“The Defender In-Depth” this week featured Rob Verkerk, Ph.D., founder, executive and scientific director of the Alliance for Natural Health, who joined host Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., to talk about censorship and how it affects people’s access to reliable information about health.

“We’re in this war of information,” Verkerk said. “We’re also in a war of values. And right at the heart of this is our ability to express views. If we can’t express our views, we don’t have a democracy. If we can’t receive information about health, we can’t actually engage properly in self-care.”

Alliance for Natural Health last month launched the “Free Speech 4 Health” campaign and a petition asking YouTube to change its medical misinformation policy, enacted in August 2023. Children’s Health Defense (CHD) is one of the campaign’s partners.

Verkerk discussed the campaign and petition and highlighted examples of Big Tech censorship of health-related information and attempts by governments to criminalize such speech.

He also discussed the risk of artificial intelligence (AI) being weaponized to stifle online speech further.

‘We are on a very slippery slope’

Verkerk said he founded the Alliance for Natural Health in 2002 to protect “the right to natural health,” noting that this right has been threatened “for decades.”

He said his organization has “used a very specific technique of good science and good law,” including in six successful legal cases against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

However, he said threats to natural health have grown as efforts to combat “misinformation” and “disinformation” have increased in recent years.

“It’s very easy for people to buy into this idea that control over misinformation is needed to protect you,” Verkerk said. “This is probably one of the biggest challenges we’ve got the world over as we move to more and more global control.”

As the “locus of control” moves from governments to Big Tech corporations, the two are “now almost inseparable,” Verkerk said.

YouTube and other platforms have embedded censorship into their official policies, Verkerk said, citing YouTube’s “incredibly draconian” new “medical misinformation” policy.

The policy bans any health-related content that isn’t “approved” by authorities such as the National Institutes of Health or the World Health Organization (WHO). “It’s basically like giving them a loaded gun,” Verkerk said.

YouTube’s policy isn’t limited to COVID-19-related content — it’s also used to censor natural health content, Verkerk said. He gave examples of intermittent fasting and Keto diets, which have been “very heavily shadowbanned” in recent months.

Verkerk said the central message of his organization’s free speech campaign is that YouTube’s medical misinformation policy “is not fit for purpose, and we want to see change.”

“People are getting ever more distorted information,” Verkerk said. “AI is right at the heart of it … We have to start reassessing the First Amendment in the digital age [but] it’s pretty hard to have a public debate on that when there is … censorship.”

Multiple governments have joined the act, Verkerk said, citing the European Union’s Digital Services Act, the U.K.’s “online safety” law, Ireland’s “hate speech” law and a proposed French law that could criminalize criticism of government-approved medical treatments.

“They now argue that the whole of the alternative medicine space is a cult,” Verkerk said, referring to France’s proposed law. “And so, they are proposing that anyone who suggests that a mainstream medical treatment is not appropriate, and they give an alternative treatment in its place, will be extremely heavily fined if not imprisoned.”

Verkerk also cited the danger the WHO’s proposed “pandemic treaty” and amendments to the International Health Regulations pose to free speech, due to provisions that would lead to censorship of narratives not approved by the WHO.

“The misinformation war that will be … arbitrated by the WHO is a very significant part of the problem,” Verkerk said. “We are on a very slippery slope.”

Verkerk said it’s “time for reflection — big, deep reflection on where we are in society. We’re helping to develop … parallel systems of communication … parallel health systems … parallel news systems, parallel education systems.”

These are critical to “maintaining our fundamental freedoms” and the U.S. Constitution.

“If we do nothing, if we are silent, we will see this continuous march toward an ever more authoritarian situation, and I think many of us don’t want to see that happen.”

Watch ‘The Defender In-Depth’ here:

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[…]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/defender-in-depth-rob-verkerk-alliance-for-natural-health-free-speech-misinformation/

A new peer-reviewed study raises concerns about the methods used to test for potential DNA impurities in the Comirnaty COVID-19 mRNA vaccine produced by Pfizer and BioNTech.

In the study published this month in Methods and Protocols, German researchers Brigitte König and Jürgen O. Kirchner questioned the reliability of the quantitative PCR (qPCR) technique Pfizer-BioNTech used to measure DNA contamination in the vaccine’s active substance.

The researchers experimented with dissolving Comirnaty‘s lipid nanoparticles. They found DNA impurity levels ranging from 360 to 534 times higher than the 10 ng (nanogram) per dose limit set by regulators globally.

The researchers proposed that fluorescence spectroscopy methods could more reliably quantify the total levels of DNA contamination present in the final, ready-to-use vaccine product.

Kevin McKernan, chief scientific officer and founder of Medicinal Genomics, told The Defender that while the authors raised some crucial points regarding DNA contamination in COVID-19 mRNA vaccines, fluorometric dyes can be unreliable, leading to inflated readings.

Manufacturers like Pfizer-BioNTech use DNA contamination testing that relies on a qPCR method applied to the vaccine’s active substance before it is combined with lipid nanoparticles.

König and Kirchner pointed out that the qPCR test looks only for a tiny 69-base-pair segment of the original 7,824-base-pair DNA template used to produce the mRNA vaccine.

This means Pfizer checks less than 1% of the original template. The other 99% goes unanalyzed, resulting in “a massive under-detection of DNA impurities,” they stated.

The researchers also argued that this small segment may get destroyed at different rates than the rest of the DNA template fragments during the enzyme digestion process, further confounding accurate measurements.

Another complicating factor is that the qPCR target sequence overlaps with a section of DNA called the T7 promoter used to produce the mRNA. Cellular machinery or byproducts could bind to this promoter region, blocking it from being detected by the qPCR test.

David Speicher, Ph.D., co-author with McKernan and others of a preprint study on DNA fragments in Moderna’s and Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccines, expressed similar concerns.

PCR can quantify only a particular DNA/RNA sequence targeted by the primers used, he told The Defender. If there are any breaks or mutations in that target sequence, the “DNA will not amplify and the loads will be under-reported.”

“There is also an assumption that the DNA in the vaccine is only from the plasmid and not bacterial or any other source,” Speicher said.

McKernan pointed out another problem: Regulators allow Pfizer to use qPCR to measure the DNA and fluorometry to measure the RNA.

“The regulations from the EMA [European Medicines Agency] are a ratiometric measurement of RNA:DNA,” he said. “The ratios should not be measured with inches for RNA and meters for DNA.”

He said Pfizer should measure both the RNA and the DNA using fluorometry or qPCR. “When they allow them to mix and match tools like this, they enable overt deception.”

McKernan also shared a portion of Moderna’s patent application acknowledging that qPCR is inadequate for measuring small DNA fragments.

‘We are no longer debating whether the shots are contaminated’

To avoid the pitfalls of qPCR, which targets only a tiny fraction of the contaminant DNA, König and Kirchner proposed using fluorescence spectroscopy techniques like Qubit to quantify total DNA levels in the final vaccine product.

These methods employ fluorescent dyes that bind specifically to nucleic acids like DNA and RNA.

Their experiments using the fluorescence technique with Comirnaty found DNA contamination significantly higher than the 10 ng/dose limit after breaking apart the nanoparticles.

Figure 2. Quantification of total DNA in batches of Comirnaty using Qubit fluorometry without and with the addition of Triton-X-100 as a detergent to disintegrate the lipid nanoparticles contained in the vaccine formulation. Credit: Brigitte König and Jürgen O. Kirchner.

McKernan, who wrote about fluorometry’s limitations on his Substack, urged caution when considering König and Kirchner’s results.

“Fluorometric dyes can cross-talk between RNA and DNA such that large amounts of RNA present in the vaccine will trigger the DNA-specific dye to provide some signal from RNA,” he told The Defender. “This is leading to inflated readings of the DNA in the König paper.”

To address this concern, McKernan said the researchers should perform an RNase control. RNase is an enzyme that erases RNA, so there is no interference from RNA when measuring DNA.

Without this control, König and Kirchner “have left an easy attack surface for their critics,” he said.

In research in preparation for publication, McKernan said several labs performing RNase experiments observed a 10-fold reduction in the DNA signal observed when using fluorometry.

“This still leaves the DNA contamination well over the FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] limit,” McKernan said. He emphasized that his “hair-splitting critique” of the study should not diminish or derail the call to reevaluate DNA contamination testing protocols for mRNA vaccines.

“We are no longer debating whether the shots are contaminated,” he said. “We’re just debating whether they are 10-fold or 100-fold over the limit and how much they vary from lot to lot.”

Potential risks of DNA contamination

König and Kirchner cited concerns that higher-than-expected levels of DNA contamination could be taken up into human cells during vaccination, with unknown consequences if that DNA integrates into the genome.

They cited the “risk of insertional mutagenesis,” where foreign DNA segments disrupt normal gene sequences when inserted into the genome, possibly leading to mutations and associated diseases like cancer.

Researchers like McKernan have already determined that DNA in the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines includes the simian virus 40 (SV40) cancer-promoting gene and E. coli plasmid DNA sequences left over from the vaccine production process.

In a February presentation at the International Crisis Summit-5 conference, McKernan pointed out that Moderna’s patent application for its COVID-19 mRNA vaccine acknowledged the risks of insertional mutagenesis.

The same patent application states that DNA contamination can cause cancer:

“The DNA template used in the mRNA manufacturing process must be removed to ensure the efficacy of therapeutics and safety, because residual DNA in drug products may induce activation of the innate response and has the potential to be oncogenic in patient populations.”

McKernan asserted in his International Crisis Summit presentation that “We are always cancering.” He proposed the following “3 hit hypothesis” on the negative health impacts of mRNA vaccines:

1. Increased mutagenesis with dsDNA [double-stranded DNA] plasmid contamination.

2. The effects of N1-methyl-pseudouridine used to stabilize the RNA, causing lymphocytopenia, neutropenia, IgG4-related diseases, etc.

3. The inhibition of the “guardians of the genome,” the P53 and BRCA1 tumor-suppressing genes.

DNA contamination regulations ‘entirely unfit for purpose’

McKernan stressed that current regulations governing the allowable limit of DNA contamination in vaccines are “entirely unfit for purpose.”

“The public must know that the DNA contamination guidelines assumed a 5-10 minute half-life of naked DNA in the blood,” he said. “Once this DNA is protected by lipid nanoparticles, it is no longer naked and does not degrade but instead transfects your cells.”

According to McKernan, mammalian-based DNA fragments are part of a “highly replicative gene therapy vector designed to make more of itself” and therefore can self-amplify indefinitely once transfected.

“What good is a 10 ng limit if Pharma can sneak an amplifiable DNA molecule through that regulation?” he asked.

Regulators established the 10 ng/dose DNA contamination allowance in 1998.

“10 ng is an extra-cellular consideration,” said Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., senior research scientist for Children’s Health Defense. “If you were to ask how much foreign DNA should be allowed within the nucleus, the answer is zero,” he told The Defender.

Speicher added that regulators ignore fragments under 200 base pairs long because these would not likely be problematic if the DNA remained outside our cells.

For perspective, with the DNA in the entire human genome averaging 6.41 pc (picograms), Jablonowski noted that “10 ng of DNA is our entire genome 1,560 times over.”

‘How reckless can they be with the human genome?’

Despite possible limitations, European regulators approved the qPCR method for checking whether Comirnaty meets the required DNA contamination limits of 10 ng/dose.

According to König and Kirchner, apart from the manufacturer’s qPCR tests on the active ingredient, “no further experimental DNA quantification is carried out for the vaccine.”

Regulators contend that testing the final product isn’t feasible, citing potential interference of the lipid nanoparticles encapsulating the mRNA.

However, the researchers pointed out that manufacturers can accurately quantify the mRNA in those same nanoparticles. They criticized regulators for relying on manufacturers’ limited qPCR data and not mandating direct quantification of total DNA in the final Comirnaty product.

After other scientists replicated McKernan’s work, regulatory agencies like the FDA, EMA and Health Canada were compelled to acknowledge the presence of SV40 in the Pfizer vaccines.

However, according to McKernan, these agencies have maintained that the DNA fragments are too small in length and quantity to be functional and have taken no steps to further regulate or withdraw the vaccines from the market.

McKernan also pointed out that before the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 (NCVIA), the DNA contamination limit was 1,000-fold lower than the current 10 ng limit.

This loosening of regulations, together with the NCVIA’s liability shield and technology advancements, has made DNA sequencing technology “100,000 times cheaper,” he said, allowing vaccine companies to add “transfection reagents [like LNPs] to ensure this DNA gets into your cells, can self-amplify and tinker with cell circuitry.”

McKernan said:

“Why is the FDA not sequencing these vaccines? What excuse do they have to not know the precise sequence and frequency of every molecule of DNA and RNA in a vaccine they plan to inject into billions of people? How reckless can they be with the human genome?”

Despite apparent agency inaction, a recent Freedom of Information Act request by a Canadian citizen revealed “alarming activity behind the scenes,” according to McKernan.

“The regulators are telling the public not to worry about the contamination but scrambling internally to have this DNA removed,” he said.

[…[

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/dna-contamination-pfizer-covid-vaccine-exceeded-500-times-allowable-levels/?utm_id=20240516

Story at a glance:

• Agricultural diversification may be the age-old “secret” to not only increase crop yields and improve food security but also protect the planet.
• Diversified agriculture had “win-win outcomes” for both society and the environment, according to data from 24 studies in 11 countries, spanning 2,655 farms.
• On farms using diversification strategies, social benefits, including human well-being, crop yields and food security, were noted, along with environmental gains, including improved biodiversity.
• The study revealed that livestock integration increases the amount of food the farm produces, reduces damage to soil and decreases environmental pollution.
• The benefits were greatest when multiple diversification strategies were used at once, and applied to all different types of farms.

Industrialized farming is characterized by monoculture, or growing one type of crop over a large area, season after season.

While said to be efficient and profitable, this oversimplification of farming systems comes with significant drawbacks that put human health and the environment at risk.

Diversification, on the other hand, may be the age-old “secret” to not only increase crop yields and improve food security but also protect the planet.

“If you look at how ecosystems operate, it’s not just plants growing alone. It’s not just animals or soil. It’s all of these things working together,” Zia Mehrabi, assistant professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, said in a news release.

Mehrabi and colleagues conducted a study showing that diversified agriculture had “win-win outcomes” for both society and the environment.

To put it simply, “Drop monoculture and industrial thinking and diversify the way you farm — it pays off,” said Laura Vang Rasmussen of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, the study’s lead author.

Landmark study reveals major benefits of diversified agriculture

Using data from 24 studies in 11 countries, spanning 2,655 farms, the scientists revealed that five diversification strategies led to positive outcomes for people and the planet.

This includes:

• Livestock inclusion and diversification.
• Crop diversification, including crop rotation and cover crops.
• Soil conservation and fertility management, such as compost application.
• Noncrop plantings, including hedgerows.
• Water conservation, such as contour farming.

Contour farming, for instance, is an agricultural technique where crops are planted following the natural contours of the landscape rather than in straight lines.

This method is particularly useful on sloped land, as it helps reduce soil erosion by slowing runoff water and allowing it to soak into the ground rather than washing soil away.

By planting along the contours, farmers can create natural barriers that trap water and reduce the velocity of water moving across the surface.

Hedgerows, meanwhile, are lines of densely planted shrubs or trees that are commonly used as boundaries between different sections of land.

They’ve been used for centuries in agriculture, particularly in Europe, to mark property lines, contain livestock and provide windbreaks to protect crops.

In addition to improving biodiversity in agricultural landscapes by providing a variety of plant species and supporting different types of wildlife, hedgerows help to reduce agricultural runoff, filter pollutants and improve water quality in nearby streams and rivers.

Use of multiple diversification strategies led to the greatest benefits

On farms using diversification strategies, social benefits, including human well-being, crop yields and food security, were noted, along with environmental gains, including improved biodiversity.

The benefits were greatest when multiple diversification strategies were used at once, and applied to all different types of farms.

“The group discovered that farmers and ranchers can achieve many more benefits if they employ several agricultural solutions in tandem, rather than just one at a time,” the University of Colorado reported.

“For Mehrabi, the study reveals a new vision for food around the globe — one in which farms and pastures work less like factories for churning out calories and more like healthy natural ecosystems.”

What’s more, the study spanned agricultural operations across the globe, from small farms in rural Africa to plantation crops in Southeast Asia and large-scale farms in North America and Europe.

“The crazy thing is that the positive effect of adding multiple diversification practices is true across wildly different contexts,” Mehrabi said. “It works on industrial farms in the U.S. and in small-scale maize farms in Malawi.”

Half of the farms in the study, for instance, used some form of livestock integration, in which animals and crops are raised together within the same farming operation.

Benefits include nutrient recycling, as animal waste provides a rich source of organic fertilizer for the crops, enhancing soil fertility without the need for chemical fertilizers.

Livestock integration also provides a natural form of weed and pest control. Sheep and goats, for instance, can graze on weeds, and the grazing has an added benefit of improving soil structure and aeration.

The study revealed that livestock integration increases the amount of food the farm produces, reduces damage to soil and decreases environmental pollution.

As the University of Colorado noted:

“In many cases, Mehrabi said, more diverse farms can deliver extra benefits because they can better weather natural disasters like droughts or heat waves. In other cases, the positives are more subtle.

“If small-scale farmers grow fruit trees amid their crops, for example, they can eat those bananas or papayas themselves while selling the rest of the harvest.”

Green Revolution ushered in industrialized agriculture with negative effects

The Green Revolution that occurred between the 1940s and 1960s is heralded by increasing agricultural production worldwide.

However, it was instrumental in the implementation of industrialized agriculture, including genetic engineering, monocrops and increased use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.

Soil degradation, reduced soil fertility, pollution from chemical inputs and increased water use are all part of the Green Revolution’s legacy.

According to the featured study:

“Historically, the architects of the Green Revolution were primarily concerned with breeding crops and developing agronomic inputs to increase staple crop yields and respond to food security needs.

“However, the focus of their policies on simplifying agricultural systems came with unintended large and negative environmental impacts such as pollution, as well as social side effects such as farmer indebtedness, reduction of peoples’ dietary diversity, and reduced resilience.

“This has led to widespread calls for a change in agricultural development policy that addresses the negative side effects directly through the action of biologically diversified farming systems.”

The Corbett Report further explained why the so-called “Green” Revolution served to make oligarchs richer while threatening farmers and the environment:

“It was John D. Rockefeller III who, when sitting on the Board of Trustees of the Ford Foundation, convinced his fellow oligarchs to join the ‘Green Revolution’ by founding the Intensive Agriculture District Programme in India, which exacerbated the disparity between rich feudal landowners and poor farming peasants.

“And then of course there’s the Rockefeller’s work in Africa, which today takes the form of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa [AGRA]. AGRA’s stated goal is to ‘elevate the single African voice’ on the world stage.

“It all sounds nice and fuzzy until you learn that 200 organizations have come together to denounce the alliance and its activities. They claim that the group has not only ‘unequivocally failed in its mission’ but has actually ‘harmed broader efforts to support African farmers.’”

AGRA, an organization funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, was launched in 2006 with funding from the Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation.

It’s essentially a Gates Foundation subsidiary and most of its goals are centered on promoting biotechnology and chemical fertilizers.

After more than a decade, AGRA’s influence has significantly worsened the situation in the 18 African nations targeted by this “philanthropic” endeavor.

Hunger under AGRA’s direction increased by 30% and rural poverty rose dramatically.

During our interview, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. noted:

“He [Gates] got African countries to switch from traditional agriculture … to GMO [genetically modified organism] monocultures, with this idea that this is part of globalization that will bring big corporations in who will buy your products, give you cash and lift everybody’s standard of living up. That was the promise. But exactly the opposite happened. …

“It’s been an absolute calamity for the people of Africa. I think there’s 30 million additional people who have become food insecure as a direct result of Gates’ Green Revolution, but Gates and his companies have made a killing …

“In each philanthropical effort he makes, there’s always, at the end of it, some moneymaking scheme for Gates and his foundation.”

Living in concert with nature makes biodiversity thrive

Diversified agriculture depends on living in concert with nature and creating thriving, self-sustaining ecosystems.

Some farmers have also learned how to harness the natural environmental benefits of wildlife around them — even beavers, which are often mistakenly viewed as pests.

Centuries ago, about 200 million beavers maintained a “lush Eden of interlocking streams, creeks, ponds, lakes and rivers,” according to author Roberta Staley in Modern Farmer.

But as their animal pelts became prized for trading, their numbers dwindled — and so did their priceless gift to the environment.

Staley relates the story of Jon Griggs, manager of Maggie Creek Ranch in Elko, Nevada. The 200,000-acre ranch’s streams dried up after beavers were removed from the property for felling trees and blocking irrigation ditches.

Then, Griggs partnered with the Bureau of Land Management and beavers were reintroduced, restoring balance to the ecosystem not only on the ranch but on surrounding public lands.

Staley reported:

“First, cattle’s access to creek beds during the spring and summer growing periods was restricted, allowing brush and grasses to regrow.

“As a result, creeks began widening, cooling and deepening. Willows took root, creating an ecosystem that could support beavers, which consume such woody species.

“Griggs watched as a new generation of Castor canadensis began to re-engineer the landscape by building dams, creating pools of water that preserved the snow melt and the dozen or so inches of annual rainfall.

“The moisture created green oases half a mile wide that emanated from the creeks. Grazing expanded. Cattle had more and better-quality drinking water. Trout flourished. The creeks flowed year-round.”

Staley also interviewed the owner of a 10,000-acre ranch that includes a national forest in Idaho. The area’s main source of water — Birch Creek — dried up but was restored when beavers were released.

Not only did the beavers restore a crucial water source for the ranch’s cattle, but they also led to an increase in other wildlife, including reptiles, waterfowl, insects and mammals.

It’s another powerful lesson on how embracing nature can solve many of the environmental challenges that modern-day farming created.

Overcoming barriers to diverse agriculture

The Science study acknowledged that financial and other barriers exist for many farmers interested in switching to more diverse agricultural practices.

Government subsidies exist, but they’re overwhelmingly geared toward support of industrialized programs at the expense of biodiversity and small farmers alike.

The University of Colorado explained:

“Governments already spend huge sums to buffer the agricultural industry. Some nations, for example, subsidize farmers so that they can grow water-intensive crops in areas that don’t get a lot of rain. That money might be better spent, Mehrabi said, in helping farmers diversify.”

[…]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/diversified-farming-benefits-people-environment-natural-ecosystems-cola/