RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.realclearhealth.com/articles/2022/07/02/stop_the_war_on_doctors_111360.html

Anyone in America who deviates from the group-think enforced by public health bureaucrats runs the risk of cancellation. Politicians, parents, comedians, teachers – now they’re even coming for the doctors.

As a lung and ICU specialist, I have practiced medicine for 14 years and successfully treated more than 450 patients during the pandemic. Long before anyone had heard of Covid-19, I was studying and implementing cutting-edge methods to treat critically ill patients. I’m the Senior Editor of a best-selling textbook in my field, now in its second edition, which has been translated into seven languages.

For my efforts, I now find myself on the receiving end of “disciplinary sanctions” from the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM), who sent me a letter threatening “suspension or revocation of board certification.”

The “sin” threatening to end my medical career was my unwillingness to go along with Fauci’s monolithic vaccines-above-all-else strategy. The failure of this approach is plain to see, and anyone with an ounce of curiosity knows there are many methods of treating the virus.

Ivermectin is one of them. This cheap, readily available generic medicine is approved by the FDA for certain uses in humans – but not for Covid-19, despite 85 controlled trials from around the world demonstrating its effectiveness. In Brazil, the largest study to date found a reduction in Covid mortality rate of 70%. In India, the second most populated country in the world, the drug has been credited with near eradication of the disease. Studies attempting to discredit ivermectin have been debunked again and again.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/07/01/the-fda-is-blocking-game-changing-new-drugs-for-kidney-disease/

Imagine you’ve been diagnosed with chronic kidney disease, told by your physician that if it can’t be managed, you may eventually need a transplant or long-term dialysis. This scary situation is one faced by hundreds of thousands of Americans every year.

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is an illness that affects an estimated 37 million people in the U.S. That’s more than one in seven adults across the country, or nearly the entire population of California. Despite this alarming statistic, investment in kidney disease research and therapies lags other sectors. We must redress that imbalance.

CKD is a serious condition that, if unaddressed, leads to organ failure. Without early interventions and disease management, CKD leads to an increased chance of heart disease, stroke, vascular disease, and even early death. Another serious, common complication – renal anemia – can cause debilitating symptoms that severely impact patients’ quality of life. Physicians and the millions of Americans living with CKD need more, and better, treatment options. 

While there have been increased efforts toward innovation in the kidney care community to provide new, effective treatments for patients, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has rejected most of the drugs for kidney disease that it has reviewed in recent years. Perhaps for that reason, nephrology has historically had one of the lowest rates of new drug applications submitted to the FDA, particularly when compared to other therapeutic areas like oncology and cardiology. 

Although the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has championed advancements in kidney care through initiatives like the public-private Kidney Innovation Accelerator (KidneyX), the FDA seems not to be onboard. By failing to approve drugs to treat patients with CKD and renal anemia, the FDA is out of step with the administration’s efforts to advance the development and access to cutting-edge treatments that have the potential to greatly improve patients’ lives and appear to have demonstrated a favorable risk-benefit profile.

The development of new kidney drugs such as vadadustat, one of a class of drugs called HIF-PHI, has given hope to the community that more options will be available to patients. Like other drugs in this new trailblazing class, it works by using the body’s innate oxygen sensing mechanism to stimulate red blood cell production, a great help to patients with anemia due to CKD.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/07/dr-vladimir-zev-zelenko-rip-frontpage-editors/

Boca Raton, Florida, June 30th 2022 – It is with immense sorrow that we announce the passing of Dr. Vladimir “Zev” Zelenko. Dr. Zelenko was a physician, scientist, and activist for medical rights who touched the lives of millions of people. Some were saved through his role as a doctor, and even more were inspired by his words. His “Zelenko Protocol” saved millions and earned him a Nobel Prize nomination and the admiration of a U.S. President, among other prominent world leaders.

Born in socialist slavery, and then immigrating to the United States, Dr. Zelenko was the embodiment of the American dream – the child of poor immigrants who rose to success as a physician and a businessman. But Dr. Zelenko was more than a physician. As an activist and a businessman, he was also a man of deep faith, incredible love for his family, and a tireless inspiration to the company. But, perhaps most of all, Zev was our friend. The world knows the dynamic firebrand who never feared speaking truth to power or speaking up for issues he cared deeply about. Dr. Zelenko was a man of great, subtle humor and deep intellect. For every verbal jab he threw at the tired and incompetent establishment, a dozen more light-hearted laughs were spent with him and the team. Dr. Zelenko could laugh at himself as easily as others, and was always in great spirits, no matter the darkness that surrounded him – something that’s easily overlooked in today’s climate of hypersensitivity.

Some have already asked us what is next for Zelenko Labs. Though we have lost a leader, a friend, and an inspiration, the answer is simple: Keep Fighting.

This is not only what we think Dr. Zelenko would want, it is what he told us to do. And it is exactly what we will do. We will fight for his legacy. We will fight for the company that sustains his eight children and dozens of employees, and we will fight for you, our loyal customers and friends. Zelenko Labs will continue to deliver high-quality products, and we will protect Dr. Zelenko’s legacy with the creation of the Z Freedom Foundation, which will support the causes that matter most to our beloved Zev.

Though Zev’s chapters in the Book of Life have closed, his legacy is yet to be written. Join us and help write those next powerful and impactful chapters by helping us keep Zev’s main mission of helping every single American live a healthier, happier, and more informed life, front and center. Help us keep that honorable vision a vibrant one in our hearts and woven into the very fabric of this great nation.

We look forward to standing shoulder to shoulder with you in the coming days. Stay tuned for more news from Zev’s best and most powerful work.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/cdc-recommends-covid-19-vaccines-babies-kids-under-5-6-things-parents-need-know

On Saturday, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky announced a new recommendation to vaccinate all 20 million children 6 months to 5 years of age. Here are some things left out of the announcement that parents should know.

1. The research was inconclusive

The studies were too small to achieve statistical significance when evaluating efficacy against mild or severe COVID-19 infection. As a result, the FDA allowed both companies to extrapolate effectiveness by measuring antibody levels, pointing to data from older children and adults.

There were no cases of severe COVID illness in either the vaccine or placebo group. The Moderna vaccine had 4,774 children and the Pfizer vaccine had 4,526 (including those who received the placebo).

Pfizer concluded that their vaccine was 80% effective in preventing symptomatic COVID-19, but based it on 3 cases in the vaccine group and 7 cases in the placebo group in a subset of children who received a third dose.

Even this was not statistically significant. In fact, it had a confidence statistic so wide, you could drive an aircraft carrier through it. (They reported the largest confidence interval I have ever seen in my 20-year research career). At one end of the range of possibilities indicated by the confidence interval, the vaccine could be associated with a 370% increased risk of getting COVID-19. The Moderna trial reported a short-term efficacy of 38% in preventing symptomatic illness–an effect well-known to be transient. 

Ironically, there were more overall hospitalizations (unspecified) in the vaccine group. Out of a total of 7 children requiring hospitalization, 6 were in the vaccine group and 1 was in the placebo group, which was half as large. 

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The CDC even said in its own slides at their deliberation meeting that data assessing efficacy were poor, characterizing them as “very low certainty” and noting that there are “very serious concerns for imprecision due to study size”. They also noted the very short follow-up time of 1.3 months.

2. The FDA lowered their standards for acceptable vaccine efficacy needed to approve

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-cdc-just-pushed-fake-news-on-covid-child-mortality/

Only because “an internet rando is more knowledgeable and paying closer attention than our top scientists and doctors” do we know that the CDC just publicized false information about the deadliness of Covid-19 to small children. This misinformation, presented at a conference among top experts, went viral and was promoted, notes Substack columnist Matt Shapiro, by dozens of well-known physicians and other media commentators and specialists, including CNN mainstay Dr. Leana Wen and a former surgeon general of the United States. Wen’s promotion of the false claim is still up on Twitter as of 6:45 p.m. on June 22.

The CDC displayed a slide at a conference that falsely claimed Covid-19 was the fourth or fifth leading cause of death for all pediatric age groups. A writer who is publicly known only by the name Kelley immediately saw that the claim was “completely and utterly false.” Among several errors, which are so blatant as to seem like intentional massaging of the numbers, Kelley discovered that all data from a 26-month period were being crammed into one year, and that deaths were attributed to Covid, regardless of whether the death was caused by Covid, if the disease was mentioned on the death certificate. The CDC slide, which cited a pre-publication British study that is now being re-examined, also bumped up the numbers by altering the definition of pediatric (ordinarily understood to mean under 18) to include 18- and 19-year-olds.

The danger to children from Covid is very, very low. For instance, babies and toddlers are 25 times likelier to die of an accident than of Covid. And all-cause pediatric mortality in the pandemic era for young children (up to 12) is 30 percent lower than it was a generation ago, in 1999. All-cause mortality for children over 12 has spiked in the pandemic era because of accidents, drug abuse, and other factors unrelated to disease. Covid barely registers as a cause of death for teens or small children.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/06/the_truth_regarding_health_care.html

There are truths regarding health care in America that need broadcasting.  Some truths are intimidating and discouraging, with no need for us to be reminded, such as the crazy costs of hospitalization, testing, procedures, and pharmaceuticals.  Another such truth is that along with ridiculously expensive medical care has come incredible success in the battle against the morbidity and mortality of disease.  But the truth about how we got here is worth reviewing.  It is the result of a unique, accidental confluence of circumstance.  Unfortunately, it is unsustainable in its current form.

Many of the residents of our country act as if cost should not be a factor in the delivery of health care.  They feel as if medical care is a right and not having a socialized, government-sponsored system of delivery is akin to slavery.  On the other hand, corporations successfully weave among the patient, the doctor, the current government-sponsored health care systems, and their fellow capitalist insurance companies, managing to make a good profit while driving up cost. 

How did we get to the point where it was conceivable to produce pharmaceutical agents that cost six figures a dose?  When did we conclude that it is cost-appropriate to pay doctors and facilities to transplant a pair of lungs, a kidney, a liver, or a heart?  Most telling for the future, what would we be willing to sacrifice to make things sensible?

Our way-out-in-left-field costs have their origins in a simple-to-understand source.  After World War II, the federal government froze wages in its concern for runaway wage inflation, knowing that businesses desired to employ the best of the huge returning workforce and pay them accordingly.  With no means to attract new workers through better wages, companies created benefits packages along with employment that included costs shared in health care.  (A harbor company in San Diego with the now familiar name of “Kaiser” was among the first.)

Health care insurance companies created from this new market accumulated monies with each employee paycheck.  Health care at the time was rudimentary and did not have much to offer sick patients.  As a result, prospective patients did not have the same desire to go to the doctor that we have today.  As money built up in the system, doctors and hospitals began to realize better, more predictable finances, and the costs of treatment options were barely considered, because insurance companies were more than willing to pay.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/06/stop-cruelly-manipulating-children-panel-slams-gender-transitioning-treatment-for-kids/?utm_

A new study discredits the theory that injecting children with cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers decreases suicide rates.

A new study published June 13 debunks the theory that injecting gender-confused children with puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones decreases suicide rates. In fact, the study, done by Jay Greene, senior research fellow at the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation, found the exact opposite:

In the past several years, the suicide rate among those aged 12 to 23 has become significantly higher in states that have a provision that allows minors to receive routine health care without parental consent than in states without such a provision.

Greene made various recommendations based on his findings, including raising the minimum age at which cross-sex treatments can be given as well as mandating that school administrators and health professionals receive parental approval before providing health services to children.

On Tuesday, the Heritage Foundation held a panel discussion of the study at which Greene was joined by Ryan T. Anderson, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center; Jay Richards, director of the DeVos Center at the Heritage Foundation; and Virginia Gentles, director of the Education Freedom Center at the Independent Women’s Forum.

“It’s time to stop cruelly manipulating children with cult-like slogans,” Gentles said. She argued that, in recent years, “trans activists have ushered in a new era that cuts parents out of critical decision-making regarding their children.” Left-wing LGBT groups such as GLAAD, the Human Rights Campaign, and PFLAG seek to help children transition without consulting their parents, she said, creating a “gender-support plan” for the child.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/major-transgender-org-to-recommend-lowering-age-for-hormone-treatment-surgeries/

A transgender health organization will release new guidelines lowering its recommended age to receive gender-transition treatments.

Hormone treatments may begin at age 14, about two years younger than previously recommended, according to new guidelines from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. The group is expected to publish the new guidance in a medical journal sometime this year, and gave the Associated Press an advance copy of the recommendations.

In addition, some surgeries may be conducted at ages 15 or 17, about a year younger than previously recommended.

Dr. Eli Coleman, head of WPATH’s standards of care, consent of the parents and the maturity of the person who wants to transition should also be taken into account before making a decision to transition.

“Certainly there are adolescents that do not have the emotional or cognitive maturity to make an informed decision,” Coleman told the AP.

The news comes amid rising national debate on gender-transition procedures for minors, including attempts in several states to pass laws barring minors from undergoing gender-transition procedures. President Biden is set to sign an executive order on Wednesday in an attempt to counter such legislation.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/06/the-zombie-war-against-covid/

The last remaining restrictions on normal life are a national embarrassment.

This week, New York City finally made masks optional for children ages two to four in preschools or daycare facilities. They did so despite the fact that the ongoing requirement was clearly meant to be yet another inducement to get more people vaccinated for Covid, a disease that barely affects young children, and one they don’t spread as much as adults do. The vaccine-makers have had trouble showing worthwhile results in the youngest children, and in the meantime, many young children have acquired some immunity by getting sick with, and recovering from, Covid. New York City has finally given up on masks everywhere but on public transit.

The World Health Organization had never recommended masks for children below five years of age. The European Centers for Disease Control noted in its recommendations that young children have trouble wearing masks effectively, often drool into them, can easily become alienated from masked caregivers, and can suffer adverse social and developmental consequences from wearing them. Europeans trusted the science, and their children did roughly as well as Americans did. Better, in fact, because their school closures and disruptions were significantly less severe.

But in America, progressives trusted the science!, which is a very different thing. Mostly it’s about fear and neuroticism as a lifestyle choice, though occasionally it’s about using your child’s face as an anti–Ron DeSantis yard sign.

Not a single elected official in New York City or Los Angeles has ever even attempted to demonstrate with data that the policy of masking two-year-olds was achieving a public-health goal for the city that other people in their states, or in Europe, were foolishly forgoing. They don’t have to do this, because when you are trusting the science!, you don’t have to think or reflect on what you’re telling others to do.