore, while no other treatment for rabies exist, I came across a 2008 report from Togo (West Africa) where a boy with advanced rabies (where nothing could be done) received UVBI and rapidly had a full recovery—which while plausible given UVBI’s robust antiviral properties, given the lack of data here, I would never substitute for rabies vaccination unless the latter was simply unavailable.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, therapeutic vaccines are also used for chronic disease, which in a few cases, by increasing the immune response, have demonstrated remarkable efficacy at eliminating a chronic infection which caused chronic recurring issues for the patient. Unfortunately, that does not always hold true. For example, one of the reasons concocted to market the COVID vaccines was as a treatment for long COVID under the theory (and a widely promoted pharmaceutical sponsored case study) the vaccine’s immune stimulation could allow the body to eliminate the infection. However, since long COVID primarily resulted from cumulative spike protein toxicity, we came across many cases where significantly increasing a patient’s spike protein burden with a vaccine made them become much worse, and in turn, this marketing pitch for the COVID vaccine was gradually dropped.

Withdrawn Vaccines

Lastly, a key fact many people do not appreciate about vaccines is that despite the vaccines being “safe and effective” many have been withdrawn from the market, and it is likely many more (e.g., some of the COVID vaccines) will be in the future. For example, this is one list of withdrawn vaccines that was compiled:

Determining The Risks and Benefits of Each Vaccine

Given all of this, I have tried to extensively explore the risks and benefits of each recommended vaccine, partially for my own curiosity, but also so that I can provide truthful information to patients who ask. I feel this is particularly important as many parents want a reduced vaccine schedule rather than a full one, and since the harm of vaccines is cumulative, removing both the most harmful ones and spacing out the remaining can significantly decrease the total harm to the infants.
Note: despite spacing out being a well established way to reduce vaccine harm, the medical profession has relentlessly targeted anyone who advocates for deviating from the (ever-growing) CDC vaccine schedule as doing so is a tacit admission vaccines are not 100% safe.

In the final part of this article I will highlight:

•Which therapeutic vaccines have demonstrated real value for chronic illnesses (e.g., fibromyalgia, diabetes, cancer) and the natural “therapeutic” vaccines which have been shown over the years to offer immense promise for key chronic illnesses that do not respond to standard therapies (and in some cases reverse the immune dysfunction vaccines cause).

•My assessment of the overall risks and benefits of each vaccine on the infant vaccine schedule (e.g., I believe the COVID and HPV vaccines have the worst risk/benefit ratios).

•Completely non-toxic alternatives to vaccination which have extensive data demonstrating their efficacy in large scale ‘vaccination’ campaigns, but nonetheless have been suppressed by the medical system to protect the vaccine market.

Read more

•As part of Senator Rand Paul’s six year quest to hold Fauci accountable for his role in creating COVID-19 and putting an end to gain of function research, Fauci recently was forced to testify in front of a Senate committee in an unusually candid and contentious hearing where Fauci took the unusual tactic of refusing to testify by pleading the Fifth on every question. This article will summarize the key highlights of that hearing.

•Immediately prior to hearing, private diary entries were released that Fauci had been keeping on a nearly daily basis that explicitly showed many of the public statements he made (and forced us to go along with) contradicted his actual beliefs.

•They also paint a unique picture into his personality, as the saint much of the world came to worship during the pandemic (despite him failing to provide any substantive results) was not at all focused on the science or wellbeing of the country, and instead was a petty man who was obsessed with the fame and media attention he got and using that fame to influence the media’s coverage of the pandemic (and hence the course of it).

•Many of the almost unbelievable revelations about Fauci’s personality and conduct mirror what two White House insiders witnessed as they tried to stop Fauci’s senseless pandemic policies—including his profound lack of scientific literacy Scott Atlas observed throughout the pandemic.

•Collectively, these events illustrate an unfortunate reality—the loudest “follow the science” voices are often the most illiterate grifters. Fortunately, as the hearing showed, public opinion is turning against this paradigm and now that the unconditional trust medicine relies upon has been broken, there is a real window for alternatives to the existing paradigm to flourish.

Yesterday, a rather contentious hearing occurred where Fauci was subpoenaed by the Senate to testify over what happened during COVID, which was immediately preceded by the private diaries (which HHS Secretary RFK Jr. team found sequestered on government HHS servers) being released to the public.

The hearing (after opening statements), began with Fauci giving a statement claiming he had been a dutiful servant helping the government for decades, that he was facing a malicious prosecution that put science itself at risk, and that he would be invoking his 5^th amendment rights. Following this, Democrat members of the committee repeated this message, while Republican senators gave scathing criticisms of his conduct throughout the pandemic (eclipsing everything we’ve seen thus far), and Fauci, over a hundred times, in response to each question stating:

On the advice of counsel, I respectfully declined to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

While the focus of this hearing was largely directed at the scathing statements made toward Fauci (and his refusal to respond to or even acknowledge them), it was also apparent that many of the questions were designed to set up a future prosecution, and that Fauci’s allies gave speeches but never asked him a single question. This suggests the primary focus of both sides was executing a legal strategy each had worked out beforehand.

Note: there are widespread questions about the legitimacy of Fauci’s presidential pardon, which covers all of his federal actions between 1/1/2014 and 1/19/2025, given existing legal precedent that a pardon can negate one’s ability to invoke the Fifth Amendment’s protection against self-incrimination. Multiple Republican senators pressed this contradiction (that Fauci either does not have a valid pardon or is willfully committing contempt) and it will likely be an issue that plays out in the courts, especially if the committee votes to hold him in contempt.

Given all of this, there were a few noteworthy things about the hearing and Fauci’s diary I felt merited discussion.

Fauci’s 1988 Hearing

In each COVID hearing that has been conducted, Republican Senators and Representatives have grilled Fauci while Democrats have heaped lavish praise upon him. This is a remarkable contrast to the climate in 1988 where Democrats (whose constituents were dying while AIDS drug development proceeded at a snail’s pace) instead grilled Fauci over his program (while Republican members of Congress were largely neutral towards him).

Note: Fauci’s actions during the AIDS crisis (where he faced widespread pushback from the gay community for continually stonewalling effective off-patent therapies for AIDS to push through the toxic antiviral AZT), the fact that he was still in power over thirty years later, and his immediate endorsement of remdesivir played a large part in allowing me to accurately predict the trajectory of COVID-19.

Therapeutic Drugs For Aids - April 28 & 29, 1988

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To illustrate all of this, I will quote a few key lines from a 1988 hearing:

Chairman Ted Weiss (D-NY): “But then you told Mr. Waxman that you couldn’t develop a drug that’s been lying on the shelf for 13 months even though your committees have placed it on the highest priority list because you didn’t have one person full time to devote to it. You can understand how the people in the affected community, those who have the disease and who are struggling for their lives, feel when they hear that.” (p. 324)

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA): “Dr. Fauci, many people have complained that the NIH drug development process is too slow to put volunteers in trials. Thirteen months ago, your own drug selection committee said that aerosolized pentamidine, to prevent the deadly pneumonia in AIDS patients, was a very high priority for research. You have three protocols designed, but as best I can discover, no patients yet.” (p. 321)

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA): “The pneumonia costs us millions of dollars in Medicaid dollars. Why can’t we hire one full-time person to have gotten this study underway?” (p. 321)

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA): “Your own drug selection committee has named 24 drugs as high priority for development and trials. As best I can tell, 11 of these 24 are not in trial yet. Six of these drugs have been waiting for 6 months to more than a year. Why the delays?” (p. 322)

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA): “Well, it’s not the length of time — I’m in Congress, Dr. Fauci — it’s the length of time that a person with AIDS has left to live before something, some hope is there for him or her.” (p. 320)

Chairman Ted Weiss (D-NY): “Wouldn’t you say that... as far as drug development is concerned, very little has been achieved and you still have a long, long way to go?”
Dr. Anthony Fauci: “With regard to a cure, I agree with you; relatively speaking, little has been accomplished.” (p. 324)

Note: despite my best efforts, while I have a transcript, I have not been able to find a video of this contentious hearing (e.g., in C-SPANs archives, it somehow was removed from all the other Congressional hearing that occurred at that time).

A Plague Upon Our House

After I read Scott Atlas MD’s memoir about his time on the coronavirus task force (where he was brought in to serve as a counterweight to Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx’s relentless push for mass masking, testing, and lockdowns), I was struck by the sense that he’d provided one of the most accurate accounts of what actually went wrong inside the White House in 2020.

The first thing that emerges from his account is that no one in the White House felt positioned to challenge the doctors’ “expertise,” so no one did. As Atlas explains, most of the task force “had no medical background... so they deferred to those deemed medical experts.” That deference ran all the way to the top. When Atlas pressed his case on testing, a frustrated Trump told him, “You’ll have to convince my son-in-law of that,” and as Atlas notes, “Kushner and everyone else had been deferring to Fauci and Birx on all things medical.” The two doctors, in his words, “commandeered federal policy,” and their prescriptions “had been instituted as though it were simple common sense.” No one questioned them, largely because of the prestige of the people delivering them.

However, on closer inspection, the expert doctors had an almost unbelievable lack of scientific literacy or COVID-19 data. Atlas (a Stanford physician and health-policy scholar who had spent decades around serious researchers) was flabbergasted by what he found in the Situation Room. Of the “troika” of Fauci, Birx, and Redfield, he wrote that “none of them showed detailed knowledge of ongoing scientific literature on the pandemic,” that he “never witnessed any of them provide any detailed critique of any journal publication,” and that “none of the three ever brought scientific publications into the meetings.”
Note: the third doctor, CDC director Redfield, during COVID unlike the other two tried to do the right thing, was repeatedly disparaged by Fauci in his diary, and since leaving the CDC has done a lot of really good work to make things right (whereas CDC directors typically take lucrative positions).

Fauci in particular receives a striking assessment. Despite his daily omnipresence in the media, Atlas records that Fauci “was not in charge of anything specific on the Task Force” and “served mainly as a channel for updates on the trials of vaccines and drugs.” More pointedly:

“A bigger surprise was that Fauci did not present scientific research on the pandemic to the group that I witnessed. Likewise, I never heard him speak about his own critical analysis of any published research studies. This was stunning to me.”

Nor was any of this open to correction. Atlas describes a group that had locked in its conclusions and would not engage with contrary evidence. As he put it, “They were fixated on lockdowns, school closures, and stopping COVID cases, no matter the economic and human costs” or the fact the approach was clearly failing as it was not targeted to the primary group (elderly patients in nursing homes) that was dying. Birx’s daily presentations, which drove national policy, were “fundamentally simple tabulations of weekly tallies,” propped up by “circular reasoning as ‘proof’ that locking down was successful.” When Atlas distributed peer-reviewed data on the flaws in PCR testing at a September meeting, it went entirely undiscussed:

“The White House Task Force doctors sitting in the Situation Room for months, Birx, Fauci, Giroir, Redfield, literally never discussed this critical error during the meetings I sat through. They never mentioned it, not even after I distributed the research at a Task Force meeting in September.”

He handed the papers out, he recalls, “while noting with a tinge of sarcasm, ‘I thought some people might actually be interested in reading the science.’” It only got worse from there. By his final task force meeting, nine full months into the pandemic, Atlas was asked to prepare a basic tutorial because the doctors still didn’t grasp the rationale for testing. He refused, writing to the vice president’s staff that he “had no energy or interest in teaching basic information to people who after nine months on the Task Force still lacked such fundamental knowledge.” His verdict was blunt. This was “not the expected level of legitimate scientists, let alone those supposed to be advising the president of the United States,” people operating below what, as he put it elsewhere, “every second-year medical student knew.”

In 2006, a movie premised on projecting the consequences of our society continually selecting for low-IQ individuals was released. It became a cult classic thanks to how accurately it predicted the future just a decade later. As I read Scott Atlas’s memoir, I was floored to realize the Coronavirus Task Force meetings were a real-life version of Idiocracy‘s iconic cabinet scene: one person reasons from the plainest available evidence, lays it on the table, and watches a room full of the nation’s most credentialed officials stare back blankly, unable or unwilling to follow, before defaulting to the slogan they’d already committed to.

However, while Fauci contributed little of substance in these meetings, Atlas made it clear about what he was good at. The gap between Fauci’s actual role and his public dominance is one of the book’s recurring themes:

“Dr. Fauci held court in the public eye on a daily basis, so frequently that many misconstrue his role as being in charge. However, it was really Dr. Birx who articulated Task Force policy [and pushed through the lockdowns].”

Atlas came to suspect this media fluency wasn’t incidental but strategic. After one private meeting between the two men, he glanced at the news afterward and was astonished to find Fauci had tipped off reporters in advance:

“It turned out that Fauci had alerted the media beforehand that he was going to talk with me that day. I wondered, ‘What kind of person would give a heads-up that he was going to speak with me?’”

Furthermore, Atlas’s claims that Fauci sabotaged the COVID response and quietly worked the press against internal rivals (e.g., press hysterias were incited each time Atlas began getting traction to overturn Fauci and Birx’s disastrous policies) was independently corroborated by Peter Navarro’s White House memoir. Navarro described the same behavior aimed at him, writing what “really frosted” him “was the shadow leak campaign Fauci ran to get me off TV even as he sought to free himself completely from any disciplined White House messaging.” Navarro also captures the broader dynamic that made Fauci untouchable. “During the Trump administration,” he writes, “Saint Fauci, the anti-Trump media’s favorite POTUS foil, was always off limits.”

Navarro corroborates the substance, too. Where I’ve long argued that remdesivir was essentially Fauci’s pet drug, Navarro documents the maneuver that got it approved. Fauci, he writes, “surprised the scientific community by abruptly moving this goalpost” for the remdesivir trial, shifting it from a reduction in mortality (the original “death off the table” endpoint) “to the much less consequential time to recovery.” The drug that couldn’t clear the bar it was originally measured against was waved through once the bar was lowered, all while cheaper, off-patent options were being publicly dismissed.

Navarro also connected Fauci’s COVID conduct to a much older pattern seen in the 1988 hearing. He notes that “during the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, Fauci had sung the very same ‘there’s not enough data’ song to block approval of a suite of drugs proving to be quite effective” at preventing the pneumonia that was then the leading killer of AIDS patients. Navarro cites a documented 1987 exchange in which activist Michael Callen told Fauci there was ample evidence that the drug could prevent that pneumonia, and Fauci, by the account Navarro quotes, “practically screamed” back, “There’s no data.” One AIDS-era memoir Navarro references put Fauci’s share of the resulting body count at “nearly 17,000.”

That history came roaring back during a Situation Room showdown over hydroxychloroquine, which Navarro argues both Fauci and the FDA moved to undermine against Trump’s wishes. When Fauci played what Navarro calls “his ‘there’s only anecdotal evidence’ card,” (while the Vice President was present) Navarro walked over, dropped a dossier of studies on the table and exclaimed:

“Tony, these are not anecdotes. That’s more than fifty scientific studies in support of hydroxy. Fifty! So stop spouting your crap about there only being anecdotal evidence... You are going to kill people just like you did during the AIDS crisis when you refused to approve medicines that everybody but you knew worked.”

Within hours, in a room Navarro notes held only a small handful of senior officials, the confrontation was leaked to Axios and written up as an “epic Situation Room showdown”, providing a fitting illustration of exactly the kind of press leak Navarro was accusing Fauci of running.

Note: in Fauci’s February 28, 2020 NEJM editorial, “Covid-19 — Navigating the Uncharted,” he listed chloroquine by name among the investigational therapies being explored against the virus and back in 2005, CDC virologists had published “Chloroquine is a potent inhibitor of SARS coronavirus infection and spread” in Virology Journal, finding it active against the original SARS virus fifteen years earlier.

Fauci’s Diary

Since Fauci has a long history of lying to the public, I did not find it particularly surprising Fauci’s private diary that provided explicit proof the public statements he repeated made (I knew at the time to be false) were indeed lies. However, given the difficulty of definitively proving someone indeed intentionally lied and the consequences the country faces from those lies, Fauci’s private admissions have attracted significant attention. Specifically:

1. On January 31, 2020, weeks before most Americans had heard of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Fauci recorded a call in which leading scientists told him “the mutations around the furin cleavage site of the spike protein could not have occurred naturally,” and raised “the possibility that this could have been deliberately inserted and either accidentally released or deliberately released by a crazy person in the lab, the former being the most likely.” He convened a group to examine it the next day. So at the exact moment the lab-leak hypothesis was being publicly written off as a bigoted conspiracy theory (and was aggressively censored online), the man presiding over that dismissal had been told privately, by serious scientists, that the virus looked engineered, and had quietly organized an inquiry into precisely that.

As Fauci recorded it, “there was not total agreement about the likelihood of deliberate [lab] insertion” creating the virus. Ron Fouchier (a gain-of-function researcher himself) insisted the virus’s genetics could occur naturally and that they should not waste time pursuing the question, and Christian Drosten sided with him. But the rest, by Fauci’s own tally, “felt that deliberate insertion was possible,” given that Dr. Zheng-Li Shi at Wuhan had spent years doing gain-of-function work on coronaviruses to adapt the spike protein to bind the human ACE2 receptor. In other words, on the pivotal early call, the two dissenters were the field’s leading gain-of-function advocates, and the majority thought engineering was plausible. Yet publicly, they all not only insisted the virus emerged naturally but denounced those who claimed otherwise.

2. On February 8, 2020, Fauci privately agreed with the CDC’s Tom Frieden that COVID was “acting like a bad influenza in its transmissibility” and that the real case fatality rate was “more like 0.2-0.3% rather than 2.0%,” roughly a tenfold gap from the numbers driving public panic. Days later, as Ian Miller noted, he told Sean Hannity’s audience “to make sure your viewers get an accurate idea about what goes on” the mortality rate was “about 2 to 2.5%,” probably “closer to 1%,” and even at 1 percent “10 times more lethal than the seasonal flu.” This detail is critical as the allegedly high mortality rate of COVID was used to craft many of its draconian containment policies.
Note: previously I attempted to answer how dangerous COVID-19 actually is alongside how that compares to the flu and discovered that despite all the fear mongering, no one actually knows the influenza fatality rate.

3. While he aggressively defended the lockdowns publicly at the Coronavirus task force meetings, privately, Fauci admitted doubting them and on June 18, 2020, barely three months into the shutdowns, he emailed this to Deborah Birx:

I have been obsessing about the increases in cases that do not seem to be related to openings or closings or massive crowds. I believe that ultimately we will see increases related to all of the above; however, right now we may be looking for the lost keys under the light of the lamppost. There is something inherent here that we are missing and that is insidiously keeping the outbreak alive in the USA, and that is more concerning than anticipated spikes associated with identifiable events.

Yet despite recognizing the questionable value of the lockdowns, three months later he was publicly warning that DeSantis’s Florida was “asking for trouble” for reopening. Furthermore in 2023, when public opinion had fully turned against this senseless policy, when asked by the New York Times to account for pushing school closures, Fauci said: “Show me a school that I shut down and show me a factory that I shut down. Never. I never did.” However, on a March 15, 2020 entry, he recorded phoning Mayor Bill de Blasio and personally convincing him “to close the NYC schools,” then adding that he should “close the bars and restaurants,” and logged an identical call to the chief of staff of California Governor Gavin Newsom, after which “the Governor has decided to close the schools in California.”

4. Regular masking was pointless (and arguably counterproductive) for COVID-19 because by March 13, 2020, due to a NIAID funded study, there was already strong evidence it spread by aerosols (which masks couldn’t block) rather than droplets.^1,2,3 Around the same time, the WHO made a March 3rd announcement (I learned about from watching a WHO webinar around the same time) that one of the most critical things for combatting COVID would be to ensure there was an adequate supply of N95 masks for healthcare workers which could block the aerosol spread (after which I stocked up prior to the panic buying that hit America, and then later gave them to my colleagues in urban areas, who having not listened to my earlier warnings were desperate for PPE once all the supplies were emptied out).

Given this, I assumed the immediate pivot I saw in the media towards telling people not to wear masks had no medical basis (e.g., on February 29 Surgeon General Jerome Adams, in a now deleted tweet, stated “Seriously people — STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus"and on March 8 Fauci told 60 Minutes that “right now in the United States, people should not be walking around with masks”). Rather, I thought it was being done to protect the N95 supply until it could be scaled up—which in a June 2020 interview Fauci overtly admitted was the case.

As such, it put people through quite a lurch when the medical system pivoted from arguing against masks to advocating for cloth masks beginning with an April 3^rd CDC announcement (and then ten months later, after that didn’t work, again re-enacting Idiocracy, recommended double masking—a policy Fauci helped lay the ground work for by claiming it was “common sense” a few weeks before).

Furthermore, as his private diaries show, when the White House comms team balked at the CDC’s April 2020 public-masking recommendation, Fauci’s actual argument for overriding them contained no science at all. “We should push back a bit on the [White House’s opposition to] masks,” he wrote Birx on April 15. “Since when do comms people dictate public health suggestions? Walk out of the streets and people are wearing them anyway. We should be on board with them.”

Note: additionally, in a FOIA’d February 2020 email, Fauci (correctly) disclosed to Obama’s former HHS secretary cloth masking was pointless.

However, while these actions were egregious (as each of these big lies were immensely consequential), one of the most salient things many took from Fauci’s entries was what they said about his character.

In turn, one of the most striking things about Fauci’s diary was how preoccupied and addicted he was to his newfound fame and popularity—which I believe it’s fair to say (both from Atlas’s accounts of his actions on the task force and an objective reading of his diary) was a much higher priority to him than actually addressing COVID-19.
Note: this touches upon a key theme I’ve highlighted here—when parties are tasked with addressing a problem and receive support for doing so, this incentivizes them to demand more and more but never actually solve the problem (e.g., this is why medical therapies are designed to temporarily treat rather than cure diseases and there is a constant demand for more research but that research is never funneled into areas which can treat the diseases at hand).

As there are so many examples, I was not sure which to flag, but this one Jeffrey Tucker found makes the point quite succinctly:

Fauci hence compulsively logged his media appearances day after day, in many cases making his vanity explicit: “It is not hyperbole to say,” he writes, “that today I am the most famous and talked about person in the country and one of the most recognizable person in the world.” He saved clippings about his childhood and his high-school basketball career, noted a petition to name him People‘s “Sexiest Man Alive,” logged “grandmothers who have crushes on me,” and archived an Atlantic profile headlined “America Is Thirsty for Anthony Fauci.” He transcribed the full guest list of a celebrity Zoom call Kim Kardashian organized for him — nearly thirty names, Katy Perry, Orlando Bloom, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ashton Kutcher, Chris Rock, Ariana Grande among them — logged Brad Pitt playing him on SNL, and tracked the songs written about him. As such, I feel I need to share one song that was made in Fauci’s honor (which is sung in full at the end of the segment):

Note: the only other thing Fauci compulsively logged was the daily COVID death count.

However, what immediately jumped out at me about the diaries was that they corroborated what Atlas had alleged about Fauci:

•He used his fame to manage the press directly. When Washington Post reporter Lena Sun called about reports that Beijing had pressured the WHO not to declare a global emergency, Fauci recorded that he dismissed it and “probably stopped her from writing the story,” noting that she backed down because, as he put it, “I am in all the important meetings.” He wasn’t merely enjoying the adulation; he understood it as leverage, and he used it to kill coverage he didn’t like.

•Fauci’s private remarks demonstrates his pettiness and vindictiveness. Fauci saw Atlas as a threat to be neutralized, never a colleague — accusing him of “deliberately trying to undermine Deb Birx[’s] interpretation of the data,” writing off the world-class epidemiologists behind the Great Barrington Declaration (Bhattacharya of Stanford, Gupta of Oxford, Kulldorff of Harvard) as “Atlas and his 3 stooges,” and grumbling that Atlas kept “causing problems” (at one point even pushing Kushner to have Trump remove him). Rand Paul gets it too: after one hearing, Fauci gloats that he “really stuffed him as he spouted out bullshit acting like he is an experienced epidemiologist.” The tell is that when Atlas’s account and Fauci’s are set side by side, it’s Atlas’s that the diary backs up.

•Atlas’s observation that Fauci lacked a basic ability to critically interpret scientific studies (demonstrated with individual exchanges they had such as when Fauci gleefully showed Atlas a study which at last vindicated Fauci until Atlas pointed out he’d misinterpreted it), an extreme bias towards only seeing the parts of literature that supported his own pre-existing biases and no interest in studying new science is corroborated by the fact scientific reasoning (wrestling with data, working through new studies, thinking on the pages) was absent from Fauci’s diary.

Peter Navarro’s accounts are corroborated too. For example, his “epic Situation Room showdown” over hydroxychloroquine was recorded by Fauci as “a big (unusual) argument with Peter Navarro who handed out a folder that he says shows studies that Hydroxychloroquine is effective in COVID,” notes that he “strenuously objected,” and adds, tellingly, “VP and Marc Short acted like Peter was nuts.” Both men place the same clash in the same room with Pence watching, each remembering the VP breaking his own way. Fauci even pasted the Axios writeup of the fight into his own diary, suggesting he was the one leaking (biased) summaries of these events to the press.

Note: one interesting admission from Fauci in his diary was that he initially favored hydroxychloroquine over remdesivir due to remdesivir’s “the potential toxicities” and “the need to prove that it works.” Not long after however, he stacked the NIH committee which decided the national protocols with longtime friends who had deep financial ties to remdesivir’s manufacturer and then predictably recommended it rather than the off patent-therapies with much stronger data.

Overall, I feel four critical insights can be gleaned about Fauci’s personality from these entries which apply to many people who worm their way into positions of power:

•The Dunning-Kruger effect is a psychological observation that the less competence or knowledge individuals have, the greater they will overestimate what they know or can do. Because of this, when people are overly aggressive with asserting something to be true, I tend to become inherently skeptical of their claims—which is unfortunate as humans are generally wired to follow the crowd and believe the most confident party even if what’s being promoted is insane.

•Many people in the public sphere (e.g., public health) have adopted the belief some degree of suffering is justified for the greater good (e.g., Fauci admitted lying to the public about masks to protect the N95 supply for healthcare workers). This mentality inevitably causes a lot of problems, because (due to the Dunning-Kruger effect) public health officials will become certain the bad policies available to them are justified and then come up with increasingly sophisticated rationalizations to continue them as more and more evidence (or public pushback) emerges showing they are not a good idea.

•Once people lie enough, they start to believe their own stories. My impression was that while Fauci flip-flopped on a lot of positions, once he became committed to one, he gradually began to rationalize everything to see all evidence as proof for his belief regardless of how at odds with reality it was (e.g., he constantly ranted about lab leak claims being “conspiracy theories” even though he’d previously acknowledged their validity).

•Certain insecure men (I’ve had my own share of bad experiences with) like Anthony Fauci and Peter Hotez have a deep craving for fame adulation and worship, will go to great lengths to attain sycophants and will be quite vindictive towards anyone who threatens their needs. As you might guess, these types of narcissists can cause a lot of issues once they rise to positions of power, particularly since power structures inevitably select for these types of people rather than competent or ethical individuals.

Note: while the conduct highlighted throughout both Fauci’s diary and the hearing is abhorrent (and likely the most consequential due to how many people COVID-19 impacted), I must emphasize that Fauci has engaged in far more abhorrent conduct throughout his career (which was the focus of RFK Jr.’s best seller The Real Anthony Fauci and covered in this previous article I wrote).

Fauci’s Hearing

Since the entire hearing was quite long, I wanted to highlight a few of the most noteworthy parts.

First, one of my “favorite” unbelievable facts about COVID-19 was that in 2021, Fauci received a $900,000 prize (from an Israeli foundation that gives out 3 million each year—typically split between 9 people and scholarship recipients) for “speaking truth to power.” In Hawley’s questioning (which given his background as a former Attorney General was clearly designed to expose and legally box in Fauci’s Fifth Amendment strategy), Hawley not only brought up the Dan-David prize, but also that Fauci not only had received many other cash prizes, but tasked numerous HHS employees with helping him to secure a multitude of prestigious cash awards.

Note: Fauci also had his employees lobby federal ethics watch dogs to allow him to receive the cash prizes (as it was a violation of Federal law for Fauci to receive them). This goes hand in hand with Fauci going to great lengths to cover up many of the pharmaceutical royalties he and his staffers had received (another point raised at this hearing) and Fauci’s wife effectively being the nation’s chief bioethicist for medical research.

During Senator Ron Johnson’s questioning, after highlighting the immense damage of the vaccines and the FDA cover-up of them he’s used his Senate authority to uncover, he noted that Fauci’s own diary (prior to being redacted¹,²) recorded a pulmonary infarction around June 2021 (one of the flagged safety signals the FDA never disclosed). Johnson then asked whether it ever occurred to Fauci his own shots might have caused it:

Note: due to the political repercussions of acknowledging a COVID vaccine injury (especially if one advocated for them), but the nonetheless high rate of injury seen with them, I hypothesized we would likely see a spate of public officials who developed unusual injuries linked to the vaccine that were too severe to cover up (but nonetheless would never admit the vaccine association). As it so happened, these severe injuries were seen in numerous Senators (at a rate matching those detected in COVID-19 vaccine injury surveys), and I have since corroborated through direct sources sources other Senators have in private admitted they are suffering from less severe (concealable) injuries—all of which is detailed here (along with other cases like Biden’s sudden cognitive decline).

Fetterman (one of the Democrat Senators who suffered a stroke after COVID vaccination), then, to the best of my knowledge, became the first Democrat legislator to jump ship, adopting a neutral position towards Fauci and saying it was completely justified to question both the lockdowns and natural origin of COVID-19:

Lastly, Senator Moreno gave to the best of my knowledge the most scathing criticism a legislator has given to Fauci (which then went viral, in part due to the profanities within it and the vivid pandemic authoritarianism he recounted).

The full hearing had an excellent summary from a variety of Senators of many of the other egregious things Fauci did during the pandemic, and for those interested, can be watched in here:

Conclusion

From watching how this movement has grown over the last six years, two key themes have emerged. First, there has been deep gratitude from those who fought for vaccine safety and health freedom that these concepts are at last reaching public attention and that many of the seemingly insurmountable COVID-19 policies were successfully overturned. Secondly, there has been a widespread despair amongst those awakening to the reality of our situation both at how bad it is and the fact that regardless of how much we try to do things, nothing seems to change and no one is held accountable.

Since I belong to the former camp, rather than be distraught, I’m astonished at how much has been accomplished, but I also recognize how critical it is to have a tangible pathway forward so everything we are doing doesn’t seem like a perfunctory exercise in futility.

While I have been trying to do what I can to amplify specific leverage points that can shift things in a positive direction (which at times works), because of how entrenched vested interests are within the government, I’ve long believed that the only real solution to the predicament we are in is to shift public opinion and provide viable alternatives that allow them to opt out of the status quo (e.g., community food production frees you from the harmful food we are flooded with and DMSO is a freely available alternative to many of the less than ideal things we are forced to rely upon the medical system for).
Note: I have been publishing less over the last month because I’ve been working around the clock to collect the ozone literature base, and just finished the Russian part of that (which was harder to do than I expected because they’ve demonstrated a lot of uses for ozone therapy I would have never thought of). One notable thing about ozone therapy is that its demonstrated significant efficacy against a wide range of “incurable” viral pandemics and I believe a case could be made ozone therapy would be a superior approach to the billions we spend each year (and risky gain-of-function research) trying to make novel countermeasures to them.

As such, it’s been quite noticeable to me that we’ve seen a nearly historic loss of trust in vaccination and medical authorities (which I covered in detail here), with extensive polling now showing:

• 9%–34% of COVID vaccine recipients developed side effects from the vaccine, 7-13% developed serious side effects, 7.5-22% know someone with a severe vaccine injury, 24-28% know someone who they believe died from the vaccine and 46-55% believe the COVID vaccines have killed a significant number of people.
  

• There has been an unprecedented loss of trust in doctors and hospitals since COVID (from 71.5% to 40.1%) which is mirrored by a significant loss of trust in the pharmaceutical industry, government health authorities and support for childhood vaccinations (which, now, almost half of the population no longer fully trusts).

As such, the political (and medical) system are now slowly responding to that pressure, with things such as RFK Jr. ascending to a previously unimaginable position (due to the MAHA coalition and public sentiment) and state bills across the country legalizing ivermectin for over-the-counter use. Fauci’s recent hearing, in turn, demonstrates that this pressure is continuing to build, as beyond him, for the first time in his career refusing to answer any questions in front of Congress (as he now has legitimate fears for his own freedom), not only were the Republican remarks against Fauci much harsher but one Democrat crossed over.

I never expected this to be an easy or quick battle, so it is still unbelievable to me how quickly all of this is progressing and I sincerely thank each of you for you help in bringing this new status quo to fruition.

To learn how other readers have benefitted from this publication and the community it has created, their feedback can be viewed here. Additionally, an index of all the articles published in the Forgotten Side of Medicine can be viewed here.

•Something about vaccines (e.g., their promise of a simple injection being sufficient to safely and effectively end all diseases) has always deeply appealed to the minds of government officials.

•That promise is often a lie. Over and over, unsafe and ineffective vaccines reach the market, and each time, the officials invested in them do everything they can to shield the vaccines from scrutiny and bury the red flags. The medical field has dutifully gone along.

•In earlier decades, the press was far less captured than it is now, and it occasionally aired real investigations into what was happening — segments that documented the suffering of the injured.

•Watched together, these reports show two things at once: how much more candid the media used to be, and how precisely the lies of that era match the lies we face now.

•I compiled this article in the hope of breaking the collective amnesia, now that the pharmaceutical industry’s grip on the media is finally slipping. Below are 78 news reports on the dangers of vaccination that have been almost entirely forgotten and would never be broadcast today.

A key theme I’ve tried to highlight in this publication is that the same medical catastrophes keep repeating (because those responsible are never held accountable), so by understanding what happened in the past, you can see and understand what is happening now and what will likely happen in the future.

For example, because vaccines are “risky but necessary,” the medical profession and government, again and again, concluded that they needed to tell the public all vaccines were “safe and effective” as the potential injuries a mass vaccination campaign would cause were outweighed by “necessary” benefit the vaccines could offer. As such, examples can be found again and again of severe injuries being systematically covered up for the “greater good” (e.g., the earliest documented example I know of this happened in 1874 with the smallpox vaccine) and health authorities concocting the same set of excuses we’ve seen since smallpox as to why those vaccines failed to prevent the diseases they were supposed to.

Since the risks of most vaccines (detailed here) far outweigh their benefits, a mass-vaccination paradigm can only be sustained by censoring the evidence of harm — and then citing that manufactured silence as proof of safety. Over the decades, more and more has been done to conceal those harms. For almost a century, severe neurological injuries after vaccination were routinely reported in the medical literature. Now vaccine injuries are censored, and it is nearly impossible to publish anything critical of vaccines in a “reputable” journal.

Likewise, despite the “science” that says vaccines are safe, it is nearly impossible to obtain the raw datasets that could actually answer the question — as Steve Kirsch showed the public throughout COVID-19 with his relentless, endlessly stonewalled quest to get that data. Likewise, VAERS, a public injury-reporting database only exists because the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act required a way for patients to bypass doctors refusing to report their injuries, and as such, ever since a law mandated its creation, everything possible has been done to undermine and discredit VAERS (except when the industry uses it as “proof” to prove vaccines are safe).



This is the inescapable problem at the heart of mass vaccination. When you take a product that is not completely safe and give it to an entire population, tens of millions of healthy people, most of whom were never at meaningful risk from the disease, even a small rate of serious harm guarantees that enormous numbers are injured or killed. Since there is no way around that arithmetic the authorities have chosen concealment every time, suppressing the data, reclassifying the injuries, and dismissing each casualty as a coincidence, because the alternative is admitting the paradigm itself produces the ever-increasing wave of chronic illness sweeping our society.

For a long time, the injuries were too numerous to fully hide, so the public kept reawakening to them and the mainstream media kept covering them. The industry’s solution came after it won liability protection in the 1986 vaccine law: spend whatever it took to censor the coverage and bury the injuries. But removing that check, the public finding out and objecting, removed the only real constraint on toxic vaccines reaching the market, and progressively more dangerous ones followed, until the COVID-19 catastrophe injured so many people that even a robust censorship apparatus couldn’t contain it. Numerous polls I’ve summarized in detail here demonstrate the scale of the vaccine injuries: depending on the survey, 7% to 13% of recipients reported a serious side effect, 24% to 28% say they know someone they believe died from the shot, and 46% to 55% believe the COVID vaccines have killed a significant number of people. Propaganda has its limits, and once numbers like those take hold, a new awareness of vaccine injury surfaces across the media ecosystem, occasionally on conservative networks, but mostly in the independent press.

Because we keep forgetting the past, the cycle repeats. My goal here is to show that what we are seeing now is nothing new, that it has happened countless times before, on a smaller scale that was easier to sweep under the rug, by collecting dozens of clips that were once routinely aired on television and are almost inconceivable today, given how brutal the censorship has become.

Watch them in sequence and two patterns jump out. The same lines protected the schedule every time. We just need more research before we change anything, and we’ll do that research soon. Yet decades later, we still “need more research.” And the things vaccine-safety advocates warned about, and were denounced for warning about, kept coming true.

Note: after publishing this article ten months ago, its message generated immense interest and I subsequently found a much larger number of buried news reports so I have been gradually updating it since then (and likely will add a few more in the future). As such, if you have any segments you know of which are not in here their additions would be greatly appreciated (and helpful to many).

Mass Media Censorship

Actions like these were only possible because the corporate media suppressed dissent — even when large numbers of Americans believed the mandatory vaccines were injuring or killing their children, which is exactly the kind of story the press has a foundational duty to cover.

In response to a FOIA request filed by TheBlaze, [Biden’s] HHS revealed that it purchased advertising from major news networks including ABC, CBS, and NBC, as well as cable TV news stations Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC, legacy media publications including the New York Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post, digital media companies like BuzzFeed News and Newsmax, and hundreds of local newspapers and TV stations. These outlets were collectively responsible for publishing countless articles and video segments regarding the vaccine that were nearly uniformly positive about the vaccine in terms of both its efficacy and safety.

Note: the amount spent per network is unknown, but likely totaled a billion. Additionally, in 2009, the H.H.S. Secretary testified to congress about similar partnerships (e.g., with Seasame Street) to promote the H1N1 vaccine.

Because of this, many people in the media wanted to speak out against the vaccines, but effectively could not, and to my knowledge, other than a few Fox hosts lightly criticizing them, only two did. One, a recently hired reporter at a local station, on live television announced Fox was muzzling stories the public wanted to hear (and was promptly fired) after which she provided secret recordings to Project Veritas corroborating this censorship.

The other was Tucker Carlson, who was able to leverage both being the most popular news host in America and having a show which did not rely upon pharmaceutical funding to speak out against the vaccines without being fired. Nonetheless, this was still a huge risk for him and eventually, after airing this remarkable 4-19-23 segment (which took a lot of courage), at immense cost to Fox News, was immediately fired.

Once he left, he began talking openly about how much pharmaceutical money kept these stories off the air — and other former hosts corroborated him:

When I was on Fox News [circa 2007] and we talked about the possibility of vaccine injuries … They would RUN out to the set to tell you to shut that down.—Megyn Kelly

Likewise, Sharyl Attkisson (an acclaimed CBS investigative journalist) has extensively chronicled (e.g., in her 2020 book and even more so in her 2025 book) how in the early 2000s, the pharmaceutical industry, feeling the pressure from negative coverage of disastrous vaccination programs was creating for them, lobbied to prevent future negative coverage. Once this happened, it became impossible for her to air well produced segments which were critical of any vaccine initiative, and likewise, that in the post-2000s, stories on vaccine risks “disappeared” due to advertiser pressure.

However, things were not always this way. Rather, major networks used to air numerous scathing stories about vaccine disasters—and in many cases, the dangers they covered were so explicit by current journalistic standards that I frequently find sharing those (previously inconceivable) segments with people on the fence about vaccination opens their minds to the entire mess.

Let’s now review some of the forgotten vaccine disasters and the evolving censorship emerging alongside them.

Mass Censorship

The Vietnam War was considered by many to be the event that broke the public’s trust in the Federal Government.

Note: many believe the specific event which turned the American public against the Vietnam War was the My Lai massacre—an event where American soldiers decided to commit war crimes against Vietnamese civilians until a different group of American soldiers on their own volition decided to stop the massacre.

That collapse of trust alarmed the government and prompted the Pentagon to make sure it never happened again, which it accomplished by ending the draft and switching to an all-volunteer army, and by ensuring the public only ever saw a sanitized picture of future wars — embedded journalists supplying government-approved footage, and the press strongly discouraged from showing anything that exposed the horror.

Major Colin Powell was one of the officers who helped cover up My Lai. He rose through the ranks, became Secretary of State, and infamously lied to the UN about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction — a lie that killed hundreds of thousands and cost trillions. Powell is one of many cases that illustrate how richly the government rewards those who cover up its atrocities.

It is hard to overstate how much work went into hiding the horrors of war, and how effective it was — transforming war from something much of the public vehemently opposed into an abstraction they were largely apathetic about (the best documentary I’ve seen on how military propaganda evolved is Why We Fight).

The sanitizing of war parallels the medical censorship we now face. The same PR (public relations) firm that manufactured a heart-wrenching but entirely made up testimony that dragged the U.S. into the Gulf War has a long history of pharmaceutical work — and was contracted both to promote the COVID narrative and to eliminate “vaccine hesitancy.”^1,2,3

Turning Points in Medical Censorship

Numerous medical catastrophes have happened which provoked widespread public outrage, and like the Vietnam War, those events brought the government to conclude it was imperative the public was prevented from becoming aware of future medical atrocities. Some of those events include:

The Polio Vaccine

In 1955, after an expedited approval, the government released a much-heralded vaccine, and two weeks later, children across America began turning up paralyzed in the exact limb where they’d received Salk’s polio shot.

After some investigation, it was discovered that:

•Only two of the five vaccine manufacturers had produced the same “safe” vaccines used in the clinical trials—which meant many of the vaccines the public got (which at the time were a new experimental technology) had never been tested in humans.

•At the urging of Salk, when the vaccine was mass produced, a different and less safe production process was used for the vaccine so the orders could be met.

Note: this also happened with the COVID-19 vaccines and many now believe this is a key reason why they were so dangerous.

•Bernice Eddy, an NIH employee, had immediately discovered this mass produced vaccine caused paralysis in monkeys.

Note: Eddy had previously upset the NIH after she discovered that adenovirus vaccines caused cancers (which caused the NIH to put up innumerable obstacles to her work) but eventually Eddy won and adenovirus vaccines stopped being given to children—at least until COVID-19 (as the J&J vaccine is a modified adenovirus).

•All of the paralyzing vaccines came from the same manufacturer (Cutter Laboratories).

Note: later paralyzing lots were also identified from Wyeth (better known for making the highly dangerous DPT vaccine—which also had major hot lot issues), but the general public was never made aware of the other hot polio lots—which the head of the CDC’s polio surveillance unit believed was done to prevent the public from realizing the Polio vaccine in general was unsafe and ineffective.

•The (early) FDA delegated testing of the vaccine for safety to the vaccine manufacturers rather than doing so itself.

Note: I believe this is a key reason why “hot” vaccine lots that disproportionately injure their recipients are a recurring issue with our vaccines.

•There were many safety concerns with the testing of the Salk vaccine, but the professional publications chose to censor them and instead continually repeated the message that the vaccine was completely safe and effective.

The public was outraged, the government faced a public-relations crisis, and lawsuits dragged on against Cutter. In response, the federal government took direct control of every aspect of the vaccine program — switching from a neutral external auditor to a major stakeholder. As you’d expect, that conflict of interest gave the government every incentive to bury safety problems, and business as usual soon resumed.

To quote Turtles All The Way Down:

Perhaps the most disturbing element of the entire program has been the disparity between the risks that were known to be involved and the repeated assurances of safety.—Paul Meier, professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health

The National Foundation told doctors, in a memo, that the vaccine was completely safe and the risk of paralysis was “zero.” Meier, at an expert panel, described the operating philosophy plainly:

The best way to push forward a new program is to decide on what you think the best decision is and not question it thereafter, and further, not to raise questions before the public or expose the public to open discussion of the issue.—Paul Meier speaking at an expert panel on the vaccine.

In 1960, five years after Cutter, Bernice Eddy determined that the polio vaccines were contaminated with a cancer-causing virus, SV-40, and were not fit for the public. Ordered to keep quiet so the public wouldn’t lose faith in the program, she published anyway — and was immediately demoted and stripped of her lab. Officials had known since 1959 that their vaccine caused cancer (a consequence of cutting costs with imported monkey kidneys) and were scrambling to address it while still promoting the shot. Only in 1963 did the government force manufacturers to stop growing the vaccine on contaminated kidneys — by which point between 40 and 98 million Americans had been infected, and a case can be made that SV-40 lingered in some vaccines until around 2000. This drove an increase in cancer that, until COVID, was unprecedented.

Around 1997, Canada’s Broadcasting Corporation aired a remarkable program on the recent findings that SV-40 was turning up in tumors, how it caused cancer, and the full history of how the polio vaccines became contaminated with it.

Many severe kidney diseases are also strongly associated with SV-40, and have likewise exploded since the polio vaccines. Because SV-40 was introduced into the population through the program (and transmits between humans and to fetuses) there has been a persistent reluctance to study its danger or admit it lingered in the supply for decades.

Additionally, many horrible kidney diseases are strongly associated with SV-40 (and likewise have exploded in incidence since the Polio vaccines hit the market). Sadly, since SV-40 was introduced to the population through the vaccine program (and transmits between humans and fetuses) there has been a general reluctance to study its danger—or to acknowledge it was still present in the vaccine supply decades later.

Dr. Suzanne Humphries covered what happened in a 28-minute video:

One of the most important admissions of the entire polio fiasco came from the FDA in the Federal Register: that any doubts about a vaccine’s safety, valid or not, could not be permitted to exist, because they would reduce vaccine uptake.

The Swine Flu Fiasco

When the earliest influenza vaccines hit the market in 1945, they received minimal interest from the public. Joseph Anthony Morris PhD was recruited by the early FDA to conduct the research to prove those vaccines were safe and effective (eventually leading to him becoming the FDA’s Chief Vaccine Control Officer). Yet, after he found they were ineffective (only working 0-40% of the time) and unsafe, his superiors ignored his data and released the vaccines while claiming they were safe and effective.

Like Bernice Eddy, he also faced significant retaliation, being harassed, demoted, losing access to his lab and blocked from publishing his results. Before being fired, Morris decided to fight the FDA’s gross misconduct by hiring a lawyer and going to the Senate. This prompted a 1972 Senate hearing (detailed in Dr. Humphries’ 28 minute video above) which concluded the issues Morris raised were only the tip of the iceberg, and as a result of the hearing, thirty-two unsafe and unproven vaccines were taken off the market. Most importantly, the conduct of the FDA’s progenitor (called the DBS) was deemed so egregious that it was scrapped and replaced with the modern FDA (which unfortunately did not fix the rot within the agency).

After being transferred to the new FDA (where he was protected from termination due to the recent Senate investigation), he continued to be responsible for influenza, and in February of 1976, a swine flu strain was found in a soldier who died in March. As the FDA tried to drum up fear about a new 1918 influenza, Morris was called into the investigation and concluded that swine flu strain was not something to be concerned about as it rarely travelled from person to person.

Note: As far as I know, the three deadliest plagues in human history were the Black Death (of which much is still not known), its predecessor the Justinianic Plague, and the 1918 Influenza. Because of the 1918 Influenza, the medical community became fixated on preventing anything like it from happening again, which amongst other things resulted in an enormous influenza vaccination apparatus flooding America, which sadly has injured many but consistently failed to provide any benefit.

Since that swine flu strain reproduced slowly, it was not feasible to produce enough of it to make a vaccine before the “pandemic” faded into memory, so someone had a truly astounding idea. Why not hybridize it with the fast-growing 1918 influenza? As this provided a way to meet the vaccine production timeline, it was supported by the government.

Dr. Morris did not support this idea, and before long discovered that the emergency vaccine was unsafe and ineffective, but when he reported this to his superiors at the FDA, he was told to keep his concerns to himself. Morris then decided to go on a speaking tour which included the Donahue show (one of the largest talk shows in America) and warned the public of the vaccine’s danger.

Note: I have been unable to find a transcript or copy of that 1976 show. However, according to one account of it, Morris “warned the experimental vaccine could cause serious allergic and neurological reactions, had a very low potency, and was completely unnecessary as the virus concerned was an ordinary pig virus, and not highly pathogenic, and had died out within two weeks of its being detected in February, and had not been seen anywhere else.”

However, his warning went unheeded, and the vaccine was distributed across America. Before long, the injuries piled up from this experimental vaccine, with hundreds becoming paralyzed from Guillain-Barré syndrome, dozens died, and thousands of lawsuits were filed.

Note: the official count (which claimed 1 in 100,000 developed GBS) likely underestimated the actual injuries. For example, a colleague who was in practice at the time shared 6% of their patients developed GBS and one reader here shared they did as well. Likewise, when the COVID-19 vaccines came out, a patient who refused to vaccinate shared with me she was still dealing with severe injuries from the 1976 vaccine and was not going to fall for the government’s scam again.

In the same way it is remarkable that the Donahue show was willing to publicly give a platform to Dr. Morris’s concerns, consider the 1979 program Sixty Minutes aired across America and how eerily it parallels what happened decades later with the COVID-19 vaccines:

Note: throughout this article, I designated some of the news clips like the above one as “programs.” Those are the more detailed segments with hard-hitting investigative journalism (rather than ones either with people from opposing sides debating the topic or a guest sharing the dangers of vaccination).

What I find most extraordinary about this program is that while the 1976 vaccine was much less damaging than the COVID-19 vaccine, in this current era of mass censorship, airing a segment like this would be unthinkable.

One of the more remarkable things about these events is how they were seen in the eyes of government officials. The Public Health Crisis Survival Guide (quoted via Oxford) provides a remarkable illustration into the administrative mindset:

Early in 1976, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention proposed and President Gerald Ford approved a plan to vaccinate the country against swine influenza, a new infection that had only recently appeared on a New Jersey army base. While agency leaders imagined themselves rising to the challenge of a crisis, mismanagement and poor communication led to a debacle for public health. Problems included logistical difficulties in manufacturing the vaccine, disputes with Congress, and the inability to revise the vaccination goal in light of the fact that the disease never returned. When people who were vaccinated fell ill with neurological complications, the vaccine effort ended, but not before causing grave damage to confidence in public health agencies.

Note: this effectively says the “mistake” in this debacle was poor control of the media that damaged public trust in the all-important vaccination program, rather than say...pushing an unsafe, ineffective and unneeded vaccine onto the market and ignoring every warning to the contrary.
Lastly, in 2009, when a new swine flu vaccine was being promoted (which also was ultimately unnecessary and had some safety issues), CBS aired a segment which generally pro-vaccine but acknowledged some concerns from parents.

Likewise, in 2009, Fox aired a segment on the need to understand the risks and benefits of vaccinating which focused on the potential issues with getting the experimental swine flu vaccine where it was too soon to know the risk profile of it.

Note: larger datasets later detected serious issues with that vaccine such as it causing narcolepsy.

Finally, in 2010, England’s Channel 4 news aired a segment highlighting that the swine flu pandemic was a scam governments wasted billions of dollars on after the WHO’s “experts” exaggerated how bad it would be due to pharmaceutical influence.

Pertussis

Developed a century ago, the original pertussis vaccine was incredibly dangerous, and from the very start evidence emerged (which I compiled here) showed that it caused seizures, permanent brain damage, and infants to suddenly die (likely due to microstrokes in the respiratory centers of the brain). I’ve extensively studied this subject because so many people I know developed permanent brain damage from it (as have numerous readers here^1,2), and to this day I still periodically meet people (e.g., an epileptic) whose entire lives were upended by that vaccine.

The saddest thing about this is that:

•In each case, the child’s pediatrician failed to recognize the initial adverse reaction (which should have been recognized a contraindication to the subsequently permanently disabling reaction) and often denied the child’s injury, insisting the vaccine was 100% safe and effective.

•The benefit of the pertussis vaccine is marginal at best (e.g., outbreaks often happen in vaccinated communities).

•Pertussis can easily be treated with antibiotics and oral vitamin C.

•It was possible to make a safer (but not completely safe) pertussis vaccine. However, since it cost more to make those, the industry never did so until lawsuits in the 1980s and the 1986 Vaccine Injury Act incentivized them to.

Note: this is very similar to the infamous Ford Pinto memo, where Ford’s management decided they would not fix the Pinto’s tendency to explode after car accidents as the cost to settle lawsuits was significantly less than the cost to make the cars safe in crashes. Sadly, many similar examples of profits being put over people also exist.

However, rather than pull the pertussis vaccine from the market (or at least ask for a safer one to be made), government officials ignored the innumerable issues they came across and continued to push the vaccine upon the world (even as other developed nations gradually dropped it).

Note: one school of thought argues that the government’s attachment to the pertussis vaccine comes from the fact that it is always packaged with the tetanus and diphtheria vaccine, and tetanus vaccine (when laced with HcG) is the most effective sterilizing vaccine that was ever developed (the WHO spent decades developing it and there are many tragic cases of it being deployed in the third world).

Eventually in 1982, NBC decided to air a program on this vaccine that shocked America and again highlighted the degree to which the American government will lie to protect the vaccine program:

Once the video was aired, lawsuits began being filed against the DPT manufacturers and parents from across the nation began to contact NBC to ask to be connected with other parents with similar injuries. Before long, these parents joined to form a group which successfully began the modern political movement against the vaccine manufacturers.

Note: that group (Dissatisfied Parents Together), which Barbara Loe Fisher cofounded, later became the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC.org), and for decades has been one of the primary groups advocating for vaccine safety and parental choice. Many of the videos in this article were originally archived by them, were deleted after YouTube wiped their channel (but fortunately were mirrored by many others before the deletion) and can now be viewed on their Rumble Channel alongside many other segments NVIC has produced over the years (along with all of these videos also being mirrored on my channel). I strongly encourage you to download them and share them so the public can be aware that there was a longstanding opposition to vaccination which simply was erased by mass censorship and that vaccine injuries, contrary to popular belief, are very real and have existed for a long time.

Likewise, the attention the NBC program brought to the issue resulted in the Donahue show (America’s largest talk show—who’d previously hosted Morris in 1976) spending an hour hosting a 1983 public debate between medical experts on the dangers of this vaccine and the ethics of vaccine mandates. Nothing like it has happened since, as candid discussions like this always expose the issues with vaccinations and hence always harm vaccine promoters.

Next in 1985, New York’s WOR-TV “Straight Talk” hosted a live debate on between Barbara Loe Fisher, then vice president of Dissatisfied Parents Together and co-author of DPT: A Shot in the Dark, and a hospital infectious-disease chief, in which Fisher pressed that the safety test used to screen the pertussis vaccine had been known for twenty years not to predict its capacity to cause death or brain damage, that a far less reactive vaccine had been in use in Japan since 1981, and that the country still had no system for counting how many children it was injuring.

Then, in 1986, ABC news aired a segment on the dangers of the DPT vaccine where experts were allowed to be challenged.

Note: over the decades, Barbara Loe Fisher has been the primary person invited on television to speak out against mandatory vaccination and it is remarkable to observe both her fortitude and also how the media landscape evolved as the years went by.

Around 1988, Philadelphia’s WCAU aired a multi-part investigation by consumer reporter Herb Denenberg into the DPT vaccine: children left brain-damaged or dead, parents never warned, city health centers falsely telling families the shot was required for school, an FDA official conceding there had never been a controlled study proving the vaccine safe, and a safer Japanese acellular vaccine the FDA still hadn’t approved. It closed by pointing viewers to the parent group that would become NVIC.

Next, in 1990, CNN also aired a segment on the dangers of the DPT vaccine where experts were also allowed to be challenged.

In 1992, the Lifetime Network also exposed the dangers of the DPT vaccine (along with discussing a healthcare worker being injured by the rubella vaccine).

In 1994, NBC aired a program by Katie Couric on the dangers of the DPT vaccine which criticized the CDC and discussed the widespread problem of hot DPT lots.

In 1996, MSNBC's Ann Curry interviewed Barbara Loe Fisher about Money Magazine's December cover investigation into the vaccine industry, which reported that the older whole-cell DPT shot, tied to brain damage and death, with many deaths misclassified as SIDS, remained in widespread use even though a safer purified acellular version had already been licensed.

Finally, in 1997, NBC aired a debate with a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics on the need for mass vaccination.

Hepatitis B Vaccine

The hepatitis B vaccine has long been marred with controversy due to the fact:

•It primarily benefits specific high risk groups (e.g., healthcare workers, intravenous drug users who share needles, individuals who engage in large amounts of unprotected sex with multiple partners, children of Southeastern Asian immigrants—which became a significant public health challenged following the Vietnam war) rather than the general population.

•It is given to all newborns in the hospital despite there being no benefit to them (you have to vaccinate millions to prevent a single case of chronic hepatitis—the primary justification for mass vaccination), and there’s been no change in chronic hepatitis B since the program was enacted—a policy which I learned recently through an ACIP member was adopted to insure the high-risk urban youth could have some coverage against hepatitis as it was unlikely they would ever return for vaccines (and likely continued to avoid the hassle of having to selectively vaccinate high risk groups).

•It frequently caused significant autoimmune problems due to it somewhat matching the lining of the nerves.

One 1999 ABC News program exposed all of this:

Pneumococcal Vaccine

In 2001, a Dallas News Station aired a scathing investigative of the pneumococcal vaccine which noted that it frequently caused seizures, sometimes caused death and was not tested against an inert placebo, so its rate of adverse reactions was likely higher. This program also highlighted that both the CDC and ACIP members who voted for had financial conflicts of interest, that it was being falsely advertised by the CDC to prevent ear aches, and that a similar issue had happened with a now withdrawn rotavirus vaccine:

Note: Barbara Loe Fisher had an excellent line at the end of this segment: “What’s scientific about that assumption, that every time something bad happens after vaccination it’s a coincidence? That’s not science, that’s politics.”

Additionally, more recently, another Texas news station covered the increasing interest by members of the community to opt out of vaccination (e.g., on Facebook and with billboards).

Anthrax

In the lead-up to the Bush’s Gulf War, the US military was worried Saddam Hussein would use anthrax (we’d given him) on US troops, so they urgently attempted to make an experimental anthrax vaccine (delegating it to a faction within the military deeply invested in it). While Hussein never used anthrax, this vaccine ended up severely injuring far more soldiers than the entire war (approximately 250,000 of the 697,000 who served developed a debilitating “Gulf War Syndrome”). Remarkably, the vaccine was not discontinued and instead routinely forced on servicemen, eventually resulting in widespread resistance against the policy (despite military hierarchies typically prohibiting dissent).

Eventually, investigations revealed three possible explanations for what happened (which were detailed here):

•The anthrax vaccine was part of a covert experimental program to develop a new squalene-based adjuvant that later hit the market.

•Due to challenges with making the anthrax vaccine, the manufacturer (as revealed by the GAO) decided to use a larger filter of the vaccine product, which prevented the filters from clogging but also allowed many toxic components to enter the vaccine.

•There was mycobacterial contamination of the vaccines (which may be linked to ALS as the mycoplasma’s discoverer believes it infected the general population).

Note: while the evidence for each is compelling, I think the bad filters is the most probable explanation, although I have met members of the military who were given unlabeled vaccines and then developed chronic health issues and spoken to people who cured their Gulf War syndrome with antibiotics targeted to the mycoplasma.

As this vaccine caused an immense degree of suffering, there was widespread public demand to investigate it (which eventually resulted in a law being passed that restricted the military from giving troops experimental vaccines, but, not surprisingly, was ignored during COVID-19). Because of this, a scathing 2003 program was produced that was aired by Democracy Now (which aired on smaller stations including PBS), suggesting it was aired on national television.

Note: the Institute of Medicine was tasked to determine if the anthrax vaccine injured veterans. It concluded there was “insufficient evidence,” much in the same way it concluded vaccines do not cause sudden infant death syndrome or autism (discussed further here).

Smallpox

In the run-up to the Bush (II)’s Iraq War, to gain public support for the war, he promoted the idea Hussein was planning to release smallpox upon America (despite him not having it). As such, an aggressive push for the vaccine was conducted throughout the national media, initially targeted at the military and healthcare workers (much like the COVID vaccines). However, because of its poor risk to benefit ratio (e.g., it caused myocarditis), many opposed the plan and by the time it was ready to be deployed on the general public, the program was largely finished due to the injuries it caused in the military and programs like this one publicizing its issues.

As such, I believe the lessons from the failures of this campaign were incorporated into ensuring the same did not happen with COVID-19.

Much later, a CBS affiliate in Jacksonville, Action News Jax, aired an investigation into a Marine, Sean Kelly, who developed pericarditis (a labeled side effect) after the ACAM2000 smallpox vaccine he was ordered to take, was denied VA benefits, and learned the VA admits it has no mechanism to track smallpox or any other vaccine injury, with Barbara Loe Fisher (once again) noting the government simply refuses to acknowledge how many people these vaccines hurt.

Flu Shots

In 2005, CNBC hosted a debate over a recent legislative move to give vaccine manufactures blanket immunity for any “emergency” vaccines they developed. Of note, everything Barbara Loe Fisher predicted here subsequently came to pass:

Annual flu shots have been repeatedly shown to provide minimal benefit to their recipients (e.g., because they normally do not match the actual strain which is circulating) while simultaneously, have a variety of minor and severe side effects (e.g., I’ve met numerous healthcare workers who got GBS from one). In 2006, Sharyl Attkinson had a brief CBS segment which highlighted a CDC study which showed the entire program was pointless for preventing deaths in the elderly, but nonetheless, that the CDC had no plans to change it.

Note: in addition to the flu vaccines not being proven to provide significant benefit, they can frequently make flus much worse, something supported by extensive data and which we have observed in severely ill flu patients.

In 2008, the Christian Broadcasting Network aired a segment highlighting why annual flu shots were absurd.

In 2008, ABC aired a segment on the widespread public pushback against New Jersey mandating flu shots for children six months and older (as the CDC had recently added it to the immunization schedule).

In 2009, CNN aired a segment highlighting the very reasonable objections protesting New York healthcare workers had to a newly passed regulation requiring them to get annual flu shot and swine flu vaccines. This segment is particularly remarkable given what followed a decade later with COVID.

The same year, on CNN, in response to a guest saying he didn’t trust the flu shot, Piers Morgan stated that after being publicly vaccinated by Dr. Oz, ten days later, he caught the flu. This clip is noteworthy, because at the time he got the flu shot, they specifically said it was impossible for it to give you the flu, (whereas in reality, as noted before, vaccines frequently cause the illnesses they prevent) with Piers telling Dr. Oz “if I get the flu, I’m coming after you.”

Note: given the previous, it makes this COVID tweet by Piers even more remarkable.

Likewise, in 2009, the Sky Angel Network (a Christian station that was on satellite television) aired a critical segment about the influenza vaccines:

In 2010, MSNBC hosted a flu-season debate between Barbara Loe Fisher and a pediatric vaccine expert, in which Fisher argued that America mandates more vaccines than any nation, that almost everyone now knows someone injured after one of the 69 doses on the schedule, and that the long-term study comparing vaccinated and unvaccinated children, requested for decades, had still never been done.

In 2012, CNBC allowed opposing parties to discuss if it was ethical or rational to fire healthcare workers for refusing flu shots.

An Atlanta WSB-TV Channel 2 investigation examined how the federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, funded by a surcharge consumers pay while manufacturers are shielded from lawsuits, was failing the people it was built for. It followed an EMT left with a permanent brain injury after a job-required flu shot who waited seven years for the government to acknowledge her claim, with Barbara Loe Fisher noting she had advised Congress when the program was created.

Autism

A few segments have aired which discussed the link between vaccines and Autism. In 1999, shortly before a Congressional hearing on autism, it was discussed on Fox News.

In 1999, CNN aired a balanced program on vaccine induced autism which included injured children.

In 1999 and 2000, ABC News aired two segments on the links between vaccines and autism (including cases of rapid regressions), noting that everyone agreed the condition was increasing (whereas now vaccine defenders claim it is not), and that the government would “do more research” to find out why.

Note: the endless mantra within the medical field is that people only have concerns about vaccines because “Wakefield conned the public with a fraudulent study and incited a hysteria.” As the chronology of these media clips shows, it should be very clear major concerns existed about vaccine brain damage long before Wakefield (whose accurate study has been continually misrepresented).

In 1999, ABC’s Nightline (October 14) aired a segment examining public concerns over vaccine safety, featuring parental anecdotes of post-vaccination injuries (including autism and seizures), Barbara Loe Fisher discussing her son’s DPT reaction and the role of anecdotal evidence, and a debate between Dr. Jane Orient (who raised informed-consent and Nuremberg Code issues around mandates, especially hepatitis B) and mainstream experts Dr. Samuel Katz and ABC’s Dr. Tim Johnson. I have only been able to find a transcript of that segment (rather than the actual video).

In 2000, MSNBC aired a segment on what parents should know before vaccinating that moved from an Offspring Magazine editor’s cautious tips into a debate between Barbara Loe Fisher and Dr. Nancy Snyderman, where Fisher recounted her son’s DPT convulsion and regression and pressed how many “coincidences” it would take before the medical community stopped attributing every post-vaccination injury to chance.

Note: in 2000, 60 minutes aired a program showing both sides of the autism causing vaccines issue, but I have not been able to find a video of it.

In 2002, WFAA (a Dallas station) aired a program highlighting the link between mercury containing vaccines and autism and the CDC’s refusal to share their data assessing the link:

In 2002, a local Fox station also aired a segment focusing on how vaccines cause autism.

In 2004, CNN aired a segment which openly discussed the dangers of vaccination and the importance for parental choice on vaccination:

In 2007, CBS hosted a program which discussed vaccination in general and developmental regression:

In 2007, The Christian Broadcasting Network hosted a vaccines and autism segment:

In 2008, CBS’s The Doctors allowed a gentle debate on the subject where vaccine brain injury was discussed:

The same year, CNN had the doctor who was able to get the US government to acknowledge vaccines caused his daughter’s autism to also discuss the topic with their medical correspondent:

Likewise, in 2008, Sharyl Attkisson interviewed the former NIH director, who acknowledged that some children may develop autism from vaccines and that this possibility needs to stop being dismissed and instead researched so the susceptible children can be identified (which I agree is critically important to do, but unfortunately never will happen because it reduces potential vaccine sales).

Additionally, in 2008, CBS aired a segment by Sharyl Attkisson which highlighted the immense conflicts of interest with the “experts” pushing many vaccines.

In 2009, Larry King on CNN hosted Jenna McCarthy and Jim Carrey discussed the dangers of excessive vaccination, how they treated vaccine-induced autism and how doctors were refusing to help autistic children.

Note: in 2007, Jenny McCarthy extensively discussed vaccines causing autism with Opra (detailed here), 2012, on a different briefly syndicated talk show (which was hosted on Ora TV), Larry King briefly discussed the same topic with Jenna McCarthy.

In 2009, CBS also aired a national and local segment on the link between autism and vaccines (with the national one featuring Andrew Wakefield)

Note: the “expert” here who obnoxiously dismissed autism causing vaccines was a close friend of Fauci and a decade later was nominated by Fauci to chair the NIH panel which decided how COVID should be treated in America. There, he repeatedly concluded remdesivir should be the primary treatment and dismissed off patent therapies which much better evidence, likely in part due to him having received significant funding from remdesivir’s manufacturer.

In 2011, Fox News aired a segment on vaccines causing autism and that parents who’d received compensation for it were willing to speak out on the issue at risk of losing that compensation.

That same year, a local Fox station hosted a mother of an autistic child who defended Andrew Wakefield’s work.

Note: in a 2013 Washington Post segment (largely a defense of vaccination (a physician was brought on to rebut the concerns), NVIC’s Theresa Wrangham was still given room to make the informed-consent case: that the Institute of Medicine’s own reports concede large gaps in vaccine science, that many reported reactions have never been properly studied, and that parents are entitled to weigh those risks themselves.

In 2015, Newsmax aired, what as far as I know, was the last vaccines causing autism segment aired until RFK’s H.H.S.’s nomination forced it back into the public discourse.

Measles

In 2015, during a measles outbreak, CNN allowed an integrative cardiologist to challenge the MMR vaccination push and highlight the neurological dangers of vaccination.

Likewise, that year Fox News aired a brief debate on the subject.

In 2015, Newsmaxx also invited an integrative neurosurgeon to explain why the push for the measles vaccine was unwarranted.

In another 2015 Newsmax segment, Barbara Loe Fisher debated a health commentator, arguing that because the 1986 Act and the 2011 Supreme Court “unavoidably unsafe” ruling stripped away all liability, the informed-consent ethic must govern vaccination, and that with waning pertussis and measles immunity and a huge pipeline of new vaccines, the science was nowhere near settled.

Finally, a local Virginia station covered why the measles vaccine is not completely necessary.

Vaccine Mandates and Exemptions

Alongside the disaster-specific coverage, the media occasionally aired the broader fight, whether the state can compel a growing list of vaccines and how easily it can strip away a family’s right to say no. These debates always exposed the same fault line, and they’ve all but vanished from television.

In 1995, NBC’s Today Show aired a debate between Barbara Loe Fisher and the chickenpox vaccine’s developer and (just as the FDA approved it), with Fisher questioning whether mass-injecting healthy babies with a live virus, originally developed for immunocompromised children, might wane after five to ten years, push chickenpox into a more dangerous adult population, and raise the risk of shingles later in life.

Note: reducing shingles was initially a primary rationale for the vaccination program and something the CDC eagerly studied. However, after the found the opposite (mass chickenpox vaccination reduced population herd immunity and created a significant subsequent singles spike that’s persisted ever since), the researcher’s results were buried and he was kicked out of the CDC.

In 2007, CNN hosted a debate between Barbara Loe Fisher and the CDC’s Dr. William Schaffner over Prince George’s County, Maryland threatening parents with jail for not getting their children chickenpox and hepatitis B shots, with Fisher arguing that mandating an ever-growing list of new vaccines for school entry, for diseases not even transmitted in a school setting, abandons the principle of informed consent.

Also in 2007, Fox News Live hosted a debate between Fisher and a pediatrician over parents turning to religious exemptions, where Fisher recounted her sons’ DPT and post-vaccination injuries and argued that officials should spend less energy interrogating parents’ religious sincerity and more explaining why so many highly vaccinated children are chronically ill.

A California news segment featured actor-comedian Rob Schneider (who has since become a massive vaccine safety advocate on Twitter), an NVIC representative, and a legislative candidate debating AB 2109, Dr. Richard Pan’s bill (then on the governor’s desk) requiring parents to obtain a physician’s signature to claim a vaccine exemption, arguing it would gut the existing opt-out by letting doctors who refuse to sign simply turn unvaccinated families away.

In 2014, Mississippi Public Broadcasting aired an interview with Barbara Loe Fisher in which she recounted her son’s 1980 DPT injury, explained how the schedule had since tripled, and made the case for the vaccinated-versus-unvaccinated outcomes study that health authorities have long refused to conduct.

More recently, Charlottesville’s NBC29 covered a Virginia General Assembly hearing where hundreds turned out over a proposal to restrict religious and medical vaccine exemptions, and Barbara Loe Fisher received a standing ovation for speaking against forced immunization.

In a follow-up report, NBC29 covered the Joint Commission on Healthcare briefing at which 674 of 679 public comments favored keeping Virginia’s existing exemptions and the state health department recommended no change to the law.

Note: in 2010, PBS’s Frontline aired a mostly pro-vaccine documentary, “The Vaccine War,” that framed hesitant parents as a threat to public health, yet still gave communities like Ashland, Oregon real airtime to explain why they were opting out. That an hour of primetime once treated parental vaccine refusal as a serious phenomenon worth engaging (rather than simply censoring) again illustrates how much the media landscape has narrowed since.

Gardasil

Prior to COVID-19, I considered the HPV vaccine (Gardasil) to be one of the worst vaccines in history as:

•It was completely unnecessary and was produced purely for profit.

•Its clinical trials showed it was extremely dangerous. For example, between 2.5%-50% of those who got the vaccine (the range is wide because Merck was deliberately vague in reporting the injuries) developed autoimmune and neurological conditions.

•Many young girls I know suffered a severe and permanent injury from the vaccine.

•From the moment Gardasil hit the market, the FDA and CDC were deluged by reports of severe adverse reactions—which like the COVID-19 vaccines, they did everything in their power to cover up (often in a very similar manner).

•It severely affected the physiologic zeta potential, a trait I have seen in many of the other most harmful vaccinations in history (e.g., Anthrax and COVID-19).

Sadly, as it launched in 2006, there was very little reporting of its dangers (or the fraud which occurred during its clinical trials) in the American Press, with the only coverage being:

A 2007 NBC News, in response to public outcry against mandating the HPV vaccine for schoolchildren, hosted a segment where opposing parties briefly debated mandating it.

In 2009, CBS’s Washington DC station aired a segment highlighting the serious issues with the HPV vaccine.

On a 2013 daytime talk show (which received significant pushback from a coordinated pharma campaign, and led to the host apologizing for airing it—along with the cancellation of Katie Couric’s show being announced two weeks after this segment aired).

Along with two brief somewhat critical CBS 2008 and 2009 segments (the first of which was produced by Sharyl Attkisson):

Finally a few critical segments were aired on local news stations (ie. this 2016 one, which was immediately followed by a local segment where an "expert" debunked it):

Note: I also found another news segment on YouTube of girls injured by Gardasil I forgot to download before it was deleted for “violating the terms of service”).

Then in 2022, Charlotte’s WSOC (Action 9, reported by Jason Stoogenke) covered local North Carolina women who had filed federal suits against Merck over the lasting symptoms they attributed to Gardasil, alongside the story of a girl left with persistent stomach and joint problems after receiving the shots at age nine.

Note: those 2022 filings fed into the larger wave of Gardasil injury cases consolidated into a federal multidistrict litigation in North Carolina. Even after a judge dismissed a group of more than 200 of those cases in 2025 (concluding they were preempted by the FDA’s approval of the vaccine’s labeling), Merck chose in 2026 to settle the bulk of the remaining litigation, paying more than $50 million to resolve over 200 cases, including the long-running California case of Jennifer Robi that had been headed for a jury. Merck admitted no liability and maintained the vaccine was safe, but it acknowledged the payout was “considerably less” than the cost of continuing to defend the suits, (which tells you why it preferred to make them disappear rather than face a jury and let the evidence obtained through discovery play out in open court).

Finally, since the pharmaceutical industry did not own the European media (as they can’t advertise there—although the Gates foundation has still found ways to buy out the press^1,2,3), one Danish station eventually produced a (very restrained) 2015 program on the injuries from the HPV vaccine and the government’s unwillingness to do anything about it:

Like many of the previous news programs, this one (despite being extremely restrained in what it mentioned) was immensely controversial, caught on like wildfire, and made many HPV vaccine injured girls realize they were not alone.

Conclusion

One of the key points RFK has repeatedly emphasized is how much power the pharmaceutical industry holds over the press. He often tells the story of his close friend Roger Ailes, the chairman and CEO of Fox News, who was supportive of RFK coming on air to discuss his documentary critical of vaccination. Despite that, Ailes couldn’t allow it, because roughly 70% to 75% of Fox’s advertising came from pharmaceutical companies, and Fox couldn’t afford to lose that revenue by offending its sponsors.

Much of this traces back to a 1997 FDA decision to effectively legalize direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising, making America one of only two countries on earth (alongside New Zealand) to permit it. In response, two solutions are now emerging. First, RFK’s team is making a historic attempt to pull back and restrict pharmaceutical advertising, something that has needed doing for decades. Even sitting presidents are now willing to say things that would have been unthinkable on network television a few years ago. In a recent Full Measure interview with Sharyl Attkisson, for example, President Trump argued that the childhood schedule has ballooned far beyond that of comparable countries, that injecting so much into small infants is a harmful thing to do, and that he’d like to see far fewer and smaller shots given over more visits, which he expects would produce far better outcomes on autism.

Second, every large media business is ultimately balancing two things: not offending its sponsors, and not offending (but rather growing) its audience. Because of the monopoly the mass media long held, it was possible to air inane and frequently false content that served sponsors without losing viewers, so there was never any incentive to air the truth audiences actually wanted. The recent rise of independent media, which frequently outpaces its conventional counterparts, has broken that monopoly, because once people can choose, they would rather watch real news that is relevant to their lives (which is why I am so grateful to each of you for supporting Substack’s model which lets me do just that).

Likewise, consider Sharyl Attkisson, Megyn Kelly, and Tucker Carlson. All three had to leave their pivotal mainstream positions to become independent journalists, yet each now arguably has more influence than before, along with the freedom to cover what they want to. As a result, once-untouchable subjects like the dangers of vaccination are finally getting widespread exposure on their platforms, and more independent productions have been made on the dangers of the COVID vaccines than on virtually every prior vaccine combined. Nonetheless, it’s also worth noting we still are seeing virtually no mainstream commentary on COVID vaccine injuries (excluding occasional ones on Fox and a few smaller conservative networks) despite the fact far more people were injured from the COVID vaccine than any other one in history—which I believe encapsulates why the mainstream media is rapidly making itself extinct.

Finally, if you watched all of the segments above, you’ll have noticed that the person who advocated for the vaccine-injured on national television across the decades was, again and again, Barbara Loe Fisher, who accurately predicted the mishaps and catastrophes that would follow each successive vaccine. That fell to her partly through her own unwavering dedication, but also because there was almost never a physician available to do the same, other than Robert S. Mendelsohn, an articulate media presence who featured in the 1983 Donahue debate but regrettably passed away in 1988. COVID changed that. For the first time, there is now a contingent of highly persuasive physicians receiving regular airtime to wake the public up and lend the movement the mainstream credibility it never had.

Even ten years ago, almost no one in the vaccine safety movement imagined a shift like this was possible, and much of it is thanks to readers and viewers like you, whose support makes the rise of independent media possible. I am truly grateful to every one of you who has supported the work that I, and so many others, are now able to do.

To learn how other readers have benefitted from this publication and the community it has created, their feedback can be viewed here. Additionally, an index of all the articles published in the Forgotten Side of Medicine can be viewed here.

•Modern medicine acts as a sales funnel, where patients are seen for the minimum time necessary to refer them onward to lucrative services rather than identifying the root cause of their condition.

•Since back pain has multiple causes, 90% of low back pain is simply labeled “nonspecific,” the most common causes go unrecognized and patients are placed on a standardized escalation ladder instead, where almost every rung either misses the actual cause or worsens it (e.g., all the common pain medications have serious issues).

•Some spinal surgeries are necessary or offer tangible benefits. Fusions, the most lucrative ones, have repeatedly failed to outperform non-surgical care in randomized trials while carrying a host of common and serious complications, yet have become increasingly favored — a dynamic illustrated by an extensive investigation of one hospital that generated record revenues from high-volume neurosurgery while its own physicians resigned and departed in protest over what they described as inappropriate surgeries and unsafe conditions.

•Meanwhile, countries without the wealth to sustain a medical monopoly actively explored inexpensive alternatives, and Russia and Eastern Europe built an entire literature around treating disc herniations and radiculopathies with topical DMSO, including a placebo-controlled trial and national treatment guidelines. Hundreds of readers here have independently found the same thing, including many recovering from fusions that had already failed them.

•This article will detail why each step of the conventional pathway is dangerous, the forgotten approaches my colleagues and I have relied upon for decades to resolve neck and back pain without surgery and how DMSO specifically can be used in these instances.

One of the greatest issues in healthcare, which I believe is a reflection of the society at large, is that everything has become so rushed that there is no longer time for doctors to actually connect with their patients. Because of this, a lot of the most critical parts of medicine get missed, and I have known so many patients who were harmed by the medical system because of the fifteen-minute-visit model.

When I started this newsletter, my goal was to correspond with each of the readers who reached out to me, but as this publication has grown that has become impossible. The best solution I have been able to come up with is these monthly open threads, where any question that has accumulated over the last month can be asked publicly (which is much faster for me to work through and lets everyone see the answers), paired with a topic many readers have requested.

This month’s topic is a major shortcoming of medicine that has bothered me for a very long time.

Why Back Pain Defeats Modern Medicine

Medicine, as it currently exists, serves as a sales funnel where patients are seen for the minimal amount of time necessary to refer them to (lucrative) medical services, which frequently involved perpetual symptom management and escalation to increasingly invasive therapies which are both more profitable and harmful to patients. As such, many “sales funnels” exist in medicine, and I’ve repeatedly cited this chart I made of one I find particularly egregious.

In most cases, this status quo is due to the fact visits are so short doctors (outside of private cash pay ones) do not have time to look at the broader clinical picture and identify the root cause of the patient’s condition and because the medical system is incentivized to develop products that can be perpetually sold (e.g., symptom managing drugs) rather than actual cures for common conditions.

One classic illustration of this dynamic is with pain, as temporarily alleviating pain guarantees a perpetual stream of repeat business, whereas understanding what causes it and permanently addressing the pain rapidly eliminates its customer pool. Because of this, the key drivers of back (and neck) pain remain surprisingly unrecognized by the medical field and incorrect causes (we can be managed with medical services) are frequently ascribed to them rather than the actual causes. Likewise, I’ve lost count of how many people I’ve seen who had a simple cause of back pain that was never recognized, leading to them spending years pursuing ineffective interventions.

As such, I believe it’s important to highlight the common causes of back pain:

•Tight muscles. This is by far the most common cause and the most consistently missed. Physical therapy, which would ordinarily be responsible for addressing this, tends to focus on strengthening weak muscles rather than releasing tight ones (in part because insurance reimbursements incentivize this).

•Ligamentous laxity. Ligaments are responsible for holding the bones within the body in the correct place, particularly when external strain would otherwise push them out of place (which frequently happens in settings of laxity). Once this occurs, the joints will often “grind” against each other (producing inflammation and facet joint degeneration) and irritate the surrounding structures (e.g. impinging nerves).

•Bone Misalignment: while bones being directly out of place (which are often corrected with manual adjustments) are recognized to cause this issue, the focus typically is on putting them back into place rather than correcting the underlying issue (e.g., ligamentous laxity, myofascial dysfunction or a leg length inequality) which causes them to go out of place—which is why many spinal adjustments do not last and need to be continually repeated.
Note: one of the most commonly missed causes of low back pain is sacroiliac (SI) joint dysfunction

•Seronegative spondyloarthropathies are a family of inflammatory joint conditions that do not have some of the classic blood markers for rheumatologic diseases (and hence are often missed). They are characterized by inflammatory axial back pain (starting at the sacrum) that onsets before age 45, and often is accompanied by morning stiffness lasting around 30–60 minutes that improves with activity along with other signs of joint inflammation in the body. The appropriate (relatively non-toxic) rheumatologic drug can be very helpful for these conditions, as can foundational natural methods for reducing inflammation.

•Immobility and prolonged sitting triggers many of the different factors which set off back pain (e.g., poor fluid circulation and tight muscles)—providing another key argument for avoiding a sedentary lifestyle (which sadly is quite challenging in many professions).

•Psychological pain (e.g., due past trauma, suppressed emotions, depression, feeling unsupported, or having anxiety and fear avoidant behaviors that cause individuals to minimize back motion) while not always applicable, can be either a key cause of back pain, or exacerbate an existing issue. As such, some individuals have found dramatic results addressing the potential emotional contributors to refractory back pain, while others have experienced negligible benefit from prolonged attempts to manage the emotional component of the disease.

•A disc herniation compressing a nerve root. These occur, but are far less common than the amount of attention it receives would suggest and often are secondary to ligamentous laxity.

•Referred pain (from an issue in another organ such as a kidney stone) can often be critical to identify so that the underlying disease can be prevented from causing a serious complication in the future.

•Structural disease (e.g., a fractured or weakened vertebra). These are fairly rare and sometimes genuinely require surgery (although they become more common with age and certain medications such as longterm corticosteroid usage).

Layered on top of these, I consistently find that chronic inflammatory conditions (mold toxicity, Lyme, spike protein injuries), sympathetic overactivation, trapped emotions, scars generating autonomic dysregulation, and altered central pain processing all substantially worsen whatever else is happening (or sometimes independently trigger it).

Unfortunately, most of these are typically missed. For example, 90% of low back pain is diagnosed as nonspecific mechanical low back pain that does not have a specific identifiable pathoanatomical origin for the pain.^1,2,3

As such, rather than taking the time to sort through each possible cause (and because imaging findings that are easy to see frequently have nothing to do with the pain) medicine defaults to a standardized treatment ladder instead that often fails, hence funneling many patients into the most extreme treatments.

Note: this also explains why nearly every treatment for back pain shows partial evidence. If 40% of cases share a particular cause, a treatment targeting that cause will look “effective” in 40% of patients while failing or worsening the rest, and the averaged result will look like a modest, unimpressive benefit.

Ambiguous Imaging and Disc Herniations

Medicine is biased to believe something must be visible to be real. Beyond causing important things that are hard to see to be rejected outright, this also causes things that are easy to see to be treated as consequential when they are not.

MRI abnormalities are used to assess back pain, judge its progression, and decide whether someone gets an opioid or a fusion, because the problem appears self-evident on the scan. Yet when this has been studied, patients with abnormal MRIs frequently do not have back pain and do not go on to develop it, while patients with severe back pain frequently have normal MRIs, with no correlation between imaging findings and pain severity.

My own experience mirrors this. The MRI only becomes meaningful when there are also clear clinical signs that a nerve is actually being compressed, meaning a weakness or a loss of sensation in the distribution of that specific nerve. This turns out to matter enormously, because it is precisely those patients (the ones with a demonstrated radiculopathy rather than an abnormal-looking picture) in whom surgery actually has evidence behind it.

The Escalation Ladder

What follows is the standard pathway, and what is wrong with each step of it.

NSAIDs. These are arguably among the most dangerous drugs in America. They are the most common drug class resulting in hospital admission for a drug reaction, and as I show here, they increase kidney disease, heart attacks, strokes and fatal gastric bleeds anywhere from 24-154% (e.g., Vioxx and Celebrex jointly are estimated to have killed roughly 195,000 people while their manufacturers concealed the risk)—leading to numerous (pre-COVID) authors considering NSAIDs to be the deadliest class of drugs on the market. Notably, NSAIDs have also been shown to impair ligament repair after injury, creating weakened joints that are further predisposed to injury and irritation.

Tylenol. Rarely sufficient for significant pain, it produces roughly 500 deaths and 56,000 emergency visits a year in the United States from liver toxicity, in part because like NSAIDs, people take more when the standard dose does not work.

Gabapentin and Lyrica. Originally approved for epilepsy, then illegally marketed for everything else at a cost of nearly a billion dollars in fines. For certain neuropathies these work quite well. For most back pain they do almost nothing, while producing sedation, cognitive impairment, dizziness, and sometimes dependence.

Opioids. Effective, and also the origin of one of the worst public health disasters in American history (which has caused their use to be restricted in the patients who most need them). Beyond addiction and overdosing, long-term use commonly leads to tolerance (requiring ever-higher doses for the same effect), opioid-induced hyperalgesia (where the drugs paradoxically make patients more sensitive to pain, worsening the original condition), severe constipation that rarely improves and can cause bowel obstruction, profound hormonal disruption (low testosterone or estrogen leading to sexual dysfunction, fatigue, depression, bone loss, and fractures), sedation and cognitive impairment that interfere with daily life and rehabilitation, increased fall risk, immune suppression, and a host of other issues that often leave patients worse off after months or years of treatment. In many cases of chronic back pain, they either do not help or provide only marginal or short-lived relief while creating new problems that make recovery harder.

Physical therapy. Some physical therapists consistently help their patients, but they are hard to find, and I attribute this both to training that does not emphasize the most effective approaches for musculoskeletal pain and to an insurance model that rewards checking boxes over resolving problems. Because of this, patients who are in pain often spend a significant amount of time seeing physical therapists before it is deemed a failure and they are moved up the ladder.

Steroid injections. Since inflammation in the spine’s facet joints and the nearby nerve roots creates back pain, a common approach to back pain which does not respond to conservative interventions are steroid injections into those areas.

The major problem with this approach is that corticosteroids damage bone and ligaments, so in exchange for the temporary relief the steroid provides, the underlying irritation gets worse.

Note: most injected steroids are not water soluble and will persist in the injection site for a long time. An orthopedic colleague once showed me arthroscopic footage from inside a live joint where previously injected steroid could be seen coating it. Beyond that, steroids carry a remarkable systemic burden: at typical doses they cause a 5 to 15% loss of bone every year, roughly 70% of long-term users report weight gain, roughly half of oral users develop some degree of adrenal insufficiency, and one study found 90% of users reported adverse effects with 55% reporting at least one that was very bothersome. I have seen a patient develop avascular necrosis in both hips following a course of steroids.

Furthermore, in addition to the spine being destabilized, the discs depend upon the ligaments in the back of the spine (where steroids are injected) to prevent herniations and bulges. This is because when the spine bends backwards (e.g., because the ligaments in the back pull the vertebrae together) the discs are pushed forward, whereas when they bend forward, the discs are pushed backwards and against the nerve roots.

Note: as the ligaments play a key role in keeping the disc in place, when a bulging disc is suspected, we often focus on them. However, it can also be the case that the issue is not the disc, but rather that the existing ligamentous laxity is affecting and irritating a facet joint (which I believe is one reason why disc herniations observed on MRI can be a red herring).

Nerve ablations. A needle is placed into the nerve thought to be generating the pain and electricity is run through it to destroy the nerve. This works, but peripheral nerves regenerate, so it typically has to be repeated within a year.

Finally, when all of those approaches fail (and sometimes sooner), patients are referred to the culmination of this funnel—spinal surgery.

Spinal Surgeries

Various types of spinal surgeries exist. I would like to highlight three:

•Repairs of a fractured bone (which are necessary, have benefits which greatly outweigh their risks and are performed in a variety of different ways depending on the circumstances).

•Decompression surgeries (laminectomy, discectomy). These remove bone or disc material compressing a nerve and outside of the previously mentioned emergency repairs, offer the greatest benefit of any spinal surgery. In the lumbar spine they are frequently life-changing with minimal side effects. In the cervical spine they help most patients but carry more risk of complications. Existing evidence, in turn, supports them in patients who have both pain and clinical signs of nerve impingement and I have seen many people experience dramatic improvement from them.

•Spinal Fusions join vertebrae together with hardware (metal and screws), permanently eliminating motion at that segment. For as long as I can remember I’ve met people who had fusions which did not help them and caused a host of problems (as the body depends on the entire spine being able to freely move in a myriad of ways). Given that, I would hence like to briefly review the data on spinal fusions:

•In a Norwegian trial comparing instrumented lumbar fusion against cognitive intervention and exercises for chronic low back pain with disc degeneration, the nine-year outcome showed no difference between the two groups, one-third of the patients randomized to fusion had been re-operated, and when compared to the non-surgical group, the fusion patients were using more pain medication and were more likely to be out of work.

•The British MRC Spine Stabilisation Trial (349 patients) found no clear evidence that spinal fusion was more beneficial than intensive rehabilitation.

•Additionally, fusions are often added to decompression surgeries. A Swedish 2016 RCT (247 patients) found that two years out and five years out, there was no significant benefit from adding on the fusion. However, it did increase post-operative infections (from 4%-10%), post-operative hospital stays (from 4.1 to 7.4 days) and direct costs ($6,800 higher).

Why the Fusions Happen Anyway

Given all of that, you would expect fusions to be rare and shrinking. The opposite happened.

A 2010 JAMA analysis of Medicare claims examining surgery for lumbar spinal stenosis between 2002 and 2007 found that overall surgical rates declined slightly, but the rate of complex fusion procedures increased fifteen-fold, from 1.3 to 19.9 per 100,000 beneficiaries (with half of the recipients of those complex fusions having neither scoliosis nor spondylolisthesis—the structural indications that could justify adding the hardware in the first place). In parallel, life-threatening complications rose with surgical invasiveness, from 2.3% among patients having decompression alone to 5.6% among those having complex fusions, as did 30-day mortality (0.6% versus 0.3%) and hospital charges (being three times higher for the complex fusions).

Why?

Fusions are reimbursed dramatically more than decompressions, and they are reimbursed per level fused, which means there is a direct financial reward for fusing more of the spine than the pathology requires (despite more fusions creating greater subsequent impairment for the patients).

The Five Problems With Fusion

1. Adjacent segment disease: The spine continually transfers force through itself, so when a segment cannot move, the force disproportionately concentrates at the vertebrae immediately above and below the fusion. Those segments then wear out. Reported rates range from 5% to 27%, and the risk increases the longer patients are followed, with reoperation for it running at roughly 2.5% to 3.9% per year for traditional posterior approaches. That is a per-year rate, which compounds. A 45-year-old getting a fusion is signing up for decades of that arithmetic.

Note: any time a wave travels through a medium and the density of that medium changes, the wave refracts, with part reflecting, part being absorbed at the transition, and part continuing on. The spine’s alternating flexible (lumbar and cervical) and inflexible (thoracic) zones create these transition points, which is why the junctional areas before and after each part of the spine are the most common sites of musculoskeletal spinal pain. Fusing a segment creates an artificial and far more abrupt transition, and the tissue at the boundary absorbs the difference.

2. Pseudarthrosis (failed fusion): in 5–35% of cases the bones never solidly fuse, leading to ongoing pain, hardware loosening or breakage, and often more surgery (with the risk being higher in smokers, diabetics, and multi-level fusions).

3. Failed back syndrome: persistent pain after the operation is common enough to have its own name and its own ICD code. Failure rates range from 30% to 46% for lumbar fusion versus 19% to 25% for microdiscectomy, with increasing surgical complexity (e.g., vertebrae fused) increasing the likelihood of this.

4. Hardware issues: Defective and counterfeit screws, unapproved bone cement, and metallosis (a toxic reaction to the implant metals—most often cobalt, chromium or nickel which seep into the body and can cause symptoms weeks to years after the fusion). Most physicians have never heard of metallosis (despite it being acknowledged within the scientific literature^1,2), but I have run into numerous patients who developed debilitating complications from it (and learned of a few cases which resulted in medically assisted dying because no one recognized what was causing the symptoms).

5. Irreversibility: Once a fusion is bonded into bone and the adjacent segments rapidly begin compensating for the abnormal spinal mechanics, revisions to the original surgery become harder to perform, riskier, and much less likely to work than the original surgery. One review reported that success rates drop to 30% after a second spine surgery, 15% after the third, and approximately 5% after the fourth, and that instrumented fusion performed to treat failed back surgery syndrome produced good outcomes in only 35% of patients at 15 months, with 65% unsatisfactory. Likewise, regardless of how compromised someone’s back is, a solution normally exists to resolve, or at least improve their condition—but once a fusion is present, it becomes much more difficult to (non-surgically) improve their symptoms, with partial improvements typically being the best that can be achieved.

Note: many patients report agonizing and debilitating complications after spinal fusions. Additionally, I have observed a variety of more subtle issues arise in the body mind and spirit following spinal fusions.

Much of this is synopsized by two large state workers’ compensation studies, which objectively tracked the results of these surgeries.

In Ohio, 725 lumbar fusion patients were compared to 725 randomly selected non-surgical controls with the same diagnoses. Two years out, 26% of the fusion patients had returned to work versus 67% of those who never had surgery, permanent disability was awarded to 11% versus 2%, and total days off work were 1,140 versus 316. Additionally, 27% required a reoperation, 36% had a complication, and daily opioid use increased 41% after the surgery, with 76% still taking them more than 90 days postoperatively. As the authors put it, "This procedure is offered to improve pain and function, yet objective outcomes showed increased permanent disability, poor RTW [return to work] status, and higher doses of opioids.”

In Washington State, among 1,950 injured workers who underwent lumbar fusion, 64% were still on work disability two years later, 22% had a reoperation, and 12% had a complication. That study also found adding cages or instrumentation increased complications without improving disability or reoperation rates at all — despite their use rising from 3.6% of fusions in 1996 to 58.1% in 2001.

The Business of Spinal Surgeries

Everything above describes incentives in the abstract. What follows is what happened at one hospital that deliberately built those incentives into its physicians’ contracts, and what happened to the doctors who objected.

In 2011, Providence Health & Services acquired Swedish Health, and with it Swedish’s Cherry Hill campus in Seattle, an institution with a growing reputation as a center for neuroscience research and treatment. Over the next few years, Providence and Swedish overhauled how Cherry Hill’s neuroscience program approached the business of medicine.

By 2015, the campus was generating half a billion dollars in net operating revenue, a 39% increase in three years, and had the highest Medicare reimbursements per inpatient visit of any hospital in the United States with at least 150 beds. Five of the six top-billing brain and spine surgeons in Washington State worked there, averaging $67 million in billed charges each.

All of this was documented in a year-long Seattle Times investigation that reviewed more than 10,000 pages of records across four states and interviewed over 100 people, including more than 30 current and former Cherry Hill staff. The reporting was subsequently challenged in federal court and upheld in full, with the judge finding no evidence had been produced that any of it was false.

Note: my interest here is entirely in the institutional decisions, so I have deliberately left the individual physicians out of this account as I believe the events were ultimately a result of the system in place.

The Contract Change

The most consequential thing that happened at Cherry Hill was not a surgery. It was a change to how surgeons got paid.

Previously, the neuroscience institute’s surgeons pooled a portion of their pay and redistributed it among themselves. That system existed for a specific reason: it removed the financial penalty for handing a patient to a colleague who was a better fit for that particular case. If the patient would do better with someone else, you lost nothing by saying so. In some surgical settings all income is pooled this way, for exactly this reason.

Administrators ended the pooling. Surgeons would instead be paid almost entirely on their individual production, measured in Relative Value Units, the Medicare formula that assigns a point value to each procedure.

In other words, the mechanism specifically designed to prioritize patient fit over personal volume was removed, and replaced with one that rewarded doing more yourself.

And here is where this connects directly to everything I described earlier about fusions. The Times laid out the arithmetic:

-A spinal decompression at one vertebral level totals 15.37 RVUs.

-Adding a second level of decompression adds only 3.47 RVUs.

-But converting it to a fusion of two vertebrae totals 23.53 RVUs.

-Each additional vertebra fused adds 6.43 RVUs, and more can be added by using more hardware.

So decompressing two levels earns roughly 18.8 units. Fusing those same two levels earns 23.5, and every additional level fused adds nearly twice what a second level of decompression would have. This is the per-level financial incentive I described above, stated in actual numbers, inside an institution that had just made those numbers the basis of physician pay.

For scale: a typical neurosurgeon performs about 9,400 RVUs per year, according to the firm Swedish itself used to benchmark compensation. The two top producers at Cherry Hill each exceeded 27,000, and in 2014 earned roughly $2 million and $2.3 million respectively, according to Providence’s nonprofit tax filings. The national median for a neurosurgeon is about $772,000.

In 2014, those two surgeons ranked first in the state for lumbar fusions performed on patients whose primary diagnosis was lumbar stenosis without a displaced vertebra, with 24 such cases each. That is precisely the scenario in which, as Richard Deyo told the Times, the evidence does not support adding the fusion.

Note: an economist focused on health policy interviewed for the investigation put the general principle plainly, which is that there is evidence physicians respond to volume incentives by adding more procedures, including unnecessary ones, to a patient’s visit. The federal government has spent recent years trying to shift hospital reimbursement toward effectiveness rather than volume. Cherry Hill went the other direction on purpose.

What the Volume Required

Sustaining that output required practices staff found alarming enough to report.

Six current and former staffers described surgeons running multiple operating rooms simultaneously, with fellows handling portions of procedures while the attending was elsewhere. This is not prohibited, and Medicare permits it if the attending is present for the “critical” portions. But four staffers said the attending was sometimes in the room for less than fifteen minutes of a case, and several described the operating room pausing mid-surgery, with the patient open and under anesthesia, waiting for the attending to arrive.

Patients did not necessarily know this was the arrangement. The consent forms they signed included small print permitting the attending physician to use associates “to perform and/or assist with part or all of my procedure(s),” while the hospital’s advertising emphasized the personal involvement of its star surgeons, drawing patients from hundreds of miles away.

There was also a marked institutional shift toward more invasive procedures. In treating brain aneurysms, surgeons can either “coil” the aneurysm through a catheter threaded up from a small incision in the groin, or “clip” it by removing a section of the skull and working through the brain tissue (which provides more RVUs^1,2). Coiling has grown in use because research indicates the less invasive option is often better for patients, and it avoids opening the skull.

At Cherry Hill, the clipping rate rose from 36% of cases in 2012 to 57% in 2014, while the statewide average stayed under 40%. Over roughly the same period, 9% of aneurysm patients treated at Cherry Hill had an ischemic stroke during their stay, versus 4% at every other hospital in the state. For clipping procedures specifically, the stroke rate was double the rest of the state, 14% versus 7%.

On the federal government’s patient safety indicators, Cherry Hill ranked below national levels in three areas: post-surgical blood clots, collapsed lungs, and serious complications. State data showed that among neuro and spine patients admitted electively, the rate who developed accidental cuts or other surgical problems climbed from 0.1% in 2011–2012 to 2.6% in 2015.

The strain reached the units where patients recover. A nurse who co-chaired Swedish’s staffing oversight committee described ICU patients who would normally receive one-on-one care being watched by nurses handling a second patient, charge nurses forced to take patients on top of administrative duties, and patients lingering in post-op for hours because there was no ICU capacity. She said it was not uncommon for some operating room nurses to work twenty hours in a twenty-four hour period, and noted a loophole in Washington’s nurse overtime law that allowed it.

“If the caregivers are completely spent, they’re not going to be able to take care of you.”

What the Doctors Did About It

This is the part that matters most, and the part I want to sit with.

The physicians at Cherry Hill were not silent. They escalated, in writing, repeatedly, to the top of the organization, for years.

When administrators moved to appoint new leadership for the neuroscience institute from within rather than conducting a national search, one of the surgeons at the meeting suggested they take a vote on how to proceed. According to four people present, the chief executive of Providence, a physician himself overseeing fifty hospitals across seven states, ended the discussion:

“This is not a democracy.”

The head of Swedish’s own internal committee on surgical quality resigned in protest over the appointment, writing to Swedish and Providence leadership that he could not do the job while administrators promoted someone who “has shown very little respect for the Culture of Safety and related processes,” and that the “number of negative reports submitted by so many different individuals is, in my judgment, a serious indicator of deficiencies.”

Administrators proceeded with the appointment, and then revised the surgical contracts described above to further incentivize the high-volume approach.

Within sixteen months, staff had filed 49 internal complaints concerning quality of patient care and professional conduct.

One neurosurgeon wrote to the Swedish CEO that “this toxic, repressive environment has already negatively impacted the ability of the SNI community to provide the quality care (to) our patients that they deserve,” and that fundamental issues including “patient safety, appropriate surgery, and quality of care have been rebuffed by the leadership.”

An internal memo cited these problems as a reason more than 60 staff members had left in two years.

Then, in November 2016, the chief executive of physicians at Swedish wrote directly to the chief executive of Providence. He reported that the neurosurgeons felt intimidated about raising what they considered unsafe practices at the morbidity and mortality conference, the standard forum where physicians review bad outcomes specifically so they are not repeated. He said he had heard of decisions that led to significant patient harm and death. And then he said this:

“It has created a perception that what really matters at Swedish is vast RVU production without concern for the means by which it is achieved.”

The month before, ten surgeons and staff members had met in person with the Swedish CEO and two other administrators to make the same case. The minutes show they warned that a reporter was calling staff, and that everything which had been ignored was about to become public.

Nothing changed until the investigation was published.

That is the whole story in one sequence. The quality committee chair resigned. Forty-nine complaints were filed in sixteen months. Sixty staff left. The chief executive of physicians put it in writing to the CEO of a fifty-hospital system that the institution appeared to value production over the means by which it was achieved. Ten surgeons made a direct plea in person.

And the answer was no, because the model was working financially.

An anonymous whistleblower did reach the state Department of Health in early 2016, outlining inappropriate surgeries, rising complications and infection rates, unsupervised fellows, and ignored complaints. After a two-day investigation, the investigator concluded the allegations were “not substantiated due to lack of evidence.”

What This Cost

I want to close with one patient, because the numbers above are easy to read past.

Talia Goldenberg was 23, an artist, a former gymnast and pole vaulter, with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a connective tissue disorder causing unstable joints and chronic pain. It was not going to kill her. But her flexible cervical spine meant even a vigorous laugh could jostle her neck and trigger debilitating headaches, and she was told a cervical fusion could improve her life.

Note: EDS in fact responds very well to certain treatments like nutritional supplementation, but it is typically mismanaged and worsened by the increasingly invasive treatments it receives.

She traveled from Oregon with her parents in February 2014. Her father was a family physician. The surgery lasted four and a half hours and was declared a success, with no complications, described to her parents as “perfect.”

As the anesthesia wore off, her jaw was jutting forward and would not open wide enough to admit a finger. Her face was swollen. Her voice came out as a rasp. She told the nurse she was having difficulty breathing, then vomited twice.

Her father understood immediately what that combination meant. If her airway closed, intubation requires tipping the head back, which her newly fused neck would not permit, and passing a tube through the mouth, which her locked jaw would not permit. The only remaining option would be a cricothyrotomy, cutting an emergency airway through the front of the throat. He told the staff, repeatedly, that they needed a crike kit and a plan.

Over the following hours a nurse paged the attending about her medications and received no response, then paged the physician assistant, then paged again asking for a doctor to come as soon as possible, then paged the neurosurgical fellow, then called a Rapid Response team instead. Talia was moved to the ICU.

The next morning she texted her friend: “My throat is nearly swollen closed.” She texted her cousin: “Yeah feel like my throat is literally barely open. Can’t even talk well or swallow!” At 11:56 she texted: “Still having a very, very hard time breathing and feel like the docs aren’t quite takin it seriously.”

A note filed by the surgical team that morning recorded “subjective mild difficulty breathing,” attributed it to the tube used during surgery, observed that she sounded hoarse but did not appear to be in distress, and said she was ready to transfer out of intensive care.

At 1:26 p.m. Talia coughed, looked at her parents, and forced out: “I can’t breathe! Help me! I can’t breathe!”

Staff tried to force airway devices past her clenched teeth, switching sizes, shoving and twisting and levering to try to pry her jaw open. It did not work. Her father pleaded for the cricothyrotomy and paced the bedside watching her color turn gray. Her mother stood at the foot of the bed holding her daughter’s foot.

Someone asked whether any of it was getting air in.

“No!” the respiratory practitioner answered. “Maybe randomly.”

About fifteen minutes after Talia’s last breath, a doctor entered the room, assessed it, and called for the crike kit.

None was in the room.

She went into cardiac arrest roughly twenty minutes after asking for help. Staff performed CPR, retrieved the kit, and did the cricothyrotomy. Her heartbeat returned. She never regained consciousness, and died nine days later after her parents made the decision to withdraw support.

Swedish’s autopsy could not determine why she had suddenly been unable to breathe. Her parents still do not know.

A week after her death, a letter arrived at their home addressed to Talia, asking her to complete a survey about her stay. “By sharing your thoughts and feelings, you can help us improve the care we provide.”

Her father has not practiced medicine since.

What Happens in Countries That Can’t Afford This

In studying the history of the forgotten side of medicine, you will inevitably discover that many of the most revolutionary discoveries originated in America—but beginning in the 1950s they gradually stopped appearing here. This, I believe was a result of the American Medical Association (discussed here) and then the FDA (discussed here) not only suppressing each low-cost discovery which threatened the medical monopoly but also intimidating scientists who researched “unapproved” therapies (culminating in Fauci cutting off research grants to undesirable researchers).

Because of this, we have a system of medicine which neglects affordable and unpatentable solutions to monetizable diseases, costs more and more each year and frequently fails to address the ailments patients suffer from.

However, in places where there is not enough available wealth to sustain a medical monopoly, many of those solutions are actively explored. For instance, in Russia and Eastern Europe, there is an extensive body of evidence showing DMSO can treat a wide range of back issues:

•A placebo-controlled trial in 68 patients with acute, subacute and chronic vertebrogenic dorsalgia found topical DMSO gel (twice daily for ten days) significantly outperformed placebo across every measure: mean pain on VAS fell from 7.46 to 2.58 versus 7.13 to 4.73 for placebo, the muscle syndrome index shifted to mild severity in 76.3% versus 33.3%, spinal mobility restriction fully resolved in 39% versus 27% (with 20% of the placebo group remaining severe versus 0% of the DMSO group), and Roland-Morris disability scores improved 60% versus 35%.

•A 1968 controlled trial in 38 patients with lumbar and cervical disc herniation found treatment duration in the DMSO group was roughly halved compared to controls.

•In a staged rehabilitation program across 320 patients with vertebrogenic pain syndrome, topical DMSO on the painful segment reduced pain to 0–2 points on VAS in 89% versus 73% in controls, with long-term remission maintained in 80% when repeated annually.

•Across four studies from the same research group spanning 2005 to 2018, with 64 to 147 patients each, DMSO with procaine applied as compresses to painful myotonic points on the neck or shoulder for 1.5 to 2 hours per session over 10 to 15 procedures succeeded in 68.8% to 84.4% of patients with cervical radiculopathy and myelopathy, with improvements in pain, sensation, strength, cervical mobility and EMG parameters.

•For cervical osteochondrosis with pronounced neuralgic syndromes, a DMSO mixture applied for 40 to 45 minutes every other day over 20 to 22 days produced analgesia from the first application, eliminated spontaneous pain within 3 to 4 procedures in patients with reflex syndromes, and over two years dropped total disability days roughly 4.7-fold, from 481 to 104.

•In a comparison of DMSO-mud applications against mud alone for cervical osteochondrosis, clinical improvement occurred in 100% of the DMSO group after only 5 to 6 procedures versus 50% in the mud-only group after 10, with hand dynamometry (grip strength) in one case improving from 20 kg to 53 kg.

Likewise Karipain (a papaya-derived proteolytic preparation containing papain, chymopapain, proteinase and lysozyme) is delivered into herniated discs via iontophoresis, with DMSO added as the penetration enhancer. Across well over a dozen studies (detailed here) this protocol has been reported to reduce hernia size by 2 to 7 mm on MRI (and volume by up to 52%) in 75% to 98% of patients, avoid surgery in approximately 45%, and produce improvements of 54–72% on the McGill Pain Questionnaire, 33–54% on Oswestry, 58–76% on Roland-Morris, and 29–66% on VAS. In the largest single series, 221 patients with cervical and lumbar herniations showed significant reduction in hernia dimensions on spiral CT in 98.2% after two courses. Enzyme therapy combined with DMSO-enhanced delivery was used in over 8,500 patients across Armenian medical institutions.

Finally, DMSO applications appear as a standard component in Russian, Ukrainian and Uzbek clinical guidelines and treatment protocols for back pain, is in national guidelines for radiculitis and sciatica and is used at military rehabilitation sanatoriums as part of standardized 21-day courses—yet almost no one in American medicine has heard of any of it.

What Readers Have Reported

At this point I have received thousands of reports from readers using DMSO for pain, and my best estimate is that between 80 and 90% of people who try it for pain notice a meaningful improvement (which matches what the early DMSO researchers observed). Spinal pain is the most common pain condition readers here write to me about, and across the hundreds of reports I’ve reviewed, pain relief was typically in the 60–100% range (happening anywhere from within minutes to weeks in certain long lasting cases), many people were able to reduce or eliminate NSAIDs, opioids, or other pain medications and a striking number describe it working after years or decades of failed conventional treatment—including many individuals suffering from the complications of spinal fusions.

Acute Back Injuries

Readers have consistently reported rapid pain relief from acute back injuries, often within minutes. A welder with 10 years of work-related back pain was pain-free 20 minutes after a single DMSO application,¹ and similar rapid responses were reported after car accidents,^1,2,3 falls,^1,2,3 sports injuries,^1,2 and lifting injuries,¹ with pain relief typically occurring within minutes to hours and often persisting without need for reapplication.^1,2,3 One reader was “in agony” and “a hobbling cripple” after a tennis fall until DMSO restored 90% of pain relief and movement within one minute.¹ A Navy EOD trainee in 1980 who severely bruised his tailbone in a ski accident was able to fully resume training after two days of DMSO use.¹ Multiple readers also reported rapid relief from tailbone injuries (fractured or bruised coccyx), typically reducing pain from “searing” to manageable within days to weeks^{1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9},¹⁰ along with another who said it “changed my life” after a spinal fracture.¹

Chronic Back Pain

A large number of readers with chronic back pain (ranging from years to decades) reported significant or complete relief from topical DMSO. ^{1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57,58,59,60,61,62,63,64,65,66,67,68,69,70,71,72,73}

A few consistent patterns stood out: pain relief was typically 60–100%, onset ranged from minutes to weeks (with longer-standing conditions taking longer), and many were able to reduce or eliminate NSAIDs,^1,2,3,4 opioids,^1,2,3,4 or other pain medications. One reader with severe chronic back pain described DMSO as the only substance in their life that “beat the too good to be true rule”¹ and a physician with 26 years of practice and chronic lower back pain called it “a game changer,”¹

One particularly detailed account described a reader with 30 years of “severe disc degeneration L1-S1” who applied DMSO once to the lower back: “It worked immediately and I haven’t had to use it for my back again. That was about 60+ days ago.”¹ Another reader with severe chronic spinal pain soaked their entire back in a DMSO-mineral solution for six hours (far exceeding recommended contact time). “Unbelievably, 7 pitch black lumps rose to the surface and formed eschar scabs which finally came off about 4 weeks later.” After these masses were expelled, “my back felt fantastic and I felt 20 years younger,” though subsequently “it felt like something was moving up and down my spine in the fluid.”¹

Post-Surgical Back Pain

Pain which persists after spinal surgeries, particularly after spinal fusions, is sadly quite common, termed “failed back syndrome” (or sometimes ‘failed neck syndrome’), and notoriously difficult to treat. However, readers who had this after spinal surgery including fusions, laminectomies, and multiple revision surgeries frequently reported significant relief from DMSO.^{1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15}

One reader with over 50 surgeries and a thoracic spinal cord injury (who was also allergic to opioids) called DMSO “life changing,”¹ while another after 23 spinal operations reported a 50% reduction in medications within weeks.¹ Another with a spinal cord injury and two ACDF (cervical fusion) surgeries said DMSO was “the only product that worked on nerve pain or rigidity.”¹ A reader whose wife had nerve shocks in her toes following a poorly executed spinal fusion found that nightly DMSO application to the spine adjacent to the fusion incision “immediately had less severe and less frequent toe shocks” and she no longer needed to charge her back nerve stimulator.¹ Another with hardware in the back from fusion surgery gets “a DMSO back rub every day, and it helps,”¹ while a reader with Morvan’s disease following viral encephalitis (who had undergone cervical fusion among multiple surgeries) reported 75% pain reduction and visible inflammation decrease after two weeks of topical DMSO.¹

A reader whose severe neck and shoulder spasms began 11 years after a cervical discectomy and fusion — and had failed both PT and injections — found DMSO “helped within minutes,” and eventually stopped needing it entirely except during flares.¹ Others with fusions at various levels have also reported reduced pain and improved function.^1,2,3,4,5

Scar Tissue and Adhesions

Multiple readers reported DMSO softening and reducing surgical scars on the spine, with one noting that a scar on the back of the neck (operated on three times over 30 years) “softened and untwisted” and the spine came back into alignment.¹ Others reported scar tissue pain from back surgeries diminishing with regular use.^1,2,3

Neck Pain and Stiffness

Topical DMSO applied to the neck produced rapid improvements across a wide range of cervical conditions. Readers consistently reported pain reduction of 80–100%,^1,2,3,4,5,6 often within minutes,^1,2,3,4 with many noting restored range of motion they had not had for years.^1,2,3,4,5,6 A 55-year-old whose neck pain had persisted since a car wreck at age 19 (and did not respond to surgery) was “100% pain free in 1.5 hours” after a family physician applied DMSO gel.¹ A 78-year-old with five rear-end car accidents over decades, spinal stenosis, and bone spurs started oral DMSO two years ago and now walks three miles daily with only occasional shoulder pain remaining.¹

Neck mobility improvements were particularly striking. One reader’s neck rotation “increased 30 degrees each way in the first week,” causing them to almost cry while driving upon realizing the change.¹ After an electric scooter crash producing a severe trapezius/whiplash injury, another reader endured two weeks of excruciating pain and only two hours of sleep per night despite multiple treatments until a morning application of oral and topical DMSO eliminated the pain within 15 minutes¹ (similar significant scooter injuries in other readers also resolved, including one 20 years after the original accident^1,2 as did other whiplash injuries^1,2).

Additional readers reported relief from chronic neck pain,^{1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42} with several noting improved sleep^1,2 and reduced medication use.¹

Cervical Disc and Vertebral Conditions

Readers with diagnosed cervical disc degeneration, herniations, and stenosis reported significant improvements. Multiple readers with conditions at specific vertebral levels (C3-C4, C4-C5, C5-C6, C5-C7) reported 80–90% pain reduction, often within minutes of application, with continued improvement over weeks to months of use.^{1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10}

Additional reports of cervical condition improvements include cervical spondylitis or spondylosis,^{1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9} cervical arthritis,^1,2 and post-neck-surgery pain.^1,2,3,4,5,6

Spinal Stenosis and Spondylolisthesis

Readers with diagnosed spinal stenosis reported significant improvements. One reader with moderate to severe cervical stenosis (worst at C3-C5, with additional lumbar and thoracic involvement) that had required hospitalization reported “life-changing” improvements and full range of neck motion after DMSO.¹

One with “severe spinal stenosis and a slipped disk” who was not a candidate for surgery and had no relief from pain injections described DMSO as giving them “my life back.”¹ Another with stenosis and spondylolisthesis who had discontinued opioids after a decade found topical DMSO “kept me moving” with rare need for NSAIDs.¹ A 75-year-old with grade 1 spondylolisthesis and severe spinal stenosis at L4-L5 reported DMSO “reduces, even removes the pain for a few hours” and combined with other therapies made them “noticeably more functional,”¹ while another with 20% forward slippage of L4 over L5 found DMSO “reduced my perceptions of pain considerably”¹ (and noted an unexpected side effect of transient erections from larger doses, which they attributed to improved pelvic blood flow—something numerous other readers here have also reported alongside prostate improvements). A reader with grade 3 spondylolisthesis at L5-S1 (with bulging discs, nerve compression, and stenosis at levels above, making fusion inadvisable) who had discontinued epidural steroids after they damaged bone density reported DMSO was “the only thing that works,” producing entirely pain-free days after years of unrelenting chronic pain.¹ Others with foraminal stenosis,¹ stenoses at various levels^1,2 and spondylolisthesis at various levels^1,2 also reported pain relief. One reader with a similar L4-over-L5 slippage (triggered by a decades-old motorcycle injury) causing six years of daily pain found topical DMSO largely eliminated his back pain.¹

Disc Herniation Reports

Reader reports of DMSO treating disc herniations are amongst the most dramatic I’ve received. Most remarkably, a reader whose 12.5 mm bulging disc had left them unable to stand without crying reported that after seven days of DMSO use, they could stand, and after seven months, imaging showed the disc had shrunk to 3–4 mm without surgery.^1,2 A reader with a herniated L5-S1 disc who had been confined to bed for seven months and unable to stand reported being able to stand and return to physiotherapy within six weeks of oral DMSO.¹ One with symptoms heading toward cauda equina syndrome (from multiple disc compressions—making it urgent to address immediately) declined surgery and found relief through spine decompression therapy combined with topical DMSO and THC cream.^⬖1

Other readers with confirmed disc herniations reported similar patterns: pain elimination within days to weeks,^{1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11},¹² reduced need for epidural injections,¹ healing slipped disc with castor oil,¹ and functional recovery sufficient to return to work and normal activities.^1,2,3,4 One reader avoided a planned back fusion surgery entirely, noting their surgeon “had 0 curiosity” when told why.¹

Readers with degenerative disc disease similarly reported significant relief,^{1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25} with several noting DMSO was the first treatment to provide meaningful improvement after years of failed therapies, and one reader whose wife’s 50-year-old disc injury (sky diving accident) had been considered untreatable finding that topical DMSO (combined with other therapies), to her doctor’s astonishment, appeared to be healing the disc.¹

Ankylosing Spondylitis

Multiple readers with ankylosing spondylitis reported dramatic improvements from DMSO. Two readers with 23+ year histories of AS (one with 29 fractures from prescription drug complications) reported being off all medications and thriving, with one no longer needing daily DMSO.^1,2,3 A reader who started topical DMSO on their knees for AS found that within an hour “I could feel a difference” and could walk stairs normally for the first time in years; after two months, their CRP inflammatory marker dropped from a chronic 9–12 to 3 (near remission levels), with DMSO being the only change made.¹ One reader reported “literally ZERO lumbar pain” after one week.¹ Others with AS or autoimmune spondylitis reported significant pain and inflammation reduction.^1,2

Treating Spinal Pain

Back pain has many different causes (e.g., tight muscles, weakened ligaments, impaired circulation, inflammation and edema compressing a nerve root, a bulging disc, scar tissue, a hypersensitized neural circuit). Each requires a different treatment, and the reason the conventional ladder fails so reliably is that it applies the same standardized sequence regardless of which one is actually present and then often defaults to pain killers which do nothing for the underlying cause of the illness.

DMSO succeeds precisely because it addresses many of these causes so it will often be applicable to the cause of the individual’s pain when utilized rather than being stuck focusing on a single molecular target like most pharmaceutical drugs.

However, that same non-specificity is also its ceiling. When DMSO produces a partial response rather than a complete one — the backaches resolve but the nerve pain persists, or the pain improves but the mobility does not — it almost always means one particular cause is dominant and needs something aimed directly at it.

In the remainder of this article, which as always doubles as an open forum for whatever questions have accumulated over the past month, I will cover:

•The specific DMSO protocols for spinal pain, drawn from both the Russian clinical literature and what readers here have worked out on their own, including concentrations, application sites, and what to combine it with.

•Why applying DMSO to the site of pain is frequently not enough, and how to reason out where it actually needs to go (along with how to dose and procure it).

•How we address the muscular, and ligamentous components of back pain (which are typically our primary approach), including in hypermobile patients.

•Methods we have found helpful for disc herniations.

•Simple at-home approaches which are often extremely helpful for neck and back pain.

Read more

I feel the same way. It’s always so shocking to see, but it shouldn’t be. Genesis was written 3,500 years ago and there’s not a single human frailty described there that I can’t relate to.

In middle school, I was introduced to the bell curve (normal distribution) concept in statistics, which stated that with many sets of natural values or variable quantities, they will become exponentially rarer as you deviate from the mean value (e.g., men who are 6’8” are much rarer than men who are 5’8”) and for years, I marveled at how some invisible force was able to maintain this distribution as I noticed it again and again in the world around me.

Once I dove into medicine and health, it hence was apparent to me that a bell curve distribution existed for how people would react to toxicity and injury (much of which is likely due to the human body having a inherent but variable resistance to toxicity and injury along with an ability to heal from it). As such, when people are exposed to a toxic pharmaceutical or chemical, severe injuries will be rarer than moderate injuries, moderate injuries rarer than minor ones and subtle injuries most people rarely notice will be far more common than the minor ones.

When the COVID-19 vaccines were initially released, I had a large number of patients immediately show up with “moderate” reactions to the COVID vaccines (none of which were reported in the vaccine trials), with many of them stating something to the effect of: “I have gotten a flu shot for years and I have never experienced anything like this.” This was alarming to me, as I knew, per the above bell curve, if that many moderate injuries were occurring, this was likely the tip of the iceberg and I would likely be seeing far more severe reactions to the vaccine than I had initially anticipated.

In turn, before long, people around the country began reaching out to me to ask if the vaccine could cause sudden death or rapidly accelerate dementia due to this happening to a relative (which I spent a year documenting), and in time, I began seeing the same pattern within patients of other providers in my community (again demonstrating how the bell curve distributes).

Note: on the other end of the spectrum, I began noticing a lot of people around me developed abducens nerve palsies (one of the most easy to detect and frequent complication of vaccine induced microstrokes), and in each case when I asked, they shared they had been vaccinated, and in many cases acknowledged they’d experienced other effects from the vaccine.

However, while it was plainly apparent there was a major issue, due to how much religious euphoria surrounded the “95% effective vaccines which would end the pandemic” it was essentially an exercise in futility to make my colleagues see it (even when they had patients skip visits because, in the relative’s words, they’d died suddenly from a vaccine).

The Absence of Evidence is Not the Evidence of Absence

One of the particularly frustrating things about this situation was that there was a complete lockdown on any information about vaccine injuries, and as such, when people observed them, they normally were dismissed with statements such as: “it’s anecdotal” “if the vaccines were that dangerous it would have shown up in the trials” or “there are no safety signals showing the vaccines are dangerous” and told the observation they made was a complete coincidence that had no bearing on reality.

As such, those who could see the injuries were so frequent it was hard not to miss them were stuck in a cat and mouse game where we had to rely upon finding every possible data set which slipped through the web of censorship that indicated there was an issue (e.g., spikes in disability data, explosions on VAERS etc.) while in tandem, the medical system did all they could to hide those datasets and downplay the ones which emerged (e.g., V-Safe, the system which was supposed to accurately monitor COVID vaccine safety via a set sample size was altered so significant adverse reports would not be reported in it, the CDC blocked public access to incriminating V-Safe data until courts forced them to disclose it and Senator Ron Johnson has obtained records that proved the FDA deliberately suppressed safety signals showing many of the severe injuries from the COVID vaccines were indeed happening).
Note: recognizing this dynamic early on was essentially why I put so much effort over 2021 into creating that log of individuals injured by the COVID vaccines as I felt things were so censored it was unlikely something like that would ever be published otherwise.

Given the censorship from every angle we faced, a novel solution was eventually arrived at—use polling firms to determine the scale of injury. For example, in any sane society, this survey Charlie Kirk took in December 2021 should have permanently ended the vaccine campaign (which three months prior had become mandatory because so many people were not willing to take it):

Likewise, numerous polls (which I summarized in detail here) showed 9%–34% of COVID vaccine recipients developed side effects from the vaccine, 7-13% developed serious side effects, 7.5-22% know someone with a severe vaccine injury, 24-28% know someone who they believe died from the vaccine and 46-55% believe the COVID vaccines have killed a significant number of people.

Ultimately, the thing we really needed was to have a set sample of people who were comprehensively assessed for symptoms before and after vaccination so that an actual injury rate could be calculated, but since the medical system’s game plan was to argue the absence of COVID vaccine injury evidence was proof the vaccine was safe, that data set was never created. Nonetheless, because of how frequent the injuries were, they kept appearing.

High-Profile Injuries

Given the high rate of significant COVID-19 vaccine injuries, two possibilities seem quite plausible.

The first is that the COVID-19 vaccines have also injured numerous public officials.

The second is that if those officials pushed for mandating the COVID-19 vaccines on the population, they would likely try to cover up their injury rather than speak out on the issue.

For example, Illinois Democrat and US Representative Sean Casten’s 17-year-old vaccinated daughter Gwen died suddenly and unexpectedly in her sleep Sunday night, June 12, 2022. For context, prior to the vaccines, a sudden death in an adolescent was extraordinarily rare (one reader calculated a US Representative would be expected to lose a child under 18 once every 200 years).

When independent journalists investigated the events, they found both that Casten’s family aggressively promoted the vaccine and that there was a high likelihood it killed his daughter. However, rather than supply any information to dispel these rumors, Casten in a statement, simply said:

“The only thing we know about her death is that it was peaceful. And the only lesson we can take from that is to savor the moments you have with your loved ones.”

Note: quite a few parents took strong exception to how Casten handled this, and sadly there are other similar examples I can also cite of the “Casten Response.”

In addition to Casten, there have been other suspicious incidents strongly suggestive of COVID-19 vaccine injury existing throughout the Democratic leadership (that included prolonged and conspicuous absences) and of those injuries being covered up.

Democrat Senators

The best dataset I have come across can be found in the U.S. Senate. Briefly, since the vaccines entered the market:

Ben Ray Luján is a freshman New Mexico Democratic Senator who repeatedly promoted the COVID-19 vaccines:

On January 27, 2022, Luján (then 49) was hospitalized in Santa Fe after feeling fatigued and dizzy. He was found to have had a stroke affecting his cerebellum and was transferred to the University of New Mexico Hospital for treatment, which included a decompressive craniectomy. A statement from his office said that "he is expected to make a full recovery". Luján returned to work at the Senate on March 3 and stated by April 21 that he was 90% recovered.

John Fetterman, a freshman Pennsylvania Democratic Senator (then aged 52) on May 17, 2022, less than a month after strongly endorsing the vaccine, suffered a stroke two days before the state primary for his senate seat. Despite significant signs of cognitive impairment since his stroke, Fetterman somehow won the primary and then the general election. Since becoming elected, Fetterman has had prolonged periods of absence from the U.S. Senate due to needing specialized medical care:

Fetterman was hospitalized for syncope (lightheadedness) for two days beginning on February 10, 2023. Two days after his release he was hospitalized again, for a severe case of major depression. For about two months, Fetterman lived and worked at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. As part of his daily schedule at the hospital, his chief of staff arrived at 10 a.m. on weekdays with newspaper clips, statements for Fetterman to approve, and legislation to review. During his hospitalization, Fetterman co-sponsored a bipartisan rail safety bill, introduced after the derailment of a chemical-carrying train in East Palestine, Ohio, close to the border with Pennsylvania; the regulation aimed to strengthen freight-rail safety regulations to prevent future derailments.

On April 17, 2023, Fetterman returned to the Senate to chair the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry subcommittee on food and nutrition, specialty crops, organics and research. The Washington Post said that Fetterman's "voice stumbled at times while reading from prepared notes" during the subcommittee hearing, but "he appeared in good spirits" and communicated a message about the importance of fighting hunger.

Senator Chris Van Hollen, on May 15, 2022, had an unusual hemorrhagic stroke (in a vein rather than an artery) while giving a speech.

It is also important to consider that in addition to strokes being one of the most common complications of the COVID-19 vaccines, both Luján and Fetterman were at an age where unexpected strokes are fairly rare (while due to the type Van Hollen’s was also quite rare).

I would argue that both of these events occurring not long after the vaccines entered the market (to a 49-year-old and a 52-year-old within a group of 48 people) was so unlikely that it cannot be attributed to chance.

However, while those two senators' stories are compelling, Dianne Feinstein's is the most important one in my opinion.

In late February, Dianne Feinstein was hospitalized for shingles. To quote Steve Kirsch's investigation of his California senator:

The article in the San Jose Mercury News said her office wouldn’t comment on her medical history regarding shingles due to privacy concerns.

But I’d like to know how keeping her history secret benefits the public.

She pushed the vaccines. Over and over. And over.

She even wanted to require vaccination or COVID tests for air travel.

We all know now how ludicrous such a suggestion was.

Given that shingles typically does not require hospitalization, many assumed Feinstein had suffered a rare but severe complication of shingles like Ramsay Hunt Syndrome due to vaccine immune suppression. Her staff, of course, insisted nothing of concern had happened, and she would be able to return to work soon.

Unfortunately, like Fetterman, a significant neurological injury occurred that became impossible to coverup once she returned, forcing Feinstein and her staff to come clean about what happened:

Adam Russell, a spokesman for Feinstein, said that the encephalitis, or inflammation of the brain, “resolved itself shortly after she was released from the hospital in March.” Feinstein continues to have complications from the Ramsay Hunt syndrome, Russell said.

Russell confirmed the two complications after the New York Times first reported them, raising questions about whether she had been hiding the extent of her illnesses. Upon her return last week, Feinstein was using a wheelchair and noticeably thinner, and has appeared confused at times when speaking to reporters or being wheeled through the halls.

“The senator previously disclosed that she had several complications related to her shingles diagnosis,” Russell said in the statement. “As discussed in the New York Times article, those complications included Ramsay Hunt syndrome and encephalitis.”

Feinstein’s face has appeared partially paralyzed since she returned to the Senate, stirring some speculation about whether she had had a stroke….Encephalitis can also be caused by shingles. The swelling of the brain can have a number of different symptoms, including personality changes, seizures, stiffness, confusion and problems with sight or hearing, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Aides to Feinstein said last week that she is still recovering from her illness and would operate on a reduced schedule. Since she has returned, she has missed some votes where she was not needed. On Wednesday, for example, she missed the first three Senate votes of the day but appeared for the last two, in which the margin was much closer.

While this speaks for itself, the one additional detail I wish to highlight is that, as the above compilation of vaccine injuries shows, encephalitis is a much rarer complication of shingles than the already rare Ramsay Hunt syndrome.

One of the potential complications of this infection is involvement of the central nervous system causing encephalitis. An increased risk of this complication is associated with the immunocompromised patient….According to the World Health Organization, encephalitis occurs in one out of every 33,000–50,000 cases of VZV [shingles].

Note: despite complete physical and cognitive disability (which was an open secret throughout Congress), Feinstein refused to resign and only was replaced after she passed in September 2023.

For context, amongst the 48 Democrat Senators, this constituted an 8.3% rate of severe adverse reactions, which is inline with rates of injuries found throughout polling on this subject.

Republican Senators

Within the Republican party two senators who served at the time of COVID vaccine roll-out have suffered severe health issues that prevented them from being able to work (or three if you include Ben Sasse who resigned in January 2023 and was later diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer in December 2025).

On Saturday, Senator Lindsey Graham (who was one of the strongest Republican supporters of the vaccine) died suddenly from an aortic dissection, a rare (about 6 in 100,000 persons a year) but often lethal event. This immediately caught my eye as I know two people who suffered aortic dissections after the COVID vaccine, along with a colleague who had a good 40-year-old friend who suffered immediate injuries (loss of hearing in one ear) from a COVID vaccine they were forced to take to work, then a year later had a (<1 in 100,000) aortic dissection and in the ICU was found to have blood clots throughout their body (so they died shortly after).

When one of the first aortic dissection happened, I hypothesized it was likely due to the COVID vaccine because:

•The doctor one of the two dissections I personally knew of felt there was no other explanation which could account for it.

•At the time of the surgical repair, the surgeons noted there was unusual damage to the artery (which likely weakened it and caused it to rupture), something I suspected was likely due to the spike protein damaging the blood vessel.

•When one pathologist extensively examined the bodies of individuals who died from the COVID vaccines, these were some of his findings:

•VAERS also supports this correlation:

Mitch McConnell (another strong advocate of the COVID vaccines due to his childhood polio), like Feinstein, suffered a rapid cognitive degeneration beginning in 2023, but like Feinstein, refused to acknowledge or discuss what was happening, and has become increasingly absent and dependent upon aides to do anything (e.g., since 2023, more and more he is only seen on a wheel chair). Suspicions arose that he might have a neurological disorder due to the fact in July 2026 he abruptly stopped speaking mid-sentence (while discussing the NDAA defense bill at a press conference), stared blankly ahead, and remained silent for about 20–30 seconds, after which he was escorted away along with a similar episode happening in August 2023. Most recently, he suffered some type of cardiac event and has been sequestered from the public for the last month, but as questions regarding his condition have not been answered, major questions exist surrounding his capacity to serve.

Notably, his chronology is very similar to what we saw in many elderly patients (particularly within nursing homes), where after receiving a COVID vaccine, they rapidly progressed into dementia (which was written off as “just Alzheimer’s”)—something I thought was very sad as those individuals had no ability to advocate for themselves and I detailed much more extensively here (e.g., I highlighted all the corroborating evidence and mechanisms).

Note: a very good case can be made this decline also happened to Biden, as a sequential drop in cognitive capacity was seen each time he received a COVID vaccine (all of which I detailed here).

Denial or Coverup?

Since the COVID vaccines hit the market, both I and many colleagues have been approached by a variety of famous and influential figures seeking help with their COVID vaccine injuries (some of whom have paid immense amounts of money for help because they could not find any support within the conventional medical system—which in my case, I’ve used to facilitate charitable contributions in lieu of being paid). In virtually every case, they have been insistent on absolute privacy regarding their condition, in part because showing weakness could weaken their current position, and partly because insinuating there were any dangers from the COVID vaccine would cause them to be excommunicated by their peers.

Because of this, it is not at all surprising most of the politicians who have been injured are unwilling to publicly disclose it (particularly since they voted for the COVID vaccines) and to the best of my knowledge, the only person in Congress who has publicly stated they were injured by a COVID vaccine was representative Nancy Mace (who ironically is well-positioned to become Lindsey Graham’s successor).

As such (given the bell curve), I felt it was almost certain there were a significant number of senators and representatives who had less severe injuries they could cover up and had never publicly disclosed. Given this, I reached out to a few people I trust who are connected to the Senate. They corroborated that there are senators who have privately acknowledged they experienced adverse effects from the COVID vaccines, along with others who are in denial about it and instead have attributed their new medical challenges to long COVID. However, unlike Nancy Mace, none of them have publicly acknowledged their vaccine injuries.

Note: since both are caused by spike protein toxicity, the symptoms of long COVID and COVID-19 vaccine injury overlap (although COVID-19 injuries are typically more severe and common than long COVID and if long COVID exists, COVID vaccines typically make it worse) and in many (but not all) cases, vaccine injuries are misdiagnosed as long COVID to remove culpability from the vaccines. Gardasil proponent Senator Tim Kaine has acknowledged he suffers from long COVID and people I know who’ve worked with him suspect that is in part a vaccine injury but based on the publicly available information, it cannot be reasonably inferred what he is actually suffering from. As you might guess, he has advocated for (largely pointless) research into long COVID treatments but nothing for COVID vaccine injury.

The Culture of Silence

Since COVID vaccine injuries began emerging, a common story I have heard within left-wing circles is that being COVID vaccine injured is like being in the closet (homosexual) in the 1980s due to the social stigma within their peer group of publicly acknowledging that issue is present. For example this was a September 2023 tweet which illustrates why Ron Johnson has been working so hard to host hearing that will make people recognize vaccine injuries are real:

A hiking buddy of mine who had noticeably and suddenly stopped doing the more strenuous 14,000ft hikes a couple of years ago called me and made a confession:

He got myocarditis from his second mRNA shot. Listening to him describing being alone on a trail run and suddenly having chest pains and trouble breathing was horrifying. He was afraid he was going to die alone. He’s a marathoner and highly active, in his mid 30s.

The worst part: He was afraid to tell me or anyone in his friend group.

His literal quote:

“I saw how Oz [his best friend] and especially his fiance [a med school graduate in residency who is super attached to the establishment covid narrative] were talking about the antivaxxers, and I felt like if I talked about it with any of them, I would have hurt Oz’s relationship. I also felt like Kristen [a mutual friend of ours] would have judged me and stopped hanging out. I just kept it quiet. But yeah man, I’m still having a hard time with the 14ers, and my run times are all way down.”

This is a photo of him (on the left, not showing his face out of respect for his privacy) on our last hike where we were only at 10,000ft altitude, and at the time I had noticed he was struggling, but when we asked him about it, he said he was “hungover”. He wasn’t. It was about 10 months after the myocarditis, and he was hiding it from us.

Self-censorship is perhaps the most horrifying aspect of this. None of us should find out years later that our friends had to be hospitalized. The fact that he felt he had to hide it is horrifying.

He is an incredibly smart and driven guy, and he bluntly told me that he “knows, deep down, that if I said anything about this publicly, I’d be flushing my career down the toilet. I work in the software industry in Boulder. I know what will happen if I say something.”

When I told him that I believed him, and told him about my mother-in-law and my neighbor, he obviously felt a huge sense of relief. He was afraid that I was going to judge him for the crime of telling me about a medical side-effect. Ironically, his first job out of college was working for a pharma company, specifically on a new statin.

His description of the science on statins, and the things they were and were not allowed to study on statins, was horrifying. His exact words, which echoed what I’ve heard @BretWeinstein say:

“Working there, the entire culture is so messed up man. Like, the way they think is ‘we’re going to market this, now you go and make sure we can get it approved, and it was obvious that without studying anything, they already were making it clear that we WILL get it approved, and your job is to make sure you design the studies to make that happen.’ Dude, they don’t care about people at all. It’s just numbers to them.”

Likewise, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve observed someone on a left-wing internet forum state they had a COVID vaccine injury and then everyone attacked them for spreading anti-vaccine propaganda and killing people by making people not want to vaccine—in a manner eerily similar to how detransitioners who attempt to reverse sex changes due to complications they experienced are attacked by trans advocates (who previously were their friends) for “spreading hate and misinformation”).

Conclusion

My longstanding belief has been that due to the frequency of risks inherent to vaccination (which in most cases outweigh any possible benefits of eliminating diseases) the only way the vaccine profession has been able to sustain their market has been by instilling the widespread (and deliberately vague) belief “vaccines are safe and effective,” having people religiously identify with it, and then using the faith in that belief as a way to dismiss refute and ignore all evidence to the contrary.

Fortunately, while propaganda can prop up and sustain beliefs at odds with reality, there is a limit to what it can do, and once it becomes sufficiently divorced from reality, people will wake up to it—which due to the pharmaceutical industry’s greed, happened with COVID-19, as they not only chose to push a highly ineffective and dangerous vaccine on the population, but also mandate it and double-down on burying all evidence of harm even as more and more emerged.

Because of this, a profound loss of trust has occurred in medicine I never expected to see in my lifetime—surveys show in just a few years, trust in doctors and hospitals has declined from 71.5% to 40.1%, along with a significant loss of trust in the pharmaceutical industry, government health authorities and support for childhood vaccinations (e.g., almost half of the population no longer fully trusts the CDC vaccine schedule now).

As such, the industry appears to be scrambling to get as many of these lucrative products to market as they can (with minimal regards for their toxicity) while the goldmine is still there and in parallel, since the system has no way to address the increasing disability emerging in our society, we are now seeing a (previously unimaginable) widespread push beginning for medically assisted dying (which is particularly tragic as many of these “incurable cases” could easily be addressed with affordable solutions like DMSO).

On the other end, the political climate is starting to shift, as in recent hearings, I’ve noticed more and more Republican senators are becoming comfortable publicly denouncing predatory corporate practices which threaten our health and RFK Jr. is finally beginning to be able to push through government recognition of compensable COVID-19 vaccine injuries.

Ultimately, I believe it is impossible for widespread recognition of the toxicity of vaccines to return to the old “safe and effective” status quo, so in my eyes, it is much more a question of how long it will take to happen and how much unnecessary suffering will have to occur before it does. That said, given the forces we faced at the start of this, the rate at which the public has awakened to the catastrophe has been astonishing (I never expected the mandates would be overturned in a year) and at this point only 16% of adults are still boosting (assuming the CDC numbers aren’t exaggerated).

When this newsletter started, my goal was to do what I could to help accelerate the reversal on public opinion of the COVID vaccines, as they were so dangerous, I knew each day they remained in widespread use, significant short and long term suffering would result (e.g., it’s really painful to deal with all the unusual cancers I am seeing emerge now). While I wish things could have flipped sooner, I am nonetheless immensely grateful they did as quick as they did, and I sincerely thank each of you for providing the support that allowed me to play a role in helping that shift happen. For the next phase, my hope is that articles like this can be used to convince legislators (particularly the injured ones) that they are not alone and the culture of silence around this issue, not only must break, but electorally is in their interest to break.

•A gradual weakening of the bones which predisposes one to fractures is one of the most common and significant consequences of aging. Presently, to address it, we wisely try to head off bone loss in our younger years and routinely scan the density of aging bones so that a large volume of patients can be sold drugs to increase bone density.

•This approach is misguided because the data from those scans often does not correlate to the actual strength of the bones and because simply increasing bone density often creates brittle bones that fracture under stress. Additionally, the most commonly used drugs to address bone density are notorious for their side effects.

•Remarkably, medicine’s own data now shows that two-thirds of fractures happen to people who do not have osteoporosis, which means the number we have built this entire industry around is not the number that actually breaks bones.

•Anytime a large drug market exists (e.g., presently osteoporosis affects around 20% of women over 50), the medical industry will dismiss any approach to the condition which does not result in it being able to sell large amounts of lucrative medical services.

•Because of this, there is relatively little knowledge of the actual causes of osteoporosis or the most effective ways to restore the strength of the bones. The causes and treatments of osteoporosis, along with the specific things we use to restore the resilience (rather than merely the density) of bone, will be the focus of this article.

The years I have spent studying the medical industry have made me appreciate how often economic principles can allow one to understand its complex and contradictory behavior. For example, I believe many of the inconsistencies in medical ethics (e.g., “mothers have an absolute right to abort their children” and “mothers cannot refuse to vaccinate their children because it endangers their child’s life”) can be explained by simply acknowledging that whatever makes money is deemed “ethical.”

Sales Funnels

In my eyes, one of the most important business principles for understanding medicine are sales funnels, a method of selling products where you initially cast a wide net, and then successively cast smaller nets for increasingly expensive products after catching your initial customers.
Note: the term “funnels” is used to describe how the sales pipeline gets narrower as you move to more expensive products.

I typically see two types of (often overlapping) sales funnels in medicine.

The first works by normalizing giving an “innocuous” drug to broad swathes of people and then selling increasingly expensive pharmaceutical drugs to treat the complications many experience from those drugs. One of the most insidious ones affects many of our girls and is one I’ve repeatedly tried to draw attention to:

Note: a good case can be made that many of the chronic illnesses our children suffer from now (which are very lucrative to “treat”) are a direct consequence of the ever increasing number of vaccines in the marketplace.

The second funnel works by recasting “preventative medicine” and “promoting health” as the task of screening for each person for conditions they are at risk for. The results from these universal screenings are then used to justify selling them medical services (e.g., drug prescriptions). Once that screening becomes normalized, the industry will then pivot to expanding the funnel and having far more services be sold. For example:

•What constitutes a “safe” blood pressure has been continually lowered, and as a result, more and more people are put on blood pressure medications. This in turn has created a variety of problems (discussed further here). For example, the elderly (due to the arteries calcifying with age) need a higher blood pressure for blood to reach the brain, and many hence suffer lightheadedness and catastrophic falls from their blood pressure being lowered.

•Since we started mass cholesterol screenings, what constitutes a “safe” cholesterol has also been continually lowered by the corrupt committees who create the guidelines doctors follow to practice medicine. For example, a widely used calculator which determines ones risk of a stroke or heart attack consistently concludes people are at a high risk of a heart attack and must urgently start statins, yet almost no doctor in practice knows that a 2016 study of 307,591 Americans discovered the calculator overestimates their risk by 5-6 times. Similarly, most doctors aren’t aware that beyond failing to benefit patients (in contrast to natural therapies which do improve heart disease), statins are also immensely dangerous drugs (discussed further here).

Note: the folly of this approach is highlighted by a trial which found removing on average 2.8 non-essential drugs from the elderly at one facility caused their 1 year death rate to go from 45%-21% and their hospitalizations that year to go from 30%-11.8%. As far as I know, there is no intervention on the market which offers a benefit comparable to this.

Radiographic Screenings

One of the common ways mass screenings are done is through giving lots of patients X-rays and then funneling those with abnormal imaging into being treated.

For example, women over the age of 50 are advised to get a mammogram every two years so that their deadly breast cancers can be identified and the women can be saved through early treatment for the cancers. However, whenever these screening programs are studied, they are found to not provide a net benefit because:
•Fast growing cancers (the ones you want to catch) will rarely be in the early stage at the exact same time someone gets a mammogram. Conversely, these cancers are normally noticed by doctors or patients (due to the sudden changes they create) and hence are radiographically evaluated independently of the mass screening programs.
•Slow growing cancers (which are unlikely to endanger women) are typically the ones which get caught.
•False positives are quite common with mammograms.
•A positive mammogram result is extremely psychologically stressful and frequently results in a variety of harmful treatments being performed on the women (e.g., having their breasts removed).

Peter Gøtzsche in turn conducted an exhaustive review of the evidence on routine mammogram screening which should have ended the practice (it can be read here). However, his data (which was widely publicized) had no effect on these screening programs. Many (myself included) believe that was because radiologists make so much money from mammograms they have an inherent need to justify the necessity of this routine screening.
Note: many medical specialists depend upon repeatedly performing the same billable service (e.g., vaccinating a child, performing a female pelvic exam, or reading a mammogram).

DEXA Scams

Another universal screening practice for women are dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) scans, which calculate the density of bones and hence are believed to be a proxy for bone strength. It is then compared to the average bone density of a 30 year old, and a statistical method is applied to determine how far away their density is from that value which then produces their T-score. Every medical student in turn is taught that a T-score of 0 to -1 is normal, -1 to -2.5 is on the way to being bad (osteopenia) and a T-score that is -2.5 or worse means your bones are weak enough that you have osteoporosis and must urgently begin treatment for it.

If you take a step back, a few questions should come to mind.

•First, since bones naturally become less dense with age, most people will have bones that are less dense than those of a 30 year old. In turn, the current management of osteoporosis accepts that bone loss is inevitable and reasonably tries to prevent that loss early on since it is so much harder to regain it later in life.

Hence, many people due to the normal process of aging will have osteopenia or osteoporosis. Consider for example what this study concluded was the average T-score by age of Italians.

Note: if, for instance, the average T-score for a group is -2.5, this will mean a lot of people within that group (half of them) will have a score below -2.5 and conversely, at lower “averages” even more will have osteoporosis. Additionally, T-scores are calculated utilizing the standard deviation of the bone densities in 30 year olds, a value which can be up to 50% smaller than that of older adults (making it much easier to pass the -2.5 threshold). In contrast, a Z-score (which is not typically discussed or focused on) compares you to other people of your own age and sex and can tell you whether your bones are genuinely unusual for someone your age.

Where did this all come from? In 1994, a small WHO study group proposed that osteoporosis be diagnosed at 2.5 standard deviations below the mean of a healthy young adult, and osteopenia between 1.0 and 2.5 below it, hence classifying 52% of white women over 50 as having osteopenia and another 28% as having osteoporosis, leaving only 20% of them with “normal” bones. The authors themselves described their cut-off values as “somewhat arbitrary,” and the criteria were intended for epidemiological research rather than as the clinical treatment thresholds they immediately became.

Note: as the BMJ later pointed out, the WHO report disclosed its own funding, and the disclosure reads: “This meeting was organized by the WHO Collaborating Centre for Metabolic Bone Disease, Sheffield, England, the World Health Organization and the European Foundation for Osteoporosis and Bone Disease, with financial support from the Rorer Foundation, Sandoz Pharmaceuticals and Smith Kline Beecham.” In short, the definition which converted 80% of older women into patients was written by a committee three pharmaceutical companies paid for (which is sadly a fairly common pattern—for example, absurdly low cholesterol thresholds are created by committees of doctors who were shown to be taking money from statin manufacturers) .

•Second, how accurate are the scans? As it turns out, there is actually a great deal of variance in DEXA scan results depending on which machine is used, how the operator performs the test and what bones are measured, with studies often finding a 5-6% difference in bone density depending on where the test was done. More importantly, since the T-score is based off standard deviations, a 5-6% difference in bone density can, in turn, change the T-score by 0.2-0.4 (which equates to a decade of bone loss) and hence tip many over to an osteoporosis diagnosis.
Note: a similar issue exists with blood pressure, as the stress of being a doctors office often creates enough of a BP elevation for people to be erroneously diagnosed with hypertension and started on blood pressure medications. This condition, in turn, is euphemistically known as “white coat hypertension,” applies to 15-30% of hypertension diagnoses, but rarely is corrected.

•Third, is there any point to repeatedly doing them? As it turns out, a study of 4124 older women found that once an initial DEXA result was obtained, there was no additional information of use gained from repeating the study over the next 8 years. Nonetheless, many guidelines often recommend getting a scan every 1-2 years, and likewise, Medicare pays for one every 2 years. As these scans typically cost between $150 to $300, that quickly adds up.

•Fourth, do the scans accurately reflect bone strength and the risk of fractures? While they are generally predictive of the risk, they are not as accurate as is commonly believed. For example, this study found the osteoporosis status of a patient (determined by their T-score) frequently did not match what was directly observed within bones under a microscope. Similarly, this study found that when bones were deliberately weakened, DEXA scans underestimated how much strength had been lost.

Furthermore, this is corroborated by publications in top journals:

•One review estimated that roughly 85% of the contribution to fracture risk is unrelated to bone density altogether, and that over half of fragility fractures occur in people who cannot be classified as having osteoporosis at all.

•The 2019 paper “Two-Thirds of All Fractures Are Not Attributable to Osteoporosis and Advancing Age” followed 3,700 adults for decades and found that only 16% of fractures in women and 15% in men could be attributed to low bone density, and that nearly 73% of the women and 94% of the men who actually broke a bone did not have osteoporotic bone density on their scans.

•In 1996, the Swedish Council on Technology Assessment pooled eleven study populations encompassing roughly 90,000 person-years of observation and over 2,000 fractures to determine how well bone density predicts who will break a bone. Their conclusion, published in the BMJ, was that while bone density can predict fracture risk across a population, it “cannot identify individuals who will have a fracture,” and they stated plainly:

We do not recommend a programme of screening menopausal women for osteoporosis by measuring bone density.

In other words, medicine has known for years that the number it screens for, diagnoses with, medicates against, and re-scans every two years is not the number which determines whether your bones break. It simply has not changed anything, because that number is what the entire apparatus is built to sell.

Note: a cheaper method of diagnosing bone strength (which does not expose patients to ionizing radiation) is beginning to be used in Europe. It works by sending ultrasound waves into bone and then analyzing the spectrum created by those waves to assess the health of the bones. As the attached presentation shows, it accurately predicts bone density, and additionally, predicts bone strength. In short, this may be a dramatically superior approach to DEXA scans, but it is unlikely we will see it enter regular use in the United States for at least a decade due to how heavily invested many already are in performing DEXA scans.

Note: the story in the above comment is discussed in more detail in this NPR article and a 2011 book that exposed the DEXA scam.

Bisphosphonates

Once a patient is diagnosed with osteoporosis (and in some cases after an osteopenia diagnosis), the first line treatment is to start a bisphosphonate and continue it for up to 3-5 years depending on if the drug is administered intravenously or orally.

Note: the bisphosphonates include: Alendronate (Fosamax), Risedronate (Actonel), Ibandronate (Boniva), Zoledronic Acid (Reclast), Zoledronate (Zometa, Aclasta) Pamidronate (Aredia) Etidronate (Didronel), Neridronate (Nerixia), Tiludronate (Skelid), Clodronate (Bonefos, Loron)

A variety of factors influence the development of bone. Two of the most important ones are the cells that build bone up (osteoblasts) and the cells that break bone down (osteoclasts). Bisphosphonates in turn concentrate in the bone and work by disabling or killing osteoclasts. This thus leads to bone density increasing because the balance of bone production shifts towards building them up rather than breaking them down.

Unfortunately, there are two problems with this approach.

1. Bisphosphonates are notorious for having a large number of side effects. Commonly recognized ones include:

• Irritating the stomach and inflaming or eroding the esophagus (which can sometimes lead to esophageal cancer). This side effect is common enough that it leads many patients to not want to continue the drugs.

• Severe bone, muscle and joint pain throughout the body.

• Osteonecrosis (death of bone tissue) within the jaw. Since so many people have been affected by this (e.g., Kaiser found 0.1% of users were affected), class action lawsuits have been filed against the manufacturers for this debilitating illness (which revealed Merck’s private discussions about it). This appears to be a result of bisphosphonates concentrating in the jaw reducing the jaw’s ability to repair itself by around 90%. Remarkably, the American Dental Association even cautions its members to avoid working on patients who are taking a bisphosphonate (presumably due to the liability created by their increased risk of harm from a dental surgery).

• Triggering flu like symptoms when injected.

• Occasionally causing unusual fractures in the hips.

• Roughly doubling one’s risk for atrial fibrillation

• Low blood calcium levels (hypocalcemia can often be quite problematic).

• Fatigue, nausea and lack of strength.

• Declining kidney function.

• Inflammation of the eyes.

• Poor healing of bones after fractures.

• Increased risk of fractures
  Note: this is an understandably controversial side effect fraught with conflicting evidence, given that its the opposite of what the drug is supposed to do, but there is now enough evidence that it is acknowledged these drugs increase the risk of certain types of fractures.

To illustrate, a January 2008 FDA alert, warned physicians that all bisphosphonates may cause:

severe and sometimes incapacitating bone, joint, and/or muscle (musculoskeletal) pain . . . [which] may occur within days, months, or years after starting the medication, and in some patients, may not resolve even after discontinuing the medicine.

Note: we also find a variety of other significant issues occur. For example, we’ve seen many patients on bisphosphonates develop bone spurs in the jaw (which can be quite challenging for them to deal with). Similarly, a study of individuals who have had fractures after 3-8 years of bisphosphonate usage discovered that they had almost no new bone formation occurring.

2. The way bisphosphonates work is very different to how the body was designed to build healthy bone, and in effect, much of the bone they leave you with is “old bone” that easily fractures (e.g., in a thread about this article that was seen by over 4 million people, many reported highly unusual fractures from these drugs).

Note: a variety of other newer drugs exist to treat osteoporosis. These drugs are often more effective at producing stronger bones, and often don’t have the same significant side effects seen with the bisphosphonates, so quite a few of my colleagues use them. Unfortunately, those drugs tend to be much more expensive and each one still has its own set of side effects.

Physiologic Momentum

One of the most remarkable aspects of the human body is its ability to gradually adapt to whatever circumstances it finds itself in. Conversely, one of the primary challenges one faces when dealing with a chronic illness is that typically by the time the symptoms of the disease emerge, the maladaptive physiologic process that gave rise to those symptoms is firmly established within the body and hence quite difficult (and time consuming) to shift.

For example, Alzheimer’s disease typically is a result of the processes which create neurons slowing down and being outpaced by the processes that destroy them, hence leading to an increasing neuronal loss and an increasing loss of neurological function. In turn, the only method which has ever been proven to treat Alzheimer’s is to simply reverse that equation and have neuronal production outpace neuronal destruction. Unfortunately, since a drug can’t be made to do that (rather it requires changing one’s lifestyle) the industry has instead relentlessly focused on drugs which eliminate the plaque the brain forms to protect its neurons from injury. Thus all we have to show after decades of spending billions each year to find a cure for this disease are expensive plaque targeting that have a wide range of side effects and are useless for actually treating Alzheimer’s disease.

One of the most important adaptive processes in the body is how it accommodates to the stresses and loads placed upon it. For example, the reason why weight training “works” is because muscles being stressed through overexertion gives a signal to the body that it needs to build more muscle.

However, while the adaptive process with muscles is frequently recognized, many others are not. For instance, the body continually remodels the soft tissue which connects the body together, and as a result, when someone experiences a pharmaceutical injury which damages the body’s ability to rebuild those tissues, they are likely to subsequently experience a critical structural failure.

This is most well known with the fluoroquinolone antibiotics, as the drugs (which have a high degree of toxicity to the mitochondria that fuel tissue buildup in the body) frequently cause tendon ruptures to occur over a month after the drugs are stopped. Similarly, we also observe many of the other more dangerous drugs on the market over time (even if stopped) will cause the soft tissue of the body to become compromised (often to a degree which significantly impacts the patient’s life), which in part may be explained by the fact the cells that create connective tissue have abundant mitochondria.
Note: a more detailed discussion of the treatments for ligamentous laxity (hypermobility is a condition that disproportionately affects the individuals who are the most sensitive to their environment and being injured by pharmaceuticals) can be found here.

Bone Remodeling

An adaptive process also continually reshapes the bones so that their architecture is arranged to optimally bear the loads placed upon them. In most cases, we never think about this process because it just works as intended. However, in certain cases, we do recognize where it has gone awry.

For example, since the bones depend upon the weight of gravity for the signal to be built up (via the electrical currents that are created when bone is compressed), that signal is lost in low gravity environments. Because of this, a longstanding problem in space travel was the rapid bone loss astronauts experienced (e.g., in 6 months they lost 6-10% of their bone density, which put them at a high risk for fractures once they returned to normal gravity and typically took 3 or more years to recover from).

Because of this, while we typically only focus on the cells which build bone, the reality is that the osteoclasts are also immensely important, as their destruction of bone is what allows bone to assume the shape which best allows it to effectively bear the weight of gravity. In turn, when they are blocked by a bisphosphonate, bone density increases, but the bones that form are much more brittle and inflexible. Our dislike of those drugs in turn comes about from how frequently we encounter the pathologic changes they create in our patient’s bones (e.g., we find that while compressive strength may be increased, bone mobility is not, and that is often far more consequential for the patients).

This in turn highlights a common problem in medicine. Frequently doctors are trained to focus on treating numbers (e.g., reducing a “high” cholesterol) under the belief that correcting those numbers creates health. Much of this comes from the fact it’s much easier to conduct a study that assesses benefit through the change of a value which is assumed to be good (e.g., a vaccine creating the target antibodies) than it is to evaluate if an actual improvement occurs for patients (e.g., a decrease in the total number of people who died—which in Pfizer’s studies did not occur despite the fact “lifesaving” antibodies were consistently being produced).

In short I would argue that while bisphosphonates may be effective at improving a DEXA score, they aren’t necessarily good at improving health.

What Causes Osteoporosis?

Since bone metabolism is linked to many other processes in the body, a variety of things can affect it. In turn, I find that colleagues who focus on treating a specific aspect of the body are often able to provide proof their area of focus is the primary determinant of bone health. This hence makes it quite challenging to establish which area in fact matters most. That said, there are a few factors of particular importance.

1. Mobility—since bone growth depends upon the signals generated from loading weight on the body, a good case can be made that our increasingly sedentary lifestyles are responsible for the continual increase in osteoporosis occurring in America (e.g., one study found sedentary postmenopausal women lost 2.26% of their bone mass in a year, while those who did a weight training program instead had a 1.17% increase). Additionally, sunlight exposure has been shown to increase bone density (along with providing many other critical health benefits), which further illustrates how problematic being sedentary inside can be.
Note: the contribution of immobility to osteoporosis also touches upon another challenging aspect of chronic diseases—often there is a self perpetuating downwards spiral since many of the causes worsen the others (e.g., osteoporosis increases immobility, poor circulation [which is commonly seen in chronic disease states] also creates immobility and immobility simultaneously impairs fluid circulation).

2. Hormones—in a previous article, I discussed the severe dangers of drugs like Lupron which work by disabling the body’s production of sex hormones. One of the most common side effects observed from them is a significant weakening of the bones, which commonly leads those injured by the drugs to remark that they “have bones like an 80 year old” (e.g., you will hear reports of a 30-year-old leaning against a wall with their arm and that bone snapping or them learning they need to get dentures). Furthermore, in many cases these effects are often delayed, which again illustrates how a disruption of the remodeling of bone can ripple out far into the future.
Note: we have also seen cases where patients were prescribed high levels of aromatase inhibitors (drugs which prevent the conversion of testosterone to estrogen) which then appeared to trigger bone loss.

This, in turn, argues that hormones play a vital role in bone health, and this is one of the reasons why the hormonal medicine field frequently prescribes them to aging women.

However, in our experience the thing which determines whether a bone breaks is not its density but rather its elasticity and mobility as when healthy bones are subject to a loading stress, they bend to accommodate that stress and then spring back into their original shape, whereas if a bone is brittle, once it begins to bend, it will break.

This distinction matters enormously, because there is a specific hormonal balance which governs the elasticity of bone rather than merely its density, and in our experience, getting that balance right is one of the most helpful things which can be done to prevent fractures. Yet, despite this being recognized in the scientific literature, it is rarely, if ever, discussed within conventional medicine, and as such, patients are rarely told about it.

Note: osteoporosis, while rarer, also occurs in men. We find that for men, increasing testosterone levels can also help with bone loss, however the magnitude of benefit is not as much as is seen with other hormonal interventions.

3. Inflammation—many of us have observed that patients with chronic inflammatory diseases tend to be at a greater risk of osteoporosis. In turn, the mechanism to support these observations exists as the cytokines classically associated with those inflammatory disease states (e.g., TNF-α and IL-6) have been shown to activate key receptors (e.g., RANKL) which cause osteoclasts to dismantle bone until the underlying disease which is generating those cytokines is addressed.

4. Minerals—since bones are composed of minerals, this suggests bone strength is dependent upon the dietary intake of minerals. Our own experience has been that supplementing with the correct minerals is often what restores bone health, so I am inclined to believe this is indeed a critical point.

Since mineral deficiencies appear to be such a common issue, we’ve tried to identify what may be responsible for this. Presently we believe the chief culprits are:

•A stomach acid deficiency (since stomach acid is often necessary to absorb dietary minerals). Two of the most common causes of this are acid blocking medications (which have been repeatedly shown to cause osteoporosis) and the tendency for stomach acid to decline with age (which may in turn explain why osteoporosis increases with age).

Note: a meta-analysis of eighteen studies encompassing 244,109 fracture cases found that taking the most common reflux medications (proton pump inhibitors) raised the risk of a hip fracture by 26%, along with raising the risk of spinal fractures by 58% and any-site fractures by 33%. Given that these drugs are amongst the most widely prescribed in the world and are routinely taken for years on end for a condition that is frequently caused by too little stomach acid rather than too much, this again illustrates how keeping people healthy is not prioritized by the medical system (rather than say utilizing cheap simple and safe methods to cure acid reflux alongside the autoimmunity and sinus issues deficiencies low stomach acid often causes).

•The chronic depletion of essential micronutrients and minerals from the soil due to industrial agricultural practices (it’s a huge problem) and the removal of the mineral rich components of food when they are processed (e.g., when changing a whole grain into a refined grain).

•The tendency for the widely used herbicide Roundup to behave as a chelating agent which binds essential minerals in the soil (particularly the +2 cations like magnesium) and hence prevents them from entering our bodies.

5. Water Fluoridation—Fluoride was originally added to the water supply because it was a toxic waste product numerous industries needed a liability free way to dispose of. Since fluoride was known to increase bone density, this was used to argue that it could protect our teeth, and hence that it could instead be viewed as a vital nutrient. These attempts were initially unsuccessful (as fluoride has a wide range of toxicities), but eventually, since fluoride was needed to produce the original atomic bombs, for national security reasons, the government relented and added fluoride to the water supply.

Unfortunately, like the bisphosphonates, while fluoride increases bone density, the bone that forms is less healthy and able to function normally. In addition to many of my colleagues believing they’ve observed this harm within their patients, this has also been demonstrated both by numerous studies linking fluoride to osteomalacia (a condition where the bones soften and hence are more likely to fracture) and by numerous studies finding that administering fluoride increases rather than decreases one’s fracture risk. Conversely however, since osteoporosis is defined not by fracture risk but rather by the loss of bone density, I don’t feel fluoride (which increases bone density) could be the primary culprit for the increasing osteoporosis rates. However, it should be noted that some of the newer research shows that fluoride decreases rather than increases bone density.
Note: I believe one of the things that likely contributed to my physical health and cognition was taking proactive steps to avoid fluoridated water for most of my life.

6. Pharmaceutical Drugs—In addition to the hormone blockers (e.g., Lupron) and the stomach acid blockers (e.g., Prilosec) other pharmaceuticals have also been shown to significantly increase the risk of osteoporosis, particularly the glucorticoid steroids like prednisone (the vast dangers of which are discussed here). To illustrate—taking them doubles one’s risk of a fracture (and even more so for a vertebrae), at typical doses they cause a 5-15% loss of bone each year, and in long term users, 37% experience vertebral fractures (additionally, high dose steroid use increases the risk of vertebral fractures fivefold). Glucorticoid bone loss in fact is such a common problem that treating it is one of the few official indications the FDA provides for bisphosphonates.

Other drugs are also known to compromise bones. Opioids for instance have been shown to delay the healing of fractures or spinal fusions and when used chronically, to lower bone density and increase the risk of a fracture by 4.13 times. Some of the other drugs which have also been shown to weaken bones include the thiazondones (which are used for diabetes), SSRI antidepressants, the anticonvulsants (which were initially developed to treat epilepsy but are now used for many other conditions), Depo-Provera, and the previously mentioned aromatase inhibitors.

Note: while they do not directly weaken bones, blood pressure medications dramatically increase the risk of falls in the elderly (e.g., a large 2014 JAMA study found moderate-intensity blood pressure therapy caused a 40-131% increase in the risk of a fall causing serious injury)—but nonetheless, as the years go by, more and more aggressive blood pressure treatment thresholds are recommended rather than healthy ways to address this condition (all of which is discussed here).

7. Environmental Toxins—as the following links show, a variety of widely pervasive environmental toxins (e.g., organophosphates, Bisphenol A, aluminum, cadmium and nicotine, lead, mercury, triclosans, along with many other persistent organic pollutants) can inhibit bone formation and are linked to osteoporosis (e.g., a few studies have linked reduced bone density to DDT exposure—a chemical that unfortunately persists in the body for decades^1,2,3,4).
Note: drinking soda has been shown to significantly increase one’s risk of osteoporosis and fractures.

At the same time however, I’m not completely sure these points paint the full picture because the most ancient medical texts in the world also discussed osteoporosis (at a time when, for instance, Roundup and Acid Blockers did not exist)

In addition to these mechanisms, there are a few others I suspect cause osteoporosis but I have less evidence to support those claims (e.g., the ancient Chinese medical texts made a specific claim about what governs the health of the bones which modern research has now begun to corroborate and ties directly into the zeta potential work I’ve done here for years).

For the remainder of this article, I will hence discuss:

• The specific hormonal balance which determines the elasticity of bone (rather than its density), how to test for it, and the levels we prioritize targeting.

• Our preferred mineral and supplement protocol for restoring bone strength (along with some of the nuances not appreciated about bone supplementation).

• The strategy I’ve employed to eliminate fluoride as part of my quest for attaining healthy water (which is surprisingly tricky to do, but I’ve managed to find a few filters and bottled water options over the years).

• A few dietary approaches I’ve come across which provide remarkable results for bone health.

• The common causes of “unexplained” bone loss, which are easily missed, easily treated, and often cause people years of unnecessary suffering.

Read more

• Large randomized controlled trials cost tens of millions of dollars, which turns drug approval into a pay-to-play process only industry can afford and creates enormous pressure to manipulate the results (a playbook I detailed last month).

• The agencies meant to catch this are financially and professionally captured: industry user fees now fund roughly half the FDA’s budget, nearly every recent FDA commissioner has left for a pharmaceutical company, and scientists who push back are marginalized, surveilled, or driven out.

• At the NIH, compliance is enforced through control of research grants (which Fauci was notorious for weaponizing) and through massive royalties from partnerships with the pharmaceutical industry.

• Because the agencies cannot legally take corporate money directly, industry routes it through nominally independent “foundations” that act as legal bribery channels, shielded from FOIA and staffed by future pharmaceutical executives.

• Leaked NIH emails show Bill Gates used this foundation structure to effectively merge his private foundation with the NIH (much like he did with the WHO), buying influence over the federal research agenda while profiting from the vaccine investments that agenda favored.

• NIH emails (and earlier work) also show the captured apparatus was used to build much of the COVID response years in advance, around a plan centered entirely on vaccines, with no place for the cheap effective treatments that would have undercut it.

Last month, I highlighted the unfortunate state of medical research where “science” that supports corporate interests is held to much lower standards than science which opposes those interests, thereby ensuring “the science” becomes what benefits industry rather than the American people. The central vehicles for this are large randomized controlled trials, something which in theory seems like an excellent idea as they can eliminate unwanted bias and lead us to the truth. Unfortunately, large RCTs suffer from four major issues:

1. They cost tens of millions of dollars to conduct.

2. The small benefits they are able to detect are often small enough they offer no meaningful benefit to patients.

3. Much cheaper trials that could independently be conducted (e.g., by doctors in practice) have been shown to effectively detect the clinically meaningful benefits patients care about (typically as well as RCTs), but as regulatory standards do not permit this “low quality” research, drug approval (or becoming part of “the science”) is effectively a pay-to-play situation which can only be achieved by companies that can afford to invest in a profitable pharmaceutical.

4. As I showed previously, there are a lot of ways to rig clinical trials that are routinely used throughout clinical research (to the point it has developed into a standard playbook you can easily spot once you know how to look for it):

All of this hence leads to a few recurring issues:

1. Because of how much money is on the line for drug approvals (and how much has been invested in drug development and their studies), there is an inevitable temptation to doctor them so that they arrive at results which benefit their sponsors.

2. Because of how much money is on the line, a large amount is invested to ensure studies are supported by the entire establishment (e.g., regulators, medical journals, guideline committees and the mass media). As such, despite the ways studies are doctored being readily apparent (and routinely complained about), everyone we trust to safeguard us against them instead turns a blind eye to it and allows this to continue.

3. As a result, large numbers of pharmaceuticals enter the market (and standard medical practice) which provide minimal benefit to patients and frequently have significant toxicity. Yet, each time this happens, rather than upholding their responsibility to remove or restrict those drugs, medical authorities fight tooth and nail to defend them and gaslight everyone who is injected by them. I’ve hence tried to show how this continually has happened with key drugs (e.g., the SSRI antidepressants) to provide a way for everyone to come to terms with the fact the COVID vaccines were pushed on the public (and continue to be) despite:
•The trials providing negligible evidence the vaccines had any meaningful value.
•The “95%” effective vaccines failing to meet any of their promised benefits (eventually pivoting to the easily doctored outcome of reducing “severe COVID”).
•The vaccines injuring (or killing) more people than any pharmaceutical product in history, countless datasets showing their extreme danger and half the public recognizing this (to the point the impossible happened and got MAHA elected into power).
•Numerous whistleblowers coming forward to testify the COVID vaccine trials were rigged.
Note: a much more technical audit of all the proven issues in the COVID-19 clinical trials (which builds upon the playbook I laid out for how trials are routinely rigged) can be read here.

However, while all of this is extremely unfortunate (to the point Senator Johnson has effectively dedicated his term and unique investigative position within the Senate to exposing how the CDC and FDA again and again willfully covered up their data showing the dangers of the COVID vaccines^1,2,3,4,5,6), it only touches upon half of the picture.

Too Big to Fail

The phrase “too big to fail” originally described banks so large and so entangled with the rest of the economy that governments felt they had no choice but to bail them out rather than let them collapse and take everything down with them. Medicine now sits in a similar position: so much wealth, so many careers, and so large a share of the market are tied to the existing system that almost no one with the power to change it can afford to, and so, rather than fix the corruption, everyone involved has every incentive to keep it running.

For example, because of how much money is on the line with the trials, it is inevitable not only that pharmaceutical companies will pay off everyone they need to ensure investors can be guaranteed a reliable return on their investment, but also that those institutions will reshape themselves around those facilitating those payoffs and that their employees will fight to defend the existing status quo (rather than challenge it) because they too are dependent upon it.

In parallel, the FDA (the agency responsible for catching trial manipulation), is itself financially dependent on the industry it regulates. Industry user fees now account for nearly 51% of the FDA's total budget (up from roughly 20% in 2007), with pharmaceutical user fees specifically funding 77% of the prescription drug review program. Likewise, its personnel situation is equally compromised: a 2024 BMJ investigation found that nine of the FDA's last ten commissioners went on to work for or sit on the board of a pharmaceutical company, and a follow-up investigation found every commissioner since 2000 had gone to industry.

More broadly, a 2023 study of 766 HHS political appointees found that 38% of FDA appointees exited to private industry (with the CDC and CMS being even higher, at 53-54%). Among the rank and file, a 2016 BMJ study found that 57% of FDA hematology-oncology drug reviewers who left the agency went to work for or consult with the pharmaceutical industry, and a 2018 Science investigation found that 11 of 16 FDA medical examiners who left after working on drug approvals took jobs with the very companies they had recently regulated.
Likewise, in addition to the FDA commissioners who oversaw the COVID vaccine’s development joining Pfizer¹ or Moderna,¹ two recent noticeable examples were Peter Marks (who was directly responsible for stonewalling all the evidence of COVID vaccine injuries) leaving the FDA to become a high-paid pharmaceutical executive and the 2021-2024 director of CDER (oversees the review and approval of most new drugs in the U.S) leaving the FDA to become Pfizer’s chief medical officer.

In contrast, anyone who challenges the status quo is normally targeted either by their superiors, or the White House (e.g., over a century ago, the very first FDA commissioner, despite immensely popular with the public, Congress and the courts was successively neutralized and pushed out by industry lobbyists who got to the Secretary of Agriculture).

As such, honest scientists who have tried to push back from within have been marginalized, surveilled and driven out:
•A FDA safety researcher was ostracized by management after his 2004 Senate testimony exposing the Vioxx catastrophe.
•FDA device reviewer was fired and covertly surveilled (the agency planted spyware capturing his emails, including messages to Congress, lawyers and the White House) after he warned that certain breast cancer screening devices exposed patients to needless radiation.
•A group of nine FDA scientists wrote to President Obama that the agency had “ordered, intimidated, and coerced” them to alter their scientific conclusions
•FDA drug reviewer Ronald Kavanagh reported a systematic culture of intimidation and suppression of safety findings.
•A 2022 GAO investigation found employees across the CDC, FDA and NIH had observed political interference alter or suppress their scientific conclusions, yet never reported it (fearing retaliation, unsure how to, or assuming leadership already knew).

In short, everyone in the FDA has two relatively simple options in front of them:
•Go along with the corrupt system (and lie to themselves enough about what is happening to think they are doing the right thing) and in many cases then eventually move to a higher paying job in the private sector.

•Do their jobs and not only face immediate retaliation, but also a loss of future career prospects both in the public and private sectors.

Likewise, if we look at the NIH (which controls most of the public research money in the country), two of the key lines of pressure which have been established to ensure perpetual employee compliance are as follows:

•All “public” scientists (and the institutions that hire them) are dependent upon research grants. As such, there is a strong incentive to only study easily fundable subjects which conform to existing dogmas and avoid controversial ones which can permanently blacklist a scientist (and hence eliminate their economic livelihood).
Note: Fauci was notorious for weaponizing this system, both by permanently cutting off scientists who challenged him from the grant system (thereby making no one else want to step out of line) and by using the approval of grants as leverage for studies he wanted (e.g., Fauci pressured scientists who thought it was a lab leak to publish a paper stating the opposite, after which a key grant they needed was approved¹,²).

•After a 1980 law and 1986 law permitted government employees and agencies to patent and profit off discoveries they made that were brought to market, Fauci transformed the NIH into a drug development pipeline. FOIA litigation, in turn revealed that over $2.685 billion in royalty payments flowed from pharmaceutical companies to NIH institutes and scientists between 2010 and 2023 (with over $1 billion of that marked for individual inventors), data Fauci and the NIH had fought to keep hidden for decades until a federal court compelled its release (discussed further here). As this money goes to both employees and the NIH, it strongly incentivizes approval (and protection) of technology NIH grants developed (e.g., Remdesivir and Moderna’s vaccine—with Moderna paying the NIH hundreds of millions in royalties).

In in short we effectively have a “too big to fail” scenario where no one can afford to rock the boat by challenging the premises it rests upon (but can get rich through insider trading). As such, while small attempts are made to reform things, as the years go by, things become more and more corrupt and the American people ultimately pay the price by becoming sicker and sicker from what the “health” agencies give to us.

Note: I often ask people directly connected to the government who is actually making the decisions that affect all of us, and one of the most informed people I know simply shared: “You can always point a finger at a specific agency or person, but the reality is that as the government gets bigger and bigger, more and more fiefdoms will emerge within it, and those groups will fight for their own interests at the expense of everyone else.”

The CDC Foundation

If you’ve paid attention to the CDC, you will inevitably notice they will, without exception, always approve vaccines, promote them, and then double down on their safety regardless of the complaints or injuries they receive from the public.

The CDC has enormous credibility among physicians, in no small part because the agency is generally thought to be free of industry bias. Financial dealings with bio-pharmaceutical companies threaten that reputation.—Marcia Angell MD, former editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine

In turn, if you browse their website, you will frequently encounter this CME disclaimer:

“CDC, our planners, content experts, and their spouses/partners wish to disclose they have no financial interests or other relationships with the manufacturers of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services, or commercial supporters. Planners have reviewed content to ensure there is no bias. CDC does not accept commercial support.”

One of the primary ways the CDC legally takes bribes stems from a 1983 law under which Congress authorized the CDC to accept gifts “made unconditionally…for the benefit of the [Public Health] Service or for the carrying out of any of its functions.” Following this, in 1992, Congress established The National Foundation for the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, allowing the CDC to obtain additional funding for its work. Two years later, it was incorporated to “mobilize philanthropic and private-sector resources.”

Note: unlike the agencies, these foundations are not subject to legal oversight such as Freedom of Information Act requests, many foundation directors later get lucrative pharmaceutical employment and Julie Gerberding (who ran the CDC through the 2000s and pushed Gardasil through before leaving to become president of Merck’s vaccine division), now heads the NIH’s “non-profit” foundation.

Not surprisingly, the CDC Foundation has been accused of egregious conduct since its inception and has received nearly 1 billion dollars from corporate “donors” (criticisms include a scathing editorial in one of the world’s top medical journals). Some of the best examples of this corruption are documented in a 2019 letter to the CDC from a group of non-profit watchdog organizations. To quote part of it:

In 2011, Type Investigations reported that Exponent Inc, a firm that performs research for the pesticide industry, gave $60,000 to the CDC Foundation for a study to prove the safety of two pesticides. “We have a professional money-laundering facility at the Centers for Disease Control Foundation….They accept projects from anyone on the outside,” said James O'Callaghan, a researcher at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).

Between 2010 and 2015, Coca-Cola contributed more than $1 million to the CDC Foundation. It also received significant benefits from the CDC, including collaborative meetings and advice from a top CDC staffer on how to lobby the World Health Organization to curtail its efforts to reduce consumption of added sugars.

The BMJ also reported on contributions from Roche to the CDC Foundation in support of the CDC’s Take 3 flu campaign, which encourages people to “take antiviral medicine if a doctor prescribes it.” Roche manufactures Tamiflu, an antiviral medication for the flu [for reference, Roche was able to convince governments around the world to stockpile hundreds of millions of dollars of Tamiflu while refusing to release any of their clinical data—and it was eventually concluded that the benefits of the drug are negligible, while significant harms result from the medication].

These “donations” in turn often shape the “impartial” guidelines we are expected to follow:

“In 2010, the CDC, in conjunction with the CDC Foundation, formed the Viral Hepatitis Action Coalition, which supports research and promotes expanded testing and treatment of hepatitis C in the United States and globally. Industry has donated over $26 million to the coalition through the CDC Foundation since 2010. Corporate members of the coalition include Abbott Laboratories, AbbVie, Gilead, Janssen, Merck, OraSure Technologies, Quest Diagnostics, and Siemens—each of which produces products to test for or treat hepatitis C infection.”

Conflict of interest forms filed by the 34 members of the external working group that wrote and reviewed the new CDC recommendation in 2012 show that nine had financial ties to the manufacturers. A report by the Office of the Inspector General found that CDC’s external advisors played an influential role in decision-making for the federal government and that there was a systemic lack of oversight of the ethics program with 97% of disclosure forms filed by advisors found to be incomplete, and 13% of advisors who participated in meetings not filing any disclosure at all.

Note: key funders of the CDC foundation (detailed here) include Act Blue (a key Democratic political advocacy group), key vaccine organizations such as GAVI and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the major vaccine manufacturers (e.g., Pfizer, Moderna, Merck and J&J), and tech companies such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and PayPal.

Recognizing these concerning trends, employees of the CDC in 2016 anonymously complained to their leadership regarding the agency’s corruption:

It appears that our mission is being influenced and shaped by outside parties and rogue interests…What concerns us most, is that it is becoming the norm and not the rare exception. Some senior management officials at CDC are clearly aware and even condone these behaviors. Others see it and turn the other way. Some staff are intimidated and pressed to do things they know are not right. We have representatives across the agency that witness this unacceptable behavior. It occurs at all levels and in all of our respective units.

Recently, the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (NCCDPHP) has been implicated in a “cover up” of inaccurate screening data for the Wise Woman (WW) Program. There was a coordinated effort by that Center to “bury” the fact that screening numbers for the WW program were misrepresented in documents sent to Congress; screening numbers for 2014 and 2015 did not meet expectations despite a multi­million dollar investment; and definitions were changed and data “cooked” to make the results look better than they were. Data were clearly manipulated in irregular ways. An “internal review” that involved staff across CDC occurred and its findings were essentially suppressed so media and/or Congressional staff would not become aware of the problems.

Finally, most of the scientists at CDC operate with the utmost integrity and ethics. However, this “climate of disregard” puts many of us in difficult positions. We are often directed to do things we know are not right. For example, Congress has made it very clear that domestic funding for NCCDPHP (and other CIOs) should be used for domestic work and that the bulk of NCCDPHP funding should be allocated to program (not research).

Why in FY17 is NCCDPHP diverting money away from program priorities that directly benefit the public to support an expensive [global health] research that may not yield anything that benefits the [American] public?

Finally, the CDC’s dealings with corporate interests had drawn scrutiny and concern from Congress:

In February 2019, Congresswomen Chellie Pingree and Rosa DeLauro wrote the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services calling for an investigation of CDC’s interactions with Coca-Cola. They noted that the evidence shows “a troubling pattern of the company using access to high-level CDC officials to shape debates over public health policy directly involving the nutritional value of its products.” The congresswomen requested that the Inspector General “determine whether there is a broader pattern of inappropriate industry influence at the agency, and make recommendations to address this issue.”

Unfortunately, due to the politicization surrounding COVID, all of this was swept under the rug, the requested 2019 investigation was never conducted, and the (fairly recent) story was largely forgotten.

Lastly, this mechanism of funding is not unique to the CDC. For example, the CIA has its own “non-profit” foundation, a venture capital firm shielded from Congressional oversight that secures cutting edge technology (primarily from Silicon Valley).

Note: a disturbing story I recently came across (which highlights how interconnected these "too big to fail" sectors are) comes from a class action lawsuit alleging that shortly after Biden's COVID vaccine mandate for federal workers, the CIA ordered its Counter Espionage Department (a unit created to catch foreign spies and traitors within the government) to investigate thousands of its unvaccinated employees and contractors, effectively treating a personal medical decision as an act of disloyalty to the United States. Worse, unlike ordinary security or HR violations (which can be expunged), material gathered in these espionage investigations permanently remains in the CIA's files and "can be used by the Agency for any reason it deems necessary." When ODNI's weaponization probe later pressed the CIA on this, the agency confirmed the scope of the investigations but refused to cite any legal authority for ordering them, and to this day it has ignored formal requests (both from affected employees and the whistleblower who exposed the program) to remove the material from their records.^1,2

The Foundation That Shaped COVID-19

Established in 1990, the NIH foundation shares many of the same issues as the CDC foundation and hence has become a vehicle for the private sector to shape government policy.

As RFK noted in The Real Anthony Fauci, one of the individuals who has best leveraged these opportunities was Bill Gates, who through targeted donations, was able to shift the focus of many public health organizations (e.g., the WHO) away from proven public health measures to an ever increasing focus on vaccines. One of his investments was a 2003 “donation” to the NIH foundation which began a long endeavor to shift the direction of the agency.

Recently, investigative journalist Paul Thacker (writing for RealClearInvestigations) obtained several dozen of the NIH’s internal emails and planning documents from an agency whistleblower, which trace how that $200 million donation (an unprecedented sum for a private donor) grew, over two decades, into a deep entanglement between Gates’s private foundation and the NIH.

Like all outside money, it was routed through the NIH’s foundation, the firewall meant to keep donors from steering federal research. As two Rice University researchers pointed out in 2008, that firewall was effectively meaningless, since the foundation held and administered the funds while the projects that got funded were chosen by the Gates Foundation’s own scientific board.

Note: similarly, in 2018, NIH officials designing a major study on the health effects of alcohol were found to be coordinating with the beer and liquor companies bankrolling it through the foundation, in a study structured to surface alcohol’s benefits while passing over harms like cancer, and that same year the pharmaceutical industry (unsuccessfully) attempted to route $400 million through the foundation to study opioid addiction and alternatives.

After Gates gave a lecture at the NIH in 2013, the agency began coordinating grant funding and scientific policy with the foundation across ten separate programs and hosting a run of joint workshops, held on federal property but giving the Gates Foundation top billing. By 2016 the two were running shared workshops, co-funding clinical trials, merging research policies, and pooling grant efforts, with a researcher the NIH could not fund often passed to Gates, and vice versa.

Gates made his first personal appearance at the series in April 2016. The night before, the foundation paid for a catered dinner for nearly two dozen Gates executives at a stone castle in rural Maryland, while NIH staff worked to confirm the attendance of senior Obama-era HHS officials and FDA commissioner Robert Califf (who had major pharmaceutical financial conflicts of interest). For the visit itself, staff prepared a minute-by-minute itinerary for NIH director Francis Collins: NIH police would meet Gates at the entrance, escort his three-vehicle convoy the final half-mile to one of the main research centers, and Collins would greet him at the door and walk him into the auditorium. One of that day’s panels, moderated by Anthony Fauci, covered microbial outbreaks and the public-private partnerships needed to develop pandemic-preventive vaccines, four years before Operation Warp Speed did exactly that.

Later that year, the foundation gave Gates an award recognizing the $413 million he had by then donated to the NIH (the only other recipient was Pfizer, for $73 million in “donations”).

Reading the itinerary, one senior Trump-administration official noted that this level of treatment is normally reserved for the president, the first lady, or visiting heads of state. The documents also point to why few of the people Thacker contacted, including longtime critics of Gates and the NIH, would speak on the record: by the whistleblower’s account, Gates and the NIH together account for 57% of all global health research funding worldwide.

Furthermore, this same funding leverage extends well beyond the research world and into the press that is supposed to scrutinize it. A 2020 Columbia Journalism Review investigation found that the Gates Foundation had quietly directed more than $250 million into journalism, with recipients including the BBC, NPR, The Guardian, Al Jazeera, ProPublica, the Financial Times, and The Atlantic (NPR alone received $17.5 million, all of it earmarked for the global-health and education topics Gates funds). This builds on a pattern the Seattle Times documented back in 2011, which found that beyond funding outlets directly, Gates was bankrolling journalist training programs, research into how to craft media messages, and think tanks that produce op-eds and media fact sheets (part of roughly $1 billion spent on “advocacy and policy” over the decade). Some of those grants even spelled out the coverage topics, including clinical trials, which happen to be central to the Gates-backed vaccines and drugs being tested (and then deployed) in the developing world. Not surprisingly, media coverage of Gates tends to be consistently favorable, while stories about COVID corruption have drawn so little attention in the establishment press.

Note: the most damning of Thacker’s revelations (e.g., the exact internal wording, the 57% figure, and the official’s assessment of who else warrants such treatment) come from private internal emails rather than public filings, so they rest on the whistleblower’s account and hence cannot be definitively verified. However, I was able to verify the rest of Thacker’s claims against public records (e.g., the 2003 donation and its size, the 2008 Rice warning, the top-billed workshops, the $413 million award, Pfizer’s matching $73 million, and the officials involved), so those claims are likely true as well (particularly since they match Gates’ documented pattern of monopolistic behavior).

Conveniently, Gates also stood to profit from the agenda he was helping shape. For instance, before COVID his foundation held a $40 million stake in the vaccine maker CureVac and a $55 million stake in BioNTech, Pfizer’s eventual vaccine partner. After aggressively lobbying for mRNA vaccines to be the solution for the pandemic, his foundation then sold the BioNTech position for more than $550 million after the vaccine reached the market (likely exceeding what he needed to invest to ensure those vaccines would be widely adopted).

Note: the same routing of public money to private consultants appears elsewhere in the documents, where Gates channeled funds through the NIH foundation so NIH staff could hire McKinsey (which would later pay $650 million to resolve a federal investigation into its simultaneous work for Purdue Pharma and the FDA during the opioid crisis) to help shape federal research strategy, after which McKinsey’s survey of the Ebola field concluded that the two vaccines furthest along belonged to Merck and GSK (both longstanding Gates Foundation partners).

A second cache of NIH emails, obtained and reported by Maryanne Demasi, illustrates what this apparatus was used for. In the years before COVID, Francis Collins worked alongside the same organizations (the Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, the World Bank, the World Economic Forum, and the major vaccine makers) to build much of the pandemic-response framework in advance, so that a good deal of the machinery that later governed the response was already in place before COVID appeared.

The emails trace this to Davos in January 2016, where figures from the Gates Foundation and the World Bank proposed running large-scale pandemic simulations modeled on military war games, a concept nicknamed “Germ Games.” World Bank president Jim Yong Kim proposed drawing on the US Department of Defense’s war-gaming expertise, offered to find the funding, and called on the NIH, the Wellcome Trust, and the Gates Foundation to develop it jointly. Writing to Fauci afterward, Collins noted that with Gates and the World Bank behind it, it would be hard to stop. The same approach resurfaced in Event 201, the October 2019 simulation of a fictional coronavirus pandemic that Johns Hopkins ran with the WEF and the Gates Foundation, months before COVID appeared.

When COVID emerged, these organizations took up the roles they had prepared: CEPI directed vaccine funding, the Gates Foundation handled financing and distribution, the World Bank mobilized resources, and the WHO coordinated messaging. The public was locked down, masked, and told to wait for vaccines. When three epidemiologists (Jay Bhattacharya, Sunetra Gupta, and Martin Kulldorff) challenged this in October 2020 with the Great Barrington Declaration, Collins did not debate them but privately called for a “quick and devastating published takedown” of their work, the same handling of dissent already documented inside the FDA.

Lastly, much of what Demasi’s emails show had already been assembled five years earlier by Peter Breggin, whose 2021 book COVID-19 and the Global Predators exposed the planning documents behind this apparatus. Chief among them was a July 2017 presentation from Gates’s Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI, founded with the Wellcome Trust, the World Economic Forum, and the governments of Norway and India, and backed by GSK, Merck, J&J, Pfizer, Sanofi, and Takeda) to the World Health Organization, laying out how the next pandemic would be handled: rapidly financing liability-free “emergency” vaccines and bringing them to market under a “no loss” guarantee that reimbursed developers for their direct and indirect costs, with no mention anywhere of the early or effective treatments that could have removed the justification for those emergency vaccines.

Conclusion

One of the things I found the most frustrating about COVID was how many simple and highly effective ways to contain the pandemic were disregarded (e.g., safe indoor sterilization of buildings with UV lighting and countless proven but unpatentable COVID-19 treatments including things as simple as disinfecting the upper airway—which I recently detailed in an article on treating sinus issues).

Instead, we got mandates, fear, and countless policies so ridiculous we’d have a hard time believing such a hysteria had gripped our society had we not just witnessed it.

Because of this, many have understandably completely lost their trust in the medical field, with many polls corroborating that loss exceeds anything seen before in history (e.g., a JAMA survey of 443,455 American adults found in every sociodemographic group, trust in physicians and hospitals decreased substantially over the course of the pandemic, from 71.5% in April 2020 to 40.1% in January 2024).

On one hand, I think this is a fortunate development, because many of the egregious actions of the medical industry have only been possible because it has been completely shielded from outside scrutiny (whereas now many are discovering through social media that common sense, basic research and AI often provided more useful information than a typical medical visit)—hence creating an opportunity to finally subject the industry to outside competition that forces it to adopt low-cost therapies like DMSO which can actually fix the problems patients face rather than putting them on a lifetime of costly prescriptions and medical procedures which gradually make them worse. Likewise, within medical research, at this point, we waste billions upon billions of dollars each year on repetitive research which is unlikely to ever produce cures for longstanding illnesses while simultaneously shunning the things which have produced “impossible” results (e.g., here I showed how this is the case with Alzheimer’s).

Conversely, I also find it quite worrisome, as the medical field does provide many essential services (particularly for emergency conditions) and science, for all its flaws, has been a revolutionary system that has created tremendous advancements for humanity (particularly in the past when there were less restrictions on what could be researched). Likewise, every society depends upon trust in its institutions (which take decades of work to put into place), and once that is no longer present, instability and breakdown inevitably follow.

Because of that, the path forward is unclear, but presently I believe the best options we have are to openly discuss the flaws in the current paradigm and build parallel systems that are not dependent upon the existing status quo (e.g., local regenerative food supplies and obtaining the tools we need to heal ourselves) so that the medical system is exposed to genuine competition that forces it to offer a better product. Given how many parties are deeply invested in the current status quo, the path away from it will be anything but smooth, but at the same time, I feel it is impossible to avoid (particularly as the self-perpetuating greed of the medical system is gradually making it no longer possible to pay for its excesses).

My hope hence is that we can pass through this turbulent period as quickly and smoothly as possible (rather than say being forced to experience an even more draconian pandemic before the rest of the public wakes up) and I sincerely thank each of you for your support which has enabled me to do my part in helping to expose and finally fix this mess.

Lastly, I have received a lot of requests to discuss chlorine dioxide here. The reason I have avoided doing so (beyond limited time, as our team, despite doing all we can to produce material here still has many existing professional responsibilities offline) is because many have already explored the subject (making it less urgent to cover in detail) and because I feel the subject that needs exposure first is medical ozone. This is because in addition to it being a suppressed “umbrella” remedy (with a massive volume of research supporting its use across a wide range of conditions and it being regularly used in countries not subject to the FDA’s restrictions) many of the mechanisms necessary to understand how oxidative therapies like CDS work were mapped out by the ozone field.

Now that I am finally starting to clear the backlog from the DMSO project (I started in October), I’ve begun the initial process of compiling the ozone literature base, and for that reason, if any of you have had positive experiences from ozone therapy, please leave them here (as a comment or reply) or email Dan, who has been compiling reader DMSO testimonials for me at DMSOexperiences@proton.me. Likewise, if you have any compelling DMSO stories (e.g., I would really like to reconnect with the readers who treated colorblindness, FOP and interstitial lung disease with DMSO), please do not hesitate to send them either as they will greatly help those who subsequently see them.

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The best solution I was able to come up with was to have monthly open threads where readers could publicly ask any question they had which remain from the last month (as that makes it much faster to answer the questions and everyone can see them) and then tag that to a shorter topic many readers have requested here.

As context for this month’s article, a few months ago, as I was finishing up the DMSO series, I polled you to see which topics had the most reader interest and found by far that was for DMSO and neurological conditions. As such, despite that being the most challenging topic to start with (it required my compiling and presenting over 3,000 studies along with a comparable number of remarkable recoveries from readers) I did so and have now essentially finished that series which in four parts shows how DMSO heals:

•Central nervous system disorders (e.g., Alzheimer’s, Parkinsons, ALS, MS, Cognitive Impairment, Developmental Delay, and various psychiatric disorders).

•Spinal cord injuries, paralysis, and a wide range of spinal pain (e.g., disc issues, radiculopathies, sciatica, surgery complications, ankylosing spondylitis).

•Peripheral nerve disorders, neuropathies and neuropathic pain (e.g., migraines, trigeminal neuralgia, CRPS, carpal tunnel syndrome, diabetic neuropathy, MG).

•Strokes and traumatic brain injuries (which still needs to be updated with all the additional studies I’ve found but nonetheless has provided enough information to allow many readers to avoid the disastrous complications of a stroke).

While this was challenging to do, I’m glad I did it, in part because I wanted to provide the information readers here felt could most immediately help them, but also because many of the studies in those four articles elucidated the core therapeutic mechanisms of DMSO such as it:
•Reducing inflammation and congestion (e.g., by increasing lymphatic circulation).^1,2
•Increasing circulation (both for larger vessels but also for the microcirculation by preventing blood cells from clumping together).^1,2
•Rebalancing the nervous system by uncompressing nerves, resetting dysfunctional circuits, blocking counterproductive pain transmission and activating the parasympathetic nervous system.^1,2
•Protecting tissue (particularly within the brain and spinal cord) from a wide range of otherwise lethal stressors by preserving cellular architecture and effectively scavenging free radicals along with promoting cellular regrowth through cellular resets, elimination of scar tissue or adhesions, neuronal resealing, and microtubule stabilization.^1,2,3,4,5

However, while neurology was the most requested topic by readers, male sexual health was the second, so over the last month, in addition to working on compiling that article, I’ve also discussed the material extensively with experienced colleagues in this field.

DMSO and Sexual Health

As DMSO’s therapeutic properties address the root causes of a wide range of diseases, in addition to them alleviating challenging neurological disorders, they also address many challenging disorders of the reproductive tract faced by both men and women, that, once again, medicine consistently falls short in addressing, and since publishing this series, I’ve received an astonishing number of stories from readers whose issues resolved thanks to DMSO which match what’s reported in the literature (e.g., infertility, menstrual issues including cramps or longstanding complications from childbirth). Recently, I finished compiling all of the studies and reader reports (that can be read here), which shows DMSO heals:

•Prostate issues such as BPH (which many readers reported improving), prostate stones, prostatitis (including many cases that did not respond to conventional therapies), and prostate cancer—particularly when used in conjunction with another off-patent therapy (along with mitigating complications from cancer).

•Testicular injuries (e.g., protecting them from radiation or blood loss due to torsions), epididymitis improving fertility (and providing a means to create a safe reversible male birth control) and scrotal injuries.

•Erectile dysfunction, genital infections (e.g., warts or herpes), Peyronie’s disease, priapisms (blood stuck in the penis producing erections over 4 hours, which, after 24 hours often permanently damage the penis), pelvic floor dysfunction, and sexual dysfunction resulting from other genitourinary issues (e.g., prostatitis).

The Disease Men Hide

Erectile dysfunction (ED) occupies a strange place in medicine, as it is simultaneously one of the most common conditions men face and one of the least honestly discussed. During my training, I was struck both by how common it was (as in my social circle I’d almost never heard about it except from their partners) and how mean medicine was to men about it. For instance, the favored terminology for ED until fairly recently was “impotence” —effectively a declaration the man is unworthy for having the condition.

Studies hence show men are reluctant to bring up ED with their doctors (particularly female physicians) and my experience tracks this, as typically I only hear about it either because a regretful spouse mentions it or because the man informs me some other “unrelated” therapy I or someone I sent them to administered incidentally fixed their ED (at which point they are happy to share their results).

More than anything else, what bothered me about the way ED was handled was that it was typically viewed as a psychological problem and hence put the burden and responsibility back onto the man once he opened up enough to share his issue with his doctor. In contrast, seeing men develop ED after something which logically could cause ED or their recoveries after receiving therapies which would plausibly address the (non-psychological causes) of ED made me disdain how this issue was handled by my peers and the doctors I trained under. Somewhat ironically, this issue was ultimately addressed by Pfizer, as in their push to mass market Viagra, they made significant investments in educating doctors to instead view ED as a circulatory issue (that hence could be treated with their [side-effect ridden] pill), and as such, the emphasis on the psychological causes of ED has decreased in medicine (although you still see it in older doctors whose training predates that campaign).

Note: While often effective, the PDE5 inhibitors (e.g., Viagra, Cialis) only override one step of the process (sustaining the nitric oxide signal) without addressing why the erection was failing in the first place. This is part of why they so often stop working as the underlying vascular or neurological problem progresses. They also carry a consistent set of side effects from dilating blood vessels throughout the body: headaches in roughly 10–25% of users (depending on dose), facial flushing in 10–18%, nasal congestion in 5–10%, indigestion in 5–12%, and with Cialis, back or muscle aches in up to 10% (along with having rarer but more severe side effects). Sildenafil (Viagra) also temporarily tints vision a faint blue-green (cyanopsia) in around 3–6% of users (a quirk of it slightly cross-inhibiting an enzyme used in color vision). It’s harmless but a telling reminder that these drugs act well beyond their intended target. All of which goes back to a core principle of natural medicine: a pill that masks the problem is rarely as good long-term as restoring the circulation, nerves, and tissue health a part of the body actually depends upon.

Given this, I’d like to briefly review the physiology of an erection and common ways it can go awry.

An erection is fundamentally a hydraulic event. The shaft of the penis contains two columns of spongy tissue (the corpora cavernosa) threaded with smooth muscle, and most of the time that smooth muscle sits in a state of mild contraction (held there by the sympathetic nervous system), which keeps the spaces within it squeezed shut (preventing it from expanding) and the penis hence flaccid. Arousal reverses this, as sacral parasympathetic nerves signal the smooth muscle to relax, primarily by releasing nitric oxide, which is the same pathway Viagra works on (Viagra doesn’t create that signal, it simply keeps it from being broken down, which is why it only works when arousal is already present). As the smooth muscle relaxes, the spongy chambers open and arterial blood rushes in to engorge them, and as they swell they press the draining veins flat against the surrounding sheath, trapping the blood inside and sustaining the erection.

All of this can therefore be disrupted by:

1. Poor circulation, which is the big one (and by most estimates the single most common cause, accounting for the majority of ED), and which is why ED is so often the first warning sign of cardiovascular disease, frequently preceding a heart attack by three to five years, since the penile arteries are small and hence clog before the coronary ones do. Diabetes, high blood pressure, smoking, obesity and atherosclerosis all tend to show up here first, which is part of why ED should always prompt a look at the rest of the cardiovascular system (e.g., in studies of men with advanced heart disease, ED was present before the heart attack in 64% of cases).
   Note: our preferred ways for dealing with heart disease and poor circulation are discussed here.

2. Medications, an enormous and underappreciated category, since a long list of common drugs can cause ED (often without the prescribing doctor ever connecting the two). For example:
   •Blood pressure medications (which disrupt circulation), particularly beta-blockers are the most well known for doing this (and making patients miserable).
   Note: the dangers of blood pressure medications and over treating blood pressure (along with natural ways to address the condition) are discussed here.
   •SSRI antidepressants often cause (often permanent) sexual dysfunction for roughly half of users doctors rarely warn patients about. For example, one study found SSRIs caused sexual dysfunction in 59% of 1,022 patients who’d had a normal sex life beforehand, with 31% experiencing erectile dysfunction specifically, and worse still, a subset of patients develop what is now termed Post-SSRI Sexual Dysfunction (PSSD), in which the genital numbness, loss of libido and erectile dysfunction persist long after the drug is stopped, sometimes permanently.
   Note: the dangers of SSRIs and natural alternatives for depression are discussed here.
   •Finasteride (which neutralized testosterone and is often prescribed for hair loss or BPH), causes a host of severe issues for men including lasting ED.¹
   Note: the ways DMSO mitigates finasteride’s toxicity is discussed here and the ways it provides a safe option for hair regrowth here.

   •GnRH agonists like Lupron (used for prostate cancer and a range of off-label disturbing purposes like blocking puberty) are extremely toxic because they shut down the body’s hormone production, with one of their many side effects being ED (e.g., one study found a 267% increase in ED¹ while another found 80% of men on these drugs reported impotence¹).
   Note: I suspect DMSO’s nerve healing properties would likely allow it to counteract longterm ED induced by pharmaceuticals, but I have no direct experience in this area.

3. Nerve impairment, since the signal originates in the sacrum, which means anything that compromises those nerves (spinal stenosis, disc problems, sacral nerve impingement, pelvic surgery such as prostatectomy, or diabetic neuropathy) can produce ED even when blood flow is perfectly fine.

4. Pelvic floor dysfunction, where an overtight, spasming pelvic floor physically compresses the arteries and nerves feeding the penis, which is both common and badly underdiagnosed.

5. Low testosterone, which while very common in men, is less of a direct cause of ED than people assume (it affects desire more than the erection mechanics themselves) but nonetheless contributes.

6. Chronic prostatitis, where inflammation in the prostate frequently causes or worsens ED through pain, inflammation, and the pelvic floor tension that accompanies it.

7. Peyronie’s disease where fibrous scar tissue (plaques) forms inside the penis’s outer layer, causing curvature (which can be uncomfortable for the partner), shortening, pain, or erectile dysfunction (due to the plaques obstructing distal blood flow into the penis)—estimated to affect around 10% of men, although only 0.5–1% of cases are formally diagnosed, as many men do not seek care. In many cases, early Peyronie’s disease (which is the easiest to treat but lacks the classic symptoms and hence requires ultrasound to detect) goes undetected but nonetheless contributes to ED. For example, in a study of 386 men undergoing Doppler ultrasound for ED or penile pain (without curvature or palpable plaques), 41 (10.6%) had detectable Peyronie’s plaques. Of these, 73% had ED as their main complaint, and about half showed reduced blood flow distal to the plaques. Other studies have also found higher rates of ED in men with subclinical Peyronie’s, with roughly 10% of men presenting with ED showing varying degrees of Peyronie’s disease (especially in longer-lasting or more severe cases).^1,2
   Note: Peyronie’s is quite difficult to treat, as all options are less than satisfactory (e.g., traction therapy requires hours each day for months and typically offers only partial improvements in early cases, ED medications like Viagra help with erections but do not fix the plaque, about half of patients benefit from injections of collagen-dissolving enzymes, and while surgery can straighten more severe cases, it often has side effects that can worsen sexual function).

8. Lifestyle and psychological factors, which round out the picture, since obesity, heavy alcohol use, poor sleep and a sedentary life all contribute to ED through their effects on circulation and hormones, and (as discussed earlier) genuine psychological causes such as pornography and also past trauma exist—in turn making it critical to recognize ED (like many conditions medicine consigns into a small box) is often not an isolated issue but rather part of broader disruption to one’s health.

Note: the primary psychological cause of ED we do see now (which was not possible in the past) is pornography addictions (an association which has clearly been shown in some studies^1,2 while others found a weaker correlation^1,2), and to a lesser extent past-sexual trauma (which men are even more reluctant to speak about than ED¹).

DMSO and Erectile Dysfunction

As with other therapies, my knowledge DMSO helped ED originally emerged from readers sharing rather remarkable stories like these with me which they often accidentally discovered while using DMSO:

A minute or two after applying the DMSO I had this unanticipated erection, I mean a raging hard-on. Mind blowing. I’m a 75-year old male with no ED problems, but having so much pelvic pain, I haven’t had, nor thought about sex for a long time. I wasn’t having any stimulating thoughts, I was just going through my self-medication routine.

We are a 60 and 58 year old couple [and] have been using DMSO for a little over a year now. We have 4 grown children and I (the wife) had 3 episiotomies that left me with scar tissue. Never bothered me until post menopause when sex became very painful. I began applying DMSO pain relief. The scarring healed and sex is no longer painful. My husband then developed ED [and applied DMSO]. We are happy to say we again have a great sex life and are so empowered to have “cured” ourselves.

Likewise, others reported similar success after directly trying DMSO for ED.

I have had sore feet for 30 years due to high arches and the DMSO topically relieved the pain greatly. I have had ED I assume from statin use for over 20 years and I thought, hmmmm improves blood flow why not.I started having “movement.” Damn amazing. Thanks AMD.^1,2,3

I had the same thought and after a week or so, the difference was significant. So, yes, I will second the use of DMSO to improve penile blood flow [for erectile dysfunction].

Finally, some individuals without overt ED nonetheless noticed the same effects:

I was suffering form low testosterone after a weight cut and I used DMSO on my private areas for pimples after shaving & it seems to have stopped the pimples. Within a few hours I was getting erections non-stop, it sort of revived my testosterone, like a wake-up call for my gonads to start working. I noticed my erections were much much harder & stiffer erections, nothing extreme but for someone who is health & gyms, I was impressed. You may use these testimonials but please remove my name.

While these results seem quite surprising, once you understand the causes of ED and the therapeutic effects of DMSO (e.g., increased blood flow, parasympathetic activity and muscle relaxation) they fit well within DMSO’s expected effects. Furthermore, extensive research has demonstrated DMSO’s affinity for addressing erectile issues.

Existing Research

The most concrete piece of evidence is that DMSO directly relaxes the erectile tissue. In isolated strips of human corpus cavernosum (the exact smooth muscle that must relax for an erection) pre-contracted with phenylephrine, DMSO produced dose-dependent relaxation beginning at extraordinarily low concentrations (from around 10⁻⁹ M) and reaching roughly 29% maximal relaxation,^1,2 with a separate study finding that at higher concentrations it abolished resting tension entirely.¹ In turn, because DMSO is absorbed through skin so readily, the concentrations that relax this tissue are easily reached by simply applying it topically, which is to say DMSO does, on its own, a version of exactly what the erectile machinery is supposed to do (with the chronology of reader reports directly corroborating this).

That relaxant effect compounds when DMSO is used to carry an erectogenic agent, and because it relaxes the tissue independently, the benefit credited to each agent is measured against DMSO’s own baseline (meaning part of the shared effect is likely DMSO’s). As a 50% vehicle it potentiated Viagra’s relaxation of cavernosal smooth muscle roughly 16- to 80-fold,¹ and in men whose ED no longer responded to PDE5 inhibitors like Viagra at all, DMSO still relaxed their erectile tissue directly (and potentiated other types of ED drugs¹). Most notably, testosterone (which DMSO both independently raises and is often used to topically drive into the body) dissolved in DMSO produced a rapid, dose-dependent relaxation of erectile tissue taken from men with ED, reaching 41-71% (far exceeding DMSO alone).^1,2,3
Note: many other natural and pharmaceutical agents combined with DMSO have also been shown to increase erections and treat ED (which are listed here). Among these, DMSO has even served as the vehicle for nitric-oxide-releasing nanoparticles that induced spontaneous erections in a post-prostatectomy model, the situation that so commonly leaves men with ED after prostate surgery.¹

DMSO has also been shown to address a variety of conditions which can trigger ED:

• Tight pelvic floor musculature frequently contributes to ED. In one Russian study,¹ vaginal DMSO was shown (via EMG) to measurably relax the pelvic floor (levator ani muscles) and normalized their resting electrical activity (shifting 85% of patients toward a normal EMG pattern with reduced activity on straining); this normalization of pelvic-floor muscle tone paralleled relief of their pelvic pain, leading the authors to conclude DMSO exerts analgesic, anti-inflammatory and muscle-relaxant effects on the pelvic floor. While this specific route of administration is not possible for men, given DMSO’s ability to spread through tissue and reports readers have shared with me, the same effect appears achievable if needed for ED.

• Because DMSO dissolves scar tissue and dissolves collagen aggregates (along with it downregulating fibroblast type I and III collagen synthesis in human foreskin¹), it has been successfully used to treat a variety of challenging contractile collagen deposition disorders like Peyronie’s disease along with other protein deposition disorders (e.g., topical DMSO has also been utilized for localized urethral amyloidosis).¹

  
  In turn, across the original urological DMSO studies, topical DMSO improved roughly half of Peyronie’s patients (6 of 13 in one series, and softening or resolution of 2 of 4 patients’ plaques in a separate preliminary report).^1,2,3 DMSO combined with prednisolone was also developed as a local Peyronie’s treatment in the 1970s.^1,2 Larger combination regimens built on this. In 66 men treated with topical 50-70% DMSO daily over 20 sessions (alongside other conservative agents), plaques shrank in 72.7%, dissolved completely in 18.1%, softened in 43.9%, curvature improved in 37.9%, erectile function improved in 42.4%, and pain resolved in most.^1,2 In a long-term protocol centered on topical 50-70% DMSO rubbed into the plaque twice daily, 5 of 6 evaluable patients fully recovered with no recurrence over 2-4 years and the sixth stabilized with restored erectile function.¹ Another multimodal series of 41 patients including topical 20-25% DMSO reported pain relief in 54%, improved sexual activity in 38%, and plaque/curvature reduction in 40%.¹

  Note: DMSO has been also been used in numerous other publications to treat Peyronie’s,^1,2,3 often combined with a variety of other agents,¹ and appears in the standard reviews of Peyronie’s treatment options.¹
  
  However, while it frequently helped Peyronie’s disease, a meaningful response was typically only seen in half of cases, making it more ideal as a first line therapy (in the hopes it could avoid the need for less ideal options)—although once combined with one forgotten therapy, dramatically better results were seen for not only Peyronie’s but also other challenging contractile disorders DMSO had notable success for like scleroderma and Dupuytren's.

• Chronic prostatitis frequently drives ED (through the inflammation, pain and pelvic floor tension it creates) so studies which treated prostatitis with DMSO repeatedly found erectile function recovered too. For example, in 52 men with stubborn chlamydial chronic prostatitis complicated by ED, adding DMSO (mixed into a proteolytic enzyme solution) to the treatment protocol not only addressed the infection but also raised the rate of normal erectile function to 72.2% (versus 41.1% in controls), alongside greater eradication of the infection, shrinkage of the prostate, and improvements in pain, cytokine profiles and quality of life.^1,2,3 Likewise, a 1981 study of men with chronic prostatitis, vesiculitis and urethritis found DMSO with novocaine, calendula and Benadryl caused all 24 treated patients to have their libido, erection, ejaculation and orgasm fully recover (compared to 13 of 20 controls on standard therapy).¹ Likewise, another study found that adding DMSO microclysters to antibiotic therapy roughly halved the ED score relative to antibiotics alone, with greater reductions in pain, dysuria (pain with urination) and prostatic inflammation.¹

  Note: a few of the BPH formulations I came across (e.g., camphor-DMSO rectal emulsions and suppositories) likewise listed improved erectile function among their benefits.^1,2

• One author reported that in four cases of genital herpes the patients were able to have sexual intercourse after only two days of treatment, and DMSO let men resume intercourse where pain or urethral blockage had previously made it impossible.¹

Lastly, as mentioned above, due to DMSO’s utility in treating ED, a variety of combinations have been successfully explored to commercialize this un-patentable discovery (e.g., one topical preparation combined DMSO with local anesthetics and botanical extracts to prolong intercourse and reduce premature ejaculation¹).

Of these, one was particularly noteworthy to me, as I’ve come to recognize that (due to its tissue tolerability and broad range of therapeutic effects) virtually every way DMSO could be applied has been (with the possible exception of direct injections into the lymphatics—something I suspect could be quite helpful in cancer due to Walter Bryant Guy^1,2 and Gaston Naessens discoveries^1,2—but to the best of my knowledge has only been done in animals). However, despite that, DMSO researchers have devised quite a few means of administration I would have never thought of.

One Russian patent treated various forms of ED by mixing DMSO with 2% papaverine alone or additionally with 1% nicotinic acid and then applying it to the penis by submerging it in a vacuum flask at 0.3-0.6 atm pressure filled to half volume with the warmed solution (36-42°C) for 5-12 minutes per session, conducted daily or every other day for 5-10 sessions. This worked, as in all 20 ED patients under 50 years of age (and 72% of those over 50), there was an adequate restoration of erections enabling sexual intercourse, and for the remaining 28% of older patients improvements were still seen.^1,2

Note: while effective, I feel simpler DMSO applications likely would have sufficed.

Another Russian ointment combined DMSO with nitroglycerin, papaverine, eufillin (aminophylline), testosterone propionate, and soothing carriers. When rubbed into the shaft (avoiding the glans and foreskin) with light massage, it produced a gentle warmth and mild swelling, and improved sexual potency (stronger desire and firmer, more frequent erections) in 83% of patients with no side effects.

A New Way of Seeing the Body

As nature is inherently complex, boiling it down to the simple sum of a few parts is inevitably bound to miss much of the broader picture that must always be considered, but nonetheless, both because these reductionist frameworks are so much easier to implement and because the false security they provide (by seeming to eliminate the unknowns of life) is so seductive, we continuously adopt them. In medicine, this mindset has led us to view the body as an automated machine we can predictably control, which on one level has been remarkably helpful, as it has made it possible to redirect the acute course of a variety of otherwise lethal conditions. Simultaneously however, it has left us unable to address a vast range of other problems, and instead forced us into a model of using ever-increasing amounts of drugs to inadequately manage chronic illnesses which continue to progress regardless.

This is why I find something like DMSO so significant, as the fact that a single agent can resolve so many seemingly unrelated conditions (often ones medicine considers separate diseases with separate mechanisms), and do so in a manner many of you can directly observe in your own lives, is itself a sign that our way of carving the body into isolated parts and targeting them one at a time is missing something fundamental. Rather than DMSO being an anomaly to explain away, my hope is that it is beginning to illustrate a different way of seeing the body, one in which the circulation, the nerves, the connective tissue and the body’s capacity to regenerate are all deeply interconnected, so that restoring those underlying functions does far more than any number of drugs aimed at suppressing one isolated pathway at a time ever could. Until we are willing to look at the body that way, many diseases will remain incurable, treatments like DMSO will keep being discarded rather than embraced, and the many people they could have helped (such as the men told their ED was either in their heads or something they would simply have to live with) will keep being failed by a model that was never able to see them in the first place.

In the last part of this article (which serves as an open forum for you to ask any remaining questions that have accumulated over this month) I will review exactly how DMSO is used to treat erectile dysfunction, other treatments we’ve seen work over the years for challenging cases (including those arising from trauma), more general protocols for how DMSO can be used for urogenital issues in both genders and common male issues like Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia and how Stanley Jacob enhanced DMSO’s efficacy for fibrotic conditions (e.g. Peyronie’s and Dupuytren's).

Read more

•Sunlight is crucial for health, and avoiding it doubles mortality rates and cancer risk.

•Skin cancers are the most common cancers in the U.S., leading to widespread “advice” to avoid the sun. However, the deadliest skin cancers are linked to a lack of sunlight.

•The dermatology field, aided by a top marketing firm, rebranded themselves as skin cancer (and sunlight) fighters, becoming one of the highest-paid medical specialties.

•Despite billions spent annually, skin cancer deaths haven't significantly changed.

•Since skin cancer removals are so profitable, the Dermatology profession has not only hyped up sunlight hysteria but also buried a variety of effective and affordable skin cancer treatments.

I always found it odd that everyone insisted I avoid sunlight and wear sunscreen during outdoor activities, as I noticed that sunlight felt great and caused my veins to dilate, indicating the body deeply craved sunlight. Later, I learned that blocking natural light with glass (e.g., with windows or eyeglasses) significantly affected health, and that many had benefitted from utilizing specialized glass that allowed the full light spectrum through. This ties into one of my favorite therapeutic modalities, ultraviolet blood irradiation, which produces a wide range of truly remarkable benefits by putting the sun’s ultraviolet light inside the body.

Once in medical school, aware of sunlight's benefits, I was struck by dermatologists' extreme aversion to it. Patients were constantly warned to avoid sunlight, and in northern latitudes, where people suffer from seasonal affective disorder, dermatologists even required students to wear sunscreen and cover most of their bodies indoors.  At this point my perspective changed to “This crusade against the sun is definitely coming from the dermatologists” and “What on earth is wrong with these people?”

The Monopolization of Medicine

Throughout my life, I’ve noticed the medical industry will:

•Promote healthy activities people are unlikely to do (e.g., exercising or quitting smoking).

•Promote unhealthy activities industries make money from (e.g., eating processed foods or taking a myriad of harmful pharmaceuticals).

•Attack beneficial activities that are easy to do (e.g., sunbathing or consuming egg yolks, butter and raw dairy).

Much of this issue appears rooted in the controversial history of the American Medical Association (AMA). In 1899, the struggling organization revitalized itself by offering the AMA seal of approval to manufacturers who simply disclosed their ingredients and advertised in AMA publications. This strategy boosted AMA's advertising revenue fivefold and its physician membership ninefold in a decade. For example, the AMA widely encouraged cigarette smoking, even when it was known to be dangerous:

The AMA then monopolized medicine by establishing a general medical education council, that allowed them to become the national accrediting body for medical schools, effectively eliminating the teaching of competing medical practices like homeopathy, chiropractic, naturopathy, and, to a lesser extent, osteopathy, as states often denied licenses to graduates from “low-rated” schools.

The AMA then further solidified this monopoly by having the media widely promote AMA campaigns against “medical quackery” (e.g., treatments they couldn’t buy the rights to) and mobilizing the FDA or FTC against competitors. Many remarkable medical innovations hence were successfully erased from history and part of my life’s work (which I am slowly trying to introduce here) and much of what I use in practice are the therapies the AMA erased from history.

These monopolistic tactics never stopped. For example, after Dr. Pierre Kory testified to the Senate about using ivermectin to treat COVID-19, he faced intense media and professional backlash. Professor William B. Grant, then emailed Kory, stating that the same thing had been done to vitamin D research for decades.

The Benefits of Sunlight

One of the oldest proven therapies in medicine is sunlight exposure, which effectively treated the 1918 influenza, tuberculosis, and various other diseases. The success of sunbathing even inspired the development of ultraviolet blood irradiation.

Given its safety, effectiveness, free availability and lack of a lobbyist to protect it, it's hence plausible that those aiming to monopolize medicine would seek to restrict public access to it. Medicine’s campaign against sunlight has been so effective that many are unaware of its benefits, including:

1. Mental Health: Sunlight is crucial for mental well-being, notably in conditions like seasonal affective disorder, but its benefits extend further, as unnatural light exposure disrupts circadian rhythms.

2. Cancer Prevention: A large epidemiological study discovered that women with higher solar UVB exposure had half the incidence of breast cancer, and men half the incidence of fatal prostate cancer. This 50% reduction greatly exceeds the effectiveness of current prevention and treatment approaches. Likewise, unnatural light has been repeatedly observed to worsen cancer outcomes.

3. Longevity and Heart Health: A 20 year prospective study of 29,518 Swedish women found that sunlight avoiders were 60% more likely to die overall (and 130% more likely to die than the highest sun exposure group). Notably, smokers who got sunlight had the same mortality risk as non-smokers who avoided the sun as the greatest benefit of sunlight exposure is a reduction in death from cardiovascular disease.

Note: the link between losing natural light and conditions such as infertility, diabetes, cancer, poor circulation, depression, ADHD, and poor academic performance is discussed further here.

Skin Cancer

According to the American Academy of Dermatology, skin cancer is the most common cancer in the United States, with current estimates suggesting that one in five Americans will develop skin cancer in their lifetime. Approximately 9,500 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with skin cancer every day.

The Academy emphasizes that UV exposure is the most preventable risk factor for skin cancer, advising people to avoid indoor tanning beds and protect their skin outdoors by seeking shade, wearing protective clothing, and applying broad-spectrum sunscreen with an SPF of 30 or higher.

The Skin Cancer Foundation states that more than two people die of skin cancer in the U.S. every hour, which sounds alarming. Let's break down what all this means.

Note: a key reason why skin cancer is “the most common cancer” is that it’s highly visible and easily diagnosed through simple full body skin examination. In contrast, detailed autopsies routinely uncover many undiagnosed — and often harmless — internal tumors that people carried at the time of death without ever knowing.

Basal Cell Carcinoma

Basal cell carcinoma (BCC) is the most common skin cancer, making up 80% of cases, with about 2.64 million Americans diagnosed annually. Risk factors include excessive sun exposure, fair skin, and family history. BCC primarily occurs in sun-exposed areas like the face.

BCC rarely metastasizes and has a near 0% fatality rate, but it frequently recurs (65%-95%) after removal. The standard excision approach often doesn't address underlying causes, leading to repeated surgeries and potential disfigurement.

While BCCs can grow large if left untreated, they aren't immediately dangerous. Treatment is necessary but not urgent. Alternative therapies can effectively treat large BCCs without disfiguring surgery.
Note: since the COVID-19 vaccines came out, I have heard of a few cases of BCC metastasizing in the vaccinated, but it is still extraordinarily rare.

Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) is the second most common skin cancer, with an estimated 1.8 million cases in the U.S. Its incidence varies widely due to sunlight exposure, ranging from 260 to 4,970 cases per million person-years. Previously thought to be four times less common than BCC, SCC is now only half as common.

Unlike BCC, SCC can metastasize, making it potentially dangerous. If removed before metastasis, the survival rate is 99%; after metastasis, it drops to 56%. Typically caught early, SCC has an average survival rate of 95%. Around 2,000 people die from SCC each year in the U.S.

Note: unlike more lethal skin cancers, it is not required to report BCC or SCC. Consequently, there is no centralized database tracking their occurrence, so the official figures are largely estimates.

Melanoma

Melanoma occurs at a rate of 218 cases per million persons annually in the United States, with survival rates ranging from 99% to 35% depending on its stage when diagnosed, averaging out to 94%. However, despite only comprising 1% of all skin cancer diagnoses, Melanoma is responsible for most skin cancer deaths. In total, this works out to a bit over 8000 deaths each year in the United States.  Since survival is greatly improved by early detection, many guides online exist to help recognize the common signs of a potential melanoma.

What’s critically important to understand about melanoma is that while it’s widely considered to be linked to sunlight exposure—it’s not. For example:

• Patients with solar elastosis, a sign of sun exposure, were 60% less likely to die from melanoma.

• Melanoma predominantly occurs in areas of the body with minimal sunlight exposure, unlike SCC and BCC, which are linked to sun-exposed regions.

• Outdoor workers, despite significantly higher UV exposure, have lower rates of melanoma compared to indoor workers.

• Many sunscreens contain toxic carcinogens (to the point Hawaii banned them to protect coral reefs). Conversely, existing research indicates widespread sunscreen use has not reduced skin cancer rates, and in some cases increases it (e.g., a 2023 UK study of over 470,000 people found that frequent sunscreen use was associated with a 1.9-to-3.9-fold increased risk across all four skin cancers studied—BCC, SCC, melanoma in-situ, and invasive melanoma).
  Note: It’s worth pausing on how the 2023 study’s authors handled their own result. Having found that frequent sunscreen use tracked with more skin cancer, they did not consider that their model might be wrong. Instead they labeled it a “paradox,” proposed that sunscreen users must be getting more sun, or not reapplying enough, or buying sunscreen after their diagnosis, and then concluded the data “demonstrate the importance of adequate and frequent sunscreen use.” This is the same reflex behind the “French paradox,” the puzzle of why the French have less heart disease despite eating more saturated fat, which was only ever a paradox if you assumed saturated fat caused heart disease to begin with (an assumption resting on a far shakier foundation than the public was led to believe, as I covered in my article on the manufactured war on cholesterol that was used to push toxic and ineffective—but lucrative—statins upon everyone).

• •A mouse study designed to study malignant melanoma found mice kept under simulated daylight develop tumors at a slower and diminished rate compared to those under cool white fluorescent light.

• There has been a significant increase in many areas from melanoma, something which argues against sunlight being the primary issue as it has not significantly changed in the last few decades. For instance, consider this data from Norway’s cancer registry on malignant melanoma:

Note: in addition to these three cancers, other (much rarer) skin cancers also exist, most of which have not been linked to sunlight exposure.

The Great Dermatology Scam

If you consider the previous section, the following should be fairly clear:

•By far the most common “skin cancer” is not dangerous.

•The “skin cancers” you actually need to worry about are a fairly small portion of the existing skin cancers.

• Sunlight exposure does not cause the most dangerous cancers.

In essence, there’s no way to justify “banning sunlight” to “prevent skin cancer,” as the “benefit” from this prescription is vastly outweighed by its harm. However, a very clever linguistic trick bypasses this contradiction—a single label, “skin cancer,” is used for everything, which then selectively adopts the lethality of melanoma, the frequency of BCC, and the sensitivity to sunlight that BCC and SCC have.

This has always really infuriated me, so I’ve given a lot of thought to why they do this.

Note: since the pharmaceutical industry ultimately revolves around drug sales rather than drug development (e.g., significantly more is spent on marketing than drug development^1,2,3,4) you will routinely see clever but deceptive linguistic tricks used to promote a wide swathe of drugs.

The Transformation of Dermatology

In the 1980s, dermatology was one of the least desirable specialties in medicine (e.g., dermatologists were often referred to as pimple poppers). Now however, dermatology is one of the most coveted specialties in medicine as dermatologists make 2-4 times as much as a regular doctor, but have a much less stressful lifestyle.

A relatively unknown blog (Robert Yoho uncovered¹) by Dermatologist David J. Elpern, M.D. at last explained what happened:

Over the past 40 years, I have witnessed these changes in my specialty and am dismayed by the reluctance of my colleagues to address them. This trend began in the early 1980s when the Academy of Dermatology (AAD) assessed its members over 2 million dollars to hire a prominent New York advertising agency to raise the public’s appreciation of our specialty. The mad men recommended “educating” the public to the fact that dermatologists are skin cancer experts, not just pimple poppers; and so the free National Skin Cancer Screening Day was established [through a 1985 Presidential proclamation].

These screenings serve to inflate the public’s health anxiety about skin cancer and led to the performance of vast amounts of expensive low-value procedures for skin cancer and actinic keratosis (AKs). At the same time, pathologists were expanding their definitions of what a melanoma is, leading to “diagnostic drift” that misleadingly increased the incidence of melanoma while the mortality has remained at 1980 levels. Concomitantly, non-melanoma skin cancers are being over-treated by armies of micrographic surgeons who often treat innocuous skin cancers with unnecessarily aggressive, lucrative surgeries.

A 2021 journal article provides additional context to Dr. Elpern’s remarks:

Skin cancer screenings began at the community level in the 1970s. The first nationwide public skin cancer screening program was started by the American Academy of Dermatology in 1985 after the rising incidence and mortality rate of malignant melanoma gained increasing attention in the early 1980s. In the early years of the program, President Ronald Reagan signed proclamations creating the “National Skin Cancer Prevention and Detection Week,” and the “Older Americans Melanoma/Skin Cancer Detection and Prevention Week,” and the total body skin examination became the gold standard for skin cancer screening.

Note: this article also shares that the American government has long been extremely doubtful of the value of these screenings and the dermatology field has faced continual challenges to surmount this obstacle they’ve had to lobby for solutions to.

This heightened awareness led to a dramatic increase in skin cancer screenings and diagnoses, fueled by fears instilled in the public about sun exposure. Alongside this massive sales funnel, there was a significant expansion in the incredibly lucrative Mohs micrographic surgery, promoted as a gold standard for treating skin cancers due to its precision and efficacy in sparing healthy tissue. However, critics (correctly) argue that Mohs surgery is often overused, driven by financial incentives rather than clinical necessity, contributing to immense healthcare costs (e.g., the rate of use of Mohs surgery among Medicare beneficiaries in the United States grew 700 percent between 1992 and 2009¹ in 2012 over $2 billion was paid out for Mohs surgeries¹).

Note: we frequently see patients who developed complications from these surgeries.

The commercialization of dermatology was further amplified by the entry of private equity firms into the field. These firms acquired dermatology practices, sometimes staffing them with non-physician providers to maximize profitability. This trend raised concerns about quality of care, with reports of misdiagnoses and over-treatment, particularly in vulnerable populations like nursing home residents—to the point the New York Times authored a 2017 investigation on this exploitative industry.

Moreover, the shift towards profit-driven models in dermatology has sparked ethical debates within the medical community. Some dermatologists have voiced concerns over the commodification of skin cancer treatments and the erosion of traditional doctor-patient relationships in favor of more transactional interactions. Despite these challenges, dermatology remains a lucrative field, attracting both medical professionals and investors seeking financial gain from skin care services.

Many in turn are victimized by these exploitative practices. The popular comedian Jimmy Dore for example recently covered the Great Dermatology Scam after realizing he’d been subjected to it:

After Jimmy Dore’s segment, this story went viral, and as best as I can tell, was seen by between 5 to 10 million people. A few weeks after Dore’s segment, two surveys were released highlighting an “epidemic” of insufficient sun protection which the New York Times (like clockwork) then covered. Since it was such a classic medical propaganda piece, I will quote a few lines from it:

Two new surveys suggest a troubling trend: Young adults seem to be slacking on sun safety.

14 percent of adults under 35 believed the myth that wearing sunscreen every day is more harmful than direct sun exposure

Young adults are often unaware of what sun damage looks like and how best to prevent it,

Ultraviolet rays — whether from tanning beds or direct sunlight — can damage skin and cause skin cancer, which can be deadly

Experts said that Gen Z is uniquely susceptible to misinformation about sunscreen and skin cancer that has proliferated on social media platforms like TikTok.

Generously apply — and reapply — sunscreen. UV rays can damage skin even when it’s cloudy or chilly, so experts recommend wearing sunscreen every day.

Likewise, due to the recent public attention on the 2023 study showing sunscreen made you more likely to die from skin cancer, a similar media campaign emerged which investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson aptly summarized today:

Note: I must emphasize that some skin cancers (e.g., many melanomas) require immediate removal. My point here is not to avoid dermatologists entirely but to consider seeking a second opinion from another dermatologist as there are many excellent and ethical dermatologists out there.

Changes in Skin Cancer

Given how much is being spent to end skin cancer, one would expect some results. Unfortunately, like many other aspects of the cancer industry that’s not what’s happened. Instead, more and more (previously benign) cancers are diagnosed, but for the most part, no significant change has occurred in the death rate.

The best proof for this came from a study which found that almost all of the increase in “skin cancer” was from stage 1 melanomas (which rarely create problems and which the authors attributed to diagnostic drift rather than an actual increase):

Another study illustrates exactly what the result of our war on skin cancer has accomplished:

Finally, since many suspected the COVID vaccines might lead to an increase in melanoma (or other skin cancers), I compiled all the available annual reports from the American Cancer Society into a few graphs:

Conclusion

Dermatology needed a villain to justify its business model, and it chose the sun. As such, vast amounts of money were made while we were left to pay the price of being denied one of the most essential nutrients for health. However, while these predatory practices have continued with impunity for decades, things have now changed.

COVID-19 made the medical industry’s greed too visible to ignore, and people are now questioning practices that went unchallenged for decades. If an article like this had been published in 2018, few would have seen it, but instead, for more than two years, Dermatology’s unconscionable war against the sun has become a viral topic that is now routinely discussed in the health community and attacked by the mainstream press. This is a historic shift and like you, I intend to do all I can to make the most of it.

Author’s note: This is an abbreviated version of a full-length article about Dermatology’s Disastrous War Again the Sun that also discusses safer ways to treat or prevent skin cancer (most of which can be done at home) and the nutritional approaches which make it possible for the skin to tolerate and be nourished by longer sun exposures. For the entire read with much more specific details and sources, and those approaches please click here. Additionally, a companion article on the importance of natural light can be read here, and one on the remarkable therapeutic properties of ultraviolet blood irradiation here.

To learn how other readers have benefitted from this publication and the community it has created, their feedback can be viewed here. Additionally, an index of all the articles published in the Forgotten Side of Medicine can be viewed here.

• Neurological injuries from vaccination have been documented since the smallpox vaccine over two centuries ago, with severe injuries reported throughout medical literature.

• The medical profession concealed these injuries, believing public vaccination benefits justified hiding information that might create vaccine hesitancy.

• Historical injuries like spreading paralysis mirror current "one in a million" vaccine injuries, but toxicity documentation was erased to preserve the "safe and effective" narrative.

• In the past, these injuries were widely reported, but now research into them is widely censored.

• Many of these forgotten reports are critical for understanding modern “inexplicable” conditions like Autism.

From birth, we are taught that vaccines were one of the most remarkable discoveries in history, and were so safe and effective that many now unimaginable plagues vanished with few to no side effects occurring in the process. In truth, give or take, every part of that mythology is false, and remarkably similar vaccine disasters occur every few decades.

Much of this results from the fact that it is very difficult to produce safe vaccines due to both their mode of action and the methods used in their production. As such, the best "solution" which could be found to this problem was to insist in lockstep that vaccines were safe and erase any memory that vaccine disasters had in fact occurred, thereby making it possible to gaslight anyone who was severely injured by a vaccine and claim their injury was just anecdotal or a product of anti-vaccine hysteria.

For example, previously, I discussed how vaccines cause autism, and focused on a central argument used to debunk the link between the two—that the only reason people believe vaccines cause autism is because a disgraced British doctor published a fraudulent 1998 study claiming they did and then made everyone start hallucinating that vaccine injuries were occurring.

This mythology however, ignores that brain injuries were a longstanding problem of vaccination. For example, a 1982 NBC news program revealed that many parents were having children develop "post-pertussis encephalopathy" after taking the DPT vaccine, that most doctors refused to report this.

To quote that program:

Medical knowledge about severe reactions to the whooping cough vaccine goes back to the early 1930s. Report after report has been published in medical journals since then. In 1948, two American doctors reported on case histories of many children who had been brain damaged or died from DPT vaccines in Boston. The following year, another doctor surveyed pediatricians across the country and found still more. Those studies have been forgotten.

Likewise, in 1985, one of the most popular talk shows in America (the Donahue show) hosted a segment where doctors from both sides (and neurologically injured members of the audience) debated the risks and benefits of vaccination and the ethics of mandates. To the best of my knowledge, this was the last time an open debate of vaccination aired on mainstream television.

Diagnostic Obfuscation

In both of these 1980s TV programs and many of the earlier studies on vaccine injuries, the brain damaged children were described as becoming "mentally retarded" or "severely retarded." However, in the 1990s, "retarded" began to be phased out due to it being deemed too stigmatizing, with Obama, in 2010 signing a law that replaced all instances in Federal statutes of "mentally retarded" and "mental retardation" with "intellectual disability."

This is important as it is commonly argued that the increase in Autism is not due to an environmental toxin (e.g., vaccines) but rather more and more "normal" things being reclassified as autism. One of the primary studies that supported the reclassification argument, is a 2009 study from California that actually showed 26.4% of children who had previously been diagnosed as "mentally retarded" became "autistic" (as did another commonly cited study).

Since autism is deliberately undefined, it encapsulates both profound (severe) autism (25-30% of cases) and autistic traits (e.g., having manageable neurological deficits or "being on the spectrum"). This wordplay hence blends them together, making it possible to slander statements on severe autism while simultaneously tricking people into believing the increase is actually just in autistic quirks.

However, as the CDC shows, roughly 26.7% of autistic children have "profound autism," and is continually increasing:

Likewise, when the 1986 Vaccine Injury Act was passed, it acknowledged a few specific neurological injuries that were frequently seen from vaccines, one of which was encephalopathy from MMR (which is now labeled as “autism” and “not caused by vaccines”).

Remarkably, despite twelve new vaccines and decades of science since 1986, almost no additional neurological injuries have been added to the table (as there is a massive conflict of interest in acknowledging the injury and thus the government having to pay for it).

In tandem, research into vaccine neurological injuries was systematically prevented. Placebo-controlled trials were deemed "unethical," while research showing harms was dismissed as "junk science" for lacking placebo controls. When researchers conducted studies anyway, data was blocked from publication and researchers faced retaliation (e.g., an Oregon pediatrician lost his license). These studies (summarized here) showed massive increases in chronic illness. Our society did too:

Likewise, large databases containing vaccinated and unvaccinated data were withheld from researchers and remarkably when RFK's team gained access, HHS employees illegally deleted the database.

The Hazards of Immunization

In 1966, an eminent bacteriologist wrote “The Hazards of Immunization” which disclosed a large number of forgotten vaccine disasters he’d collected (both through his team surveying the medical literature and insiders sharing their private files with him) in the hope it could lead to safer vaccines as the same disasters kept on repeating and would likely continue to do so unless his profession acknowledged those risks (which as COVID-19 showed us, they still have not done).

In his compilation of vaccine injuries (which he felt represented less than 1% of them) he highlighted many devastating injuries (many of which happened to soldiers) that we continue to see today. Some of the key themes he covered included:

•How many vaccines have been shown to cause immune suppression and makes latent infections become severe and hence suddenly appear.

•How the mentality behind manufacturing vaccines makes hot lots almost unavoidable and has led to many vaccine disasters throughout history—a problem which was sadly “solved” by simply giving vaccine manufacturers immunity from injury lawsuits.

•That a wide range of autoimmune and neurological injuries were caused by each vaccine and antiserum.

What follows is a small sampling of the forgotten neurologic vaccine injuries Wilson shared:

Typhoid Vaccine

In the pre-antibiotic era, the typhoid vaccine was essential for militaries and tolerated despite its frequent complications. Many of these were of the conditions (i.e., Landry’s paralysis) we now refer to as Guillain-Barré syndrome (e.g., one of Guillain and Barré’s first GBS cases came from a typhoid vaccine).

Reports included:

• Polyneuritis with shoulder pain spreading to knees, leading to disturbed sensation, balance problems, and ongoing pain (1916).

• A soldier becoming blind for 10 days, and another developing convulsions (1919).

• 10 cases with severe headaches, seizures, paralysis, and one fatal GBS-like case (1920).

• Over 50 neurological injuries including nerve inflammation and widespread nerve damage (1954).

• Numerous other cases of paralysis or GBS, sometimes diagnosed as polio,^1,2,3 including one where autopsy showed widespread brain destruction.

Note: medical students are taught that GBS is primarily due to infections (including the flu) and is a rare one in a million complication of influenza vaccination. I believe GBS is massively unreported as over the years, I’ve met so many people who developed it (or knew someone who did). For example, the 1976 Swine Flu vaccine (which had many parallels to the COVID vaccine) was pulled for causing 1 in 100,000 recipients to develop GBS, but a colleague who was in practice had roughly 6% of their patients get GBS from the vaccine.

Yellow Fever

Hot Yellow Fever vaccines neurologic injuries were reported throughout the literature:

• A fatal 1934 case began with neurological symptoms, progressing to paralysis and death 14 months later. Autopsy showed extensive myelin degeneration and brain cell changes. Many similar cases were also reported.

• A 1936 case where vaccination caused acute meningitis, seizures, and mental confusion, with another paper revealing the lot caused nervous disturbance in at least three others.

• A 1936 report found that a third of 5699 recipients had reactions, including severe neurologic or visceral ones.

• A 1943 report showed one lot caused 1.65% of recipients to develop encephalitis, while another caused 0.06% along with a 1953 paper that found 0.3-.0.4% did (of whom 40% then died).

• A 1953 WHO report documented 12 encephalitis cases with 3 deaths in Costa Rica, 83 cases with 32 deaths in Nigeria, and 254 cases in Brazil

Rabies

It was not long after the Pasteurian method was taken into routine use that attention was drawn to cases of neuroparalysis. Among the directors of the Pasteur Institutes there was a conspiracy of silence, caused by fear of bringing Pasteur's method into disrepute.

It was difficult to find a vaccine dose strong enough to prevent rabies but weak enough not to cause paralysis. Rabies vaccine injuries averaged a 10-16.85% fatality rate and were one of four types:

• Dorsolumbar myelitis (most common, 5% fatality rate)

• Encephalomyelitis (second most common, 5% fatality rate)

• GBS (30% fatality rate)

• Peripheral neuritis affecting cranial nerves

As these injuries were often underreported, their incidence widely varied between studies:

Measles

A 1966 case occurred in a 14-month-old who developed encephalitis 11 days after vaccination, first showing facial twitching, then fever, stopped eating, and became semi-conscious. By day 15, the child had weakness on the left side and frequent severe seizures. After four months, the child still had left-sided weakness and possible mental impairment.

Vaccine Caused “Polio”

Multiple papers from 1950-1956 found vaccination significantly increased polio risk. These included a 1950 paper (82 cases), another 1950 paper (14 cases), a 1952 paper (53 cases), and a 1956 report (355 cases).

A 1950 statistical analysis by the epidemiologist who created standards for establishing causality found vaccination links. A 1952 paper found vaccination doubled polio risk.

In 1956, a committee concluded 13% of paralysis in young children were causally related to vaccines:

Diphtheria

Most reported diphtheria vaccine injuries came from hot vaccine lots:

• A 1919 Dallas incident involving several hundred doses where 8.33% died, with third-week paralysis throughout the body

• A 1924 Massachusetts incident severely injured 43 of 54 recipients

• A 1927 U.S.S.R incident where 12 of 14 children died from progressive paralytic disorder

Pertussis

There is no doubt that [the] pertussis vaccine is one of the most toxic vaccines in current general use. In trials about 70% suffered reactions.

Between 1958-1965, seven fatal cases of encephalitis from DPT were recorded. Other key findings include:

• The 1933 case of an infant seized by convulsions thirty minutes after injection and dying within two minutes

• A 1948 report detailed 15 cases with convulsions—two died, five had paralysis, two had severe brain damage

• A 1949 report documented 38 severe reactions, mostly convulsions, with at least two fatal

• A 1953 article contained 84 brain-related issues with 11 deaths and 24 permanent complications

• A 1958 report found 1 in 3000 DPT recipients developed convulsions

• A 1958 review of 107 cases found 15% died, 30% had long-term complications

• A 1961 study of 1,700 successive infants where 40 rapidly developed reactions such as severe local/general reactions, generalized eczema (delayed onset), macular rash, persistent vomiting, persistent uncontrollable screaming, or collapse.

Smallpox

Wilson considered smallpox vaccines to have the highest complication rate. Post-vaccinal encephalomyelitis had a 35% mortality rate, with over 50% of infants under two dying on the first day.

Wilson pooled studies from 8 million people finding 0.0015-0.0754% developed encephalomyelitis, while 0.0063% of 18 million developed encephalitis. He reviewed 2398 cases (which averaged a 34% fatality rate).

Notable reports include:

• A 1926 report of pathology findings from seven deaths

• A 1948 report documented 222 severe cases including 110 deaths

• A 1956 German report found animal production methods increased post-vaccine encephalitis 4-6 times

• A 1961 report of 265 autopsy-proven cases found symptoms emerged 4-18 days later

Physicians observed severe neuralgia, various paralysis types, cranial nerve issues, seizure disorders, memory loss, and general loss of vitality making patients more susceptible to other illnesses.

Additionally, they observed a variety of other issues (e.g., many different skin problems). The most notable of which was many different physicians highlighting a general loss of vitality following smallpox vaccination which made their patients both weaker and more susceptible to a variety of other illnesses (and I now believe this vaccine was an inflection point in the general decline of humanity’s health).

Vaccine Injury Susceptibility

Wilson repeatedly highlighted that constitutionally sensitive individuals were much more likely to be injured by the smallpox vaccine. This observation in turn led to many authors encouraging giving vaccines at a later age, a study linking allergies to severe rabies vaccine reactions and a 1953 article on DPT encephalitis that concluded it was unwise to immunize any child with a pre-existing conditions suggesting increased susceptibility to DPT injuries.

Over the decades, many others through their observations of vaccine injuries have likewise offered similar advice on vaccination (as sensitive patients are more likely to become vaccine-injured). Yet, to protect vaccine sales, authorities always reject those pre-existing conditions for medical exemptions.

Vaccine Induced Microstrokes

The following qualities stand out in all of Wilson’s reports:

•In many cases, the damage in the brain occurred without a virus being present, yet many of the observed pathological changes mirrored what was seen in certain severe viral infections

•Frequently edema, and sometimes blood cell congestion were observed.

•Cranial nerve deficits were often observed.

•Congestion was often seen in other parts of the body.

•Some cell death in the brain appeared to come from a lack of blood flow to the surrounding tissue.

•Small hemorrhages were observed from leaking blood vessels.

Each of these can be explained through vaccine induced microstrokes (triggered by zeta potential changes which cause blood cells to electrically clump together).

Note: the zeta potential concept underlies many diseases (particularly vaccination injuries) and hence was covered in much more detail here (e.g., improving zeta potential cures or improves many complex diseases).

Since zeta potential changes are systemic, they will show up in many parts of the body, and typically it is easiest to observe via changes in the cranial nerves (as certain ones are particularly sensitive to a loss of blood flow from systemic vascular congestion).

Additionally:

•This process is not exclusive to vaccines and will also be seen in severe infections.

•Since blood vessels also depend on their own blood supply for nourishment, if that blood supply is cut off (or vitamin C is depleted), the blood vessels will gradually die and then have small hemorrhages.

•When a strong immune response occurs (e.g., many vaccines are linked to autoimmunity) it will worsen the existing vascular congestion as white blood cells are larger than red blood cells and hence obstruct small blood vessels when they enter them.

•In Chinese medicine, “poor zeta potential” is equivalent to “blood stasis” , a condition that in Chinese medicine’s millennia-long history, suddenly came to be viewed as a root cause of disease shortly after the smallpox vaccine entered China. A classic symptom of blood stasis is unusual sharp shooting pains identical to the highly unusual neuralgias observed by Burnett and others.

Finally, Forest Maraedy, after noticing how frequently people’s faces were, realized that in photography from a century ago, those asymmetries were quite rare and argued they were due to vaccine injuries damaging cranial nerves (as the cranial nerves govern many aspects of the face such as the eyes being centered and the facial muscles being even).

Additionally, in the same way cranial nerve deficits were often reported alongside vaccine encephalitis, Maraedy (and many others) observed that those asymmetries were more common in children with autism. In parallel, autistic children frequently have a wide range of other neurological disorders (e.g., studies find between 10-30% suffer from seizures) but this neurologic damage is always glossed over as conventional autism therapy prioritizes behavioral modification therapy and psychiatric medications.

Note: because of how doctors are trained, when diagnostic signs of a stroke occur in children, they often aren’t viewed as such (since children don’t “get strokes”) and instead given other diagnoses that recognize the asymmetry but provide no explanation for its cause (e.g., strabismus). Dr. Andrew Moulden, after realizing many children were developing signs of strokes after vaccination (which often correlated with subsequent neurological injuries), uncovered the pivotal link between zeta potential and vaccine injury.

Conclusion

At the time many of the original vaccines (or antiserums) were developed, infectious diseases were a major problem and few recognized treatments existed. Because of this, a mentality became entrenched that vaccinations were vital for the survival of humanity.

As such, the same pattern has kept repeating: unusual neurological injuries frequently following vaccination, officials insisting vaccines are "safe and effective" despite evidence to the contrary, and the medical establishment covering injuries for the "greater good." Sadly, this cycle dates all the way back to the smallpox era, and persists today even though those diseases are no longer a major threat and many viable treatments exist for them.

Because of this, those who are injured always get discarded and forgotten (e.g., a few years ago I had a patient still suffering issues from the 1976 Swine Flu vaccine), and since the injuries are denied, treatments to them are rarely explored, leaving the vaccine injured to languish in their suffering. Fortunately, despite all these obstacles, solutions to the increasingly complex neurological issues that characterize modern life are still being discovered by independent physicians and researchers, a few of which will be the focus of the Saturday’s article.

Authors note: This is an abridged version of a longer article which details each of these forgotten studies of vaccine injuries (and can be read here). Additionally a companion article on how vaccines cause debilitating microstrokes can be read here, along with one on how vaccines cause autism (which can be read here).

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To learn how other readers have benefitted from this publication and the community it has created, their feedback can be viewed here. Additionally, an index of all the articles published in the Forgotten Side of Medicine can be viewed here.

Following this, I will describe my preferred approaches for addressing carpal tunnel syndrome (one of the most common causes of wrist pain and numbness in the fingers). I feel this topic is important to discuss because the commonly used approaches for mitigating carpal tunnel (e.g., regularly taking an anti-inflammatory like ibuprofen or injecting steroids into the carpal tunnel) often do not work, and frequently create a variety of complications, whereas a variety of far better options exist.

Note: I was inspired to write this article as I was finishing up the next article in the DMSO series I’ve spent the last month working on (which supporters of this newsletter can read in advance here).

August Dvorak

When the earliest typewriters were made many different keyboard layouts were used (there was no existing standard), but they all suffered from a common issue; if you typed too quickly (specifically sequentially hitting keys next to each other) the typewriter would jam. To solve this issue, a keyboard was designed to prevent this from happening which made the sequential keys you would use be far away from each other. The typewriters with this layout gradually took over the marketplace, and before long, the QWERTY keyboard became the standard everyone utilized, even once the need for it had long since passed because typewriters that jammed had long ago gone extinct.
Note: the history of the QWERTY keyboard is commonly cited in economics as the classic example of path dependence where an inferior technology was locked in because the costs of switching it were too high. Nonetheless, almost no one to this day knows this happened.

August Dvorak was an educational psychologist and professor of education who served as an advisor for a master's thesis on typing errors. From it, he concluded that QWERTY’s prioritization of sequentially distant keyboard strokes to prevent typewriting jamming had the consequence of significantly impairing the ease and speed of typing. Dvorak then decided the QWERTY layout needed to be replaced, so he and his brother in law (another professor) spent years researching how to design a keyboard that would decrease typing errors, speed up typing, and lessen typist fatigue.

Eventually they developed a layout (in the 1930s) which emphasized having the most common letters on the home (middle) row, having frequently used keys be close to each other (so the fingers would not have to travel far for each keystroke) and having the fingers alternate between each keystroke (e.g., by having the vowels on one side and the most commonly used consonants on the other).

This for context is an illustration of the comparative keyboard layouts:

After developing the layout, a variety of studies and contests were conducted (e.g., by the US Navy) which allegedly demonstrated that the Dvorak keyboard layout was faster to learn, allowed individuals to type faster and created less repetitive strain from typing. For example, the world’s fastest typist used the Dvorak layout.

Note: To this day, I am not actually sure how much of the early research supporting adoption of the Dvorak layout actually occurred and how much of it was either fabricated or exaggerated by Dvorak proponents.

Despite many compelling reasons to have a more efficient keyboard layout, Dvorak was never adopted due to existing market pressures to stay with the standard layout everyone was already comfortable with. Eventually (at least according to the story I heard) Dvorak gave up, feeling bitter and depressed no one was interested in something he had put so much work into creating and promoting that he felt could genuinely help everyone. When I heard this, my heart went out for him, and I decided I had no excuse but to learn this layout he worked so hard to give us as I could afford to have a few weeks of impaired typing to do so.

Since that time, more advanced analytics have concluded the Dvorak is a more efficient layout to type with, but there is a bit of a debate over if that benefit is worth the hassle it takes to learn it. Since the Dvorak layout has maintained a devoted following, it has been available as an alternative language on most computer (and mobile) operating systems and numerous websites now exist to help train you in the layout. Additionally, a variety of alternative layouts like Colemak has been developed which also have a high rate of efficiency but are more similar to QWERTY and hence easier to learn (with the trade-off being the more similar to QWERTY, the less efficient they are).
Note: Dvorak layouts which change what each key on the keyboard does are built into most operating systems, so you can enable them on almost any modern computer. The best ones are the ones that switch to QWERTY when you input a command (as the commands evolved to fit the key placements on the keyboard, and, especially initially, it’s helpful to know you are hitting the right key for a command).

Once I learned the Dvorak layout, it was clear that it was much easier to type on it, and I gradually become exasperated when I had to type on QWERTY layouts as it was much slower, and importantly, much more straining. However, later in life, once medicine required me to type a lot of electronic notes (in settings where it was often quite difficult to enable Dvorak), I switched back to QWERTY and then had long periods where I would use one or the other (depending on my work situation).

At the time I started this newsletter, I had gone through a long QWERTY period and before long, began noticing, for the first time in my life, that I was developing pain with my wrists (in the carpal tunnel) so I gave myself a few tests that established it was definitely carpal tunnel syndrome. Before long, I realized I’d need to change back to Dvorak, and discovered much to my joy that external Dvorak keyboards and laptop keyboard covers in the Dvorak layout could easily be purchased online (as could stickers to place over keys). I got a cover, and since the layout was still in my distant muscle memory, I made the transition in a very short period (I believe it was a few days) and noticed a dramatic improvement in the amount of wrist strain lengthy typing sessions created.

In short, an immense amount of suffering essentially resulted from some odd historical quirks of fate that never were corrected (something that is surprisingly common).

I hence felt I needed to write this post, not only to bring attention to this, but also since the Dvorak layout played a pivotal role in making this Substack possible. Likewise it’s important to note, much of the advantage of Dvorak comes from the fact it is a mostly forgotten discovery; had Dvorak become mainstream, everyone would have been held to productivity rates it facilitated. Since it is not (and everyone instead is expected to type at the slower QWERTY rate) Dvorak offers a huge advantage to those who make use of it (although I acknowledge AI may eliminate the need for prolific typing in the not too distant future).

Note: the two times I normally use QWERTY are either when I am typing out a complex password, or when I need to write with one hand while walking and carrying a laptop (I try to make use of every available window to write). Since Dvorak is a “language” toggling between it and QWERTY is very easy in modern operating systems.

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

Carpal tunnel syndrome is one of the more common issues patients see their doctor for that we don’t really have a good solution to (e.g., I’ve had numerous patients who had a carpal tunnel decompression surgery that ultimately didn’t help them at all).

Conventional treatments for carpal tunnel syndrome, in turn begin with nighttime wrist splinting in a neutral position to reduce nerve pressure, activity modification and ergonomic adjustments to avoid repetitive strain then progress to short-term NSAIDs for pain and inflammation, corticosteroid injections for swelling relief (both of which can create significant issues), and physical therapy, and if that doesn’t work, carpal tunnel release surgery is done (where the transverse carpal ligament is cut to open the canal).

What stands out about this progression is that each step manages symptoms or relieves pressure mechanically, yet none of them ask why the pressure built up in the canal to begin with. That question is what eventually reframed how I understood the condition.

The first thing that clued me into what was actually causing carpal tunnel was the frequency with which I would see pregnant patients who mentioned they had developed carpal tunnel during their pregnancy. One of the major changes that happens during pregnancy is that the amount of fluid retained by the body increases and there is thus a general increase in swelling throughout the body. This suggested to me that the root cause of carpal tunnel was excessive fluid within the carpal tunnel that could not drain out. As I have emphasized here, impaired fluid circulation is a key cause of many chronic conditions, and the reasons why I am such a strong advocate for approaches like restoring zeta potential or utilizing DMSO is because it frequently restores critical fluid circulation throughout the body.

Note: this is not just my own clinical impression. Topical DMSO has decades of published support for tunnel neuropathies (including formal Russian clinical guidelines for carpal tunnel), and many of the reader DMSO reports I've received for wrist issues (including those following a carpal tunnel surgery) have been remarkable.

The second thing was that all the extra time I needed to write on Substack required me to use each available window I had for writing. This frequently meant that I needed to use awful ergonomics while writing, which I fully admit I actively discourage my patients from doing. Prior to this, I had experimented with a variety of typing positions and concluded the best options were either:

•Use some type of accessory set up which raises your monitor to the level of your head so you do not need to look down and bend your head forward (this really adds up over time).

•Using a treadmill desk (people are always selling them and used ones are fairly cheap).
Note: you need specialized treadmills designed to run at a slow speed for a prolonged period. If you repurpose an existing treadmill, you may run into issues with it.

•Use a standing desk.

•Squat (with each leg going out diagonally at approximately 45 degrees) while having a support against your back. If you find the right type of rolling office chair (e.g. one you can control the height of where the arm rests are at the correct height for your legs and the back vertically supports you), this becomes quite easy to do.

Note: Generally speaking, I think squatting is much healthier for you than sitting, and that many chronic health problems come from people sitting too much (a viewpoint that is gradually becoming more accepted by the medical profession—"sitting is the new smoking"). The setting where the ills of sitting become the most apparent occurs each time you go to the toilet (as sitting causes the puborectalis muscle to compress part of the rectum, thereby making it harder to push poop out). As a result, many find using a device like the Squatty Potty which cause them to squat when on the toilet to be very helpful for things like constipation, and there is some evidence to support this.

As I’ve gotten to know some of the other individuals who write prolifically on this platform (which requires frequently utilizing their laptop in poor ergonomic situations), I’ve discovered they also developed many of the same musculoskeletal issues I identified. For example, quite a few of them moved along this progression which causes a lot of problems as it progresses if not addressed.