A Democratic politician has received massive backlash after she called the scientifically attested belief that children suffer less abuse in nuclear families “dangerous and un-American.”
“Extremist group Family Heritage Alliance said this morning that the safest place for kids are in families that have a married mom and dad. What a dangerous and un-American belief,” tweeted State Representative Erin Healy (D) on Monday.
She had apparently been triggered by testimony offered on behalf of the natural family by the South Dakota family policy council. “In committee we made the claim that the home of a married mother and father is statistically the safest place for a child, and we stand by it 100%. We know that a strong, nuclear family is the safest, most beneficial place for a child to be. Research confirms our claim,” Family Heritage Alliance Director Norman Woods told The Washington Stand.
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“Children living with two married biological parents had the lowest rate of overall Harm Standard maltreatment,” according to the most recent, congressionally mandated survey of child abuse, conducted in 2010. “This rate differs significantly from the rates for all other family structure and living arrangement circumstances. Children living with one parent who had an unmarried partner in the household had the highest incidence of Harm Standard maltreatment.”
Studies as far back as 1985 found toddlers living with a stepparent were 40 times more likely to be abused than those living with “two natural parents.” Children living with an unrelated parent were 50 times more likely to be killed than those living with their biological parents, according to a 2005 study by University of Missouri researchers Patricia Schitzman and Bernard Ewigman published in the journal Pediatrics. Four years later, Lawrence Berger of the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that “families in which the mother was living with a man who was not the biological father of all children … were significantly more likely to be contacted by [Child Protective Services] than those in which she was living with the biological father of all resident children.”
Children from fatherless homes are more likely to do poorly in school, join a gang, commit crimes, and be imprisoned, multiple studies show. In addition, “boys who came from a home without a father were more likely to use drugs than boys who came from a home where a father was present,” according to the Minnesota Psychological Association.
The science attesting to the success of the natural family “is well established, uncontroversial, and obviously not un-American to believe. How sealed does one’s echo chamber have to be to tweet something like this?” replied Jay Richards of the Heritage Foundation.
Yet Healy had lobbed multiple epithets at the defenders of the natural family. Three hours earlier, she complained, “The grip from fundamentalist groups who only believe in nuclear families is strong at our state legislature today. I am disgusted by the extremist opposition we heard today,” she said, adding she was “disappointed” a House committee voted down a “simple, important bill” (H.B. 1092) that would redefine marriage as any union “between two persons.”
Live-in boyfriends are not the only threat to children’s safety. The tweet came the same day South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem (R) signed the Help Not Harm Bill (H.B. 1080), which bars the transgender industry from administering puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, or committing surgeries “for the purpose of attempting to alter” the child’s gender identity in a way that is “inconsistent with the minor’s sex.” It allows children affected to sue the doctors and medical establishment involved.
“This bill is extremism at its finest,” Healy said, adding, “We know that kids are going to die because of this bill. We know that most Republicans realize that this bill and its testimony is full of lies and misinformation.”
The assertion that children suffering gender dysphoria will commit suicide without lifelong hormone injections or permanently life-altering surgeries is itself misinformation. Multiple surveys show that individuals who go through with gender-reassignment procedures have the same, or higher, risk of suicide as those who do not. Whistleblower Jamie Reed, who identifies as a lesbian supporter of “trans rights,” explained that employees of gender reassignment surgeries regularly use high-pressure tactics to convince parents to go forward with the controversial, and highly profitable, transgender procedures. Reed’s former clinic is now under multiple investigations for prescribing experimental cancer drugs to children and disregarding parental consent.
“Denying the truth that we are either male or female hurts real people, especially vulnerable children. By enacting this legislation, South Dakota has taken critical steps to protect children from radical activists that peddle gender ideology and pressure children into life-altering, experimental procedures and drugs,” said Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Matt Sharp. “Science and common sense tell us that children aren’t mature enough to properly evaluate the serious ramifications of making certain decisions; the decision to undergo dangerous and likely sterilizing gender transition procedures is no exception.”
Ironically, Woods’s organization — and Woods personally — has also taken heat from Kristi Noem after Woods wrote a letter asking her to take action against a “kid-friendly” drag show sponsored by South Dakota State University. Noem responded by instructing the organization to “find an executive director” who does not “attack the most conservative governor in the country.”
Woods says his organization will continue advocating for nature and the natural family. “Any child who grows up without a mother has lost something. Any child who grows up without a father has lost something,” Woods told TWS. “We will not ignore this loss, no matter the political consequences.”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2023-02-15 18:56:032023-02-15 19:03:35Democrat Calls Advocacy for Natural Family ‘Dangerous and Un-American’
A whistleblower’s explosive account reveals that the transgender medical industry uses high-pressure techniques, employs its own cadre of “experts,” and lies about the impact of puberty blockers and other drugs to convince parents to authorize lifelong “gender-affirming care” that effectively, or literally, castrates their children. When the parents refuse, at least one transgender clinic disregarded the will of the custodial parent, the insider’s testimony states.
Allegations of illegal activity come from an affidavit and accompanying article by Jamie Reed, a far-Left LGBT activist who worked for four years at The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. The affidavit attests doctors in the university’s transgender clinic prescribed experimental drugs to young children, ignored the children’s physical and mental health concerns, and may have committed Medicaid and insurance fraud. Her heartrending report has touched off separate investigations by Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R) and U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.).
Yet her record of the pediatric gender clinic’s actions during her 2018-2022 tenure also contains damning information about the way the industry overcomes wary parents’ concerns and traps children into decades of costly, harmful “treatments.”
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The facility referred young people reportedly suffering “gender dysphoria” for an evaluation with a psychologist chosen from on a list of doctors they “knew they would say yes” to the gender transition, Reed states. One psychologist at the hospital was particularly “known to approve virtually everyone seeking transition,” she writes. If no outside psychologist signed the letter, the center referred the child to their two in-house psychologists, who would certify that the child should begin the gender reassignment process.
For the youngest patients, this meant beginning puberty blockers before administering a lifetime of cross-sex hormones. “The Center tells the public and parents of patients that the point of puberty blockers is to give children time to figure out their gender identity,” she writes. But in reality, the center uses those drugs “just until children are old enough to be put on cross-sex hormones. Doctors at the Center always prescribe cross-sex hormones for children who have been taking puberty blockers.” (Emphasis in original.)
The doctors’ insistence, rather than the children’s persistence, may explain another discrepancy: Left to their own devices, approximately 85% of children with gender dysphoria will identify with their birth sex by the time they reach adulthood. But nearly 100% of children placed on puberty blockers continue the gender transition process, notes Jennifer Bauwens, director of the Center for Family Studies at the Family Research Council.
Doctors lie to assure parents will approve the puberty blockers, Reed reveals. “The doctors at the Center tell the public and tell parents of patients that puberty blockers are fully reversible. They really are not. They do lasting damage to the body,” says Reed. Those damages include “sterilization, reduced bone density, cognitive problems, increased body fat percentage and body mass index, decreased lean body mass, and arterial hypertension,” writes Bauwens.
Reed describes meetings between concerned parents, who wanted answers to the scientific findings they had uncovered about the dangers of puberty blockers, and gender clinic employees, who sought to sell them a lifetime of medical interventions. “The clinicians would dismiss the research that the parents had found and speak down to the parents,” Reed testifies. The facility exhibited a thorough “lack of regard for the rights of parents,” as “doctors saw themselves as more informed decision-makers over the fate of these children.” Clinic employees “would also malign any parent that was not on board with medicalizing their children,” says Reed.
That echoes the experiences of relatives in the documentary “Dead Name,” especially Helen, who was told to “celebrate” her child’s transgender identity after her former lesbian partner had introduced Helen’s four-year-old son, Jonas, to transgender ideology. Helen recounts that a parade of preschool officials and therapists presented her preschooler’s decision as a fait accompli. “They never said, ‘We need to talk about this,’” Helen says. “It was always edicts by email.”
Parents who resisted received the ultimate high-pressure sales tactic: “Experts” said they must approve their child’s gender transition or witness the child’s suicide. “A common tactic was for doctors to tell the parent of a [girl], ‘You can either have a living son or a dead daughter.’ The clinicians would tell parents of a [boy], ‘You can either have a living daughter or dead son,’” Reed testifies. The employees made these comments “to parents in front of their children,” which “introduced the idea of suicide to the children” — something that equally violates known research and medical ethics, Bauwens says.
“It is entirely inappropriate and unethical for anyone in my profession to plant the idea that an inevitable outcome will be suicide (even in the absence of expressed suicidal ideation) if the clinician’s counsel for gender-affirming care is not followed,” Bauwens told Nebraska legislators last week while testifying on behalf of Bill 574, the Let Them Grow Act, which would protect minors from transgender injections and surgeries. “This is blatantly manipulative and has no part in promoting psychological or relational health.”
When parents still refused, or withdrew consent for, the procedures employees at the gender transition clinic continued the treatment, Reed alleges. They would even intervene in custody disputes against parents who disagreed with plans to transition their children. “One of our doctors actually testified in a custody hearing against a father who opposed a mother’s wish to start their 11-year-old daughter on puberty blockers,” Reed notes. But they also ignored the judges’ orders and sided with anyone who brought a child into the office for a gender transition. “I was told not to ask for custody agreements because ‘if we have the custody agreement, we have to follow it,’” Reed notes in legal documents.
To make matters worse many, perhaps most, of the young people who entered the university’s gender clinic had not experienced gender dysphoria at all, Reed states, but a form of social contagion. During her four years at the center, the total number of calls the center received increased between 400% and 800%, and girls began to outnumber boys. Traditionally, most cases of gender dysphoria involved males who identify as female. When she began, she heard about 10 calls a month from teenage girls who identified as male; that had increased five-fold by the time she left, with this cohort making up 70% of the center’s calls.
“It became clear that many children coming to the Center had gender identities that were likely the result of social contagion,” Reed writes. A 2018 study from Dr. Lisa Littman found that rapid onset gender dysphoria (ROGD) can be “initiated, magnified, spread, and maintained via the mechanisms of social and peer contagion,” including peer pressure via online platforms. Reed concludes, “Social media is at least partly responsible for this large increase in children seeking gender transition.”
Yet the center lobbied these minors to begin puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones (typically testosterone injections) and ignored the side effects, Reed writes. “The Center never discontinues cross-sex hormones, no matter the outcome,” she says.
The industry is big business. “Certainly pubertal blockers could run thousands of dollars per month in out-of-pocket expenses,” says Dr. Michael Haller at the University of Florida’s department of pediatrics. Transgender surgeries are “a huge money-maker,” said Dr. Shayne Taylor of Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Clinic for Transgender Health in 2018.
The problems Reed identifies affect all cases of transgender identity, because ideological considerations have narrowed the medical standards and available “treatments” for gender dysphoria, Bauwens told The Washington Stand. “A multitude of treatments have been researched to help children through depression. Yet when it comes to gender dysphoria, there’s only one path currently being prescribed: that is to try to become someone else,” she told Nebraska lawmakers.
“These interventions are being endorsed based on consensus, not evidence: Practices were voted on rather than standing on the merits of solid research findings addressing gender dysphoria,” Bauwens noted. “The success rates for nonintervention for gender dysphoria already exceed most psychological interventions.”
Children need to be “protected from misdiagnosis and scientifically unsupported, highly invasive, and potentially irreversible interventions that will impact the rest of their lives.”
Surprisingly Reed — who says, “I support trans rights” — agrees. “Given the secrecy and lack of rigorous standards that characterize youth gender transition across the country, I believe that to ensure the safety of American children, we need a moratorium on the hormonal and surgical treatment of young people with gender dysphoria,” Reed concludes.
Lawmakers promise to act on the legally actionable items in her whistleblower testimony. “Accountability is coming,” Senator Hawley has promised.
But investigations and prosecutions cannot bring wholeness to the lives permanently altered by the gender transition industry.
“It’s important as others are affirming a false identity that we need to go out of our way, as parents and as a community of believers, to affirm our young people in who they are,” Bauwens told “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” last fall. “Transing a child is never the answer.”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2023-02-14 15:22:252023-02-14 15:23:29Whistleblower Explains How the Transgender Industry Convinces Parents to Mutilate Their Kids
The Missouri Attorney General is investigating a transgender clinic in St. Louis for allegedly harming hundreds of children after a whistleblower published an account of shocking revelations there. The whistleblower, who worked at the clinic in question, self-describes as “a queer woman … politically to the left of Bernie Sanders… married to a transman…..”
The whistleblower provided a sworn affidavit alleging children are being given puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones without an individualized assessment of their particular cases, while telling parents such assessments are being done. Children, in some cases, are being given these drugs without parental consent or even after consent has been revoked. Drugs continue even after patients report adverse effects from taking them. An unstudied pancreatic cancer drug is being prescribed because it can grow breasts, even though it can and does poison the liver. In some cases, the clinic proceeds with transitioning even where it is clear the parents are pressuring the child into it. The whistleblower provided documentation the clinic has been billing state healthcare programs unlawfully.
Clinic personnel told parents their children would probably commit suicide if not allowed to transition. “We lied to them all the time,” the whistleblower said. “These doctors would push, and push, and push … and somehow the doctors thought that was a true good consent.” True consent was also lacking because the clinic failed to inform kids about the foreseeable adverse consequences of transgender drugs and surgery. There are words in the law for these actions, words like ‘undue influence’ and ‘fraud’. To show you the kids didn’t really understand what they were getting into, the whistleblower recalls one girl who had her breasts removed and then, three months later, asked for them to be put back on.
The clinic’s actions actually made impressionable mixed-up kids more suicidal. “I have seen puberty blockers worsen the mental health outcomes of children,” the whistleblower said. “Children who have not contemplated suicide before being put on puberty blockers have attempted suicide after.” The clinic doesn’t track negative outcomes so they don’t have to report them to new patients, the whistleblower believes. How convenient.
The whistleblower described the atmosphere as “cult-like”, with doctors hell-bent on transitioning kids and unwilling to listen to contrary facts. It’s a good bet the same mentality and unethical practices prevail in other gender clinics, so the whistleblower is calling for a nationwide halt to the procedures. Britain ordered its only transgender clinic closed last year after similar allegations were documented there.
The word ‘cult’ was also used by a lesbian mother who led her 4-year-old son to transition into a girl and ended up regretting it. The whole phony transgender narrative began to unravel for her when her other son, who previously showed no signs of confusion, started asking to be a girl, too. The mother questioned her own assumptions and ended up raising her sons as boys. “This experience for me has felt like leaving a cult, a cult that would have me sacrifice my child to the gods of gender ideology, in the name of social justice and collective liberation,” the woman wrote. “I have left this cult, and I am never turning back.”
She might be out, but the transgender lobby is still working to rope more people in. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons is fighting state bills banning sex change drugs and surgery for minors. There’s big money at stake: the market for transgender surgery grew to over $2 billion last year.
So there are powerful forces at work, but they can be beaten. A university health system in South Carolina shut down its gender clinic after government records requests exposed the fact the clinic was treating children as young as four.
Four-year-olds? This is sick. All so that some people can make a buck and pursue their left-wing political agendas. The Left is in a very dark place. And, as far as the Left’s phony narratives go, transgenderism is a particularly weak one, but it’s having ruinous consequences, consequences we should not allow.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Daily Skirmish - Liberato.UShttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Skirmish - Liberato.US2023-02-13 17:40:152023-02-13 17:40:15Blowing the Lid Off the Transgender Lobby’s Pack of Lies
A pediatric gender clinic is under criminal investigation after a whistleblower charged the center with potentially defrauding Medicaid and private insurance to prescribe transgender hormones to children as young as 11. The sworn affidavit states the St. Louis facility administered cross-sex hormones to mentally ill children, sometimes against their parents’ wishes, and ignored children’s worsening physical and mental health conditions — including at least one suicidal teenager.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R) announced Thursday night that his office and two other agencies had opened an investigation into The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. “We have received disturbing allegations that individuals at the Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital have been harming hundreds of children each year, including by using experimental drugs on them,” said Bailey, citing an affidavit from a former employee, who switched to another area of the hospital after becoming convinced the center is permanently hurting the people it swears to help.
The whistleblower, Jamie Reed, describes herself as “a 42-year-old St. Louis native, a queer woman, and politically to the left of Bernie Sanders.” She says she is married to a woman who identifies as a male and affirms, “I support trans rights.” Reed details in her affidavit and in an article at Bari Weiss’ website, The Free Press, that she began working as an idealistic case manager at the center in 2018. By the time she left last November, she left convinced the center’s actions are “morally and medically appalling” — and is likely a systemic problem in the nation’s 100 pediatric gender clinics. “By the time I departed, I was certain that the way the American medical system is treating these patients is the opposite of the promise we make to ‘do no harm,’” she wrote.
“I was struck by the lack of formal protocols for treatment,” said Reed. Yet she kept her concerns private for months, because “anyone who raised doubts ran the risk of being called a transphobe.”
Reed states the center provides outside psychiatrists with a “template” form letter attesting that a child identifies as transgender. If the analyst will not sign it, the center uses in-house psychiatrists, Dr. Dr. Alex Maixner and Dr. Sarah Girresch-Ward, to confirm a child’s “gender dysphoria” after a one-to-two-hour consultation, rather than a full 10-12 hour assessment. They then begin children on a pipeline that results in lifelong hormones and potentially permanently disfiguring surgery before the age of 18.
She exposed potential perjury, as surgeons at the center testified before the Missouri legislature that transgender surgeries for minors are not “on the table” at their center. “This was a lie,” said Reed in the affidavit. She said the center claimed it provided minors with referrals to surgeons who are willing to remove teenagers’ healthy breasts and genitals “for educational purposes,” but they “were in fact referrals.” And Dr. Allison Snyder-Warwick performed at least one gender transition surgery in the hospital, apparently contradicting the doctors’ testimony.
Doctors at the center prescribed teenagers the prostate cancer medication Bicalutamide, which she says caused liver toxicity in a 15-year-old boy. (His mother agreed not to sue the center but warned her son’s condition “could be a huge PR problem.”) She related horrifying tales of physical and mental harm, including a graphic description of intense vaginal bleeding caused by the side effects of “gender-affirming care.”
Reed paints the picture of a center ignoring the real needs of its patients, and the real harms inflicted by the transgender regimen, in order to maximize its profits.
“[N]early all children who came to the Center here presented with very serious mental health problems,” including autism, ADHD, depression, anxiety, PTSD, trauma histories, OCD, and serious eating disorders, she said. Some erroneously identified as suffering from other psychosomatic maladies, such as Tourette Syndrome or blindness. “Privately,” the doctors recognized their other psychosomatic illnesses reflected “social contagion” … but not their gender dysphoria, even when groups came from the same high school. Others used pronouns identifying as a “mushroom” or a “rock”; one patient told employees she identified as a “communist, attack helicopter, human, female, maybe non-binary.” Despite these serious issues, the center “would not treat these mental health issues. Instead, children were automatically given puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones.”
The center also ignored indications of parental coercion of physical abuse, Reed said. In one case, a parent was “forcing” a boy to dress as a female, but the center administered cross-sex hormones, as well. In another, a 17-year-old boy brought to the center by an unrelated male and given hormones upon turning 18. His mental health deteriorated, yet staffers continued administering hormones — even after it turned out the man who brought him to the facility “had been sexually and physically abusing” him.
The experimental nature of many of these drugs set children up for a lifetime of infertility, early menopause, bone thinning, and — contrary to their advertisements — worsened mental health. “I witnessed the Center cause permanent harm to many of the patients,” said Reed. “I doubt that any parent who’s ever consented to give their kid testosterone (a lifelong treatment) knows that they’re also possibly signing their kid up for blood pressure medication, cholesterol medication, and perhaps sleep apnea and diabetes.” She added “clinics like the one where I worked are creating a whole cohort of kids with atypical genitals.”
When parents or doctors would describe worsening mental health outcomes, the center ignored them and continued the hormones, she said. One mother, in a letter revoking consent for her son to receive hormone blockers, said her child “is a shell of his former self riddled with anxiety.”
The center even ignored pleas that their actions might contribute to a potential suicide. In one case, “a psychiatrist called the Center’s endocrinologist and explained that a child, who had already tried to commit suicide by threatening to jump off a roof, should not be given cross-sex hormones because the child was struggling with serious mental health issues,” Reed attested. “I witnessed the endocrinologist yell at the psychiatrist on the phone and speak down to this provider.”
“The Center never discontinues cross-sex hormones, no matter the outcome,” she said.
The center’s actions often lead to lifelong regret, Reed noted. A black teenager from a troubled family began receiving hormones at the facility at age 16 and had a double mastectomy at age 18. Three months later, she told the surgeon she would return to her birth gender, adding, “I want my breasts back” and asked a surgeon to have them “put back on.” Reed wrote, “The last I heard, she was pregnant. Of course, she’ll never be able to breastfeed her child.”
These are the same concerns that motivated Chloe Cole, the teenage detransitioner who now embraces her biological identity, as nearly nine out of 10 children with dysphoria eventually do. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to fully carry a child,” she told Florida legislators last July. “And because I do not have my breasts … I am not able to breastfeed whatever future children I have. That realization actually was one of the biggest things that lead to me realizing that this was not the path that I should have taken.” She’s now suing the Permanente Medical Group and the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan for breaching appropriate standards of care.
Even removing parental consent was not enough to stop the ideologically motivated doctors at the center according to Reed, who testified, “On several occasions, the doctors have continued prescribing medical transition even when a parent stated that they were revoking consent.”
The center also fudged the billing codes for many of these prescriptions, Reed said, sending erroneous invoices to private insurance and sometimes state or federal programs. Employees falsely claimed that one child who received puberty blockers was experiencing precocious puberty, Reed wrote.
The whistleblower’s comments have triggered a statewide investigation from the Missouri attorney general, the Missouri Department of Social Services, and the Division of Professional Registration. Sheila Solon, the director of the Division of Professional Registration, promised her agency will “take any necessary action against the licenses” of Missouri doctors involved in the center’s work that violates the “health, safety, and welfare of the citizens of Missouri.”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2023-02-13 15:18:202023-02-13 15:25:08St. Louis Transgender Clinic Under Investigation for Using Experimental Drugs on Kids, Medicaid Fraud
By: Shaee Prejo, Big League Politics, February 1, 2023:
DeSantis is making the capitulation even as he and RINO Republican leaders in the state claim that they are punishing Disney – the exact opposite of what is happening.
“The bill maintains the current tax-exempt status of property of the district and bonds issued by the district,” the analysis of DeSantis’ measure states.
DeSantis is using sleight of hand to claim he is cracking down on Disney when he is really giving them what they want and enabling Disney’s campaign contributions to fill Republican coffers in the years to come.
DeSantis' Disney punishment bill advances.
Proponents say it'll "even the playing field" for other companies.
I asked the House bill sponsor what would change in what Disney's special district is currently doing.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2023-02-13 14:56:562023-02-13 15:02:44DECEIT: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis Caves to Woke Disney, Pushes Bill to Quietly Restore Special Tax Breaks
The Cost of Ignorant ‘Expert’ Policy Makers During COVID.
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
The Cochrane Library recently updated its 2020 systematic review of physical interventions to reduce respiratory illnesses. The update included an additional 11 randomized controlled trials, bringing the total number of RCTs included to 78
As in its 2020 review, they found no evidence to support the use of surgical face masks or N95 respirators to prevent influenza or COVID-19 infection
The relative risk reduction of using surgical masks in the general population (within hospitals and communities at large) to reduce symptoms of flu-like/COVID-like illness (not lab confirmed) was a statistically insignificant 0.95
The same goes for reducing laboratory-confirmed influenza and COVID. Here, the relative risk reduction was 1.01 with a confidence interval of 0.72 to 1.42. In other words, it’s a wash. On average, it raises your risk of lab-confirmed infection by 1%. Range-wise, it may lower your risk by 28% or raise it by as much as 42%
The review also found “no clear differences between the use of medical/surgical masks compared with N95/P2 respirators”
The question of whether we should wear face masks or not to prevent the spread of COVID-19 has been a hotly contested issue ever since our so-called health authorities came out with the recommendation in early 2020. Some of us were quick to point out the obvious, namely that masks cannot filter out viruses due to the virus being far smaller than the holes in the fabric.
Surgical masks have only ever been used to prevent droplets of saliva to drip into open wounds during surgery, potentially causing an infection. That’s all they were ever designed to do.
Numerous studies looking at mask-wearing during cold and flu season in years past came up empty, showing masks are not a viable prevention method. Yet the narrative we were fed was that masks will somehow prevent respiratory infection, and not wearing one meant you had no regard for the health and safety of others.
Never mind the fact that a healthy person cannot transmit disease in the first place. The asymptomatic spread fallacy was still used to reinforce the idea that everyone had to wear a mask, regardless of whether they were ill or not. You couldn’t even debate the issue. The propaganda angle was the only viewpoint allowed to circulate.
Today, three years later, mask policies are cropping up yet again, especially in schools,1 and health care facilities. In December 2022, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) submitted a final rule to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs and Office of Management and Budget for review which, if approved and implemented, would make universal masking in health care facilities a PERMANENT rule.
The largest nursing union in the U.S., National Nurses United, is also pushing to include permanent rules for “screening and testing of patients, visitors and staff, measures ensuring optimal PPE, exposure notifications for healthcare workers and paid leave for those exposed or infected with COVID-19,” according to Health Care Dive.2 All of this despite the fact that the scientific underpinnings are now even shakier than they were in 2020.
The AARP (formerly the American Association of Retired Persons) is even going so far as to claim mask wearing can help prevent heart attacks!3 Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo had the following to say about the AARP’s attempt to invent benefits for mask wearers:4
Gold-Standard Scientific Review Published
The latest of these studies is a meta-analysis and systematic review by the Cochrane Library,5,6,7,8,9 an independent research organization that has been reviewing the use of physical interventions to reduce respiratory illnesses since 2010.10
Cochrane reviews have long been recognized as the gold standard in evidence-based health care as their analyses look at the whole body of published science, and every few years, reviews are updated to include the latest research findings.
For example, reports on “Physical Interventions to Interrupt or Reduce the Spread of Respiratory Viruses” were published in 2010, 2011, 2020 and January 30, 2023.
In the video above, Dr. Vinay Prasad, a hematologist-oncologist, health researcher and professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, reviews11 the latest Cochrane review, which added 11 new randomized controlled trials (RTCs) and cluster-RCTs to their previous 2020 analysis.
That brings the total number of RCTs included in the systematic review to 78. Six of the 11 new RCTs were conducted during the COVID pandemic and looked at the spread of COVID-19 specifically.
Still No Evidence to Back Surgical Mask Recommendations
The Cochrane investigators concluded that, while there’s “uncertainty about the effects of face masks” due to trial bias and low adherence by participants, the pooled results of randomized controlled trials (RTCs) “did not show a clear reduction in respiratory viral infection with the use of medical/surgical masks.” Here’s an excerpt from the review:12
“Medical or surgical masks — Ten studies took place in the community, and two studies in healthcare workers.
Compared with wearing no mask in the community studies only, wearing a mask may make little to no difference in how many people caught a flu‐like illness/COVID‐like illness (9 studies; 276,917 people); and probably makes little or no difference in how many people have flu/COVID confirmed by a laboratory test (6 studies; 13,919 people).”
The relative risk reduction of using surgical masks in the general population (within hospitals and communities at large) to reduce symptoms of flu-like/COVID-like illness (not lab confirmed) was 0.95.
A value below 1 indicates the intervention improved outcomes, whereas a value above 1 shows it made it worse. So, here, surgical masks was associated with a relative risk reduction of 5%.
However, it’s not statistically significant, as the confidence interval ranges from 0.84 to 1.09.13 So, it may lower your risk by as much as 16% or raise it by 9%. As noted by Prasad, the most accurate way to describe this finding is that “we have not proven there is an effect.”
This is conclusive … This is the reality … You just don’t have credible evidence [for masking], and the science didn’t change … This is what the science has always shown. ~ Dr. Vinay Prasad
The same goes for reducing laboratory-confirmed influenza and COVID. Here, the relative risk reduction was 1.01 with a confidence interval of 0.72 to 1.42. In other words, it’s a complete wash. On average, it raises your risk of lab-confirmed infection by 1%. Range-wise, it may lower your risk by 28% or raise it by as much as 42%.
So, masking really has no effect on confirmed infection rates (which, by the way, is more important than reports of perceived symptoms). As noted by the authors, the analysis “suggests that wearing a medical/surgical mask probably makes little or no difference compared to not wearing a mask for this outcome.”
“This is conclusive,” Prasad says. “This is the reality … You just don’t have credible evidence [for masking], and I want to tell you this: The science didn’t change … This is what the science has always shown.”
The review also found “no clear differences between the use of medical/surgical masks compared with N95/P2 respirators.” As detailed by the authors:14
“N95/P2 respirators — Four studies were in healthcare workers, and one small study was in the community. Compared with wearing medical or surgical masks, wearing N95/P2 respirators probably makes little to no difference in how many people have confirmed flu (5 studies; 8407 people); and may make little to no difference in how many people catch a flu‐like illness (5 studies; 8407 people), or respiratory illness (3 studies; 7799 people).”
Public Health Experts Simply Lied
So, in conclusion, none of the new studies that were added made one iota of difference. Masks were unable to prevent influenza transmission before the pandemic, and they still fail to prevent respiratory infections, be it the flu or COVID.
But, if there was no evidence to back masking in the first place, how did we end up with mask mandates? In short, our public health authorities started lying. As noted by Prasad: “Anthony Fauci told the truth on ’60 Minutes’ — the first time. The second time when he said you have to wear a cloth mask … he was lying.”
Yet somehow, they managed to convince everyone that the truth was the lie and the lie was the truth.
A clip from Fauci’s “60 Minutes” appearance is featured in “The Jimmy Dore Show” video above, as are some of his later public announcements where he suddenly promotes mask wearing and defends mask mandates.
Population-Wide Mask Mandates ‘Never Made Sense’
In a February 3, 2023, article in The Spectator,15 lead author Tom Jefferson and Carl Heneghan, director of the University of Oxford’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine and former editor-in-chief of BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine, explained why the 2020 Cochrane review was unable to influence public health policy on masking:
“This is the second update of the review since the start of the pandemic. The first update was delayed by seven months due to unexplained editorial decisions. It was too late when it came out in November 2020 to make a difference to national COVID policy; by then, activism, low-quality observational evidence and government policy had set the agenda for mask mandates, and the damage had been done.
Often these government policies relied on observational studies on mask usage and the spread of COVID. But there are lots of flaws in observational evidence.
For example, in the absence of a study protocol setting out methods before the study is done, it is possible to shift the dates of an observational analysis to suit the rise and fall in infections. So if you time your analysis near the peak of infections, the results will favor mask interventions as the infection rate quickly decreases.
But when we pointed out in November 202016 the troubling lack of robust evidence on face masks and the problems with observational studies, we were shouted down, removed from Facebook and put on the government’s secret watchlist …
Mandates that affected the whole population never made sense … even in high adherence populations such as Japan, they have not stemmed an inevitable rise in infections. Part of the problem may be that during the pandemic the government had to be seen to be doing something. Interventions like handwashing and vaccines are invisible, but masks acted as a visible sign of compliance.
What we have witnessed in this pandemic are strong beliefs about what works and what doesn’t … Several policies such as mask mandates, restrictions, and unproven interventions now seem absurd in hindsight. And as the culture of fear has lifted, the population has become all too aware of their detrimental effects.
We failed to follow an evidence-based approach during the pandemic. We are now left with the human, social and economic aftermath of evidence-free policies.”
Public Health Agencies ‘Steeped in Failure’
As noted by Prasad in an accompanying Substack post:17
“Who should we be angry with? Obviously there is a class of twitter expert that doesn’t understand how to read evidence. Some of them have even been promoted to be deans for public health schools. So much for public health.
But the real failure is NIAID [National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases] and CDC [U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]. It is Tony Fauci.
Fauci controlled NIAID budget. He could have run 10 RCTs of masking — different masks, different ages, different settings. He chose to run zero. Instead he went on TV 1,000 times and lied about effectiveness of cloth masks …
CDC and AAP [American Academy of Pediatrics] are also steeped in failure. These agency forced 2 year olds to mask. Against the advice of the World Health Organization and UNICEF.
The Cochrane review fails to identify any data that pertains to 2 year olds. The CDC should be ashamed of themselves. Tens of thousands of people working from home, and no one inside the organization with the ability to stop this policy.”
Scientists Censored by Propagandists
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this masking debacle has been the massive censorship and shutting down of healthy scientific debate, not just among laypeople but among scientists themselves.
Only the yes-men were ever given room to air their perfectly scripted views, while those who had concerns were silenced, regardless of their credentials. YouTube even censored a roundtable discussion with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and several medical experts. Why? Because in multiple instances, the doctors said children didn’t need to wear masks, and this position violated YouTube’s “COVID-19 medical misinformation” policy.
In a February 6 Substack article, Jefferson describes the propaganda effort to twist the findings of the 2023 Cochrane review on masking and other physical interventions against COVID-19:18
“We, the co-authors of the Cochrane review … have received several … ‘can I please check the main facts and, by the way, tell me what your review says because I cannot be bothered to do my job’ type of messages. However, we recently got another query … This request comes from a very powerful press syndicate:
‘I’m reaching out because I’ve been seeing some posts [links redacted by TJ] spreading widely on social media that seem to be misrepresenting the conclusions of your recently published study on physical interventions and respiratory viruses.
Do you think it is a misrepresentation to claim (as the tweets I link to above do) that your study definitively proves that masks don’t work in preventing the spread of viruses such as COVID-19 and the flu? If so, I’d be interested in debunking these claims to set the record straight and would love to speak with you more about the study.’
The disturbing aspect of this request is as follows: the stringer is making contact with one of us. After exchanging pleasantries, he/she will ask a few superfluous questions.
We have an abstract, a plain language summary, TTE [Trust the Evidence] posts and a podcast, and Carl and I have written a Spectator piece covering the review. If you are a real masochist, you can read all the 300-plus pages of the review …
So there is nothing to explain or fact-check. But the stringer is not really interested in checking facts. What they want to do is to write truthfully that they have spoken to one of us and then put the spin required in the release to ensure the ‘misinterpretation’ of twitterati is set straight. ‘Debunking’ is the term used, and it will be actioned if the stringer thinks the Twitterati have ‘misinterpreted’ our findings …
What disturbs me … is the idea of ‘debunking’ or ‘normalization’ of the information flow. We have done the tough work over two decades, reporting results separately from our interpretation, as in all Cochrane reviews. The studies’ results are the results reported by the authors of the single studies included in the reviews.
Our interpretation is one you can — and should if you want — challenge. However, successfully challenging our interpretation requires hard work, elbow grease, graft, focus, and application. So picking up the phone and speaking to someone, then deciding how to ‘debunk’ or normalize the message, is so much easier.
The reach of this particular press syndicate is global and powerful. I wonder why the stringer wanted to ‘debunk’ the interpretation of the twitterati mentioned in the text. To ensure ‘truth’ triumphed? Or to ensure no more waves in the official narratives were made by a bunch of academics or Twitter dwellers?”
While Jefferson now avoids interactions with the mainstream media, he did agree to an interview with investigative journalist Maryanne Demasi, which you can read here.19 He also granted an interview with Paul D. Thacker, which you can read on Thacker’s Substack.
Pro-Maskers Guilty of Creating Massive Pollution Problem
In addition to the many health problems associated with prolonged mask wearing, which I’ve addressed previously, mask policies have also created a massive pollution problem. Ironically, many pro-mask activists also claim to be environmentalists, yet they completely ignore the environmental effects of mask mandates.
According to UNICEF, the world used and discarded an estimated 2.4 billion masks in 2020.20 Another estimate, calculated by the University of Southern Denmark,21 put that number at 129 billion face masks EACH MONTH. As reported by Business Insider:22
“Since the very first lockdowns of 2020, these plastic-based coverings have … been an environmental disaster in the making … [The] rapid adoption of face masks … means their waste can now be found everywhere …
Discarded masks have seeped into every corner of our lives, from city sidewalks to solemn niches of the internet.23 They’ve washed up on the shores of Hong Kong’s deserted Soko Islands and cloaked octopi off the coast of France.
Scientists and environmental advocates expressed alarm24 about this tsunami of waste … They foresaw the dire ecological ramifications of our mask waste — especially once those masks made their inevitable way into the earth’s waterways.
Elastic loops pose entanglement hazards for turtles, birds, and other animals. Fish could eat the plastic-fiber ribbons that unfurl from a discarded mask’s body. Then, there is the untold menace to human health that would likely present, at the microscopic level, once masks began to disintegrate.”
The global consumption of other single-use plastics also increased by a whopping 300% in the last three years, further adding to the problem of plastic pollution. You’d think governments that claim to be so concerned about “saving the planet” would address the issue, but no. As noted by Business Insider:25
“[W]orld leaders have ignored the problem. And once the immediate public-health emergency superseded ecological concerns — the heads of Big Plastic made sure it stayed that way.”
Medical Masks Are Hazardous Waste
Research26 from Swansea University in Wales reveals single-use masks readily disintegrate when submerged in water, releasing both micro- and nanoplastic particles, even after relatively brief periods of submersion.27
As if that’s not bad enough, the masks also release nanoparticles of heavy metals like lead, cadmium, copper and arsenic. Not only can this mask litter result in contaminated drinking water, but the particles can also disrupt entire marine food chains.
Nanoparticles are particularly troublesome as they can penetrate cell walls and damage DNA, and this is true not just in animals and humans but also in plants. As reported by Business Insider:28
“Recent research29 on silicon nanoparticles, in particular, has shown that if a particle is very small in nano scale, it can act almost as a tiny, carcinogenic bomb. Multiply that by a minimum of several hundred per mask, at a rate of 50,000 masks disposed per second, and the scope of the dilemma grows vivid.”
According to research30 published in Science of the Total Environment in September 2021, the polypropylene in medical face masks could be recycled either by mechanical or thermal means, and biodegradable mask options are also available. Yet no one in a position of power is advocating for these solutions.
High Time to Discard False Mask Narratives
It’s time to put an end to the false narratives that mask wearing lowers infection rates and/or that it “protects others.” They protect no one. Not the wearer and not those around the wearer.
And, as noted by Prasad in the featured video, the burden of proof lays on the proponent of a given intervention. In this case, those claiming we should mask up to protect others are the ones who have the responsibility to prove they’re correct. The burden of proof is not on those who object, based on logical and existing evidence.
Universal mask wearing is also resulting in environmental pollution that is completely unnecessary and avoidable. So, please, just stop wearing disposable masks. It’s time. The record has been set straight. There are no benefits, and plenty of risks and negative impacts.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00MERCOLA Take Control of Your Healthhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMERCOLA Take Control of Your Health2023-02-13 07:47:592023-02-13 07:47:59Do Masks Protect You? Here’s the Conclusive Evidence
Dr. Terry Adirim during a briefing event at the Reserve Officers Association in Washington, DC last 2019.
The former senior defense official behind the unconstitutional military vaccine mandate will step down from her current position as executive director of the electronic health records modernization program inside the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), according to FedScoop.
Dr. Terry Adirim will step down on February 25 to “pursue other opportunities” outside the department, according to an internal memo sent by VA Deputy Secretary Donald Remy to employees.
According to the internal memo, the position will be filled by Dr. Neil Evans, who is currently a senior consultant for the Office of Information and Technology, until a candidate is identified.
Adirim has served as the VA electronic health record modernization program director since December 2021.
Investigative reporter Jordan Schachtel of The Dossier reported that Adirim signed an order requiring all service members to receive the emergency use authorization (EUA) COVID vaccine while serving as acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs after being appointed by Joe Biden.
“While she was in the Pentagon as the acting assistant secretary of defense for health affairs (serving as a Biden Admin political appointee), Dr Adirim, signed her name to an order forcing service members to take the emergency use authorization (EUA) vaccine. Adirim’s memo attempted to justify mandating EUA shots as if they were FDA approved, which was not the case at the time, and remains the same today. The mandate led to countless vaccine injuries, the worst recruiting crisis since the formation of the all-volunteer military, and thousands of service members discharged for refusing to take the mRNA experimental gene serum,” The Dossier reported.
More from the outlet:
As The Dossier has reported, Adirim is a devoted democrat political activist and, as a medical doctor, advocates for “gender-affirming prescriptions” for “transgender” children.
“Terry Adirim, the former senior defense official who may have sidestepped the law to implement the [DOD’s] vaccine mandate, appears to have tried to sidestep the law again — this time by liking a tweet soliciting political donations, in potential violation of the Hatch Act.”
Pauli Murray, a nonbinary Black activist, lawyer, Episcopal priest, and poet, will be featured on a quarter in the next round of the U.S. Mint’s American Women Quarters Program, making Murray the first Black queer person to appear on U.S. currency.
Throughout the 1930s, the Pauli Murray Center writes, Murray “actively questioned” her gender and sex, repeatedly asking physicians for hormone therapy and exploratory surgery to investigate her reproductive organs.
Pauli Murray wrote about her gender identity and sexuality throughout her life. In her journals, Murray wondered if she was “one of nature’s experiments; a girl who should have been a boy.” Partially because of this struggle, Murray suffered breakdowns and was hospitalized throughout her twenties and thirties. Murray sought medical treatment and consulted doctors concerning what she called “an inverted sex instinct,” including asking doctors to test her hormone levels for any imbalance and attempting to find doctors that would agree to give her testosterone.
Though Murray was married to a man briefly, she wrote “Why is it that when a man makes love to me, something in me tries to fight?” She fundamentally felt that she was a man trapped in a woman’s body, an expression of gender dysphoria. Pauli Murray wrote less about her gender identity after feeling that her medical options had been exhausted and after attending Howard where she experienced the dual oppressions of sexism and racism in Washington, D.C. Alongside Betty Friedan, Murray was a founder of the National Organization of Women (NOW), and she wrote extensively about the importance of women’s equality under the law.
We truly believe that it won’t be long before our government will start targeting Christians who refuse to accept gender neutral and sexual nonbinary persons.
When our government puts these folks on money, you can bet that they will start looking to persecute any who defy their stance. Think not?
Just yesterday, Newsweek carried an article that showed an FBI report that listed Catholics as extreme terrorists.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Royal A. Brown IIIhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngRoyal A. Brown III2023-02-11 13:10:022023-02-11 16:56:13Biden’s Treasury Department Issuing Nonbinary Pauli Murray Quarter first U.S. ‘Queer Quarter’ – Not Political Satire
The Biden administration is crowing about the record number of sign-ups for Obamacare this year. They shouldn’t be.
A record 16.3 million people signed up in the latest enrollment period. Supporters trumpet the notion this is double the number who signed up when Obamacare first became available. Sounds great, right? Not so fast. When they were selling us the Obamacare legislation, they promised 21 million people would sign up right away. That’s never happened, and they’re still 30 percent short of the goal they set for themselves ten years ago.
Besides, it’s no mystery why enrollment went up this year. Obamacare subsidies have been jumbo-sized and the jumbo subsidies have been extended through 2025. Now, some people don’t have to pay for it at all. They get zero-dollar premiums. If you give it away for free, of course more people will sign up. No mystery there. So now they’re practically giving it away and they’re still 30 percent short of where they thought they would be a decade ago. That’s not a triumph. It’s an utter abysmal failure. The failure is not unexpected; only half of Americans approve of Obamacare and, now as we’ve seen, most people don’t want it, unless it’s handed to them on a silver platter.
It’s not hard to see why people don’t want it. First of all, lots of the best hospitals and doctors won’t take Obamacare. Obamacare patients don’t have access to top-tier care. Doctors hate Obamacare because it adds layers of paperwork to their burdens.
Second, Obamacare has led to concentration in the individual insurance market. Prior to Obamacare, there were lots of insurers competing on price and features. Obamacare standardized many of those features and, in addition, caused lots of insurers to drop out. I read one article crowing about how most of the country now has three insurers in their state Obamacare exchange. Only three? Here’s what happens when the market becomes concentrated and you only have three companies competing for business, according to a recent GAO report:
From 2015 through 2020, most states’ exchanges were concentrated and became more concentrated over time…. In 2020, the exchanges were concentrated in all states…. [M]arket concentration … can result in higher premiums due to less competition in the market.”
So what’s being covered up by the jumbo subsidies is the fact that premiums are rising behind the scenes, because of Obamacare. Insurers can hike prices because federal subsidies ensure consumers don’t feel the pain. By the way, the overall price tag for those subsidies is a lot higher than originally estimated.
Obamacare is also causing overall healthcare costs to go up. The insurance taxes in Obamacare get passed along to consumers. Obamacare was supposed to keep people out of expensive emergency rooms, but ERs are more crowded than ever.
But the most insidious effect of Obamacare is increasing dependency on government. People are being trained to rely on government as the answer for everything instead of relying on themselves and looking to the private sphere for solutions to what they need. The law putting jumbo Obamacare subsidies in place also pushed welfare spending further into the middle class. A family of four that makes $111,000 a year is now eligible for subsidized health insurance. That’s crazy. Most people who take the subsidies already had health insurance, so government dependency is crowding out private insurance.
There’s been commentary recently that we’re turning into a nation of welfare moochers. People can make $80,000 to $100,000 a year in Obamacare subsidies and other government benefits for sitting around doing nothing. That’s not normal, healthy, or sustainable. As the economists like to say, things will continue until they can’t.
During his State of the Union address Tuesday night, President Biden asserted that “some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset.” A chorus of GOP lawmakers, including Senator Rick Scott (R-Fla.) are fiercely disputing the claim, pointing out that as a U.S. senator, Biden himself supported cuts in the social welfare programs.
“What he said is a lie,” Scott made clear. “You can’t make this stuff up. I put out a plan (you can go to RescueAmerica.com) [that] says, ‘Look, let’s come up with ideas. How do we make this a better place? Let’s … promote families, promote God … make sure we respect human life. One section says we should sunset the laws and regulations unless we want to keep them. So [Biden] wants to put out there that we want to cut Medicare and Social Security, which is a lie.”
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Scott went on to point out that as a senator, Biden advocated for cutting Social Security and Medicare himself.
“But guess what’s even better? He actually did a bill to sunset everything. Let me let me give you the quote of what he said: ‘When I argued that we should freeze federal spending, I meant Social Security as well, Medicare, Medicaid, veterans benefits. I meant every single solitary thing in the government.’ … So he might be a little bit of a hypocrite. And then, as you know, in September, he signed a bill to cut $280 billion out of Medicare, which will cut lifesaving drugs. So he might be a liar. He might be a hypocrite, but he’s one of those things. He could be clueless.”
Observers have pointed out that Biden has suggested making cuts to Social Security and Medicare on numerous occasions while in public office over a 40-year period.
“What he’s trying to do is just scare people,” Scott contended. He went on to assert that pursuing a balanced budget will be critical to saving programs like Social Security and Medicare from future insolvency.
“If we don’t balance our budget … if we don’t do anything, in 10 to 12 years, you’ll have over a 20% cut in Social Security. So if we just sit here and do what the Democrats want to do, just keep spending money, just augment a 20% cut. On top of that, we will run out of money. The bondholders are not going to lend us money.”
Scott continued, “We can balance this budget. … Biden could actually pay the interest without even any bills passing. But we’ve got a lot of ideas on how to do this. We’ve got to get our fiscal house in order and we’ve got to preserve Medicare and we’ve got to preserve Social Security, Medicaid, all these safety net programs that are important to people.”
The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2023-02-10 14:28:492023-02-12 16:07:26Florida Senator Rick Scott: Biden ‘Lied’ about GOP Wanting to Cut Social Security and Medicare
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) last Tuesday rolled out a new education agenda designed to comprehensively recapture the state’s higher education system from woke ideologues. Instead, he set forth a conservative vision for a higher education system: “to focus on promoting academic excellence, the pursuit of truth, and to give students the foundation so they can think for themselves.” The proposals affect curriculum, faculty, funding, and more.
Proposed Reforms
DeSantis proposed reforms to Florida curriculum so that “everybody who goes through a Florida university has to take certain core course requirements that’s really focused on giving them the foundation so that they can think for themselves.” There is that phrase again — “think for themselves.” This is the essence of DeSantis’ proposals, and leftists work hard to smear it because they understand how popular that objective is.
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DeSantis offered specifics. “The core curriculum must be grounded in the actual history, the actual philosophy that has shaped Western civilization. Our institutions are going to be graduating students with degrees that are going to be meaningful. We don’t want students to go through, at taxpayer expense, and graduate with a degree in Zombie Studies.” Florida is already practicing this at the high school level. Earlier this year, Florida rejected a proposed high school curriculum for AP African-American studies because it was riddled with CRT-related concepts. Days later, The College Board (which produces the curriculum) released “a serious rewrite,” in the words of The Wall Street Journal editorial board.
DeSantis also proposed reforms to hiring and firing of higher education faculty. He identified two problems with the hiring process: a political process and a lack of control by those supposedly in charge. A lot of hiring decisions are “done by faculty committees,” he explained. “And if they have a certain worldview that they want to promote, those are the kinds of candidates they’re going to bring in. And, if you don’t toe that line, you’re not going to get hired.”
That’s not just a “blue state” problem. A WSJ op-ed from this week began, “At Texas Tech University, a candidate for a faculty job in the department of biological sciences was flagged by the department’s search committee for not knowing the difference between ‘equality’ and ‘equity.’ Another was flagged for his repeated use of the pronoun ‘he’ when referring to professors.”
Under DeSantis’ proposed changes, university presidents may “go out and recruit directly. Boards of Trustees will be able to do a lot of this approving directly. And that’s going to make a huge difference in terms of making sure, not only do we have high quality faculty, but we’re not applying some type of ideological litmus test to be able to be hired in the first place.”
Another problem DeSantis identified is the irresponsible behavior encouraged by life tenure. He said “the most deadweight cost” to universities comes from “unproductive tenured faculty.” Under his new proposals, tenured faculty must undergo a performance review every five years, and they would be liable to an impromptu performance review at any time.
DeSantis also announced his intention to defund all DEI and CRT programs at Florida universities, particularly DEI bureaucracies. “We are also going to eliminate all DEI and CRT bureaucracies in the state of Florida. No funding, and that will wither on the vine,” he said.
In a December 28 memo, the governor’s office required public universities to itemize all woke programs and expenditures and report them by January 13.
“They reported that, and it’s a lot of money. And it’s not the best use of your money,” said DeSantis. “Those bureaucracies are not representative of what the people of this state and the taxpayers of this state want.” DEI “bureaucracies are hostile to academic freedom,” he continued. “And really, they constitute a drain on resources and end up — certainly around the country — contributing to higher costs as these bureaucracies metastasize.”
DeSantis justified scrubbing DEI bureaucracies for two closely intertwined reasons, one ideological and one pragmatic. First, their purpose runs counter to the academic freedom most Americans expect from public universities; they are, essentially, wrong. Second, they’re just too expensive. They capture resources that can be better spent elsewhere — and more so as they continue to grow. Pairing these reasons is both accurate and politically astute. Together, they outflank any counterargument (such as suggesting DEI bureaucracies might possibly provide a marginal benefit) except the most radically left endorsement of critical theory — which voters rightly see as crazy.
By purifying the hiring process and distilling out DEI bureaucracies, DeSantis hopes to transform public higher education into a potable experience. Under Florida’s proposed system, FRC senior fellow for Education Studies Meg Kilgannon told The Washington Stand, “Professors and students will be able to learn in an environment freed from politically correct groupthink.”
DeSantis rounded out his policy proposals with targeted initiatives aimed at certain professions and institutions. He proposed that Florida research universities increase their research grants for STEM programs up to $50 million annually (thus draining resources that might be used for less serious, woke “research”). He endorsed his administration’s efforts to expand the training of Floridians to serve in critical, under-staffed occupations, such as nurses, truck drivers, and mechanics. He promoted the establishment of two constitution-focused centers at Florida State University in Tallahassee and Florida International University in Miami.
DeSantis also expressed concern over the plight of New College of Florida, an autonomous public institution since 2001. “In Florida statute, it’s supposed to be our premier liberal arts college,” he lamented. “Its mission has been more into the DEI, CRT ideology, rather than what a liberal arts education should be.” DeSantis chief of staff James Uthmeier said last month, “It is our hope that New College of Florida will become Florida’s classical college, more along the lines of a Hillsdale of the South.”
In early January, DeSantis appointed six new members to the New College of Florida Board of Trustees, creating a conservative majority. Some of the appointees are widely known, such as Manhattan Institute fellow and CRT-exposer extraordinaire Christopher Rufo, Hillsdale College Professor Dr. Matthew Spalding, and former 1776 Commission member Charles Kesler.
It turns out that appointing conservatives to higher education boards — thus puncturing academia’s typical, boring, progressive sameness — excites potential applicants. “When we announced the trustees,” DeSantis said, “you had people asking, ‘How do I apply?’ You had professors asking, ‘How do I join?’” The national media may scoff, but introducing real diversity — intellectual diversity — to university systems generates widespread enthusiasm.
Political Context
DeSantis’s new round of education policy proposals builds on his popular but unfairly criticized efforts undertaken during his first term as governor. For instance, the national media widely lampooned the Parental Rights in Education Act as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill for prohibiting teachers from discussing inappropriate sexual content in K-3 classrooms.
But what the national media sees as a problem, the average Floridian — and average American, for that matter — views as popular. Governor DeSantis and other Florida Republicans cruised to huge victories throughout the former swing state in November, even as Republicans generally underperformed expectations in most of the country. After winning reelection by 20 points, Governor DeSantis announced, “Florida is where woke goes to die.”
Conservative Education Manifesto
DeSantis’ proposals for higher education reform were no haphazard assortment of disjointed, incoherent positions working at cross-purposes. Rather, each is a well-thought-out piece of a comprehensive vision for a higher education system free of woke nonsense. And DeSantis accompanied his proposals with a 20-minute speech which is probably best described as a conservative education manifesto.
“There’s really a debate going on about, what is the purpose of higher education, particularly publicly-funded higher education systems?” said DeSantis, “The dominant view is, the use of higher education under this view is to impose ideological conformity, to try to provoke political activism, and that’s what a university should be. That’s not what we believe is appropriate in the state of Florida.” Instead, he proposed “centering higher education on the academics, excellence, pursuit of truth, teaching kids to think for themselves, [and] not try[ing] to impose an orthodoxy.”
Not only will slicing up the woke monster restore academic freedom, but it will also free up resources to promote real education. “And so, you’re not spending the money on DEI bureaucracies,” said DeSantis. “You’re spending the money on bringing really good people in. … That makes much more sense from a financial perspective, and it’s much more mission-oriented.”
DeSantis suggested his vision for higher education is actually quite popular. The more we implement this vision, he said, the more “you are going to see people flooding into these institutions because there’s a desire for it.” He underlined the basic motivation for this desire, “people want to be in a situation where they can send their kids to a university or college and not have to worry about, ‘what is going on?’”
He used New College of Florida as a prime example. Its DEI bureaucracy “really serves as an ideological filter, a political filter,” he said. “New College has really embraced that, and I think that’s part of the reason it hasn’t been successful and the enrollment’s down so much. Because I think people want to see true academics, and they want to get rid of some of the political window dressing that seems to accompany all this.”
Higher education reform benefits not only college-bound students and their parents, but every taxpaying Floridian as well, added DeSantis. “It’s important that your tax dollars are funding institutions that you can be proud of, with a mission you can be confident in.”
More Than Just Slogans
With slogans like “education not indoctrination” and “bring more accountability to the higher education system,” the new round of changes to higher education in Florida may seem like all talk and no action — a politician specialty. After all, things that sound too good to be true usually are. But when you pierce the surface, Florida’s new education plan brings the substance, too.
“This move by Governor DeSantis to really direct and guide higher education officials in his state is a great development,” said Kilgannon. “For too long, conservative leaders have not prioritized reforming higher education in ways that impact the moral and cultural life of students and faculty.” But the DeSantis plan emphasizes what others have neglected.
Nor are DeSantis proposals pie-in-the-sky fairy tales. “By reining in diversity, equity, and inclusion infrastructures that often act as Marxist politburos on college campuses, Governor DeSantis is offering not just an ideological critique but an actionable path toward reform,” said Kilgannon.
This path to reform already has the buy-in of every Florida college president. All 28 of them signed a letter pledging to “ensure that all initiatives, instruction, and activities do not promote any ideology that suppresses intellectual and academic freedom, freedom of expression, viewpoint diversity, and the pursuit of truth in teaching and learning. As such, our institutions will not fund or support any institutional practice, policy, or academic requirement that compels belief in critical race theory or related concepts such as intersectionality, or the idea that systems of oppression should be the primary lens through which teaching and learning are analyzed and/or improved upon.”
Here is a conservative education solution that doesn’t content itself with condemning leftist dominance in higher education; it actually proposes a workable alternative. DeSantis’ team has clearly thought long and hard, at every level, about what is required to take back the wheel of a public education system and redirect it to serve all the citizens and taxpayers of Florida.
Two qualities are rare among politicians: a brain and a spine. With these comprehensive education proposals, DeSantis demonstrates both.
Florida’s education plan is making news because it hasn’t been attempted before. No other conservative state has set forth a plan this comprehensive or this pragmatic to recapture higher education. “I don’t think there’s any state in the country that’s been leading on the issue like Florida,” said DeSantis. “We’ll be the first state that’s actually leading by example.”
“This is a great example for others on how to tackle the problem of taxpayer funded Marxist education at the higher-ed level,” said Kilgannon. “And since this is where teachers are formed for service in K-12, it’s a reform that will benefit younger children too.”
“We have more work to do,” said DeSantis. But he added, “I think you’re going to see some positive results really quickly.”
The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2023-02-10 11:36:012023-02-10 11:39:29‘Zombie Studies’: DeSantis Declares All-Out War on University DEI, CRT in Education Manifesto
During his State of the Union Address Tuesday night, President Joe Biden called on Congress “to restore the soul of this nation” by making abortion legal nationwide until birth and passing a bill that would force religious employers to hire people who identify as transgender. His administration’s focus on pushing polarizing social issues clashes with Republicans’ more mainstream views of abortion and gender identity, a contrast that Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) said gives Americans a clear choice “between normal or crazy.”
“Congress must restore the right the Supreme Court took away last year and codify Roe v. Wade to protect every woman’s constitutional right to choose,” said Biden, an apparent nod to the “Women’s Health Protection” Act, which would erase 1,381 pro-life protections including parental notification requirements. “The vice president and I are doing everything we can to protect access to reproductive healthcare and safeguard patient privacy.” He went on to chide states for enacting “extreme abortion bans” and threatened to veto any national pro-life legislation.
The president also urged Congress to “pass the bipartisan Equality Act to ensure LGBTQ Americans, especially transgender young people, can live with safety and dignity.” The bill, a longstanding goal of the LGBT lobby, would amend landmark civil rights acts to equate sexual orientation and gender identity with race, sex, and religion. It effectively places homosexuality and transgender status above religious liberty by denying protections of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). The extreme bill, once supported by Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) and former House Speaker Paul Ryan, “would eradicate freedom of thought, conscience, and belief — resulting in the penalization of anyone who disagrees with the ideologies,” wrote Mary Beth Waddell, director of Federal Affairs for Family and Religious Liberty at the Family Research Council.
Passing such social legislation, Biden said, would enhance “the power of our example. Let’s remember the world is watching.”
Biden symbolically gestured toward left-wing social issues with his guest list, which included Gina and Heidi Nortonsmith, the lesbian couple whose lawsuit foisted same-sex marriage on the state of Massachusetts by judicial fiat in 2004. The couple also spoke at the signing ceremony of the so-called “Respect for Marriage” Act, which struck down marriage protection laws nationwide.
Biden also invited Amanda and Josh Zurawski of Austin, who say doctors denied them medical treatment for a miscarriage due to confusion over the state’s Heartbeat law. SBA Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser says the president has weaponized their “tragic” story to further his “deeply misleading” allegations. “Every pro-life law in the country allows necessary and timely medical treatment to save the life of a pregnant woman in an emergency,” she said. “There are no laws in any state that prevent timely and compassionate care for a miscarriage,” added the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG). “Denying proper healthcare to patients facing miscarriage complications is not complying with the law. Miscarriage care is not abortion.”
Some members of Congress made statements of their own, with Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) inviting acquitted pro-life activist Mark Houck, who found himself swarmed by federal agents at his home in front of his family for allegedly violating federal laws against blocking access to an abortion facility.
Even as he discussed bipartisanship, Biden tied conservatives and Republicans to civil war, insurrection, and the attack against Paul Pelosi by a hammer-wielding man with a mental illness. “Two years ago, our democracy faced its greatest threat since the Civil War,” he said, referring to the January 6 riot. “Today, though bruised, our democracy remains unbowed and unbroken,” apparently quoting the HBO series “Game of Thrones.” He claimed Pelosi’s assailant had been “unhinged by the Big Lie.”
“This kind of provocative rhetoric has only served to fuel the spread of violent attacks on churches and pregnancy help centers since Biden took office. While ignoring these attacks and their victims, the Biden administration has openly weaponized the federal government against pro-life Americans like Mark Houck and his family,” said Brian Burch of CatholicVote.
Biden also proposed a massive federal intervention into the way families raise children by “providing access to pre-school for 3- and 4-year-olds,” a proposal repeatedly made by President Barack Obama during successive State of the Union addresses. Multiple studies have found Pre-K attendance inflicts a number of harms on young students, and polls have found most mothers would like to stay at home. “No public preschool program can provide the environments and the parental love and care of a functioning family and the lifetime benefits that ensue,” saidJames J. Heckman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist frequently cited by those who support universal pre-K.
Those references aside, Biden’s 70-minute-long address largely focused on economic issues, showing uncharacteristic “restraint,” Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow for Education Studies at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand. Biden “tried so hard to seem like a 1980s Democrat but it’s just not believable.”
The president often cited his economic success by comparing his results to the worst days of the 2020 recession, caused by a government-mandated shutdown to “slow the spread.” Biden said he had “created a record 12 million new jobs, more jobs created in two years than any president has ever created in four years,” he said.
Biden has added 2.7 million jobs over the prepandemic high of 152.4 million reached under President Donald Trump. By comparison, Trump added nearly 5 million jobs in his first two years in office, and 13.4 million in the 22 months rebounding from the COVID-19 lockdown. The labor force participation rate under President Biden remains below prepandemic levels (62.4% this month compared to 63.3% in January 2020).
“The state of our union is miserable, and the blame rests squarely with President Biden and the Democrats,” said Jenny Beth Martin, honorary chair of the Tea Party Patriots Action. “Whether it’s record deficit spending causing the worst inflation in four decades, an ‘open borders’ policy causing a record stream of illegal immigrants crossing our border, or a weak foreign policy emboldening China and other adversaries, President Biden is always doing the wrong thing and American families always end up paying the price.”
President Biden urged Congress to “pass the PRO Act, because workers have a right to form a union.” The Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, a sought-after legislative goal of labor unions, would strike down all state right-to-work laws and compel workers in a unionized shop to pay union dues, even if they do not want to belong to a union. Federal legislation has protected workers’ right to join a union since the 1936 Wagner Act. Yet only 6% of the private sector workforce belonged to a union in 2022, while one-third of government employees have unionized, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Labor unions contributed $65 million in union dues to Democratic candidates during the 2020 election cycle, including $27.5 million to Biden’s presidential campaign. The president was also the top recipient of campaign donations from teachers unions.
At two points, Biden paused mid-speech as Republicans opposed his caricature of their platform, accusing Republicans of wanting to eliminate Social Security and Medicare. A legislative proposal to that effect, from Senator Rick Scott (R-Fla.), received little legislative support.
Biden made a brief reference to the border, which has seen record-breaking levels of illegal immigration and virtually non-existent deportations during both of his years in office. “America’s border problems won’t be fixed until Congress acts,” particularly “if you won’t pass my comprehensive immigration reform,” which includes a pathway to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants, he told lawmakers.
On foreign affairs, Biden pledged continued financial and military aid to Ukraine despite flagging public support, and boasted of a supposed hardline against China. “Before I came to office, the story was about how the People’s Republic of China was increasing its power and America was falling in the world. Not anymore,” he said. “As we made clear last week, if China’s threatens our sovereignty, we will act to protect our country. And we did.” Biden shot down a Chinese spy craft this weekend after it had completed its surveillance of areas that included U.S. nuclear installations.
Biden gave a nod to COVID-19, which defined the first few months of his presidency. “We have broken COVID’s grip on us,” he said. “And soon we’ll end the public health emergency.” Biden announced the federal government would end its emergency in May, shortly after the House of Representatives passed legislation ending the government’s state of emergency immediately. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) invited as his guest a U.S. serviceman briefly dismissed from the military for refusing to take the COVID shot.
“Biden’s comments aimed at the need for a world ‘solution’ on certain topics (which understandably concern people) continue to imply the legitimacy of world power centers like the UN, WHO, and the like. Yet this takes power further from the people that true democracies are supposed to represent. If we have a ‘crisis of democracy’ as some think we do, such ‘solutions’ only exacerbate the problem,” Travis Weber, vice president for Policy and Government Affairs at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand. “To the extent that the Biden administration’s priorities (like abortion or gender transitions for minors) are injected into these centers of world power, we will be exporting spiritually harmful activities to other nations. Social liberals’ intended solutions for these young people only keeps them imprisoned … and they need to find true freedom from the clutches of the enemy of their souls,” Weber said.
The spiritual condition of America figured prominently in his remarks. “Because the soul of this nation is strong, because the backbone of this nation is strong,” he said. Americans “are a good people, the only nation in the world built on an idea: that all of us, every one of us, is created equal in the image of God.”
“I appreciated the president’s affirmation that everyone is ‘created equal in the image of God.’ Unfortunately, for two years the president has demonstrated that he really doesn’t believe that,” David Closson, director of FRC’s Center for Biblical Worldview, told The Washington Stand. “Against the moral teachings of his own church, President Biden has pursued the most radical pro-abortion agenda in our nation’s history, and he made it clear tonight that he remains beholden to the abortion lobby by indicating he would veto any federal efforts to protect unborn life.”
“When it comes to protecting life, I wish the president’s policies matched his rhetoric,” said Closson.
“Americans want common sense from their leaders, but in Washington, the Biden administration is doubling down on crazy,” said Governor Sanders.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2023-02-08 12:45:142023-02-08 12:48:29Biden Urges Congress to ‘Restore Soul of This Nation’ by Expanding Abortion, Transgenderism in SOTU
Former President Donald Trump responded to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address in a video released late Tuesday night after the speech.
The Daily Caller obtained a copy of the response, which Trump called the “real State of the Union.” Trump’s speech focuses on the border crisis, inflation, and high gas prices. He also says that Biden’s Department Of Justice is “waging war” on free speech and persecuting Biden’s political opponents. Trump mentions that he is running for president in 2024 and that he hopes to complete the “unfinished business” of making America great again.
“Over the past two years, under Biden, millions and millions of illegal aliens from 160 different countries have stormed across our southern border. Drug cartels are now raking in billions of dollars from smuggling poison to kill our people and to kill our children. Savage killers, rapists and violent criminals are being released from jail to continue their crime wave. And under Biden, the murder rate has reached the highest in the history of our country. Biden and the radical Democrats have wasted trillions of dollars and caused the worst inflation in half a century. Real wages are down 21 months in a row. Gas prices have soared and are now going up much higher than even before. And the typical American family is paying $2,200 in increased energy and food costs each year,” Trump said in his speech.
“Joe Biden’s weaponized Justice Department — and I’m a victim of it — is persecuting his political opponents. His administration is waging war on free speech. They are trying to indoctrinate and mutilate our children. He’s leading us to the brink of World War III. And on top of all of that, he’s the most corrupt president in American history, and it’s not even close. But the good news is we are going to reverse every single crisis, calamity and disaster that Joe Biden has created,” Trump continued.
“I am running for president to end the destruction of our country and to complete the unfinished business of making America great again. We will make our country better than ever before, and we will always put America first,” he added.
Biden’s speech did not mention Trump and he also did not use the term MAGA Republicans, something Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy said that he urged the president that wouldn’t be “appropriate.”
Biden reportedly rehearsed his speech at Camp David with top officials this past weekend.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Dr. Rich Swierhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Rich Swier2023-02-08 07:09:192023-02-08 07:27:44‘End The Destruction Of Our Country’: Trump Responds To Joe Biden’s State Of The Union
I told you about a slew of experts calling for a halt to COVID vaccinations because of the unprecedented huge number of adverse reaction reports coming in from the U.S. and around the world. In the U.S. alone, more than 34,000 people have died shortly after getting vaccinated. I’m seeing lots of stories about people dying suddenly and more stories about ‘excess deaths’ among the vaccinated above normal rates. But today I want to focus on other medical problems the vaccines may be causing. The list is as long as your arm.
CDC records show more than 18 million people were so injured by their Pfizer or Moderna shot, they ended up in the hospital. We’re talking hospitalization rates of 8 percent compared to 2.1 percent for the total population from COVID itself. The CDC withheld this information until a court forced the agency to release it.
Heart problems have received the most publicity. I will only note here the FAA lowered its standards late last year for acceptable heart performance among pilots because, apparently, heart damage from the COVID vaccines is now so widespread.
You might also have heard about massive blood clots being linked to the vaccines. FDA researchers have linked the Pfizer vaccine to blood clots affecting the lungs in older people. The FDA said it was not taking action on the findings, preferring to study the problem further. I’m sure they’ll study it to death and never do anything about it.
A number of other conditions linked to the vaccines have not received nearly the same kind of publicity as blood clots and heart problems.
The CDC and FDA identified a higher risk of stroke in elderly people from the Pfizer bivalent booster.
There is now evidence the vaccines impair the immune system and trigger aggressive cancers. The vaccinated are getting aggressive cancers at a far higher rate than the unvaccinated.
A Pfizer executive admitted mRNA COVID vaccines are causing irregular menstrual cycles in women. Adverse reaction reports to the government show a 4,000 percent increase in miscarriages and stillbirths among vaccinated women.
Several new papers link the vaccines to new onset type 1 diabetes in adults.
An FDA study found elevated Bell’s palsy facial paralysis among the elderly from a Pfizer COVID booster no longer in use in the U.S.
The problems with the vaccines are so serious, some suffering adverse reactions are choosing suicide as the way out.
Public health authorities keep saying the benefits of the vaccines outweigh the risks arising from the vaccines or from getting COVID itself. That assessment may not look so good in hindsight, and I doubt this type of dithering entered into the decision of U.S. regulators to pull the swine flu vaccine from the market in 1976 after it was linked to just 25 deaths. My suspicion is there was no cost-benefit analysis then. Regulators saw an obvious problem and they dealt with it.
Not this time, and you have to wonder why. You have to wonder why all the phony narratives started flowing, why the government paid media outlets a billion dollars to push the COVID vaccines on us, and why government officials went to such great lengths to suppress troubling information about the vaccines from coming out. If I had to guess, I’d say the country has become much more authoritarian and we’re just supposed to jump when politicians and bureaucrats tell us to, instead of weighing the risks for ourselves and making our own decisions. People being in charge of their own lives and taking responsibility for their own welfare is much less highly prized than it once was, and we’re worse off for it.
Children have been poisoned by fentanyl for weeks, resulting in three deaths and even more hospitalizations in one area of Texas, according to The Dallas Morning News.
Three young students attending Carrollton-Farmers Branch schools near Dallas are dead and six others have been hospitalized as a result of fentanyl exposure linked to one home in the area, where minors picked up drugs to later sell to their peers at school, according to The Dallas Morning News, which obtained a criminal complaint. Fentanyl, which is made mainly by the Mexican drug cartels using chemicals from China, is largely responsible for the more than 100,000 overdose deaths that happened in 2021, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data.
“To deal fentanyl is to knowingly imperil lives. To deal fentanyl to minors — naïve middle and high school students — is to shatter futures,” U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Leigha Simonton told The Dallas Morning News.
One of the victims was a 14-year-old girl, who overdosed and almost died twice on an “M30” tablet, which can mimic oxycodone, hydrocodone, alprazolam (Xanax) and Adderall, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. A 13-year-old is also one of the nine victims.
The young girl overdosed first on Christmas Eve, when she was taken to the hospital, and later on Jan. 16 when she was temporarily paralyzed from the incident, according to The Dallas Morning News.
Law enforcement pursued the case with surveillance at the supplier’s home, where a student was dealt drugs, according to The Dallas Morning News. A school resource officer later detained a student after hearing them “making a ‘snorting sound’” in the bathroom.
Fentanyl continues to threaten young Americans, including babies who are sometimes exposed in utero and in their early years, experts recently told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“The country has never experienced anything like this and we need a greater sense of urgency to cut off the supply from the Mexican Cartels,” former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Special Operations Division Derek Maltz told the DCNF.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Daily Callerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Caller2023-02-07 07:14:412023-02-07 07:15:49Mass Fentanyl Poisoning In One State Leaves Three Children Dead
