Volume 79, no. 6
Our aging “Reagan Republicans” need to take note: Reagan was elected 43 years ago. We are not in Kansas anymore, but the house has not fallen on the Wicked Witch of the East.
Remember the glorious Fourth of July celebrations, and the stirring patriotic songs? Some may fly the Stars and Stripes for the day, but now many fly the currently less controversial Pride flag for an entire month? Remember the seven deadly sins: pride, wrath, avarice, lust, sloth, gluttony, and covetousness? Our country now seems to take pride in all of them.
What about the “land of the free and the home of the brave”? What did COVID-19 teach us about that?
Mike Jones of iEarlGrey, a British expatriate reporting from St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad) on the Russian Special Military Operation in Ukraine, said that at the onset of the pandemic, Russia closed its borders very early. It also enacted public health rules like those in the U.S. and the UK. When ordered to close their businesses, people put up a “closed” sign, pulled down the blinds, and carried on as normal inside (tinyurl.com/53suj4uf).
Few did that here. They were likely turned in by zealous informants (an American Stasi), and severely punished.
Conservatives living in their protected echo chambers have a “normalcy bias” and think that we still live under the 1980s institutions. If a hero subdues a threatening maniac in the subway, the would-be assailant dies, and the hero is charged with manslaughter, some people who are on the right “immediately assert that we should somehow wait until the justice system grinds the hero into dust before we actually take a stand for him,” writes Kurt Schlichter. Our justice system, our institutions “are rubble,” and “we should stop pretending that they are anything else.” But honestly admitting the problem requires action, not just talk (https://tinyurl.com/3ts6h3as).
What Is a Woman?
In 1980, no one would even have thought of this question, since the answer is so obvious. There were rare patients with gender dysphoria who cross-dressed, may have taken cross-sex hormones, and tried to live as a person of the opposite sex, but they did not generally believe that they truly were a person of the opposite sex. Now, we not only have a nominee for the Supreme Court who claims not to know the answer, but a Senate that confirmed her anyway. We also have scores of physicians, therapists, and academics who are unable or unwilling to answer.
The documentary What Is a Woman? by Matt Walsh featured interviews with a number of such professionals, one of whom was uncomfortable with the language about getting to the truth. “That sounds deeply transphobic to me, and if you keep probing, we’re going to stop the interview.” Twitter at first labeled the documentary “hateful conduct,” but then Elon Musk tweeted it to his own 140 million followers (https://tinyurl.com/4jjtr6dr) and said the censorship had been a mistake.
Children are likely being taught the transgenderist ideology in school. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) encourages the use of its “self-assessment tool” on “LGBTQ Inclusivity in Schools” (https://tinyurl.com/jrphhh4r). Schools that get mostly “C” grades need to commit to change. The guide asks whether people use their “voice to educate or support others” by correcting those around them who “[use] incorrect, outdated, derogatory, or harmful language or terminology”—such as “boyfriend” or “girlfriend” instead of gender-neutral terms such as “partner.” The educators assessment encourages teachers to display gay and transgender pride flags and other decorations to signal that the classroom is “a safe space for LGBTQ students” (https://tinyurl.com/3eanznha).
AMA’s Morning Rounds reports that the Human Rights Commission (HRC) has declared a “state of emergency for LGBQT+ people in U.S.” (tinyurl.com/438uw6tv). HRC urges fighting against anti-LGBTQ bills—some 525 have been introduced in 41 states—with the same fervor as for abortion rights (tinyurl.com/mrr6w2jj). It provides information on travel to states with “stronger LGBTQ+ protections,” such as allowing “gender-affirming care” for minors (tinyurl.com/p77av63c).
Our ‘Values’ in 1980
In 1980, we knew what a doctor is, and to whom the doctor was responsible (the patient—remember?). Most primary care practices were small, independent, and organized around “values, professionalism, and relationships” (tinyurl.com/36c3vsvz). Physicians determined the value of their services, a right that was about to end. In 1984, AAPS members, Atlanta surgeons Douglass Whitney, M.D., and W. Daniel Jordan, M.D., sued to challenge the constitutionality of a “two-year” freeze on Medicare physician fees. In 2018, only 46% of physicians owned their practices (tinyurl.com/ys78676s), and only physicians who opt out of Medicare and other third-party schemes can set their own fees.
Since 1980, the U.S. dollar has lost 73% of its value. What $100 would buy then costs $368 now (tinyurl.com/5f8xnccv). In 1980, the U.S. public debt was less than 25% of GDP; in 2023, it is 98% of GDP. It is expected to increase by 2% per year, reaching 118% by 2033 and 198% by 2053, writes David Stockman (https://tinyurl.com/24u3c426); see p 2.
Cultural destruction and fiscal doomsday are in sight. Cosmetic surgery will not save us. Carthago delenda est.
The Fall of Rome—or of Carthage?
Many write about U.S. parallels to the decline of Rome and its fall in the 5th century A.D. But as G.K. Chesterton writes in The Everlasting Man (https://tinyurl.com/ymxndany), Rome was essentially dead, crushed by Carthage, in the 2nd century B.C.
“The sacred savour that hung round Rome for ever, it is too often forgotten, clung to her partly because she had risen suddenly from the dead.… The war of the gods and demons seemed already to have ended; and the gods were dead. The eagles were lost, the legions were broken; and in Rome nothing remained but honour and the cold courage of despair. In the whole world one thing still threatened Carthage, and that was Carthage.” To the businessmen of Carthage, “even excitable Latins could not be so mad as to cling to a lost cause forever.” So, Hannibal’s pleas for reinforcements were ignored.
All men are primarily inspired by religion—their notion of the nature of things, Chesterton writes. Carthage was founded on “a religion of fear, sending up everywhere the smoke of human sacrifice.” In the New Town, the god who got things done was Moloch. The empire believed that death was stronger than life, and therefore dead things must be stronger than living things. The cosmic vision of the commercial mind of Carthage had a “brutal blunder.” Its materialism had “a mad indifference to real thought. By disbelieving in the soul, it comes to disbelieving in the mind.”
The embers that Carthage disdained to tread out burst into flame, and “Carthage fell as nothing has fallen since Satan. Only men digging in its deep foundations centuries after found a heap of hundreds of little skeletons, the holy relics of that religion.”
This section of Chesterton is reprinted at length in Alexander Dugin’s 2015 book, Last War of the World-Island: The Geopolitics of Contemporary Russia. Dugin speaks of the “Land” power (Rome) and the “Sea” power (Carthage). Britain has been supplanted by the U.S. as the world’s sea power (Eternal Carthage). Dugin sees Russia as the Eternal Rome. The Russian Federation was nearly splintered into several small, weak, warring sections after the fall of the USSR, and globalists desire this outcome in order to seize control of the Heartland (https://tinyurl.com/wxtde8n8).
Dugin, founder of the International Eurasia Movement, writes: “All those cruel words that Chesterton directed against Carthage are perfectly applicable to those who won a victory in the ‘Cold War.’ Mercantile civilization prevailed….”
Are they? What does the treatment of our children tell us?
Planned Parenthood Leads in ‘Gender Therapy’
Still the nation’s number one abortion provider, Planned Parenthood has become the second-largest group distributing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones in 41 affiliates (https://tinyurl.com/2ashx95m). More than 35,000 patients requested such therapy in 2022. Planned Parenthood endorses and distributes “comprehensive” sex education that includes promoting all sexual practices and LGBTQ ideology, even to children (https://tinyurl.com/3yaw6w6e).
X X X
“If you shut the truth up and bury it under the ground, it will but grow, and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through it will blow up everything in its way.”
Emile Zola (1840-1902)
Debt without End
From 2000–2021, federal outlays grew from $1.9 to $7.2 trillion, 6.5% per year, vs. 4.0% per year for GDP, David Stockman (op. cit.) notes. Then came the COVID lockdowns/stimmies year of 2020, when federal spending erupted by nearly $2 trillion during that year alone. The lockdown cost $16 trillion.
Medicare and Medicaid are off the table in debt ceiling negotiations. According to the latest Trustees Report, the unfunded liability in Social Security and Medicare is almost seven times the size of our entire economy, states Bonner Cohen (tinyurl.com/4amsrzx6); more than 60% of that is Medicare.
Between 1900 and 2008, the Fed printed $1 trillion. Between 2008 and today it printed $10 trillion: ten centuries worth of wealth to pay for bailouts and lockdowns. That is paid off through inflation: a tax on the poor. Basic foods like chicken and milk are up 78%. The half of the printed dollars that are located outside the U.S. will flood back if no longer trusted as a store of value.
The actual wealth of the world is diminished, writes Dr. John Day—not just in numbers but social cohesion, quality of life, and resilience to disruptions. The financialized world “wealth” is predominantly false promises, which can never be kept in the physical world (https://tinyurl.com/2p8be4jp).
Independent political and economic analyst Tom Luongo writes that the debt ceiling fight could be truly different this time. He sees nationalist interests facing off with globalists (“the Davos crowd”), who want unlimited U.S. deficit spending in order to maintain European finance, which is arguably even more stressed than U.S. finance/banking (https://tinyurl.com/ykhjmvyu).
“Financial crises are managed by wars,” Dr. Day writes, “and all wars are ‘banker’s wars….’ [T]here is more money to be made in the ruin of a nation, than in its construction…. The people who are pushing citizens to quarrel with each other are not crazy. They seek to profit from the breakdown of civil societies.”
Today’s hybrid war is “a civilizational war, where different worldview systems are opposed. It is clear that this is a war of good and evil and a war for the survival of humanity in the end,” writes Sergey Glazyev (https://tinyurl.com/yv9vbkjk).
Injecting cash will not create the needed economic goods. The preservation of humanity also requires traditional moral values. What the West brings us is “universal chipization, artificial intelligence and dehumanization, LGBT people, the destruction of the family, the termination of all forms of human identity.” This is “an image of death, not the future,” Glazyev states.
Sanctions on Russia are backfiring. Vladimir Putin points out that paper money can’t feed or warm people. He accuses the West of moving to a “radical denial of moral norms, religion, and family” (tinyurl.com/2vzxuszt). Is he wrong about that?
AAPS Calendar
Jul 15. Missouri Chapter. https://aaps.pub/mojuly15.
Oct 26-28. 80th Annual Meeting, Fort Worth, TX.
ACTION OF THE MONTH
Scholarships for medical students/residents to attend annual meeting: contact [email protected]. Contribute to AAPS Educational Foundation: aapsonline.org/scholarships.
Calif. M.D.s Won’t Be Forced to Kill People
California law S.B. 280, signed in October 2021, states that “participating” in assisted suicide remains “voluntary” but requires unwilling physicians to refer patients to someone else and defines “participation” so narrowly as to effectively compel participation. The U.S. District Court for the Central District of California granted a preliminary injunction against enforcing the law, and now the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), which filed a lawsuit against the law on behalf of the Christian Medical & Dental Associations (CMDA), has announced a settlement in which the state agrees to not enforce “any criminal or civil punishment, including professional discipline or licensing sanction, for a California-licensed physician’s refusal or failure to” aid a patient in ending his life and to pay CMDA $300,000 for its attorneys’ fees and other expenses. The national conflict continues, as the Biden Administration has proposed rescinding federal regulations that provide conscience protections (tinyurl.com/4j88an4t).
Tip of the Month: Beware of resigning or not renewing your hospital medical staff privileges in a situation where there might be a secret investigation against you. Under the rules of the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB), resigning or not renewing is a reportable event if it happens during an investigation. There is no requirement that the physician be aware or informed of the investigation. To avoid this, it is possible to inquire by email to administration if there is any investigation ongoing against you, before resigning or electing not to renew privileges.
Politicized Medical Examiner’s Report
When former Marine Daniel Penny restrained a menacing homeless person, Jordan Neely, on the N.Y. subway, and Neely died, Penny was at first released without charges. Then political protests began, and the politically appointed medical examiner “ruled” that the death was a homicide caused by “compression of neck (chokehold).” The Manhattan District Attorney is seeking an indictment carrying up to a 15-year prison term. The deceased had a history of psychosis, a long criminal record, and was a known user of K2 (synthetic marijuana), but the M.E. did not wait for the toxicology report. John Dale Dunn, M.D., J.D., stated that the video showed that Penny had used a “head lock,” not a choke hold (tinyurl.com/3trsvzf9). After being subdued, Neely was placed in the recovery position and was conscious and talking. No evidence of a neck injury was reported.
The medical profession, like the criminal justice system, has been politicized and corrupted to serve the ends of racial politics.
Will future bystanders intervene to prevent harm to others?
Dr. Eggleston Wins Injunction
Dr. Richard Eggleston, an 80-year-old ophthalmologist who has been retired for 10 years, faces possible delicensure by the Washington Medical Commission (WMC) for statements about COVID he made in a column in the Lewiston Tribune.
His Sep 5, 2021, article stated that “ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine are very effective and safe, and should be used along with vitamins C and D, melatonin, zinc, and quercetin,” and referenced “those who wish to control our individual lives and make us part of a Marxist/fascist collective.” Dr. Eggleston is one of about 60 physicians targeted by WMC for questioning the mainstream COVID narrative.
A Washington state appeals court granted a stay of Dr. Eggleston’s administrative hearing pending court proceedings regarding violation of his freedom of speech (tinyurl.com/ync3e6j2).
Attorney Rick Jaffe said that WMC “is under the constitutionally mistaken belief that medical boards can discipline physicians for what they say in public.” A July 2021 press release by the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) floated the idea that “physicians who generate and spread COVID-19 vaccine misinformation or disinformation are risking disciplinary action by state medical boards, including the suspension or revocation of their medical license.” But every single state that considered doing this has backed off, except Washington, Jaffe stated. “Every single justice and judge who has addressed this issue in the past 75 years has said that licensing agencies cannot interfere with the public speech of their licensees” (https://tinyurl.com/2p9cc57z).
Dr. Eggleston said that when he wrote his columns he suspected that the WMC would take action against him, but he felt he had to stand up for his beliefs. “I’m going to write these things. I’m not going to be afraid to write…. I think it is important to realize how fragile our rights can be.”
Litigation Briefs
· Dr. Scott Jensen Sues MN Board of Medical Practice and AG Keith Ellison. “For three years, while I was a sitting State Senator and while I was running for governor, the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice hovered over me as a weaponized agency,” writes Dr. Jensen. He argues that a series of illegal investigations were intended to chill his speech critical of the prevailing and official narrative on COVID-19 (tinyurl.com/mvz9k3wt).
· Vaccine Exemption Case Can Proceed. A Maine appeals court overruled the dismissal of Alicia Lowe v. Janet Mills. Liberty Counsel argued on behalf of medical workers who were terminated because their religious exemptions from Gov. Janet Mills’s COVID-19 shot mandate were denied. Gov. Mills ordered employers to deny all religious exemptions and also threatened to revoke the licenses of all health care employers who failed to mandate the shot to their employees (tinyurl.com/3uktvebz).
· Teenager Sues over Breast Removal at Age 13. Kaiser Permanente is being sued by Layla Jane, now 18 years old, for performing a double mastectomy on her at age 13, after two years of cross-sex hormones. The letter of intent to sue states that doctors engaged in “intentional, malicious, and oppressive concealment of important information and false representations.” Kaiser is also being sued by Chloe Cole, who had her breasts removed at age 15 (https://tinyurl.com/3sdbjh4m).
· Doctor Sued for Non-consented COVID Shots. NaTonya
McNeil, mother of two children, ages 15 and 17, who were given COVID shots without her consent, is suing Dr. Janine A. Rethy, director of the KIDS Mobile Medical Clinic/Ronald McDonald Care Mobile clinic, operated by Georgetown Hospital. The children were taken to the clinic for a school physical, and the mother remained outside the examining room. The lawsuit seeks damages for false imprisonment, battery, and fraud. Allegedly the children were falsely told they could not attend school without the shot (https://tinyurl.com/3zn87mns).
Correspondence
Data vs. Communication. Most hospitals force physicians to use an electronic medical record, which is clearly designed for billing. Physicians are drowning in data—which is killing medicine. “Asking the patient what transpired usually yields more information than the discharge summary,” writes Dr. Louis Caplan (https://tinyurl.com/4r7mn879).
I once visited a friend who was hospitalized at the Cleveland Clinic. A mobile tablet was at the bedside. I asked the resident what was the patient’s diagnosis. After struggling through multiple screens in the electronic record, he could not tell me. I asked the attending physician, who again scrolled through screen after screen—no specific diagnosis could be stated. I think most clinicians recognize the outright fraud inherent in these electronic records, but many accept this fiction just to get paid.
Lawrence R. Huntoon, M.D., Ph.D., Lake View, NY
Scientism: the State Religion. Scientism is the opinion that science and the scientific method are the best or only way ro render truth about reality. At its heart is the theory of materialism, which holds that physical matter is the only reality and that everything, including thought, feeling, mind, and will, can be explained in terms of matter and physical phenomena. The U.S. government now considers itself the purveyor of what is “true” vs. “fake” science. Religious believers as well as dissident scientists/medical professionals are heretics in the eyes of the law—and likely enemies of the state. In the Soviet Great Purge, up to 100,000 clergy members were slaughtered between 1936 and 1938. Has the U.S. Dept of Homeland Security essentially become one of the new courts of the inquisition for this new religion? We must have a separation between science and state.
Robert W. Malone, M.D., https://tinyurl.com/3trr572e
Corporate Practice of Medicine. I began the political fight at the Minnesota Medical Association (MMA) in 1974. We all lost big in 2005 with the MMA “report” of cost control through “quality care and prevention.” The “report” was legislated in 2008 as the “doctor’s plan,” which promoted transfer of population risk to “providers” under a cloud of six pages of smoking prevention initiatives. Obamacare made this ACO-like MN (and MA) system of legalized profiteering by rationing of care into a powerhouse reality. The litany of cost control through rationing care remains biblical-like political theology ever since 1973. MMA staff and duped volunteer M.D. leadership began riding their cement surfboard on the HMO wave of the future in 1973 and have now drowned in irrelevance!
Can we reverse 5 decades of laws legalizing crony corporate cartel rationing? I believe this is possible! Reforms, believe it or not, can start in public programs: Medicaid first, Medicare next! In 2009-2010, Connecticut Medicaid reform fired all its HMOs! Control needs to be returned to enrollees through onsite debit-card payment for out-patient services.
Robert Geist, M.D., North Oaks, MN
Gas Stoves Not Shown to Cause Asthma. In the meta-analysis claimed to show a causal connection between gas-stove cooking and childhood wheezing, 14 of 27 studies examined a median of more than 15,000 hypotheses. None of these papers made mention of correcting for multiple testing or explained why this was not done. Data dredging and p-hacking could explain the claimed connection (https://tinyurl.com/4vwn4zar).
John Dale Dunn, M.D., J.D., Brownwood, TX
AMA Pushes Woke Agenda. A “free” AMA course on “racism” begins with the statement: “We acknowledge that we are all living off of the stolen ancestral lands of indigenous peoples for thousands of years” and the fruits of the forced labor of Africans. The course is pure propaganda along with a series of scientific misrepresentations. The AMA has abandoned its mission of physician advocacy to promote radical leftist ideology.
Julio Gonzalez, M.D., J.D., https://tinyurl.com/3dm8x9vs
The Debt Ceiling. Karl Marx said that religion is the opiate of the masses. Debt is the opiate of Americans. With the agreement, the federal deficit will be 4.6% of GDP in 2025; without it, 5%. The U.S. leads Western countries in deficits. Only 15% of spending was included in the negotiations. This is akin to a debt-ridden family trying to avoid bankruptcy by cutting back on restaurant meals while taking out a 72-month loan to buy a $60,000 car. America’s institutions are preoccupied and even obsessed with gender and sexual orientation. Woe to anyone who suggests that the decline in two-parent families might be a root cause of many of America’s socioeconomic problems.
Craig Cantoni, Tucson, AZ
Corporate Medicine. In a great commentary on “The Profession Formerly Known as Medicine,” Steven Goldsmith writes: “I sit at the bedside grieving over medicine as it expires into a soulless technocracy. I watch its extremities cyanose as it struggles for air, its body reeking with the stench of commingled corruption and cowardice” (https://tinyurl.com/4j49nhxx). Hope for its resuscitation depends on a parallel medical system.
Bose Ravenel, M.D., Winston-Salem, NC
