Volume 79, no. 4 April 2023
If religion is defined as “ultimate concern,” then even committed atheists have a religion. Our Founders were opposed to a federal established church, but the “wall of separation” between church and state is only being applied to recognized religion—not to totalitarian, godless ideology.
Religions generally have a creed, scriptures, a hierarchy, a priesthood, rituals, concepts of sin and judgment, a means of salvation, and punishments for nonbelievers.
“Wokeism” seems to fit these criteria. As do Critical Race Theory, DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), and radical environmentalism. Sacraments or rituals include abortion, “anti-racism” struggle sessions, vaccines, and obsessive recycling.
Three great dystopian novels of the early 20th century seem to be prophetic. As in 1984, we have equivalents of the Memory Hole, the watchful telescreen, children spying on parents, the Two-Minute Hate, and the Junior Anti-Sex League meant to discourage romantic love and non-Party loyalty.
We don’t yet have decanted babies as in Brave New World , but they could be here in 15 years if ethical constraints were removed, according to visionary filmmaker and “molecular biologist by trade” Hashem Al-Ghaili. EctoLife facilities could grow 30,000 babies per year in transparent pods, monitored by an artificial-intelligence-based system, he claims. “An ‘Elite Package’ would allow people to choose their baby’s level of intelligence, height, hair, eye colour, physical strength and even skin tone.” Experts do not rule out the possibility (https://tinyurl.com/2dvzznak).
That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis is about transhumanism, seeking immortality, and creating a god: a disembodied Head.
What is the underlying ideology?
Cultural Marxism
Wokeism, DEI, queer theory, radical feminism, post-colonialism, etc., are different species, but all of the same genus—Marxism, stated James Lindsay, founder of New Discourses, in a talk to the European Parliament (tinyurl.com/3mpa9wes). Classical economic Marxism has evolved, like the virus attributed to Wuhan, to adapt to the host.
Although considered an economist because he wrote about economics, Marx was basically a theologian, Lindsay states. In his early writings, Marx says that what makes human beings special is that man is a being that is incomplete and knows that he is incomplete. Marx wanted to create a religion that would supersede all religions and bring man back to his true social nature. To do this, he sought to awaken the underclass and make them the historical agents of change to foment revolution and transform society.
At the end of history, we would have socialism, or equity.
Today’s definition of equity is an administered political economy in which shares are adjusted so that citizens are made equal. The only difference between equity and socialism is the type of property they redistribute. The new species intend to redistribute social and cultural capital as well as economic and material capital.
The working class did not rise up. As Herbert Marcuse pointed out in the 1960s, capitalism gives people a good life. So, the working class is irrelevant, and Marxists who are seeking power can make friends with corporations. The energy for revolution is no longer with workers but in racial minorities, sexual minorities, feminists, and other outsiders.
The formula for the genus of Marxism is to identify an elite class that has access to a special kind of property (e.g., whiteness or normality), and create underclass consciousness against it, to get people to band together to channel resentment and gain power. Marxists call everything they want to control bourgeois, or racist, or homophobic, until they gain control of it.
For 30 years, Marxists studied what they called the culture industry, which commodifies and packages culture and sells it back to people—empty, abstract, stripped of what it actually is. They seized the means of production of the culture industry and started to transform it to sell racial, gender, sexuality-based agit prop as though it were genuine culture.
Wokeness is identity-based Marxism, a constellation of species that all work with the same operating premise, each located in a different “Volk.” LGBTQ is a Volk, as is the Black community. They think of themselves as nations—don’t they all have flags? They are bound together like the various colonized nations around the world seeking liberation from Western civilization.
Wokeism is a Maoist cultural revolution with Americanized identity categories. The new program features “inclusion” and “sustainability.” UN Agenda 2030 is the new socialist standard.
Our future looks like China, if we do not stop the Woke religions, says Lindsay. It’s been successful so far because we cannot even name the enemy. Education has been “redwashed.” Children are taught nothing about Communism.
The Power of Words
In the best-selling novel The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, a Jew who had been hidden in the basement of a German couple wrote a book for their foster daughter. How did Hitler come to power? “The Führer decided that he would rule the world with words…. He planted [the words] and cultivated them…and also planted seeds to create symbols…. [People] were placed on a conveyer belt…. Words were fed into them…. Next, they were fitted with their symbols, and everyone was happy.”
The Importance of Public Opinion
In 2022, the WHO European office produced the Vaccine Crisis Communication Manual, to help countries respond to events that might “erode the public’s trust in vaccines and authorities that deliver them” (https://tinyurl.com/3wrcszym). The overarching goal is to “rebuild trust in vaccines.” However, writes Dr. John Day, “The ‘unsinkable’ control-narrative of global elites has hit an iceberg of cold facts. The band…continues to play waltzes, but not everybody is dancing” (tinyurl.com/2c6vdjd4).
A perspective: Whenever the government of the United States shall break up, it will probably be in consequence of a false direction having been given to public opinion. This is the weak point of our defences, and the part to which the enemies of the system will direct all their attacks. Opinion can be so perverted as to cause the false to seem true; the enemy, a friend, and the friend, an enemy; the best interests of the nation to appear insignificant, and trifles of moment; in a word, the right the wrong, and the wrong, the right. In a country where opinion has sway, to seize upon it, is to seize upon power. As it is a rule of humanity that the upright and well-intentioned are comparatively passive, while the designing, dishonest and selfish are the most untiring in their efforts, the danger of public opinion’s getting a false direction is four-fold, since few men think for themselves.”
– James Fenimore Cooper (The American Democrat 1838)
Updates on COVID Shots
CDC’s VAERS safety signal analysis for mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, based on reports from Dec 14, 2020 – July 29, 2022, shows that there are more than 500 adverse events with a safety signal stronger than for myocarditis (tinyurl.com/3xa7v6r9).
Switzerland withdrew all COVID vaccine recommendations; doctors are now liable for harm (tinyurl.com/4msec2f5).
FDA has pulled the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for the original Pfizer and Moderna products (https://tinyurl.com/ucr5b8sv), and CDC has issued new guidance for use of the updated bivalent products: “CDC recommends 1 updated COVID-19 vaccine dose for everyone aged 6 months and older” (https://tinyurl.com/ydpvsx3b).
The FDA has, without citing data, lowered the total dose of mRNA to be administered (tinyurl.com/2p8n8f8a).
The “moderate increase in protection [from a bivalent booster] against a probably generally mild disease will be short-lived,” writes Paul Offit, M.D. (NEJM 2/9/23).
The first three people have received compensation from the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP) for COVID-vaccine injuries: $2,019 for severe allergic shock and $1,582 and $1,582 for myocarditis. More than 8,000 applications have been filed (https://tinyurl.com/2p96dbta).
The vaccine dose-fatality rate (vaccine-related death/doses delivered) increases dramatically with age, reaching 0.6% for persons over 80 in Israel (https://tinyurl.com/3az4t2kd).
“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it is profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”
Frank Zappa
Nonbelievers ID’d
Another species in the Marxist genus is the cult of public health compliance and COVID vaccination.
The International Classification of Diseases (ICD) system authored by WHO has added a set of codes, not for a disease but for a decision—not to take a COVID-19 shot—and for the reason for declining. Code Z28.3 indicates underimmunization status. Reasons immunization not carried out: contraindication (Z28.0-); patient decision for other or unspecified reason (Z28.2-); patient decision for reason of belief or group pressure (Z28.1).
Once encoded and uploaded into a database, a person’s vaccination status can be accessed by government and private health insurers alike once the CDC classifies it as a reportable event (https://tinyurl.com/4f8sewwt).
The federal government is tracking unvaccinated people who go to the doctor or to the hospital (tinyurl.com/yhr6dwau).
The CDC has so far declined to answer questions by Republican lawmakers, including Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), about why the CDC and National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) are gathering data on why Americans decline the COVID shot and how they plan to use it (https://tinyurl.com/5zfr4nt2).
Unvaccinated New York City teachers are having “problem codes” attached to their records, and their fingerprints are being sent to the FBI. By having their biometric data sent to the FBI, “NYC educators were being set up to be viewed as ‘right-wing extremists’ or even ‘terrorists,’” said Michael Kane, national grassroots organizer for Children’s Health Defense and founder of Teachers For Choice (https://tinyurl.com/3bzp4cxc).
There are plenty of codes for symptoms experienced with COVID-19 disease, but not with COVID-19 vaccine injury (https://tinyurl.com/5bheymba).
How Much Harm Is Too Much?
Of course, we know that correlation does not prove causality, but how do we establish causality? In 1965, Sir Austin Bradford Hill, a medical statistician, established a set of nine “viewpoints” to determine when data demonstrated causation. The nine criteria are: strength, consistency, specificity, temporality, biological gradient, plausibility, coherence, experiment, and analogy. These were used to show that tobacco causes cancer. Satisfying any one criterion is enough to suggest causality. Of course, temporality is essential (cause must precede effect). Former pharmaceutical executive Sasha Latypova states that all criteria show that the harms of COVID-19 vaccines exceed the benefits (https://tinyurl.com/2p8w3ahs).
AAPS Calendar
Jun 9. Pa. Chapter. https://aaps.pub/pajune9.
Jul 15: Mo. Chapter. https://aaps.pub/mojuly15.
Oct 26-28. 80th Annual Meeting, Fort Worth, TX. https://aapsonline.org/2023am
ACTION OF THE MONTH
Scholarships for medical students/residents to attend annual meeting: contact [email protected]. Contribute to AAPS Educational Foundation: aapsonline.org/scholarships.
Biden Nationalizes DEI Bureaucracy
By a Feb 16 Executive Order (tinyurl.com/36jcnuw9), President Biden is overhauling the entire federal government along the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). The order will create cadres, “Agency Equity Teams, ” to see that DEI ideology is embedded everywhere in a patchwork fashion, explains Christopher F. Rufo (https://tinyurl.com/yu3sknsm). Tens of thousands of DEI ideologues will be subverting the constitutional order with a death-by-a-thousand-cuts strategy. Persons who disagree will be filtered out. The culture will be set by changing the meaning of language and bombarding employees with a constant stream of ideological materials and “training.” Even the use of artificial intelligence (AI) will be regulated. If people are categorized by race, and there’s a difference in any outcome between the groups, it is evidence of racial discrimination. This statistical manipulation justifies the entire package. The initiative will fund third-party political activism and weaponize civil-rights laws. Advocates of Marxist-Leninist guerrilla warfare against the U.S. government will be hired as outside diversity consultants to teach NASA engineers about their “white fragility.”
Religious Exemptions Upheld
Families with religious objections can no longer be forced to vaccinate their children in order to attend school, ruled the U.S. District Court for the Southern Division of Mississippi in Bosarge v. Edney (1:22-cv-00233). Attorneys for Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN), led by Aaron Siri, argued that since from a public health perspective, a medical exemption to vaccination has the same effect as a religious exemption, the government cannot treat secular activity more favorably than religious activity (https://tinyurl.com/bdfm23xx). According to Greg Glaser, general counsel for Physicians for Informed Consent, this could open a way to limit Jacobson v. Massachusetts (the 1905 decision legalizing mandatory vaccination without religious exemption).
Public Health Powers Curtailed
More than 1,000 legal decisions have been made at the local, state, and federal level regarding public health protections since March 2020, a quarter of which succeeded in weakening public health powers. “The courts are leaving us vulnerable,” said Wendy Parmet, director of Northeastern University’s Center for Health Policy and Law. Additionally, at least 30 states, nearly all led by Republican legislatures, have passed laws that restrict the imposition of mask mandates, school closures, or other measures, or require permission from legislatures to renew emergency orders.
“Big court wins” will prevent government overreach in the next declared pandemic, said Peter Bisbee, executive director of the Republican Attorneys General Association. “We’ll die with our rights on,” said Lawrence Gostin, director of Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law (Wash Post 3/8/23, https://tinyurl.com/ypcmmufj).
Tip of the Month: Beware of making humorous references to the word “gun” in a hospital. Hospital administrators and nurses looking for something to pin on a good physician have claimed that a mere mention of a “gun,” whether as a joke or quoting popular culture, creates a safety issue for the hospital. Of course, this is an absurd tactic of retaliation. But in liberal regions where guns are considered by some to be taboo, hospital administrators and nurses in a sham peer review case distorted a joking reference to a gun. Physicians should conduct themselves in a business-like fashion at all times. No jokes, no levity of any kind, and no comments not directly related to the task at hand. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a hospital “kangaroo court.”
Sham Peer Review in South Africa
Dr. Shankara Chetty is being accused by the Health Professional Council of South Africa of “unprofessional conduct” and contravening ethical Rule 19, which requires practitioners to use only technologies that have been proven by evidence-based medicine to fulfill claims made about them. Dr. Chetty saw patients in person throughout the pandemic. He treated 14,000 patients with COVID, including those with comorbidities; zero (0) patients were hospitalized or died. He observed a type 1 hypersensitivity reaction that occurred on day 8 in susceptible patients, which required high-dose antihistamines and steroids. He advised hundreds of specialists from around the world and received a Malaysian award for saving thousands of lives. But he did not accept the official narrative. Those who do not are “now the victims of this new apartheid,” writes Nadya Swart (tinyurl.com/x5xsuts6).
Vaccination Incentives (≠ Kickbacks)
Reportedly, insurers offer substantial bonuses to pediatricians for vaccinations if most of the patients in the practice are fully vaccinated”—up to $400 per child (tinyurl.com/2xk2p268). These are “performance-based incentives” (https://tinyurl.com/3xay4h9t).
It is unlikely that anti-kickback statute penalties would apply to incentives to receive COVID-19 shots (https://tinyurl.com/jeecz9a4). California Medicaid paid $350 million to providers between September 2021 to February 2022 for meeting performance criteria such as increasing vaccination rates in certain groups by 75% (https://tinyurl.com/5xutvtds).
Chilling the Transgender Industry
Lawmakers propose expanding the statute of limitations for medical malpractice suits related to treating minors with puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, or “sex change” surgery.
In most states, the statute of limitations is around two years, making it impossible for some detransitioners to sue. It may take 4 or 5 years for patients to realize that they have made an irreparable mistake. Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, board chair of Do No Harm, stated that creating a private right of action and expanding statutes of limitation would sharply curtail the child “gender-affirming” industry. Most pediatric gender clinics are part of large hospital institutions that are highly sensitive to litigation. Most are self- insured, and would not want to risk a trial that might be 20 years out, for example, for not getting proper informed consent or not explaining potential complications (tinyurl.com/2p8na43z).
The number of pediatric transgender clinics in the U.S. has grown from one in 2007 to 300 now, according to Abigail Shrier (https://tinyurl.com/bthm7j35).
Correspondence
No Gun Control for Federal Agents. Why do HHS and FDA need military drones, hundreds of millions of rounds of hollow-point bullets, shotguns, submachine guns, and assault rifles? “The number of federal agents armed with guns, ammunition, and military-style equipment, authorized to make arrests, and trained in military tactics has nearly tripled over the past several decades.”
And “there are now more bureaucratic (nonmilitary) government agents armed with weapons than there are U.S. Marines. As Forbes reports, ‘The federal government has become one never-ending gun show’” (tinyurl.com/ynujznar). Whatever happened to the Posse Comitatus Act?
Lawrence R. Huntoon, M.D., Ph.D., Lake View, NY
Masks Don’t Work; Cochrane Reviews Compromised. The Cochrane review found that wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to influenza-like or COVID-19-like illness transmission—as many of us said two year prior. However, Cochrane weakens the result. Once the premier resource, it has been corrupted by pharma and academic scientists. It has lost its way and destroyed itself over COVID funding money. In an interview with Maryanne Demasi, the study’s lead author Tom Jefferson stated: Cochrane delayed the release by 7 months, during which critical policy decisions were made and some Cochrane scientists published unacceptable studies that gave “the right answer.” Jefferson doesn’t think much of the “Swiss cheese model,” which assumes that we know how respiratory viruses transmit—but we don’t.
Paul Alexander, Ph.D., https://tinyurl.com/9zzxw2vb
The End to the Exception? In his book Tocqueville in Arabia: Dilemmas in a Democratic Age (2013), Joshua Mitchell writes that the business of gender is a permutation of the equity obsession.
In Democracy in America, deTocqueville invented the idea of American exceptionalism because America was the first nation founded on equal rights for citizens, in a world where aristocracy/oligarchy was the rule. He warned, however, that equality could be the end of democracy if equality of opportunity was distorted to mean equal outcomes (“equity”), a nonsensical idea that requires totalitarian management by a tyrant class of oligarchs.
Mitchell writes: “A new political religion has full command over the hearts and minds of elect parishioners, who operate on the basis of an intersectional debt-point scheme that gives them moral clarity about who is pure and who is stained. This is identity politics, the spiritual eugenics of our time…. I worry that the idea of original sin has migrated…into politics,…[in] the form of… group-scapegoating, which intends to purge…[the] irredeemably stained, along with all that they have wrought in history, so that the world may be made pure (https://tinyurl.com/b5hxv6kh).
John Dale Dunn, M.D., J.D., Brownwood, TX
The Rest of the Story on Race and Poverty. A higher percentage of Blacks (19.5%) live in poverty than non-Hispanic whites (8.1%). But the absolute number of impoverished non-Hispanic whites is higher (15.9 million vs. 8.5 million), showing the falsity of the claim that all whites come from privilege. From 1970–2019, the poverty rate for whites increased slightly, while decreasing for other ethnic groups. With rising costs, the middle class—which keeps a nation from bifurcating into a two-class society of the powerless poor and the powerful wealthy—is under siege. Home ownership has declined; nearly three in eight homes today are rentals. As Victor David Hanson says, “The result is a new American peasantry,…who own little or no property.” They are like medieval peasants dependent on propertied overlords.
Craig Cantoni, Tucson, AZ
Death Down Under. Even Australia—the poster child for COVID fascism—now recommends the shots only for the elderly and those with health risks. Perhaps it’s because Australia is experiencing worse excess mortality than at any point in 80 years, while neighboring New Zealand is experiencing the worst mortality since the Spanish flu. Officials won’t openly acknowledge the likely cause, but their policy changes regarding boosters clearly demonstrate a quiet walk-back of the needle idol, as Daniel Horowitz points out (https://tinyurl.com/syyaj7mr). The Associated Press fact-check team has concluded that the surge in deaths must be because of COVID itself. But that is a self-indictment of the vaccine.
Stewart Tankersley, M.D., Montgomery, AL
The ‘Equity’ Agenda. The UN introduced Agenda 21 with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals in 1992. It has been adopted in every country at all levels of government. The new target date is 2030 to bring equity to everyone on earth. The motivator—fear of climate change—infiltrated public schools via student TV channels, video games, movies, Saturday cartoons, and other mass media forms of indoctrination (https://tinyurl.com/n2tda9fu). An Equity Pledge proposed by the Racial and Social Justice Commission of Prince William County, Virginia, promises to agree to the group’s norms by “monitoring my thoughts for internal dialogue” and to “reflect on my…impact on others before asking a question or making a comment.”
Ileana Johnson, Ed.D., https://tinyurl.com/2kupnerv
