We are trying to establish totally independent fundraising initiatives outside Syria but we are being hit by sanctions (of course). The following article demonstrates this – link to the article here:
Via https://beeley.substack.com/p/who-to-dontate-to-for-syrian-humanitarian/
Crippling sanctions prevent the arrival of international rescue aircraft to Syrian airports.
I speak with Kevork Almassian of Syriana Analysis about the inhumanity of Western regimes who are politicizing their response to the earthquake victims in Syrian territory under the protection of the Syrian government:
Posted BY: Paul Joseph Watson | NwoReport
China has demanded that the United States “explain itself to the world” if the revelations in Seymour Hersh’s story about US intel being responsible for destroying the Nord Stream gas pipelines are true. The Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist published an article this week in which he asserted that the pipelines were destroyed by the US as part of a covert operation.
According to Hersh’s sources, the explosives were planted in June 2022 by US Navy divers under the guise of the BALTOPS 22 NATO exercise and were detonated three months later with a remote signal sent by a sonar buoy.
One source told Hersh that the plotters knew the covert operation was an “act of war,” with some in the CIA and State Department warning, “Don’t do this. It’s stupid and will be a political nightmare if it comes out.”Now Beijing is demanding that the White House address the issue, seemingly unimpressed with the Biden administration’s rather weak response to merely label the story “false”.Earlier today, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning asserted that Washington would have to bear responsibility if the report is confirmed as accurate.
“If the conclusions of the investigation are true, then the US behavior is unacceptable,” the diplomat told reporters, adding that the US would need to “explain itself to the world community.
The Kremlin also responded to the report by demanding a fresh international investigation into the attack, which was preceded by both Joe Biden and Victoria Nuland asserting that the pipelines would be taken out if Russia invaded Ukraine.
Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said Hersh’s article showed “the need for an open international investigation into this unprecedented attack on this critical infrastructure.”
It’s a very important piece, which… must provoke the acceleration of the international probe. But we, on the contrary, witness attempts to silently wind down such international investigation,” he added.
Meanwhile, in Germany, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is also calling for a full inquiry. “The Pulitzer Prize winner’s suspicions must be investigated,” wrote co-chairman of the AfD parliamentary group, Tino Chrupalla.
“Has NATO’s leading power carried out an attack on our country’s vital critical infrastructure in European waters? Then one would have to question whether the alliance guarantees security in Europe or rather endangers it. The consequence would be the withdrawal of all U.S. troops.”
Aletho News
Republicans in Congress have introduced a resolution seeking to halt US aid to Ukraine, citing the massive cost to taxpayers, the risk of escalation with Moscow, and the toll on America’s own arsenal after some $30 billion in arms transfers.
Led by Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, 11 Republicans put forward the “Ukraine Fatigue Resolution” on Thursday, which states that Washington “must end its military and financial aid to Ukraine” while urging “all combatants to reach a peace agreement.”
“President Joe Biden must have forgotten his prediction from March 2022, suggesting that arming Ukraine with military equipment will escalate the conflict to ‘World War III,’” Gaetz said in a press release announcing the resolution. “We must suspend all foreign aid for the war in Ukraine and demand that all combatants in this conflict reach a peace agreement immediately.”
Arguing that the United States is in a period of “managed decline,” Gaetz said the problems will only get worse if the government continues to “hemorrhage taxpayer dollars” in a foreign conflict.
The resolution includes a list outlining the staggering American military largesse for Ukrainian forces since last year, stating that “munitions donated to Ukraine have severely depleted United States stockpiles, weakening United States readiness in the event of conflict.” It went on to cite a recent report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies which found that, at the current rate of production, it will take more than 12 years to replenish the US stock of Javelin missiles, underscoring the strain on American arsenals.
Moreover, the lawmakers argued military support to Kiev was “inadvertently contributing to civilian casualties” on all sides, echoing previous comments from Gaetz, who has said the weapons would only “prolong the killing.”
Long a vocal critic of US aid to Ukraine, Gaetz’s resolution was joined by 10 Republican co-sponsors, among them Reps. Thomas Massie, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Andy Biggs, Paul Gosar, Anna Paulina Luna, Mary Miller, Barry Moore, Ralph Norman and Matt Rosendale.
Though a growing number of House Republicans are increasingly wary of the aid – among them House Speaker Kevin McCarthy – senior lawmakers in the Senate have been more supportive. In December, Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell declared that “providing assistance for Ukrainians to defeat the Russians is the number one priority for the United States right now,” claiming that view was broadly shared among the GOP.
Via https://alethonews.com/2023/02/10/republicans-push-to-end-ukraine-aid/
Episode 2 The First Migrations to the Americas
Ancient Civilizations of North America
Dr Edwin Barnhart (2018)
Film Review
According to Barnhart, most DNA (both Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA) evidence indicates that ancient humans migrated from Siberia across a Bering Strait land bridge (when sea levels were lower) as they pursued mega fauna (eg mammoths and mastodons) driven by drought and population pressure. Thus far, all DNA studies are positive for specific haplogroups that are are only found in North America and parts of Asia.
There is no evidence that either Neanderthals or homo erectus species migrated to North America.
Archeologists believes the first wave of human beings most likely crossed the Bering Strait into Alaska 30,000 years ago, migrating as far south as Texas and northern Mexico. The second wave, which arrived 16,500 years ago, migrated as far south as South America. The third arrived around 10,000 years ago.
Most prehistoric North Americans left behind artifacts (tools and plant and animal remains) without any skeletal remains. Exceptions include human remains dating from 16,000 BP (before present) in South Carolina, Virginia and Pennsylvania, from 13,000 BP near Santa Rosa California and 11,000 years BP in Texas. Human coproliths (fossilized feces) have ben discovered in Oregon dating from 14,300 .
In Buttermillk Creek, the oldest Texas site, archeologists have discovered 16,000 tools and other human artifacts dating from 15,500 BP.
Butchered mammoth remains have been discovered from 18,000 BP in La Sena, Nebraska and from 21,000 – 18,000 BP in Lawrence Kansas.
Barnhart speaks briefly about the Solutrean hypothesis that East coast indigenous humans traveled by boat from Europe between 21,000 – 17,000. This hypothesis relates to the discovery of Solutrean blades (in the absence of human remains) in both Europe and the eastern US.
Human migrants reached Japan around 30,000 BP and Australia around 50,000 BP.
Film can be viewed free on Kanopy.
https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/5713021/5712740
Photo credit: House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
In the first of what is expected to be multiple hearings on the Biden administration’s response to COVID-19, Republicans on Wednesday peppered top U.S. health officials with questions about masking and social distancing, vaccine mandates, vaccine safety and the National Institutes of Health funding of gain-of-function research.
Republican lawmakers indicated this will be the first of many hearings into the administration’s handling of the pandemic. A separate committee will investigate questions around the potentially fraudulent mishandling of $5 trillion in COVID-19 relief funds.
“President Biden’s public health leaders are here today because they have broken the American people’s trust,” Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) said in her opening remarks.
“My message today to all the administration public health officials is that this is going to be a long road. Trust is broken a lot faster than it is built. And many will say that the American people deserve an apology, but they deserve much more,” she added.
Chair @cathymcmorris to @CDCDirector, @FDACommissioner, and @NIHDirector:
“My message today to all of the administration’s public health officials is this is going to be a long road. Many will say that the American people deserve an apology but they deserve much more.” pic.twitter.com/6IpMC1EScR
— Energy and Commerce Committee (@HouseCommerce) February 8, 2023
Dr. Lawrence Tabak, acting director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH); Dr. Robert Califf, commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA); and Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) responded to four hours of questioning.
Committee Republicans pressed the officials on their failed oversight of gain-of-function research, challenged the agencies’ rationale for vaccine mandates, mask mandates and school closures, and interrogated them on their role in suppressing information on social media, all of which they said have caused a loss of faith in public institutions during the pandemic.
Committee Democrats largely praised the officials.
[…]
Republicans are pursuing investigations into the virus’ origins.
Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chair Griffith (R-Va.), Health Subcommittee Chair Guthrie (R-Ky.), and Reps. Burgess (R-Texas), Carter (R-Texas), Duncan (R-S.C.), McMoriss Rogers and Lesko (R-Ariz.) raised questions about the NIH’s lack of oversight into funding for EcoHealth Alliance, an NIH grant recipient that funded research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where the virus may have originated.
Late last month, an internal federal watchdog agency found the NIH had made significant errors in its oversight of EcoHealth Alliance grants. The Office of Inspector General (OIG) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released a report outlining missed deadlines, confusing protocols and misspent funds — raising and reinforcing concerns about the government’s system for monitoring research on potentially risky pathogens.
Republican committee members made several requests to the NIH for documents relating to EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan lab. The requests were ignored until the night before the hearing.
Griffith accused Tabak of stonewalling the committee and pressed him on why, after EcoHealth Alliance failed to comply with NIH documentation requirements, the NIH continued to fund it.
Carter asked whether NIH was funding, or had ever funded, gain-of-function research, which is banned from funding by HHS.
Tabak said they had brought EcoHealth Alliance into compliance and that the NIH did not now, and had never, funded the type of gain-of-function research people were concerned with, except for once, in the Netherlands in research on influenza.
But Republican committee members were not convinced. Lesko asked Tabak how he could be certain the NIH wasn’t funding gain-of-function research given that they didn’t have the reports from their subgrantees, as indicated in the OIG report.
🚨🚨 The NIH Director claims the NIH do NOT fund COVID-19 gain-of-function research. How do they know if they don’t have the full report?
WATCH my remarks in the @HouseCommerce: pic.twitter.com/BCDcQFYaRZ
— Congresswoman Debbie Lesko (@RepDLesko) February 8, 2023
Duncan directed Tabak to check with his staff and amend his definitive responses on gain-of-function research.
Several Republicans on the committee who are medical professionals said they were frustrated with federal officials over their use of faulty science for determining mitigation strategies like masking, vaccine mandates and school closures, which they said led to loss of public trust in their institutions.
“It’s demoralizing, and it is depressing that agencies that were once held in such esteem cannot translate and transfer research and evidence and respond to real-world evidence when they come up with strategies and policies,” said Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa), a physician.
“It’s not just a messaging problem, it was a problem of bias within the agencies,” Miller-Meeks said.
As the only committee member to comment on vaccine injury, Miller-Meeks also expressed frustration with “the failure of the CDC to acknowledge myocarditis, pericarditis and young people and still advocate for vaccines in young men.”
Miller-Meeks said:
“Despite that risk, which we talked about finally last year, there’s a risk-benefit that has to be considered, but was not considered in these mandates — menstrual irregularities and young women …
“The failure of the FDA to utilize their own advisory boards when approving vaccines in certain age groups and rushing approval in these age groups, and then their slowness to advance any therapeutics.
“And what evidence can you tell me, what evidence-based research that shows 6-ft. distancing is appropriate?”
Walensky on multiple occasions throughout the hearing emphasized the evidence-based nature of all CDC recommendations and said the CDC will continue to support vaccination.
She also said the CDC will continue masking when “community levels” of COVID-19 are high, despite the recent Cochrane review that found little-to-no evidence for the effectiveness of masking to prevent COVID-19 transmission. She disagreed with the review’s findings.
[…]
Many people were alarmed last month when it was revealed that the CDC had established codes for tracking COVID-19 vaccination status, particularly given the restrictions placed on, and stigma associated with, being unvaccinated, despite widespread concerns about the safety and effectiveness of the vaccines.
Reps. Harshbarger (R-Tenn.) and Cammack (R-Fla.) asked officials about the agencies’ role in defining “misinformation” and collaborating with other officials or with Twitter to discredit dissent.
Walensky and Tabak both said they couldn’t comment because of ongoing litigation.
The hearing is expected to be the first of many on the pandemic response and the origins of COVID-19. A separate committee plans to investigate how “hundreds of billions of dollars” in COVID-19 relief funds were lost to fraud during both the Trump and Biden administrations, NBC News reported.
Watch here:
Steve Templeton
Brownstone Institute
Other than a few dead-end doom addicts on social media, most people agree that the COVID-19 pandemic is over. SARS-CoV-2 has entered a stage of endemicity, similar to that of common cold coronaviruses, where there will be sporadic, seasonal outbreaks of cold and flu-like illness as immunity wanes in recovered and vaccinated individuals.
The pandemic was a worldwide disaster, claiming the lives of millions of people. It wasn’t a war against an enemy, as the virus didn’t surrender or sign any peace agreements. SARS-CoV-2 was contained by population immunity, just as similar pandemic viruses have been in the past.
The origin of the virus is still in dispute. Some virologists have tried to shut down any debate while pushing a zoonotic origin as the only possibility. However, a lab leak is no longer a wild theory, it’s a plausible explanation based on evidence from a variety of independent sources.
Yet there was another parallel disaster that was certainly man-made, and that was the US pandemic response. Panicked health officials and politicians failed to implement measures that would protect those most vulnerable to severe COVID-19, including elderly in assisted living facilities, which comprised one-third of all COVID deaths. Instead, leaders insisted on harmful and unfocused measures such as shutdowns, school closures, and universal masking, with little evidence of their benefit.
Attention to other medical issues, such as cancer screenings and diagnosis and treatment of other diseases, as well as childhood vaccinations, all disappeared in a wave of COVID monomania. The consequences of this ill-advised singular focus will be with us for many years. It is of paramount importance that the mistakes that led to this man-made disaster are not repeated.
The governments of European countries have begun to conduct public inquiries into their COVID responses, including Norway, Sweden, The Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Denmark. It is past time for the United States to join this list, and critical given the worldwide influence of the CDC, FDA, and NIH/NIAID.
Members of the US Congress are conducting such an inquiry, and their efforts require the help of physicians, scientists and public health policy experts to identify key policy decisions and provide a rationale for investigating those policies and the officials and government agencies that devised and implemented them, with the ultimate goal of meaningful reform.
With help from Brownstone Institute, the Norfolk Group was organized in May, 2022, with the goal of providing a blueprint containing key questions for a congressional inquiry into the public health aspects of the US response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The group consists of eight scientists, physicians and policy experts, and seven of us met in person in Norfolk, Connecticut over Memorial Day weekend. All eight members continued to meet virtually over the summer, fall, and winter as the document was written and continuously revised.
Because the group was comprised of individuals from diverse backgrounds, without oversight from any public or private institutions (including Brownstone), we chose to name ourselves The Norfolk Group, and publish our document independently on the website www.NorfolkGroup.org.
The eight members of the Norfolk Group are:
The document provides questions and supporting information regarding ten areas of the US pandemic response, including:
In preparing this document, we did not conduct any interviews or unearth any previously unseen documents. All the information contained in the document was and is publicly available, and we have provided links to each source throughout.
We have detailed evidence that was available at each time point during the pandemic, and have documented instances where the US health agencies, officials, and politicians ignored or suppressed discussion of that evidence. We ask questions that attempt to discover why key individuals failed to consider all aspects of public health instead of engaging in a damaging singular focus on community-wide suppression of an age-stratified and comorbidity-amplified infectious disease. Why was the uncertainty of evidence supporting the effectiveness of mitigation measures not acknowledged? How was pressure from pharmaceutical companies, teachers’ unions, and other special interests related to the abandonment of evidence-based policies? These questions broadly apply to all of the ten areas covered in our document, and together with specific questions and supporting data, resulted in eighty pages. This was no small effort, and I’m proud to have been a part of it.
Our document focuses solely on the public health-related aspects of the US pandemic response. Although the origin of SARS-CoV-2 may be in dispute, our document does not ask questions related to this active area of investigation. Separate committees have been and will be organized to address that issue. We have also avoided the topics of economic mismanagement and the role of media in creating or exacerbating pandemic response crises. A media-focused document was released in July, 2022, and an economics-related document was released in December.
Critics will no doubt reflexively label our document as a partisan effort funded with a secret pile of Koch money. Other than the initial efforts of Brownstone Institute to bring us together, there was no outside influence. Our website is self-funded. Understandably, many of our questions and supporting evidence could and likely will be used for partisan purposes, as one party will lead any COVID-19 response commission while the other may be reluctant to cooperate. It is our hope that despite this messy and partisan process, the truth will emerge, individuals will be held accountable, and an opportunity will emerge for serious reform of dysfunctional government agencies.
An inquiry into the US COVID-19 pandemic response cannot be avoided, and we are trailing other countries in efforts to identify mistakes, demand accountability, and propose solutions. It might be an ugly process, but it is a necessary one. We hope our document will move US leaders and policymakers toward the goal of ensuring that the mistakes of our pandemic response are never repeated.
[…]
Via https://brownstone.org/articles/questions-for-a-congressional-inquiry/
Greg Piper
Just the News
“Systemic immunity” through intramuscular injection has never worked for respiratory viruses, ex-NIAID chief admits after stepping down, promoting “mucosal immunization” long advocated by critics.
Anthony Fauci knows why COVID-19 vaccines have been so unreliable at halting infection and transmission beyond a few months. He waited until he stepped down as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to publicly explain it.
Elsevier’s medical journal Cell Host and Microbe published a “perspective” led by Fauci’s office last month that shows NIAID had good reason to believe COVID vaccines would fail even before they were authorized, based on research spanning Fauci’s 38-year tenure leading NIAID.
U.S.-authorized COVID vaccines, overwhelmingly built on the novel mRNA platform, were designed to provide systemic rather than mucosal immunity, administered in arms rather than noses.
Critics of U.S. policy, including law professor Todd Zywicki, who secured a vaccine mandate exemption after suing George Mason University, have long emphasized that mucosal immunity — naturally prompted by infection — is the key to broad protection against COVID.
“I still run into people — even law professors who publish articles on Covid vaccines — who still know nothing about mucosal immunity,” Zywicki wrote in sharing a November study in The Lancet that found natural infection far more protective against reinfection than Pfizer or Moderna vaccines.
The researchers speculated that “different roles of mucosal immunity” might explain the widening gap in protection after the second vaccine dose, given that vaccination “induces systemic immunity that might not be retained in the upper respiratory tracts.”
About a third of respondents had never heard of mucosal immunity in Zywicki’s Twitter poll in January.
The law professor shared his research-packed presentation on natural immunity versus vaccination, which covers mucosal immunity. Zywicki also filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of an Air Force service member challenging the military’s COVID vaccine mandates. Navy service members’ legal challenge to the COVID vaccine mandate cites similar mucosal-immunity research.
The NIAID paper affirms the importance of mucosal immunity while laying out the historic challenges to developing such vaccines and suggestions for next-generation vaccines.
If written by anyone other than federal public health officials, the paper could credibly trigger “misinformation” interventions by Big Tech, though Twitter actually did throttle a CDC-authored paper on plunging vaccine efficacy.
SARS-CoV-2 is among viruses that “replicate in the human respiratory mucosa without infecting systemically, along with influenza A, RSV and common colds, and “have not to date been effectively controlled by licensed or experimental vaccines.”
The paper is especially hard on flu vaccines, which have a “decidedly suboptimal” track record and the best of which “would be inadequate for licensure for most other vaccine-preventable diseases,” they wrote. COVID vaccines are developing the same “deficiencies” as variants evolve around them.
“It is increasingly accepted that route of vaccine administration (e.g., intramuscular, intranasal, conjunctival, or aerosol routes) is a key determinant of mucosal respiratory response,” the authors wrote. “In general, and when feasible, mucosal immunization seems the optimal approach for respiratory viruses.”
Fauci’s belated admission on mucosal immunity spurred indignation on Twitter. “After 3 years he just announces this obvious point?” GMU’s Zywicki wrote.
“Fauci facing the music on Intramuscular [sic] injections don’t provide mucosal immunity,” wrote genomics researcher Kevin McKernan, a repeat target of Twitter sanctions.
“Wherein Fauci explains that a vaccine for Covid could never work to stop infection, spread, or end the pandemic” or even pass “normal trials,” wrote Jeffrey Tucker, whose Brownstone Institute challenges the scientific basis for mainstream COVID narratives.
Fauci was less bearish on the mRNA vaccine platform when asked point blank by WebMD in an interview last week. He said it was “still uncertain” whether the problem is the platform itself or that “the response against coronaviruses [is] not a durable response,” floating the possibility of a nasal vaccine “in addition to a systemic vaccine.”
COVID vaccines funder Bill Gates floated a similar option in a talk at Australia’s Lowy Institute last month that built on his earlier criticism of the vaccines’ shortcomings.
He called for “an inhaled blocker” that stops infection early in a pandemic, and predicted that within a decade “we will have a toolset for respiratory pandemics that will be excellent.” For now, his foundation is “sitting on millions of doses” of Pfizer’s oral antiviral Paxlovid that can’t be deployed because it only works in early intervention.
COVID vaccines funder Bill Gates floated a similar option in a talk at Australia’s Lowy Institute last month that built on his earlier criticism of the vaccines’ shortcomings.
He called for “an inhaled blocker” that stops infection early in a pandemic, and predicted that within a decade “we will have a toolset for respiratory pandemics that will be excellent.” For now, his foundation is “sitting on millions of doses” of Pfizer’s oral antiviral Paxlovid that can’t be deployed because it only works in early intervention.
House of Lords
The Lords has defeated the government a total of six times during the Public Order Report Stage. We voted:
· to introduce protections for journalists, legal observers and others monitoring protests from the police’s use of powers related to protests.
· to remove expansion of suspicion less stop and search
The Lords rarely has the chance to delete laws completely, but because this government is so chaotic they introduced late amendments, it means that peers have the final say. To overrule us, the government has to bring an entirely new Bill. These two draconian laws were rejected.
· government amendments that would have removed the reasonable excuse (a topical debate or issue) defence from the offences of wilful obstruction of the highway and public nuisance.
· government amendments that would have given police powers to pre-emptively restrict protests, such as blocking roads and slow marching, or where individual protests were seen as linked (pre-crime).
Last week, the Lords voted to:
· raise the threshold before police can intervene in protests. So, it means a stricter definition of “serious disruption” will be required to prevent protests
· allow defendants to use “an issue of current debate” as a reasonable defence in court when charged with offences such as locking-on, tunnelling and blocking roads
. removed a clause allowing a magistrates court to issue a serious disruption order in cases other than as part of a conviction.
The Public Order Bill remains a horrendous piece of legislation and the government will seek to overturn the Lords’ amendments where it can. However, it shows the importance of a second chamber and the need for a new democratically elected body that has a stronger say in reviewing and revising laws.
Via https://jennyjones.org/2023/02/09/lords-success-on-right-to-protest/
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Chicago Tribune
China has abandoned its zero-COVID-19 campaign, and with the loosening of social restrictions, the country has shifted its focus from preventing COVID-19 infections to managing them. As part of that program, Li Guangxi, with China’s State Council Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism, gave an interview last month encouraging people to take Chinese medicine for severe COVID-19, specifically ginger and Chinese ginseng, “the best ginseng in the world.”
Are ginger and Chinese ginseng effective in fighting COVID-19? Who knows? There must be some studies out there somewhere. But that brief interview touting unproven medicines was startling. Think about what may have happened if an American scientist or official had given the same advice publicly. Hearing those recommendations, our medical influencers might have gone nuclear. A high public official in totalitarian China basically said things that conceivably could get a U.S. speaker censored or canceled by the American scientific establishment.
That’s not such a stretch considering the case of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. Bhattacharya, a tenured Stanford University professor, was one of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, a proposal to protect high-risk populations rather than impose strict lockdowns during COVID-19. One of its points was keeping schools open during the pandemic.
Thanks to Twitter CEO Elon Musk’s release of internal communications from the previous regime overseeing the social media platform, we learned that Twitter secretly censored and shadow-banned Bhattacharya. (Shadow-banning is an internal mechanism that makes it hard to read what someone posts on Twitter.)
Upon learning of what Twitter had done, Bhattacharya tweeted, “The thought that will keep me up tonight: censorship of scientific discussion permitted policies like school closures & a generation of children were hurt.”
Like the efficacy of ginger and Chinese ginseng, the Great Barrington Declaration approach can be called into question — some parts may have been right; others may have been wrong. But the fallout from the dissent was clear. While he did not lose his tenure at Stanford, Bhattacharya was vilified and shunned by colleagues and many in the Stanford community. He received virtually no support from the Stanford administration.
It is discouraging to witness the extreme tactics the medical community has used to keep its members in line during the pandemic. Public intimidation, harassment, personal attacks, retraction of scientific papers after publication and career sabotage have been carried out with an eye toward bringing any dissenters in line, making sure they self-censor and refrain from expressing their views on controversial subjects such as the origin of COVID-19. Reader beware: It’s as much what you don’t read as what you do.
The medical community can enforce dogma internally, but rigorous censorship of dissenting scientific views can be effective only with the assistance of other powerful actors. As the Twitter experience demonstrated, the role of tech companies, especially Facebook and Google, cannot be discounted. Their reliance on internal fact-checkers and confidential editorial policies are often used as a means of controlling public discourse, and they have shown they favor a particular political vantage point.
Big Pharma has interests worth billions of dollars in the COVID-19 discussion, including vaccine development, emergency use authorization of drugs and future drug development. Questions that might adversely affect the financial interests of the pharmaceutical industry concerning any of these subjects are not especially welcome — but are necessary.
The real force multiplier for censorship of science is the government. The government must align closely with respected scientists and protect the public, but there is a fine line between that and reinforcing rigid scientific orthodoxy. By withholding National Institutes of Health grants, which some universities require a candidate to have before receiving tenure, the government can chill scientific opinions from academia it doesn’t like.
Critics will point out that scientists must be vigilant against frauds and hucksters. True enough — there will always be charlatans and flimflammery ready to exploit the public. There will also be crackpots who deliberately disseminate false information along with the well-intentioned who unknowingly spout untruths. The best remedy is not to shut those opinions down, but to explain to the public clearly and consistently why they are wrong.
COVID-19 is a lesson in how censoring opinion and suppressing debate stifles the approach to difficult scientific issues and creates mistrust in scientists and public health officials. In any scientific issue, impartial and open discussion is eminently preferable to “trust the consensus.”
To make informed decisions, the public must have access to many voices.
Dr. Cory Franklin is a retired intensive care physician.
