Volume 80, no. 11 November 2024
Reactions to the 2024 election results show the deep polarization of our country.
A “Dissident MD” called it “Liberation Day.” He writes that the election “reveals that a majority—growing rapidly—of Americans now value truth and sanity over lies and mental illness…. This is a return to the American politics of the last century, when everyone was united by foundational principles: America first, freedom, family, security…. Now hope has been restored. There is a possibility of a future for the United States again” (https://tinyurl.com/y34a79nb).
Comedian Jimmy Kimmel expressed the opposite view: “Let’s be honest. It was a terrible night last night. It was a terrible night for women, for children, for the hundreds of thousands of hardworking immigrants who make this country go… [chokes up]… for healthcare, for our climate, for science, for journalism, for justice, for free speech. It was a terrible night for poor people, for the middle class, for seniors who rely on Social Security, for our allies in Ukraine [chokes up again], for NATO, for the truth and democracy and decency” (https://tinyurl.com/2fvsunbe).
An article in MedPage Today states that “RFK Jr. Threatens the Very Fabric of Healthcare—A vote to give Kennedy power is a vote against public health” (https://tinyurl.com/32dhk8f4). “A major risk: granting Kennedy, who has a long history as an anti-vaccine activist, access to information with a stated goal of disproving vaccine safety. For public health, which relies on the transparency and integrity of data, this could be disastrous.”
Kennedy himself stated that “FDA’s war on public health is about to end. This includes its aggressive suppression of…anything…that advances human health and can’t be patented by Pharma” (https://tinyurl.com/e2ybuxx8).
According to former N.J. assemblyman Jamel Holley, “sources” claim that five pharmaceutical company CEOs held an emergency teleconference (https://tinyurl.com/yvfs2aw7). Issues of concern likely include potential loss of liability protection for vaccine injuries and bans on television advertising.
The most important change could be respect for the First Amendment. Mike Benz proposes a Day 1 executive order that “prohibits government grants and contracts to any private company or nonprofit entity that engages in regulating, flagging, or downranking so-called disinformation. The funding of censorship by the government is censorship by the government. That EO would allow you to go agency by agency and kill all of those grants and contracts that comprise the censorship industry. There are hundreds or thousands of people around the world and tens of thousands here in the U.S….whose paychecks…are paid for by doing 24/7 censorship work. This field did not exist 8 years ago. It was created after the 2016 election as a response to Trump winning to stop a night like tonight where he might win again” (https://tinyurl.com/5e6us4ma).
President-Elect Trump announced a plan to dismantle the Deep State (https://tinyurl.com/bdezahac).
What Does It Mean for Medicine?
A new Administration and Congress offer an opportunity to offer reforms that AAPS supports: a return to Hippocratic ethic, under which physicians promise to work for the good of their patients, according to the best of their ability and judgment, and to do no harm. We oppose policies that harm patients by subjugating their care to the interest of the government and third parties.
From aapsonline.org/10-solutions-that-put-patients-first:
1. End mask, vaccine, and other mandates and policies that intrude on patient autonomy. This also includes protecting Americans from World Health Organization policies that too often drive mandates. 2. Protect physician and patient freedom of speech in all venues, including the internet. 3. Protect physician and patient autonomy in treatment and vaccination decisions. 4. End regulations blocking alternatives to ACA, employment-based, Medicare, and Medicaid plans, while allowing those who wish to keep their current government plan to do so. 5. Encourage competition, transparency, and site neutrality. 6. Decouple Social Security benefits from Medicare Part A. Citizens should be permitted to disenroll from Medicare Part A without forgoing Social Security payments. 7. Expand Health Savings Accounts (HSAs). 8. Repeal Medicaid rules that decrease Medicaid patients’ access to independent physicians. 9. End Restrictions on Health Sharing Ministries. 10. Increase options for addressing pre-existing conditions.
“True reform starts with repealing laws and correcting errors, restoring the freedom, under constitutionally limited government, that made America great.” As the movement to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act (ACA) failed, we need to emphasize ways to escape the ACA and build a free-market system: “After the Affordable Care Act: Freedom for All vs. Medicare for All” (https://tinyurl.com/mr3uex9d).
It’s Not Over
Trump won the popular vote—but only by 1.5%. Power is never relinquished voluntarily. The radical Left controls or has infiltrated the Seven Mountains of Influence: religion, the family, education, government, media, arts and entertainment, and business. It has penetrated law enforcement, the military, and medicine. We have only been granted a reprieve.
Trump Promises to End ‘Transgender Madness’
President-elect Trump promises (tinyurl.com/mpazu3se) to:
- revoke school policies on “gender-affirming care,” including puberty blockers and mutilating surgery on minors;
- order federal agencies to cease all program that promote the concept of sex or gender transition at any age;
- ask Congress to stop any programs that use federal taxpayer dollars to promote or pay for these procedures and pass a law prohibiting child-mutilation procedures in all 50 states;
- declare that any hospital or healthcare provider that participates in the physical or chemical mutilation of minors will no longer meet federal health and safety standards for Medicare and Medicaid and will be terminated from the programs immediately;
- support a private right of action for victims to sue doctors who have performed these procedures on minors;
- investigate hospital networks and Pharma to determine whether they have covered up long-term side effects of sex transitions;
- investigate illegal marketing of hormones or puberty blockers that are in no way licensed or approved for this use;
- inform states and school districts that any official or teacher who suggests to a child the possibility of being trapped in the wrong body will face severe consequences including potential civil rights violations or the elimination of federal funding;
- as part of a new credentialing body for teachers, promote positive education on the value of the nuclear family, the roles of mothers and fathers, and celebrating rather than erasing things that make men and women different and unique;
- encourage Congress to pass a bill that the only genders recognized by the U.S. government are male and female;
- clarify that Title IX prohibits men from participating in women’s sports.
Lois J. Copeland, M.D, R.I.P.
Lois J. Copeland, M.D., (1943-2024) in her 47 years of solo internal medicine practice valiantly fought Medicare on behalf of her patients, searching for a way to offer them personal care despite government barriers. She learned that when Medicare was enacted, almost all seniors were forced to rely on it as their sole source of coverage. She found that she could not offer care such as extra visits outside its constraints—even as charity—without incurring the risk of punishment. She and five of her patients took Medicare to court in the landmark case of Stewart v. Sullivan in an attempt to establish the right to privately contract with patients on a case-by-case basis. The judge evaded the issue by holding there was no official policy against it—just carrier threat letters. Attempts to legislate this right led to the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, under which thousands of physicians have exercised an all-or-nothing opt-out. Untold thousands of patients are indebted to Dr. Copeland’s work, in addition to the many she so faithfully served individually. She was AAPS president in 1995.
“Your title gives you claim to the throne of our country. But men don’t follow titles, they follow courage. Now our people know you. Noble and common, they respect you. And if you would just lead them to freedom, they’d follow you. And so would I. —Braveheart
AMA Supports Transgender Agenda
The AMA House of Delegates has passed a resolution supporting the policy that the AMA “unambiguously supports access to and insurance coverage of medically necessary GAC [gender-affirming care].” An amendment to add the phrase “for adults [over age 18]” was defeated (127-486). Only one person spoke in favor of it (https://tinyurl.com/4xj4726r).
AAPS opposes “gender-affirming care” for minors (https://tinyurl.com/y8kn8pjr). For an extensive discussion of transgender ideology, see https://neutralresearcher.substack.com/.
Effect of Puberty Blockers on IQ
Research on the impact of suppressing puberty on neurocognitive function is very sparse, and critical questions remain unanswered, writes Sallie Baxendale of Queen Square Institute of Neurology in London (tinyurl.com/af533b4n). Puberty plays a critical role in the maturation of the brain, including the parts responsible for executive functioning/control and attention, learning, memory, and emotional processing. One small human study showed a decrease of both performance IQ and full-scale IQ after three years. The average 7-point decline was called “not clinically relevant,” but at least one patient experienced a loss of 15 IQ points or more, from 138 to 123. (For comparison, an average loss of 3 points from leaded gasoline was considered extremely significant.) “Longitudinal studies are urgently needed to study the educational and vocational trajectories of persons undergoing these treatments,” Baxendale concluded, and follow-up should monitor development to at least age 25, when neurodevelopment begins to complete.
Flashback: AMA CPT Code Monopoly
The secret contract that gave the AMA its lucrative CPT code monopoly—which RFK, Jr., threatens to end—first came to light at a “Fly-in” that the AMA held in Chicago on Apr 24, 1998, to discuss its controversial new E&M Documentation Guidelines. AAPS executive director Jane Orient, M.D., asked the following question from the audience: “Does the AMA have a contract with the federal government, and when will they release the details of the contract to [the AMA] membership?” Chairman Reardon had to admit to the existence of the contract but he declined to reveal the contents, which AAPS was later able to obtain from a source independent of AMA and HCFA (the predecessor to CMS). The first provision is that HCFA would exclusively use AMA’s CPT-4 for reporting physicians’ services under Medicare and Medicaid (https://tinyurl.com/yhw2ze48).
AAPS Calendar
Jan 13, 2025. Board meeting (Zoom)
Sep 11-13, 2025. 82nd Annual Meeting, Chantilly, VA (DC Area)
Medical Boards and COVID ‘Disinformation’
“Medical Boards Barely Acted Amid Flood of COVID Misinformation,” shouted a headline in MedScape (tinyurl.com/y9ykn8hm). “Only a handful of physicians [six] in the five most populous states [California, Texas, Florida, New York, and Pennsylvania] faced medical board discipline over spreading misinformation to the community during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic,” reported Richard S. Saver, J.D., of the University of North Carolina School of Law and School of Medicine. The Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) had warned physicians that sharing misinformation could risk their licenses (https://tinyurl.com/4tfs5j9x), and the extremely limited discipline for physicians suggests a “very serious disconnect between regulators’ intentions and enforcement actions,” Saver said. “The professional licensure system under current patient-centered frameworks may be institutionally ill-suited to combat the diffuse, intractable, and largely public health-related harms arising from physician-spread misinformation” (https://tinyurl.com/bdfz6mbn). Proposals to abolish state medical boards and create a central quality assurance agency have been discussed.
In an editorial response to Saver’s JAMA Network article, Megan Ranney, M.D., M.P.H., and Lawrence Gostin, J.D., caution that we live in a free society, and “First Amendment freedoms are a bedrock constitutional principle.” Moreover, “it is conceivable that state medical board sanctions could also be used to restrict information on medically beneficial, albeit politically debated, topics, such as abortion, gender-affirming care, or counseling on firearm safety or substance abuse” (tinyurl.com/34fuez5e).
Amended Complaint against Biden’s Censorship
The AAPS Educational Foundation has filed its reply against the government’s attempt to avoid allegations of its violations of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) in the Foundation’s pending lawsuit against the Biden censorship regime. This expands on the landmark case (AAPS v. ABIM, et al.) in which the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals established a “right to hear” (AAPS News, July 2024). The government argued that disbanding the Disinformation Governance Board (DGB) mooted the case against the Dept. of Homeland Security. However, its censorship activities were simply dispersed throughout the department. Just as a rose “by any other name would smell as sweet” (Romeo and Juliet, act II, sc. 2), wrote attorney Andrew Schlafly, “ending use of the name [DGB] did not end the First Amendment infringement (https://tinyurl.com/3n4nyvm8).
Tip of the Month. Incoming President Trump and his department secretaries, including RFK, Jr., at the mammoth Dept. of Health and Human Services, will make 4,000 appointments, of which 1,200 require Senate confirmation. HHS includes the CDC, FDA, NIH, and the agency handling the National Practitioner Data Bank. Please consider applying for the many positions within HHS and other federal agencies, such as Homeland Security, which needs proponents of the First Amendment. Call or email AAPS for needed information. More than 10% of top positions were never filled during the Biden years. Imagine RFK, Jr., ending vaccine and FDA tyranny! He will need good people to do so, as personnel is policy.
Woman Fired for Refusing Shot Wins $12 Million
A jury awarded more than $12 million to information technology specialist Lisa Domski, who was denied a religious exemption for the COVID-19 vaccine and fired after 38 years of service by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, even though she worked from home. Because she was willing to take some vaccines and medicines such as Tylenol and Tums, the defendant held that her religious beliefs were not “sincerely held.” Employees were told that these medications were developed using stem cells, though they were developed decades before stem-cell research was conducted. The company did not require customers or contractors on the premises to be jabbed (https://tinyurl.com/2b9b4wya).
FinCEN: Sneak Attack on 2nd Amendment
On Nov 21, AAPS filed our reply brief (https://tinyurl.com/y94zkazr) in our case requesting an injunction against the enforcement of FinCEN (AAPS News October 2024). AAPS notes that the government fails to name any specific example of a crime the Rule would prevent. Instead, it “makes dozens of boilerplate references to ‘money laundering’ and ‘financing of terrorism,’ as if merely invoking these conclusory terms is enough to overcome the Bill of Rights.” This jargon is repeatedly used by Capitol Hill staffers to try to bolster expansions in federal power.
The draconian penalty of two years imprisonment for a failure to meet a confusing paperwork requirement would trigger a law depriving a person of his right to bear arms.
Some of the plaintiffs are high-profile targets of political adversaries and lawfare. Public disclosure of private information such as a home address is likely to chill exercise of free-speech rights because of fear of retaliation over an unpopular position.
NPDB Falsehoods Challenged
Once an allegation is entered into the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB), it is maintained forever and republished, even if proved false. Victims of falsehoods have no way to have misleading reports removed. Not even the reporting entity can void its own unjustified report except on arbitrarily narrow grounds. Pimpalwar v. HHS asserts that “unreasonable procedural restrictions, as imposed by the Data Bank Guidebook (Oct. 2018) (‘Guidebook’), violate due process and are unauthorized by Congress. Both the U.S. Constitution and the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo require that these arbitrary regulatory restrictions be enjoined and declared invalid. Physicians who are perpetually harmed by incorrect reports about them in this federal database must be afforded due process to void falsehoods about them.”
Dr. Pimpalwar requests that the Court order the voiding of the unjustified adverse reports by a state university against him in the Data Bank, which arose from allegations subsequently disproven in a confidential internal appeal there.
“Having a false or misleading entry in the Data Bank inflicts devastating harm to the physician…as it results in the automatic yet improper denial of opportunities,” the Complaint states. And as in this case, patients are harmed by lack of access to a physician with life-saving skills (https://tinyurl.com/tz9t24e9).
Correspondence
Who Knew That Peer Review Was So Lucrative? More than $1 billion was paid to peer reviewers at top medical journals by pharmaceutical companies between 2020 and 2022, according to a research letter to JAMA (https://tinyurl.com/5y4prvt9). More than half the reviewers received at least one industry payment. The median general payment was $7,614, and the median research payment was $153,173. While most journals have established conflict-of-interest policies for authors, fewer extend these policies to peer reviewers. Transparency is needed.
Lawrence R. Huntoon, M.D., Ph.D., Lake View, NY
The Medicare Destroyer. It has taken a long time to seriously degrade medical practice, but we are finally there. Medicare has destroyed fee for service by continued underpayment, forcing the use of ACOs or similar schemes, which force waiting at least a year before a payment of unknown amount, requiring any organization paying physicians to have deep capital pockets both to wait for the money and to have the administrative capacity to figure out how to get it. This destroys small rural practices that the government supposedly cares so much about. Meanwhile, the medical insurance-political complex makes bank. I absolutely cannot recommend going to medical school in a country where you have to go into so much debt and have no power at all to assure an income that will keep up with inflation.
Mark Mecikalski, M.D., Tucson, AZ
Can One Man Save Free Speech? Elon Musk’s embrace of the free-speech cause puts him at odds with almost all of his peers. Nearly everyone else who matters is determined to scuttle it. NATO military chief Rob Bauer is “very much in favour of freedom of speech, but…. it’s a threat to global security.” In America, there’s the criminal prosecution of Trump. French prosecutors want to imprison Marine Le Pen for 5 years for alleged embezzlement of EU funds. The Bundestag wants to ban the AfD (Alternativ für Deutschland), Germany’s second most popular party, ahead of February’s elections, to “save democracy.” So NATO and three-sevenths of the G7 want to criminalise or ban the Opposition. In the UK, the investigation into a year-old Tweet by a Telegraph columnist has involved (so far) three different constabularies, in a land where the solving of actual crimes is now down to approximately 1.4 per cent. Once they have concluded that without X Trump would have found it almost impossible to break through the Big Social/legacy media alliance throttling free speech, getting rid of Musk becomes an imperative.
Mark Steyn, https://tinyurl.com/2jwbuu8n
Reproducibility Crisis. In one survey, 72% of 1,600 authors of biomedical science papers agreed that there was a reproducibility crisis in their own field. Just half of the participants had tried to replicate their own work, and of these, 43% had failed. Of the participants who had tried to reproduce findings by another team, more than 80 percent had failed to get the same results (https://tinyurl.com/2mdhfs8j). In 51 practice-changing “Landmark Oncology Studies,” Amgen found that only 9 (11%) could be validated (11%). This suggests that a large cohort of cancer patients received ineffective therapy. The lure of money is strong.
Parvez Dara, M.D.
COVID v. Science. Whenever you see the definite article in front of science, as in The Science, grab onto your wallet. As shown in my book, The Price of Panic, the cost was catastrophic—as was the harm to science through preposterous scientism. Governments announced that they were the singular source of scientific certainty. The crushing censorship of science during the panic was predicted by the theory of Official Mis- and Disinformation. It is a matter of logic that any agency that boasts of a list of Official Misinformation must have a Ministry of Truth, even if it goes by another name, or is spread throughout its system. Scientists grievously neglected their duty to warn against scientism. Every time a ruler demanded “Follow the Science!” scientists should have stood and insisted, “Science cannot tell you what to do!” Science does not know right from wrong, moral from immoral, prudent from imprudent. Scidolatry overcame other religions. The reputation of science, especially in medicine, is in tatters. The good will scientists built over decades of careful work has been lost, and deservedly so.
William Briggs, Ph.D., www.wmbriggs.com/post/53422/
Register Your Bird, or Go to Jail. Owners of “pet” birds, such as backyard chickens, ducks, parakeets, etc., in Scotland, Ireland, and England must register all of their birds once a year or face stiff fines of more than $5,000 and even risk six months in prison, writes Graham Barnfield in The European Conservative. There have been zero cases of avian influenza in captive birds, and even if the UK eliminated it from wild birds, it would soon reappear from migratory birds. Once there is a registry, testing and “culling” can commence. The vast majority of the population opposes these draconian measures, and a social media revolution of sorts has occurred. “Resistance is futile, but over-compliance is vital.” British citizens are now registering their frozen chickens, rubber duckies, stuffed birds, and even dogs and cats that “identify” as chickens. The register website crashed. For now.
Robert Malone, M.D., https://tinyurl.com/r2w75kve
