Volume 81, no. 6 June 2025
Those who were in college in the 1960s and 1970s are having déjà vu about the student riots. But how many who participated in the Revolution, like the late David Horowitz, awakened to its effect on our civilization?
And who is morally responsible for our current decline?
In his 1966 semi-autobiographical novel Cancer Ward, set in a hospital in 1955, two years after Stalin’s death, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn explores the role played by various patients in the murderous regime. One patient, expecting to die during surgery for his rectal cancer, confides in the protagonist Oleg Kostoglotov.
“How could an entire society bow to ever-changing ideologies that killed their devotees?” asks Aleksei Shulubin. Can there really be a whole nation of fools? You could forgive the inexperienced young, but what about people like him, who recognized the deception, the intolerance, and the hatred?
Shulubin had at first been a true believer in the Communist Revolution, and was willing to condemn people he knew to be innocent if the Party demanded it. He was a university lecturer in Moscow. He confessed his “mistakes” and renounced them.
“A certain percentage managed to survive, didn’t they? Well, I was part of that percentage.” He withdrew further and further, ending up as a librarian in a remote province. But even there he received instructions from the authorities, for the destruction of books by certain authors. “So we stuff the books into a stove.”
He asks how “in no more than ten years, a whole people loses its social drive and courageous impulse. Or rather, the impulse changes the sign from plus to minus, from bravery to cowardice.”
Some awakened, but “the cancer of Marxism/Leninism had metastasized through an entire society and around the world, even to the U.S., where students howled in the streets and beat down doors and burned down college buildings,” writes Steven Faulkner (Touchstone: a Journal of Mere Christianity, May/June 2025).
“How quickly a country can throw off its heritage, tear down its statues and statutes, abandon the curricula that lead to the virtues necessary to sustain a successful democracy,” he writes. In education, in business, in the media, powerful influencers “are willing to bow down and repeat the denunciations, the shouted slogans, and quite often what they must know to be lies to maintain their houses in the suburbs, and their precarious footholds at the office” (ibid.).
Reform vs. Wreckage
The Trump Administration has recognized the deep penetration of malignant ideas into American institutions, especially universities. His efforts have been described as a “wrecking ball.” Drastic changes are needed, but indiscriminate canceling of grant funding is also devastating to potential or soon-to-be-former Trump allies. “The careers of young scientists have been thrown off track, as research into topics as important as curing cancer and reversing ageing has been frozen” (https://tinyurl.com/uw2f2t3e). Trump is losing the support of excellent scientists, who want Wokism to be destroyed, but see that they themselves may not survive while well-protected Woke faculty retreat and bide their time. Excellence and progress in medicine and science need abundant resources and teams of talented, well-educated workers. Scattered, well-intentioned experts with a laptop and a small laboratory cannot replace universities. Harvard needs to be reformed and rebuilt, not obliterated.
Protecting Error
Shulubin confessed: “They were destroying textbooks written by great scientists, they were changing the curricula. Very well, I agreed to that too; we would use the new books for teaching! They suggested we reshape anatomy, microbiology and neuropathology to fit in with the doctrines of an ignorant agronomist and an expert on horticulture [Trofim Lysenko].”
What is the great unchallengeable dogma in medicine? Vaccination. To get confirmed as Secretary of HHS, Robert Kennedy, Jr., a long-time vaccine critic, had to promise Sen. Bill Cassidy, M.D., (R-La.) that he would alert the Senate with a 30-day advance notice before changing vaccine safety monitoring programs; maintain the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommendations without changes; and not remove statements on the CDC website asserting that vaccines do not cause autism.
As of May 27, CDC changed its recommendation that everyone over the age of 6 months get the COVID-19 vaccine, especially if pregnant, to no longer recommending it for pregnant women and healthy children. The FDA said it would limit COVID-19 vaccine approvals to those at highest risk of severe disease, and require additional studies on healthier people to confirm the shots’ safety and effectiveness.
“Public-health experts immediately pushed back against the announcement” (https://tinyurl.com/59ews7hc).
Vinay Prasad, M.D., M.P.H., and Martin A. Makary, M.D., M.P.H. called it “An Evidence-Based Approach to Covid-19 Vaccination” in NEJM (https://tinyurl.com/ed33rp8f).
The May 21 hearing before the Senate Permanent Committee on Investigations, concerning lethal adverse effects, was largely unnoticed (https://tinyurl.com/e6hsvarb).
Has today’s U.S. become a cancer ward, similar to the society described by Solzhenitsyn? In our zeal to kill the cancer are we destroying healthy tissue essential for survival?
Cancer and MAHA
In the 72-page report on Make America Healthy Again (https://tinyurl.com/mvpyvjvt), Secretary Kennedy claims that a “staggering 54% of American children now suffer from chronic illnesses, a dramatic increase from previous generations.” Listed conditions include obesity, allergic or autoimmune conditions, mental health problems, and neurodevelopment disorders. Also, cancers at ages 0–19 are said to have increased 40% from 1975 through 2021. The four main drivers are said to be diet (especially “ultraprocessed” foods), environmental chemicals, pervasive technology use, and overmedication.
The National Cancer Institute presents the optimistic view that U.S. cancer incidence declined by 5.7% and mortality by 27.5% between 2000 and 2021. Rates fell during COVID due to delayed screening then caught up (tinyurl.com/25zms9ne).
There is no comment on “anecdotal” reports by physicians of seeing unusually aggressive tumors, or cancers in younger patients since the roll-out of mRNA COVID vaccines.
MAHA promotes more toxicology studies, but the effects of tiny concentrations generally require time, much longer than two years, to develop. Why are the potential carcinogenic effects of COVID (or other) vaccines not an even higher priority for research (https://tinyurl.com/fhw6z8xt)?
People are not dropping dead after consuming a colorful breakfast cereal, and smoking tobacco requires decades to kill you. Why are sudden or rapid serious adverse effects, including death, associated with vaccines not an extremely high MAHA priority?
Vaccine News and Evidence
Warning on Chikungunya Vaccine. The CDC is advising travelers aged 60 and older to hold off on receiving the Ixchiq chikungunya vaccine as federal health agencies investigate more than a dozen reports of serious neurological or cardiac symptoms developing within a week of being vaccinated (https://tinyurl.com/4ffa42nf).
Autism Causation. Toby Rogers states that he has mapped the entire field of 850 autism-causation studies reported in English: 22 studies since 2000 claiming no association between vaccines and autism; five large autism genetics studies; four large epigenetic studies; and six vaccinated vs. unvaccinated studies. “I imagine we could pull together another 50 to 100 studies of toxicants that increase autism risk. But in my experience none of them control for vaccines even though they are a major confounding factor and none will have odds ratios as high as the six vaccinated vs. unvaccinated studies” (https://tinyurl.com/3y3ztceb).
Autopsy Findings. A review of reports of autopsies in deaths that reported COVID vaccination as an antecedent exposure found that 240/325 (73.9%) were independently adjudicated as directly due to or significantly contributed to by COVID vaccination. The mean time from vaccination to death was 14.3 days. The main causes of death were cardiac or clotting disorders, but many other organ systems were affected (https://tinyurl.com/nkw6swzr).
“It is much more important to kill a bad bill than to pass a good one.”
Calvin Coolidge
Proposed Amendment to AAPS Bylaws
A proposed bylaws amendment that complies with the requirement to be submitted by written petition of 10 members will be considered at the AAPS annual meeting to be held September 11-13, 2025, in Chantilly, VA.
The amendment would allow Doctors of Podiatric Medicine to apply for Regular membership status by adding the following underlined words to the existing definition of regular member in Article II of AAPS bylaws:
“REGULAR MEMBER. Any physician who holds the degree of Doctor of Medicine or Doctor of Osteopathy or Doctor of Podiatric Medicine may apply for Regular membership.”
The AAPS Board of Directors opposes the amendment.
Resolution on OTC Drugs
The following resolution will be presented at the 82nd annual meeting (The entire resolution and a supporting paper from Cato are posted at: https://aaps.pub/res2501).
Therefore be it resolved that AAPS recommends that the U.S. Congress repeal necessary Durham-Humphrey provisions and amend federal law to deny the FDA any power to impose prescription requirements for non-controlled drugs, and in the interim FDA leadership should repeal the prescription requirement for all non-controlled drugs.
RFK, Jr., on the World Health Organization
Secretary Kennedy posted a photo of himself with Javier Milei and a chainsaw on X.com: “I had a wonderful meeting with Argentine President @JMilei about our nations’ mutual withdrawal from the WHO and the creation of an alternative international health system based on gold-standard science and free from totalitarian impulses, corruption, and political control” (https://tinyurl.com/3rf36hsx).
MAHA Report: Nonexistent, Miscited References
About seven of the 500 studies cited by the anonymously authored MAHA report do not exist (an AI “hallucination?) (https://tinyurl.com/e3xf8wh2), and others do not support the statements attributed to them. This can hardly be called “gold-standard science” or an example of rigor and transparency, and raises concerns about all of the evidence cited in the report. The added question is whether the report accurately reflects the full literature (https://tinyurl.com/2rcewwyx).
AAPS Calendar
Jun 28. Missouri chapter meeting, aaps.pub/mojune.
Sep 11-13. 82nd Annual Meeting, Chantilly, VA.
Sep 24-26, 2026. 83rd Annual Meeting, Alpharetta, GA
ACTION OF THE MONTH
Save the dates of September 11-13, 2025 for the 82nd Annual Meeting of AAPS. Consider donating to bring students to our meeting at https://aapsonline.org/scholarships.
Court Rules against Amish
In Miller v. McDonald (https://tinyurl.com/4xsspz68), the Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld fines totaling $118,000 against three Amish “community schools” for admitting unvaccinated students. The Court acknowledged that the immunization law burdens religious practice by forcing people to choose between two impossible options: inject their children with vaccines, or forgo educating their children in a group setting, requiring them to sacrifice a central religious practice. However, it was held not to be an “existential threat.” Because the law is “neutral and generally applicable,” and the “legislative history showed no anti-religious animus,” it “need only survive rational basis review.”
The Amish were granted an extension of the time to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court until July 31.
Tip of the Month. New York State, our fourth largest population, has prohibited religious exemptions from vaccination and this ban was upheld by the Second Circuit in a case concerning the Amish in March. But subsequent to this terrible decision a district court held in April that schools “are enjoined from enforcing against Plaintiffs any policy or practice that permits the substitution of the District’s or its medical director’s substantive judgment for that of a licensed physician under New York Public Health Law § 2164(8);” A.A.C. v. Starpoint Cent. Sch. Dist., No. 24-CV-1047 (JLS) (W.D.N.Y. Apr 25, 2025). Thus schools must accept physician-approved exemptions from vaccination in New York. A single physician, however, dare not write too many exemptions.
Missouri Gag Order Reversed
U.S. District Judge Greg Kays ruled that a section of the 2022 state law, which prohibited pharmacists from contacting doctors and patients “to dispute the efficacy” of hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin for treating COVID-19, violates the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. It is “viewpoint discrimination because pharmacists could call doctors to tout the efficacy of a drug for a purpose the FDA has not approved” (tinyurl.com/mr3vhtm7).
Clinical Trial Rigging on Trial
In what could become one of the most explosive pharmaceutical lawsuits in U.S. history, Robi v. Merck & Co., plaintiffs allege that Merck misrepresented the safety profile of Gardasil human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine.
According to expert witness Dr. Peter C. Gøtzsche, Merck engineered its clinical trials not to detect harms, but to mask them. He stated that Merck distorted its clinical trial data so thoroughly that the results were rendered scientifically meaningless.
Rather than using a saline placebo, Merck used an aluminum-based adjuvant as the control in all but two small trials. This is a known neurotoxin that can trigger local and systemic side effects on its own. This tactic ensured that the “control” group would experience side effects similar to the vaccinated group, making the vaccine seem safer by comparison.
Because of the short (14-day) observation window, thousands of adverse events that could have revealed patterns of harm were systematically excluded from the final analysis (https://tinyurl.com/fnyp2a6b).
Will AI Decide Your Need for Pain Relief?
The Doctor Patient Forum, an organization focused on patients with pain, is calling on the FDA to step in and regulate NarxCare. This uses an undisclosed algorithm that can determine whether patients receive medical care or not—without any way to see, challenge, or correct errors in their score, which assesses their risk of opioid misuse. More than 20 states use the NarxCare platform in their prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs). The Forum is asking the FDA to conduct a formal review to determine whether NarxCare qualifies as a medical device subject to regulation (https://tinyurl.com/27p3rb4j).
Kansas Can Sue Pfizer in State Court
The state of Kansas sued Pfizer in June 2024 under the Kansas Consumer Protection Act (AAPS News, December 2024). Pfizer tried to keep the suit in federal court, arguing that the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP Act), which shields COVID-19 vaccine makers from liability for injuries caused by the vaccines, “completely preempts” consumer protection claims made by the state of Kansas. U.S. District Judge Daniel D. Crabtree rejected Pfizer’s PREP Act argument because all of Kansas’s claims are about deceptive marketing, not physical injury or death from the shot. The ruling will likely embolden other states that have already expressed interest in suing Pfizer for violating state consumer protection laws. Pfizer is likely to appeal (https://tinyurl.com/bdd2kb2v).
War Declared on Journal Cartel
RFK, Jr., has threatened that NIH will stop publishing in the Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, and other top journals “because they’re all corrupt.” NIH, he stated, will allocate 20% of its budget to replication studies and back new independent journals. The U.S. Department of Justice is launching an investigation into journals over pandemic bias, fraud, and corruption (https://tinyurl.com/yc823cv4). At least five journals have received letters from Edward R. Martin, Jr., the interim U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C. (https://tinyurl.com/yu843vex). Allegedly, the consistent direction of bias was to suppress any new studies of combination early therapeutics and reports on poor efficacy and side effects of COVID-19 vaccines. None of the major journals published manuscripts that concluded the risks outweigh the benefits of vaccination (tinyurl.com/2bbppbt9).
The PhRMA Grant Universe
According to Public Citizen’s analysis of publicly available documents, PhRMA Network’s billions in grants to the most powerful advocacy organizations totaled 3.5 times the lobbying spending and 70 times more than the campaign contributions. These include the American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society, and the American Society of Clinical Oncology. Other grantees are universities and medical schools such as Harvard and Johns Hopkins, and professional associations such as the American College of Cardiology (tinyurl.com/5yvf5p6w). Prescription drug pricing is one concern, but what do we hear from these advocates about myocarditis or other vaccine adverse effects?
Correspondence
Pharmacists Practicing Medicine. Some pharmacists seek to expand the scope of their practice to include managing and treating patients. This is particularly true of small communities where some pharmacists have “granted” themselves the “right” to practice medicine. We are aware of a case in which a small community recruited a much needed endocrinologist. Prior to his arrival, pharmacists had been managing the care of a lot of diabetics. They did not appreciate this “intruder” usurping their role. So, they filed a complaint against the physician with the medical board. Thus, the “hell hounds” were unleashed on him, ultimately driving him from the community.
Interfering with an agreed-upon treatment plan by patient and physician is not the type of “free speech” that should be tolerated. The bright line between practicing pharmacy and practicing medicine needs to be highlighted and enforced.
Lawrence R. Huntoon, M.D., Ph.D., Eden, N.Y.
Take Back ‘Efficiency.’ The word “efficiency” has been co-opted by strategists, bureaucrats, and profit engineers who have come to wield it like a cudgel. It now means skipping steps. Defunding oversight bodies. Outsourcing expertise to consultants who know the contract better than they know the science. It means collapsing trial phases meant to serve as temporal firewalls between human experimentation and mass deployment. If you want to understand the collapse of institutional trust over the last five years, start here. Fast Track is now embedded in the operating system of public health—no longer an exception, but the default mode. And that’s not just a bureaucratic error. It’s an epistemological crisis. Because if your entire system of evidence-generation is predicated on learning after rollout, then what you have built is not a safety system—it’s a live experiment with no control arm, no pause button, and no transparency.
James Lyons-Weiler, Ph.D., https://tinyurl.com/y9tm35bf
Change of Definition. From 2003 to 2009, WHO stated that “an influenza pandemic occurs when a new influenza virus appears against which the human population has no immunity, resulting in several simultaneous epidemics worldwide with enormous numbers of deaths and illnesses.” Now it’s whatever Dr. Tedros says it is.
Tom Jefferson and Carl Heneghan, tinyurl.com/44vtayau
MAHA. The report of the Make America Healthy Again Commission consists of pre-made conclusions and post-hoc data. It represents the latest manifestation of the government’s mission creep from public health into personal health. Its government-funded science will almost certainly lead to a litany of health policy disasters rivalling the food pyramid disaster of the late 20th century. Good public health policy demands humility, precision, and honesty, not ideology in disguise.
Jeffrey A. Singer, M.D., https://tinyurl.com/mryjb25z
Medicaid Reform. A simple change that could rid us of huge high-cost HMO bureaucracies, lack of patient choice, and poor-quality care is repeal of the 1990s 1115 fed waiver that put MN Medicaid in the hands of the HMOs. It is this waiver from traditional federal Medicaid law that allows the use of private insurance companies as middlemen in our Medicaid program. It allows our Medicaid patients to be forced into managed care programs they don’t want to be in. It is allows our experimental, pilot or demonstration project in Minnesota Medicaid, which has been ongoing for more than 39 years, to continue to the detriment of patients and taxpayers alike. Patients need the freedom to choose traditional fee-for-service Medicaid.
Robert W. Geist, M.D., North Oaks, MN
Biggest PhRMA Scandal of All Time. Surgisphere was supposed to be one of the first incarnations of the idea that a huge data repository could be used to generate health data for research.
The process works by using real data to create synthetic data that can be released with minimal risk to patient privacy. Researchers, directed by one doctor, were supposed to be managing data from millions of patients, from multiple institutions, such that they found 98,000 hospitalized with COVID. The fraudulent Surgisphere paper was successful at stopping all trials conducted around the world for hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) in COVID. Then, one by Ben Goldacre, which also used data that could not be audited or verified, helped stop any chance of HCQ research being resurrected. Also, Lancet Rheumatology published a report making the impossible claim of finding a cohort of nearly a million HCQ users from 14 databases in the world of whom one-third were also taking azithromycin. In these Surgisphere-like papers, curated data sets are created by entities linked to pharma corporations taking in genuine health data (without express consent) and manipulating it as required. All were determined to show that HCQ didn’t work, when we knew that it did.
Most if not all of the observational studies that were relied upon by the government to impose vaccine mandates, and to prop up claims of efficacy, similarly used data that could not be audited or verified, and authors refused to release the data for public inspection. Finding out whether the studies are fake will require government or legal action.
Dr. Ah Khan Syed, https://tinyurl.com/58vxzv7y
