Volume 81, no. 5 May 2025
Public policy decisions with profound consequences are being made based on statistical models: setting the “permissible” atmospheric concentration of CO2, predicting deaths from COVID, estimating “lives saved” by vaccines, predicting measles deaths if vaccine compliance falls below a certain level, calculating the number of asthma attacks from air pollution levels, announcing the numbers of cancers from CT scans, etc.
Models are inherently flawed, even in the most rigorous science of physics. Enrico Fermi demolished a beautiful model whose calculations agreed well with available data. He quoted mathematician John von Neumann, who said that with four arbitrary parameters, he could make a model fit an elephant, and with five, he could make it wiggle its trunk (tinyurl.com/2cukdfnx).
Models depend on assumptions and on selected data points. They may predict the past, which was used to construct the model, but, like global climate models, fail to predict the future (though the latter are still used to calculate CO2 “allowances”).
In models pertaining to pandemics and vaccines, assumptions include disease mortality, transmissibility, the effects of containment efforts, the emergence of new viral strains, the effectiveness and safety of vaccines, and unknown unknowns. COVID models seem to have disregarded the existence or development of natural immunity and treatments used with or without medical advice.
Our computers and sophisticated statistical methods have not invalidated the wisdom of Aristotle: Good predictions do not prove an assumption is true. It is impossible to prove an assumption is true because the next test may prove it is false. However, one bad prediction proves the assumption is false. This is the key to science (https://tinyurl.com/yz6k8emb).
The Linear No-Threshold Hypothesis (LNT)
The MAHA movement appears, for the moment, to have been diverted from Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s, focus on vaccines to other environmental risks. The approach seems to follow that used for ionizing radiation, assuming there is no safe dose, so exposures must be kept “as low as reasonably achievable” (ALARA). This has hugely magnified costs and hindered the use of highly beneficial technology in medicine as well as the nuclear power industry. The assumption was adopted for political reasons and persists despite the exposure of its fallacies and deceptions, most prominently by Edward Calabrese. (See discussions by Scientists for Accurate Radiation Information, SARI, https://tinyurl.com/mry9a2rm).
Evidence shows a biphasic dose-response curve, with benefit at low doses and harm at high doses. Thus, radon has been called “vitamin R.” The level in your basement might reduce your risk of lung cancer, while high doses are dangerous (https://tinyurl.com/yev2kkek).
Recently, patients are expressing worry that a CT scan they had might cause them to get cancer. An article in JAMA Intern Med stated that the 93 million CT exams performed annually in the U.S. might cause an additional 103,000 radiation-induced cancers. Perhaps, authors speculate, recent unexplained increases in cancers at younger ages might be caused by CT, although we do not know the CT exposures of any of the cancer patients (https://tinyurl.com/5c87vvv6). An accompanying editorial stated that as many as 5% of cancers might be caused by CT, so clinicians need to curtail low-value examinations. All tables and figures are for model-based projections.
For radiologic procedures, we can estimate the dose received with considerable accuracy. For environmental exposures to “chemicals” in food, particulates in air (outdoor and indoor), or compounds absorbed through the skin, we have only very crude measures such as food frequency questionnaires, or ZIP-code-level measures of air quality. How much of a compound is absorbed or how it is metabolized or eliminated is poorly known. And of course, as with drugs, the dose determines the poison.
Making America Healthy Again (MAHA) Priorities
We should of course research the consequences of allegedly healthy seed oils versus animal fats, or of high-fructose corn syrup, or of food additives like those that retard spoilage and increase shelf life. But many existing studies on diet or pollution are part of the “irreproducibility crisis” (https://tinyurl.com/m4nkutbh). How will the FDA assure that sound science is applied rather than hypothetical modeling, data dredging, P-hacking, or HARKing (hypothesizing after results are known)?
New FDA Commissioner Martin Makary, M.D., says the FDA food pyramid (now called a “plate”) is coming down, along with the dogma that all calories are equal. Attorney Jeff Childers (tinyurl.com/5eyw4x2p) writes that the FDA had frozen a “discredited, anti-scientific philosophy.” Makary said that the FDA goal will now be “delivering cures and meaningful treatments and healthier foods,” instead of “fighting misinformation.” Is the pyramid misinformation? Or does that term apply only to disfavored views on COVID-19?
How will we measure whether Americans become healthier? And if enormous changes in agriculture are imposed, how will the “social determinants of health” be affected if food becomes scarce or unaffordable or more contaminated with microorganisms?
Transparency, open debate including dissidents, and insistence on risk-benefit analysis are essential requirements.
Ein Fetzen Papier (Scrap of Paper)
The 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) might be, like the 1914 treaty in which Germany pledged to recognize Belgian neutrality, an illusion. Treaties do not kill intent or capability. Despite having 188 signatories, the BWC has not prevented the use of bioweapons—or cutting-edge genetic engineering applications. The U.S. has outsourced biodefense to partners like China and Ukraine via groups like EcoHealth Alliance. While we debated gain-of-function semantics, China mastered the technique. The U.S. could outlaw gain-of-function research here and even prosecute scientists who had grants to perform it, but the techniques will still exist while our expertise may not. We need preparedness, writes Randall Bock. “Stockpiles still matter—but not for vaccines. Think treatments—ivermectin…. Antivirals, antibodies, anything to blunt the edge while we scale up…. Diverse defenses beat vaccine tunnel vision” (https://tinyurl.com/3veepvy7).
Even with mRNA platforms at the ready for attacking each emerging threat, we need general principles, applicable without sequencing genomes (https://tinyurl.com/2wmux3bu).
On Poison—Dose and Resistance
“They put arsenic in his meat
“And stared aghast to watch him eat;
“They poured strychnine in his cup
“And shook to see him drink it up:
“They shook, they stared as white’s their shirt:
“Them it was their poison hurt.
“—I tell the tale that I heard told.
“Mithridates, he died old.”
A.E. Housman, “A Shropshire Lad”
Disruptors
If an entity can be called an “endocrine disruptor,” then parts per trillion (ng/L) are of concern to environmentalists, apparently under the bizarre assumption of a nonlinear triphasic dose response such that “an ED might wreak havoc at very low and very high doses” but do nothing at all at moderate doses. They might profess concern about a mercury level of 0.144 ppm in tuna but none about injecting a 500-fold higher concentration in vaccines into babies. Trace amounts that concentrate in tissues such as brain and that provoke an inflammatory or an immune response—immune disruptors?—could have a profound and lasting effect. Thimerosal, which probably has an adjuvant as well as a disinfecting effect, has been removed except from influenza vaccine. But aluminum adjuvants are present in most vaccines (AAPS News, April 2024). Aluminum contact allergy is not rare in children (https://tinyurl.com/4nk95jc7).
Were any disruptors introduced at about the same time as an increased prevalence of neurodevelopment disorders? A plot of cumulative doses of Al-containing vaccines vs. autism prevalence suggests a positive relationship with an exponential-like increase in autism around 1995 (https://tinyurl.com/3xvayeuc).
“Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful.”
George E.P. Box
Clusters
“Cancer clusters” have excited much media excitement if they can be blamed on radiation or a chemical (such as trichloroethylene). About 1,000 suspected cancer clusters are reported to state health departments each year, according to the American Cancer Society, which provides a precise definition. They can provide useful information: e.g., studying clusters of mesothelioma led to the discovery of the link between asbestos exposure and this rare cancer (https://tinyurl.com/24s97y4x). Usually, reports are used by activists to cause social anxiety, prominently about leukemia clusters around nuclear power plants, which have been exhaustively analyzed (https://tinyurl.com/3f84bypa). Actual exposure to radiation was not determined—just distance from the facility. Maximum potential exposure was too small to be causal. Note that there was no increase in leukemia around Chernobyl.
The anti-nuclear LNT idea has survived 58 years despite lack of evidence of genetic effects or congenital malformations in A-bomb survivors (https://tinyurl.com/dtxh8ppp), showing the power of indoctrination.
In recent months, there has been a flurry of cancer clusters, generally reported in local news outlets, without nightly reporting, Pulitzer Prize-seeking reporters hot on the trail, or concerned responses from authorities. Childers (op. cit.) catalogs examples from just April 2025. Three different cancers in one family at the same time; six nurses (now 10) with brain tumors in one hospital; about 30 cases of glioblastoma in Piatt County, Illinois; 12 teachers with breast cancer in Hudson, IA; and many more.
Pre-pandemic, he writes, cases seemed to cluster around an industrial waste site or other identifiable suspect, and the cancers were of a similar type. Cases now suggest exposure to something [but not vaccine] with a general cancer-promoting effect. And the media and official response is quite different. “It’s like we’ve crossed into a new era of unacknowledged causality, where even the suggestion of a systemic agent triggers bureaucratic shutdown. The difference…I believe, lies in who the potential polluter might be. This time, it’s not likely to be just a single leaky industrial plant or a big chemical manufacturer…. Look at these greedy polluters harming the innocent townsfolk! This time, it’s much bigger and more dangerous to the establishment. This time, the likely big polluter is the establishment.”
Childers states that “if the current causal chain runs through post-2021 mass exposure, then the implication is that regulators didn’t just miss it—they caused it. And the media didn’t just fail to report it—they helped sell it.” The evidence is accumulating, and it will eventually become undeniable.
AAPS Calendar
Jun 28. Missouri chapter meeting, aaps.pub/mojune.
Sep 11-13. 82nd Annual Meeting, Chantilly, VA. https://aapsonline.org/2025am
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.
Can the IRS Revoke Harvard’s Tax Exemption?
President Trump suggested in a social media post that Harvard should lose its tax-exempt status as a public charity as long as it keeps pushing a political and ideological agenda and continues its racially discriminatory DEI policies. There is precedent. Bob Jones University lost its tax exemption because it forbade interracial dating and marriage on campus. In 1983, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a lower court decision that IRS could revoke the exemption for a private Christian college because its “charitable purpose” must “serve a public purpose and not be contrary to established public policy.” About 17 years later, in 2000, Bob Jones finally gave in and dropped its ban on interracial dating. It got its tax-exempt status back seven years after that in 2017 (Childers op. cit.).
Habeas Corpus
Article I, Section 9, Clause 2, of the U.S. Constitution reads: “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.”
Habeas corpus dates back to the Magna Carta. It gives anyone jailed an in-person court hearing, and bars indefinite detention. “In short, the government can’t just disappear people,” writes Jeff Childers (https://tinyurl.com/23fffyyf).
President Lincoln partially suspended the writ during the Civil War, leading to a showdown with the Supreme Court in Ex parte Merryman. Merryman was arrested by the U.S. military in May 1861 for burning railroad bridges to block Union troops and for recruiting Confederate forces. Chief Justice Taney found Lincoln’s suspension of the writ to be illegal, holding that since Clause 2 appears in Article I, it’s a power held by Congress, not by the Executive Branch. Lincoln ignored the Court order and asked Congress to approve the writ’s suspension retroactively—as it did, two years later in 1863, in the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act.
The issue is not settled. Justice Taney acted alone, in his capacity as a circuit judge, and not for the entire Court, so his decision has no precedential power. Since Merryman, the Supreme Court has never formally held that a sitting president cannot suspend the writ without Congress.
The U.S. may be heading for another showdown. President Trump has invoked the Alien Enemies Act, but the Supreme Court ruled that each individual must have a court hearing before deportation. This would make mass deportation of 20 million illegals impossible (https://tinyurl.com/56jy7zs9).
In 1942, the Court allowed FDR to conduct de facto mass detention of Japanese Americans. Chief Justice Roberts calls failure to overturn the Korematsu decision “a stain on the Constitution” (Childers, op. cit.).
The President has the Constitutional responsibility to defend the nation’s borders, and a mandate to do so. Are we dealing with executive overreach? Or judicial overreach?
Democrat legislators are making a trek to El Salvador over the detention of alleged MS-13 gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Alarms are being raised about American citizens being next (tinyurl.com/38db2max). Anti-Trump propaganda? What about the harsh ICE detention of tourists (tinyurl.com/2nec2yw4) or a naturalized American real-estate attorney (tinyurl.com/2wxctx7d)?
Vaccine Court and Autism
“Vaccine court,” officially the U.S. Court of Federal Claims special masters, was established by the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, when only three vaccines were given in the U.S. (DTP, polio, and MMR) and vaccinations rates hovered between 50% and 60% percent nationally. Today, there are eleven vaccines for children, given in multiple doses, with vaccination rates hovering around 90%. The court has awarded more than $5 billion to vaccine-injured Americans. Largely due to the increasing number of claims, the vaccine court amended its rules in 1995 to make it harder to win a claim. By 2002, the vaccine court was overwhelmed with hundreds of claims for autism, a previously rare disorder that was experiencing an explosive rise. So, the vaccine court took more than 5,500 claims and grouped them into the Omnibus Autism Proceedings (OAP). The outcome in three selected “test cases” would affect all of them.
The case of Hannah Poling stood out for its robustness and defensibility. A key witness, Dr. Andrew Zimmerman, wrote that with a “reasonable degree of medical certainty” he believed that the cause for regressive encephalopathy in Hannah at age 19 months was “underlying mitochondrial dysfunction, exacerbated by vaccine-induced fever and immune stimulation that exceeded metabolic energy reserves.” HHS settled the Poling case for $20 million (with a gag order) and removed it from the OAP. Dr. Zimmerman was uninvited from being an expert ever again. Soon after conceding Hannah’s case, the Omnibus court ruled against the roughly 5,500 families and exonerated vaccines as the cause of autism. Some families with autistic children received compensation—if they used the terms “encephalopathy” or “brain damage” and avoided the word “autism” (tinyurl.com/5czvn7fk).
J.B. Handley asserts that “the U.S. government knows vaccines cause autism. The truth is hiding in plain sight in the records of the vaccine court and their expert witnesses” (ibid.). Handley comes from the private equities industry. He and his nonspeaking, profoundly disabled autistic son invented the S2C (spell to communicate) method described in the book Underestimated: an Autism Miracle. He states that research published in the last 10 years, none in the U.S., makes a compelling case that autism is triggered by aluminum adjuvant creating an immune-activation event. This could also be the mechanism for other vaccine-related autoimmunity problems.
MMR does not contain aluminum adjuvant, but the child has received other vaccines that do. MMR stimulates production of MCP-1 (macrophage chemoattractant protein), which might cause aluminum adjuvant nanoparticles from prior vaccines to move into the brain, Handley hypothesizes.
Citing vaccinepapers.org, Handley concludes that “the science strongly suggests that the risk [of brain injury] is not small.”
Tip of the Month. State legislatures are passing bills helpful to medical care. Idaho just became the third state after Tennessee and Arkansas to convert ivermectin to over-the-counter (OTC) status. But many pharmacies refuse to sell ivermectin that way, so a prescription may still be required where you are. Patients might be able to obtain OTC ivermectin by mail from a courageous pharmacy in one of these three states. The Tennessee legislature has also recently voted in favor of a law to prohibit discrimination by those in TennCare against unvaccinated patients (SB1389).
Correspondence
Sham Peer Review Old and New. In a talk to 4th year medical students at Tulane, I told them the fascinating story of Dr. Robert Heath, a brilliant innovator at Tulane Medical School. He was the inventor of deep brain stimulation, as described in the book The Pleasure Shock: The Rise of Deep Brain Stimulation and Its Forgotten Inventor. He was treated very badly by colleagues, and his discovery was basically suppressed to a large degree. Years later, others are given credit for his discovery. And, the treatment has been shown to be effective in the various conditions that he set out to treat.
In graduate school in physiology, I did pleasure center implants in rats, with results incredible to see.
Lawrence R. Huntoon, M.D., Ph.D., Eden, N.Y.
History Rhymes. The decimation of private U.S. medical practices reminds me of the fate of farmers in the Soviet Union in the 1920s before the first Soviet Five Year Plan. In 1928, more than 80% of the Russian population lived in villages that were engaged in agriculture. To control the “peasants,” the first order for the Bolsheviks was to collectivize agriculture. Peasants clearly did not want to give up their private property, family, church and local community connections and supports. But terrorized by Moscow bureaucrats, these institutions were systematically dismantled. In 1937, 97% of households in the countryside had been consigned to 235,000 Soviet collective farms. And villagers reportedly slaughtered their cows and horses and lost their motivation to work. Et tu for independent U.S. physicians?
Lee Beecher, M.D., Maple Grove, MN
How Scaremongers Work. The cancer scaremongers use a standard junk science method: big uncontrolled studies looking for small blips in the cancer rates that they can associate with exposure to _____. Then they take the small relative risk and buff it up with a p value that gives them “statistical significance” and project their population study to the population of the country and voilà—a big scare. The first of nine Bradford-Hill criteria to impute causality is strength of association. Smoking increases a man’s risk of lung cancer by 2,300% and a woman’s by 700%. That association is so strong that it cannot be disputed. However, studies that show that A increases the risk of B by merely a few percentage points are far less convincing.
John Dale Dunn, M.D., J.D., Brownwood, TX
Why Science Says Everything Will Kill You. Homework assignment: Open a spreadsheet and enter everything you have ever eaten, when, and what quantities. Put in air quality data, and list all chemicals you have ever inhaled, in what quantity. Add in all incidents of stress, all maladies, all medicines, all measurements of your body chemistry and physiology. Send me your data, and I’ll do standard statistics on it. The number of “significant” correlations we will uncover with your sicknesses to the items in the data will be wondrous to behold. This exercise has been done many times. Examples include the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, NHANES, about which 400,000 papers have been written; the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Factor Surveillance System (55K papers); the National Health Interview Survey (111K papers); the National Survey of Children’s Health (32K papers); the Health Survey for England (30K papers); the Framingham Heart Study (179K papers); and many others. Now in such data sets there will many correlated things, like a chemical in the air and some dread disease. The mysterious natural force called probability may have caused each, in which case it’s a coincidence that the two were found together. Or maybe probability didn’t do any causing and instead the chemical caused the disease. To tell which, we use a statistical model to calculate the chance that the correlation is greater than the one we saw, assuming there is no correlation (the null hypothesis). This gives us the p value, which is mighty if it is small.
We cannot trust science that reports that things are correlated or associated or linked. That is most science today.
William M. Briggs, Ph.D., https://tinyurl.com/8wyxjeem
Restoring Trust. We are finally focusing on the need to reform our institutions because COVID fully exposed the massive, across-the-board institutional failure, including overt censorship, loss of freedoms, and the frank violation of human rights. Yet this failure is missing from proclamations from the new administration about medicine today. The Birx-Fauci lockdowns directly inflicted massive damage on children and literally killed millions, especially, sinfully, the poor. More than massive incompetence, more than a fundamental lack of critical thinking, we saw the disappearance of society’s moral compass, so pervasive that we have rightfully lost trust in our institutions. Silently turning the page on modern history’s most egregious societal failure would be extraordinarily harmful. It would completely eliminate all accountability. Only public accountability will prevent recurrence. The era of trusting experts based solely on credentials must be over, but the backlash must not usher in a different wave of false belief. Legitimate expertise is still legitimate; known, solid medical science is still valid; unfounded theories based on simple correlations are not scientifically sound. Remember that truth is not a team sport, and that the solution to misinformation is more information.
Scott W. Atlas, M.D., https://tinyurl.com/3jy49fnz
