Volume 80, no. 12 December 2024
An electoral shift to the right, or “right-wing” influence in media, education, entertainment, business, law enforcement, the military, or medicine might be deplored as a return to the Dark Ages of superstition and repression, and a rejection of the Enlightenment, which brought science, prosperity, and freedom.
It is popularly believed that, during this dark era and the “Middle Ages,” obscurantist Christians deliberately rounded up classical texts to destroy them, everyone thought the earth was flat, and scientific and technological advancement was virtually nonexistent (tinyurl.com/yf6azpsj).
The phrase “Dark Ages” was first used to describe the Middle Ages by the Italian scholar Francesco Petrarch (1304–1374 AD). He thought that classical antiquity was the Golden Age, and that he lived in an age of decline. Some historians use the term to refer more specifically to the Early Middle Ages (c. 475–c. 800 AD), from the collapse of the western Roman Empire until the rise of the Carolingian Empire, sometimes considered the first phase of the Holy Roman Empire, in the late eighth century A.D.
Anti-religious writers have perpetuated many myths about the Middle Ages. But in fact, classical manuscripts were preserved by copying, the sphericity of the earth was almost universally accepted as fact by educated people in western Europe, and great technological and scientific progress was made (ibid.).
Cambridge historian Seb Falk’s book The Light Ages: the Surprising Story of Medieval Science follows the journeys of a nearly anonymous monk, Brother John of Westwyck, probable author of Equatorie of the Planets (once ascribed to Chaucer), which describes the construction of an instrument for calculating the positions of the planets. Falk makes indefensible the claims of the scientific backwardness of the Middle Ages and of the perpetual conflict between science and religion, states reviewer Brad Gregory (https://tinyurl.com/yec2f7zy).
Carl Sagan, however, in his 1980 book Cosmos, places this time in a millennium-long blank space in the history of science. He thought science began in the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, when the Age of Faith gave way to the Age of Reason.
America’s current mass decline “into unreason—bordering, at times, on a psychotic breakdown,” has been called the Endarkenment by Martin Gurri, author of The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium. He contends that the disarray and distemper stem from nothing less than an exhaustion of the Enlightenment. This grim diagnosis is particularly alarming for the U.S., whose founding principles and constitutional traditions have strong Enlightenment roots (https://tinyurl.com/uh4cxt68).
In an age without faith or reason, “our public debates have come to resemble the shouts and moans emanating from a lightless lunatic asylum.” Gurri writes. “The Endarkenment is experienced collectively as the disintegration of institutions, a traumatic fracturing of social life,…at the personal level in…heightened anxiety, depression, drug addiction, ‘deaths of despair,’ and a loss of interest in family and procreation—even in sex.” This specter arises after society extinguishes all sources of meaning.
Francois-Noel Babeuf, who was executed for an attempted coup against the French Revolution, argued that the Revolution was a direct deduction from Enlightenment principles. The “community of property” (another way to say “communism”) follows from egalitarianism. William Briggs argues that the abolition of all property and privilege means the end of all learning. “A society in which privilege exists may be a barbarously ignorant one…. But a society must be barbarously ignorant if there is no privilege in it at all, only equality” (tinyurl.com/t66ysann).
Thomas Jefferson enshrined the idea that “all men are created equal” in the Declaration of Independence as self-evident even though obviously untrue. The statement that “nothing is so unequal as the equal treatment of unequals,” often erroneously attributed to Jefferson, likely originated with Plato. The concept of equality under God or under the Law is Biblical (Leviticus 19:15).
Two other Enlightenment axioms are secularism and utilitarianism (the test of morality is the greatest happiness of the greatest number). The Declaration puts “pursuit of happiness” as a right equal to the right to life and liberty. But today it is being used to justify libertinism and to cancel the rights of others to criticize or fail to support the behavior. Secularism condemns marriage vows, and all other vows, oaths, and promises, as being relics of superstition, Briggs writes.
Yet, as John Adams recognized, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” As George Washington said in his Farewell Address, religion and morality are “indispensable supports” for political prosperity, and cautioned against assuming that morality can be maintained without religion.
At the time of the American Revolution, some Loyalists (“heretics”) spoke of seeds of destruction. Anglican clergyman Myles Cooper, once president of King’s College (later Columbia), said: “When they suppose those Powers to be derived solely from the People, which are ‘ordained of God,’ and their heads are filled with ideas of Original Compacts which never existed…they will…open a door for Anarchy, ‘Confusion, and ever evil work.’” Mark Noll asks: Can American liberalism can be secured without the specific grounding that heretics desired or the amorphous kind the orthodox long took for granted (tinyurl.com/bdefdmzd)?
In endarkened times, where shall we find light?
The Enlightenment and Disinformation
The debate over disinformation reflects two philosophies of human nature that both trace their lineage to the Enlightenment. One view, attributed to John Locke, holds that man can be scientifically molded for his own good. Human understanding, and thus choices and actions, being determined by the sensory inputs we receive, human will is not an exercise of autonomy but a reaction to external stimuli. Social engineering becomes a logical project of this view, and free speech is valuable only as long as it educates the public in a way that aligns with the “clerisy’s” version of reason.
The other strand, also originating with Locke—from his political philosophy rather than his epistemology, holds that free speech is part of a right to liberty and property, which government is supposed to protect.
The clash between these visions continues in the debate over regulation of artificial intelligence (AI). To what extent will the clerisy be allowed to use technology to direct human thought and development (https://tinyurl.com/swde98m6)?
The Abuse of Science
The birth of widespread secularism led to excesses in the name of science, such as terrifying eugenics and totalitarianism. The No. 1 mystical belief of the age of science was that the methods of the natural sciences can and should pertain to social sciences, writes Jeffrey Tucker (tinyurl.com/2mp7x2nu).
Tucker refers to F.A. Hayek’s 1952 book The Counter-Revolution of Science: Studies on the Abuse of Reason and to his 1974 Nobel Prize speech. Hayek wrote: “What looks superficially like the most scientific procedure is often the most unscientific, and, beyond this, that in these fields there are definite limits to what we can expect science to achieve…. The recognition of the insuperable limits to his knowledge ought indeed to teach the student of society a lesson of humility which should guard him against becoming an accomplice in men’s fatal striving to control society—a striving which…may well make him the destroyer of a civilization which no brain has designed but which has grown from the free efforts of millions of individuals.”
Chester C. Danehower, M.D., R.I.P.
A strong believer in the sanctity of the patient-physician relationship and the art of medicine, Chester Danehower (1937-2023) practiced dermatology for 32 years in Peoria, Ill., and served as AAPS president in 2003 and several terms on our board of directors. He also fought against socialized medicine in many other medical organizations, even as delegate to the AMA. He reached the rank of lieutenant colonel in the U.S.A.F., where he served for 10 years.
“When misguided public opinion honors what is despicable and despises what is honorable, punishes virtue and rewards vice, encourages what is harmful and discourages what is useful, applauds falsehood and smothers truth under indifference or insult, a nation turns its back on progress and can be restored only by the terrible lessons of catastrophe.”
Frederic Bastiat
Is Truth ‘Scientifically Provable’?
As long-established and extremely useful scientific theories have been disproved, including Isaac Newton’s concept of gravity, it is good to remember that “whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods” (Albert Einstein, Mein Weltbild, 1931, https://tinyurl.com/4py5bdvt). Einstein is also quoted as saying “We know nothing about it at all…. We shall know a little more than we do now. But the real nature of things—that we shall never know, never.”
Does objective truth exist? During his last years, Einstein walked home daily from the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton with logician Kurt Gödel. They were the only two Platonists at the Institute.
As Rebecca Goldstein describes it in Incompleteness: the Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel, “A mathematician’s sense that he is discovering objective truths rather than simply constructing systems is a commitment to Platonism.”
Before coming to the U.S., Gödel had sat silent at meetings of the Vienna Circle, a group of philosophers, mathematicians, and scientists, while radically disagreeing with them. The philosophical movement associated with the Circle has been called logical positivism—the view that scientific knowledge is the only kind of factual knowledge and that all traditional metaphysical doctrines are to be rejected as meaningless. Gödel’s answer was rigorous proofs of his incompleteness theorems, which showed that no formal system that is large enough to contain all of arithmetic can proven to be consistent, and that no formal system can prove itself to be consistent. That is, there are true statements that cannot be proved within the system.
Are there unchanging and eternal realities, which Plato called forms, which give value and meaning to existence? Did the progeny of the “Enlightenment” reject this concept, leading to relativism, nihilism, and endarkenment?
Moral Diversity for Medical Trainees
Praising the “important benefits” of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, Benjamin Frush of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University, and Kristin Collier of the Univ. of Michigan Medical School write of the need for appreciation of alternative moral viewpoints of patients and fellow practitioners (Perspect Biol Med, summer 2024). While conscience is important, there is danger in emphasizing a “universal position of ethics and neglecting tradition-specific systems that arguably provide more robust interpretations of ethical scenarios, which may [starkly depart from] frameworks most patients subscribe to.”
AAPS Calendar
Jan 13, 2025. Board meeting (Zoom)
Sep 11-13, 2025. 82nd Annual Meeting, northern Virginia – https://aapsonline.org/2025am
Kansas Sues Pfizer over COVID Vaccine
On Jun 18, 2024, Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach brought nine counts against Pfizer under the Kansas Consumer Protection Act in the district court of Thomas County, KS, for conspiring with the media, universities, the lobbying group BIO, and the U.S. government, including the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), in order to generate billions of dollars in revenue by willfully concealing material evidence and misrepresenting the fraudulent safety and efficacy claims of Pfizer’s COVID-19 mRNA injections (https://tinyurl.com/4z89f3n7).
Key points from the AG’s report (tinyurl.com/mv6fk7z8):
- Pfizer misled the public in Facebook ads about its “life-saving vaccines” and “cures.”
- Pfizer used confidentiality agreements to conceal critical data relating to the safety and effectiveness of its COVID-19 vaccine.
- Pfizer effectively had a veto over the federal government’s communications.
- Pfizer destroyed the vaccine control group.
- Pfizer did not disclose that it had excluded immunocompromised individuals from its COVID-19 vaccine trials.
- Pfizer knew its COVID-19 vaccine was connected to serious adverse events, including myocarditis and pericarditis.
- Pfizer only tested the booster shot on 12 trial participants who were in the 65- to 85-year-old age range.
- Pfizer did not publicly release adverse event data.
- Despite admissions by Pfizer Chairman and CEO Dr. Bourla and board member Dr. Scott Gottlieb that Pfizer did not know whether its vaccine prevented transmission, Dr. Bourla warned Kansans on multiple occasions that not receiving a COVID-19 vaccine would affect the lives of those around them, thus implying that it prevented transmission.
- Pfizer worked to censor speech on social media that questioned Pfizer’s claims. Dr. Bourla called people who spread misinformation on COVID-19 vaccines “criminals” who have “literally cost millions of lives.”
FinCEN Status
In her book For Love of Country: Leave the Democratic Party Behind, Tulsi Gabbard refers to the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and its warrantless surveillance of financial transactions following the events of Jan 6, 2021. FinCEN warned financial institutions to monitor for “extremist indicators,” such as the purchase of religious texts (like the Bible) and shopping at stores like Cabela’s. Zelle payments with keywords like “MAGA” and “Trump” were flagged.
In the case of Texas Top Cop Shop v. Garland, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Sherman Division, handed down an injunction against enforcement, and the government immediately filed an appeal, claiming that a delay in implementation would cause “irreparable harm against the State as it deprives the State of the opportunity to implement its own legislature’s decisions…. FinCEN has expended significant resources to educate [32 million] companies of the new reporting requirements.”
A one-year delay is embedded in the hotly contested 1,500-page end-of-the-year spending bill.
The AAPS case is pending in Amarillo.
Tip of the Month. Concierge and direct primary care (DPC) practices are similar in charging a monthly fee. The similarities often end there. Most concierge practices still bill insurance, and patients may still also be responsible for deductibles and coinsurance. DPC practices on the other hand are generally third-party free with no additional charges. Concierge medicine is growing, particularly in more free-market states like Florida, and is expected to continue to increase by 10% annually. DPC is growing even faster, at a rate of 36% per year, such that there are an estimated 2,000 DPC practices today.
Petitions Filed on Vaccines
In an attempt to derail Donald Trump’s nomination of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to head the Department of Health and Human Services, the mainstream media is deliberately stoking fear and outrage based on legal work I did for a different client, which I never discussed with Mr. Kennedy, writes Aaron Siri (WSJ 12/18/24, https://tinyurl.com/4trr3msr). Petitions were filed with the FDA from 2020–2022 on behalf of Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN).
It is false to claim that the purpose was to eliminate vaccines, or all polio or all hepatitis B vaccines.
The first concerned IPOL, which is one of the six polio-containing vaccines currently licensed by the FDA. It is produced by modifying the kidney cells of monkeys. These cells become immortal, like cancer, and end up in the ingredients of each vaccine dose. As FDA documents attest, IPOL was licensed based on a clinical trial with no control group and only three days of safety review after injection. The petition simply asked the FDA to require a proper trial for approval of IPOL.
The second petition concerned the use of two hepatitis B vaccines that were licensed for use in infants and toddlers based on trials without a control group that monitored safety for five or fewer days after injection.
The third petition simply asked the FDA to confirm that the aluminum adjuvant content of 10 childhood vaccines was accurately labeled and to pause distribution of the vaccine if the FDA was unable to do so. A peer-reviewed study had shown than the amount was incorrectly stated on the FDA-approved label.
“We must be able to raise valid questions about vaccines without fear that anyone who deviates from the accepted orthodoxy will be smeared as a radical. There are many issues that divide Americans, but drug and vaccine safety should unite us.” Siri concluded.
De-transitioner Sues Gender-Change Specialist
Stating that she was prescribed puberty blockers at age 12, testosterone at age 14, and a double mastectomy at age 14, Clementine Breen, now age 20, has sued Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy for medical negligence. Dr. Olson-Kennedy is medical director of the Center for Transyouth Health and Development at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Breen, who was sexually assaulted as a child, saw a school guidance counselor to discuss negative feelings about her body. She was referred to the Center, and the doctor immediately affirmed that she was a boy, told her parents the drug treatments were reversible, and said she might commit suicide without the treatment (https://tinyurl.com/v8amu2h).
Correspondence
Earth to Redfield: You Are Not a Bird. Former CDC director Robert Redfield, M.D., predicted that H5N1 bird flu might become the next, highly lethal pandemic. He said that in 2012 scientists doing gain-of-function research figured the five amino acids that have to change in order for bird flu to gain a propensity to bind to the human receptor (https://tinyurl.com/bdhf8j4b).
More than 16 years ago, fearmongers were predicting an impending bird flu pandemic. At that time I commented that the serious epidemic was not a virus but a disease of moral character that was threatening to destroy the integrity of the medical profession and quality care for patients.
Harvey Risch stated that “we cannot have a society that mass produces toxic agents for the purpose of selling antidotes.” I would add that we cannot have a society that is constantly looking for ways to weaponize potentially infectious agents.
Lawrence R. Huntoon, M.D., Ph.D., Lake View, NY
The Plague Is Coming. H5N1 bird flu first appeared in Pubmed in 1997. Interest in the modeler’s theme park peaked in 2009 with 827 publications and then picked up again in 2024 with 445 publications so far. The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) is buying vaccines with our money. In about 200 cases reported from the Far East, most of those infected had contact with dying chickens, and in only 10 cases, there may have been person-to-person transmission. Our current assessment is that if you do not keep dying chickens under your bed don’t worry.
Tom Jefferson & Carl Heneghan, tinyurl.com/3cufa8t6
The Scottish Endarkenment. On another dark day for the West’s fast-fading freedom of speech, Scotland’s new “Hate Crime” law came into effect, formalising my perennial gag that in the UK everything is policed except crime: The wanker coppers will now be spending ever more of their worthless days sitting around monitoring your Twitter account.
Mark Steyn, https://tinyurl.com/425hvuf3
Doctors’ Authority. Doctors may be able to tell you what will happen to your body if you do X, depending on their level of study and intelligence, whether they went to med school pre- or post-DIE, etc. That is it, and nothing more. A doctor is no better than a non-doctor, and in our culture is often worse, in answering questions like “Is it morally right to do X?” Yet we have most unwisely ceded to doctors moral authority on many of these questions, because of scientism. This is the fallacy that those who claim to know how things work get to say what should be done with these things, and under what circumstances. For example, letting a doctor decide a girl is really a boy, seizing the girl from her parents, and drugging her against her parents’ wishes.
William Briggs, Ph.D., https://tinyurl.com/yeymzpad
Who Is Guilty? In 1997, WSJ published my commentary on America’s medical insurance mess, which was caused by government policy. Now, 27 years later, an alleged assassin has killed an insurance executive, probably because the murderer had been led to believe, as most Americans have, that the insurance industry and its obscenely paid executives are the cause of the many dysfunctions in the medical insurance system and not a symptom. Several years ago, a Canadian who had a second home in my neighborhood explained that he had cancer in his nose that required extensive surgery to save his nose and possibly his life. He had come to the U.S. for surgery because the wait list in Canada for the surgery was so long that he probably would’ve died. If the assassin had lived in Canada, whom could he have shot for the mess in medical care there?
Craig Cantoni, Tucson, AZ
Hiding in Plain Sight. People can fail to see crimes happening before their very eyes. A NY Times feature story, “Giant Companies Took Secret Payments to Allow Free Flow of Opioids,” stated: “For years, [pharmacy] benefit managers, or P.B.M.s, took payments from opioid manufacturers, including Purdue Pharma, in return for not restricting the flow of pills. As tens of thousands of Americans overdosed and died from prescription painkillers, the middlemen collected billions of dollars in payments.” For years, U.S. institutions, agencies, and the mainstream media somehow failed to notice. In recent years, the U.S. Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex has become a glorified racket that commits all manner of fraud and graft and uses massive constructive fraud to conceal spectacular crimes such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the response.
John Leake, https://tinyurl.com/yckbyj7k
RFK Nomination. The government’s failures of transparency and oversight are why we are at this juncture today. The conversation Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., proposes won’t mean the end of vaccines or of respect for science. It will mean accountability and reform of a dysfunctional system. Maybe Americans agree with RFK that the FDA, which gets 69 percent of its budget from pharmaceutical companies, is potentially compromised. Maybe Big Pharma, similarly, gets a free pass from the television news media that it generously supports.
Pierre Kory, M.D., https://tinyurl.com/3xrrpmjj
