RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.city-journal.org/article/marijuana-legalization-weed-mental-illness-health

America’s ongoing marijuana-legalization experiment will have many consequences. That goes especially for the seriously mentally ill, a sliver of the adult population but overrepresented among the ranks of compulsive pot users. Treating schizophrenia and bipolar disorder is never easy; even when treatment is available, the seriously mentally ill often fail to comply. A schizophrenic who spends most of his days in a dark room smoking weed is not a clinically promising case.

Modern mental-health systems are community-based and thus shaped by community norms. Decades ago, clouds of pot smoke were not often encountered on city streets. Now that they’re ubiquitous, a seriously mentally ill individual may be inclined to wonder what’s so objectionable about an activity that normal Americans do daily, in public and even during working hours.

The issue is only partly whether pot causes mental illness. A large body of research studies, involving tens of thousands of people, has suggested, with impressive replicability, that heavy cannabis use increases the risk of developing mental illness. Legalization proponents reject this, contending that, while the rate of marijuana consumption has soared over recent decades, the rate of serious mental illness seems to have stayed flat.

But this debate has eclipsed interest in the effect of continued cannabis use on those already mentally ill. What can be done about that? For scores of clinicians and families of the mentally ill across the nation, it’s the more pressing question.

In recent years, countless family memoirs and nonfiction accounts of mental illness have extensively chronicled the descent into madness. This literature often highlights marijuana more than any other intoxicating substance. Pot plays a notable role in several recent book-length treatments of mental illness, including Randye Kaye’s Ben Behind His Voices (2011), Patrick and Henry Cockburn’s Henry’s Demons (2011), Paul Gionfriddo’s Losing Tim (2014), Mindy Greiling’s Fix What You Can (2020), Miriam Feldman’s He Came in With It (2020), Meg Kissinger’s While You Were Out (2023), and Jonathan Rosen’s The Best Minds (2023).

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/trump-s-nih-chief-lets-loose-on-fauci-vaccines-and-covid-cover-ups/ar-AA1EKMUX

Jay Bhattacharya is no longer on the fringe.

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, the then-Stanford professor was one of the loudest critics of lockdowns, school closures and what he called “utopian” public health planning, and he was often dismissed by mainstream public health officials.

Five years later and Bhattacharya is now the director of the National Institutes of Health, one of the most powerful figures in public health and biomedical research in the U.S. and across the globe. He oversees a budget in the tens of billions and helps determine who gets funded — and whose ideas get left behind.

“The first and most important thing,” he says in a new interview with POLITICO Magazine, “is that dissenting voices need to be heard and allowed.”

In a wide-ranging conversation, Bhattacharya laid out his vision for American science under President Donald Trump and discussed the ongoing fallout from the pandemic. In particular:

He praises the pardon of Anthony Fauci even as he effectively accuses the former public health official of engaging in a Covid cover-up.
He endorses the creation of an independent commission to assess the pandemic response.
He rejects the continued recommendation of mRNA vaccines for healthy young people — and says he himself has received just two doses, both in 2021.
He explains why he thinks it’s unlikely vaccines cause autism — but that he won’t prejudge the issue.
 He waves off the notion that Europe would be able to poach American scientists amid Trump’s war on elite universities. “France is a nice place to visit,” he scoffs.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.HHh

https://amgreatness.com/2025/05/14/tulsi-on-faucis-role-in-funding-covid-pandemic-is-it-any-wonder-he-sought-a-preemptive-pardon/

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told Megyn Kelly that one reason Dr. Anthony Fauci sought a preemptive pardon before Joe Biden left the White House is because he lied under oath about helping fund the Covid-19 pandemic.

Gabbard recounted the numerous times that Fauci denied providing funding for gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) while being questioned under oath by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY).

“So is it any wonder that he sought a preemptive pardon for anything during a certain period of time by President Biden before he left office,” Gabbard asked.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard CONFIRMS Anthony Fauci sought a preemptive pardon because he lied under oath about funding the Covid Pandemic

“Anthony Fauci helped fund the pandemic, things that he denied over and over and over to Senator Rand Paul’s questioning”… pic.twitter.com/hX5w82rLFs

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) May 14, 2025

In the five years since the pandemic first began, the official story that the SARS-CoV-2 virus originated in a Wuhan wet market has been gradually walked back by members of the media, the intelligence community and the government.

The most likely origin of the virus, according to Kelly, is from a lab leak at the WIV where research was being performed on bat coronaviruses.

https://amgreatness.com/2025/05/12/steven-j-hatfill-who-promoted-hcq-during-the-pandemic-appointed-to-lead-pandemic-prevention-agency-at-hhs/

An early promoter of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) as an effective early treatment for COVID-19 has been appointed senior advisor for the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR) at Health and Human Services (HHS).

Pathologist and biological weapons expert Steven J. Hatfill, a White House adviser during President Donald Trump’s first term, assumed the role earlier this month.

Hatfill’s name should be familiar to most Americans.

While working as a consultant in 2001 at the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), he was falsely accused of being behind the Anthrax attacks which killed five people and sickened seventeen.

He was formally exonerated in 2008, and the Department of Justice paid him $4.6 million to settle his lawsuit that same year.

Now, as head of ASPR, Hatfield is responsible for preparing the U.S. for public health disasters, which include biological and chemical attacks.

Hatfill worked with trade adviser Peter Navarro during Trump’s first term to promote hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19 during the early months of the pandemic.

In the Spring of 2020, after multiple doctors and infectious decease experts from across the country reported that they were having success prescribing HCQ to COVID patients as part of their early treatment protocols, Trump told stunned reporters that he was taking the drug himself as a preventative measure.

The president explained that he’d received “many” letters from doctors expressing confidence in the drug, including the late Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, a doctor from Westchester, New York who claimed he’d given the hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin and zinc cocktail to “over 300 patients” and hadn’t lost a single one.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/hhs-pediatric-gender-medicine-review-wpath

One of President Trump’s first executive orders was the provocatively titled “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation.” The order directed federally funded insurance programs to end coverage of pediatric sex-trait modification and barred hospitals receiving federal funds from performing such interventions. It also instructed the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to conduct a review of the evidence and ethical considerations surrounding pediatric gender medicine.

That review, “Treatment for Pediatric Gender Dysphoria: Review of Evidence and Best Practices,” was released earlier this month. It is already being described as America’s Cass Review, the landmark gender-medicine review published last year in the United Kingdom.

This report is long overdue. While European health authorities in countries like Sweden, Finland, Norway, and the U.K. have moved away from the “gender-affirming” model and toward cautious psychological support for gender-dysphoric children, American institutions have only become more entrenched in the model despite growing evidence of the harm and weak benefits.

The HHS report breaks this trend, providing a comprehensive and sober reevaluation of the science, ethics, and clinical practices in pediatric gender medicine. At more than 400 pages, with chapters on history, terminology, evidence, ethics, and clinical realities, it is the most thorough and ambitious document of its kind in the United States.

The report’s central findings are clear and direct: gender-affirming interventions such as puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries are supported only by low- or very low-quality evidence, while the potential for irreversible harm is substantial. Risks include sterility, sexual dysfunction, impaired bone-density and brain development, psychiatric comorbidities, and surgical complications. The report rejects claims that gender transition reduces suicidality, finding no high-quality evidence to support this oft-repeated assertion. In line with international reviews, it concludes that psychotherapy should be the first-line treatment for youth with gender dysphoria.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/05/autism_an_ignored_medical_crisis.html

The dramatic rise in autism prevalence over the past few decades is nothing short of alarming.

What exactly is autism? I ask this because when I was a child, it was so rare that none of us had ever heard of or known anyone with it.The Autism Speaks website defines autism thus:

Autism, or autism spectrum disorder (ASD), refers to a broad range of conditions characterized by challenges with social skills, repetitive behaviors, speech and nonverbal communication. 

A few decades ago, autism was rare, but then it rose meteorically. “Reported rates of autism in the United States increased from < 3 per 10,000 children in the 1970s to > 30 per 10,000 children in the 1990s, a 10-fold increase.”

Since the 1990s, we have seen another tenfold increase. According to the Centers for Disease Control, autism affects an estimated 1 in 31 children and 1 in 45 adults in the United States today.

In just two generations, the prevalence of autism has risen 100-fold. Was there a similar explosion for any other medical or public health condition?

Can this 1,000 percent increase be explained by genetics, as some doctors suggest? 

A 100-fold increase in two generations—roughly 40 years—defies the principles of genetic evolution, which operates on timescales spanning centuries, not decades. This unprecedented rise points to environmental factors, including food additives, medicines, vaccines, and other toxins, as the primary drivers of the autism epidemic.

Genetics likely plays some role in autism. Twin studies suggest that autism’s heritability ranges from 60% to 90%, indicating a strong genetic component.

However, genetic changes do not occur quickly enough to explain a 100-fold increase in prevalence within two generations, only two reproductive cycles.

Evolution through genetic mutation and natural selection is a gradual process that often requires thousands of years to produce significant changes at the population level.

No one would attribute the increase in obesity, diabetes, and other chronic diseases over the past few decades to genetics instead of environmental factors like diet and exercise. Autism is exhibiting a similar trend.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2025/04/wokeness-in-medicine-hasnt-been-cured-yet/

The same people and institutions who have spent years degrading the practice of medicine in service of their ideological goals are still at it.

If America is a patient and wokeness is a disease, then the surface-level prognosis has been looking good for the first few months of 2025. The leading edge of leftist opinion, defined by nothing so much as its insistence on institutional omnipresence, is seemingly in retreat. After Donald Trump’s executive order purging DEI from the federal government, companies are dropping their own programs. So are some universities.

Examine the patient more closely, however, and the sickness is still evident. The medical field provides many examples. Medical school accreditors and hospitals are still pushing DEI. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which often advances left-wing causes disguised as medical advocacy, still receives federal funding. And three years later, Richard T. Bosshardt is still stuck in wokeness’s waiting room.

Bosshardt is a plastic surgeon who objected to the 2020 embrace of DEI orthodoxy by the American College of Surgeons, of which he was (and, allegedly, remains) an official member. Bosshardt sought clarity about the organization’s declaring itself afflicted by structural racism, among other things. His effort garnered considerable attention and support within the ACS. That is, until the organization’s leadership unilaterally banned him from the internal forum where he had been making his case. All this proceeded in defiance of ACS’s own disciplinary process.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/gender-medicine-trans-identifying-minors-wpath

Gender medicine is riddled with contradictions. On the one hand, clinicians frame “gender dysphoria” as a clinical diagnosis that demands “medically necessary” treatments. On the other, they often adhere to the “gender incongruence” model, which holds that having a cross-sex identity is not a medical problem, but instead a normal expression of “human diversity.” Consequently, they argue, access to surgeries and hormones should not be conditioned on the experience of “sex distress.”

These contradictions have human costs. Newly released videos, featuring Johanna Olson-Kennedy and Rob Garofalo—prominent gender clinicians and members of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH)—underscore the dangerously muddled logic of gender medicine and reveal how practitioners undermine their supposed “standards of care.”

In March, journalist Ben Ryan released videos of Olson-Kennedy, a gender clinician at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, training mental-health providers on how to treat “sex-distressed” youth. In one slide, Olson-Kennedy notes that what separates the affirmative model—which emphasizes supporting and validating a person’s “gender identity”—from other historical ways of treating sex distress is that it “follows the child,” meaning treatment eligibility flows from the child’s identity claim, which is not subject to dispute.

“Follow the child” is predicated on two assumptions: that a child has accurate self-knowledge and that “gender identity” is immutable. Olson-Kennedy claims that everyone has a gender identity, which is not subject to social influence and is stable by age four. Later, however, she contradicts herself. “Not everybody who has this experience in childhood is going to continue to identify as a different gender,” she says.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/drugs-harm-reduction-safer-supply-opioids-denver-sweden-uk-canada
Adam Zivo is director of the Canadian Centre for Responsible Drug Policy.

Last August, Denver’s city council passed a proclamation endorsing radical “harm reduction” strategies to address the drug crisis. Among these was “safer supply,” the idea that the government should give drug users their drug of choice, for free. Safer supply is a popular idea among drug-reform activists. But other countries have already tested this experiment and seen disastrous results, including more addiction, crime, and overdose deaths. It would be foolish to follow their example.

The safer-supply movement maintains that drug-related overdoses, infections, and deaths are driven by the unpredictability of the black market, where drugs are inconsistently dosed and often adulterated with other toxic substances. With ultra-potent opioids like fentanyl, even minor dosing errors can prove fatal. Drug contaminants, which dealers use to provide a stronger high at a lower cost, can be just as deadly and potentially disfiguring.

Because of this, harm-reduction activists sometimes argue that governments should provide a free supply of unadulterated, “safe” drugs to get users to abandon the dangerous street supply. Or they say that such drugs should be sold in a controlled manner, like alcohol or cannabis—an endorsement of partial or total drug legalization.

But “safe” is a relative term: the drugs championed by these activists include pharmaceutical-grade fentanyl, hydromorphone (an opioid as potent as heroin), and prescription meth. Though less risky than their illicit alternatives, these drugs are still profoundly dangerous.

The theory behind safer supply is not entirely unreasonable, but in every country that has tried it, implementation has led to increased suffering and addiction. In Europe, only Sweden and the U.K. have tested safer supply, both in the 1960s. The Swedish model gave more than 100 addicts nearly unlimited access through their doctors to prescriptions for morphine and amphetamines, with no expectations of supervised consumption. Recipients mostly sold their free drugs on the black market, often through a network of “satellite patients” (addicts who purchased prescribed drugs). This led to an explosion of addiction and public disorder.