RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.city-journal.org/article/trump-taps-jay-bhattacharya-for-nih

Four years ago, Jay Bhattacharya was ostracized by his colleagues at Stanford and censored on social media platforms thanks to a campaign against him by the public-health establishment. The director of the National Institutes of Health, Francis Collins, sent an email to another NIH official, Anthony Fauci, urging a “quick and devastating published takedown” of Bhattacharya and his fellow “fringe epidemiologists.” 

Bhattacharya is far from the fringe today. Donald Trump nominated him this week for Collins’s old job, director of the NIH. Assuming the Senate confirms him, it will be a major victory for science and academic freedom—and a serious threat to the universities that suppressed scientific debate and promoted disastrous policies during the pandemic, causing public trust in science to plummet. Academic researchers and administrators have mostly refused to acknowledge their mistakes, much less make amends, but Bhattacharya promised yesterday to “reform American scientific institutions so that they are worthy of trust again.” 

As NIH director, he would wield a potent tool to induce reform: money. Stanford and more than a dozen other universities each get more than $500 million annually in grants from the NIH, the world’s largest funder of biomedical research. The NIH grants support not only researchers but also their universities’ bureaucracies, which collect a hefty surcharge to cover supposed overhead costs. The federal largesse has helped finance the administrative bloat at universities, including the expansion of diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucracies under the Biden administration, which took into account a university’s commitment to DEI principles when deciding whether to award grants from the NIH and other agencies.  

https://nypost.com/2024/11/27/opinion/trump-picks-marty-makary-jay-bhattacharya-will-disrupt-health-agencies-to-save-lives/

The public health establishment and left-wing media are rushing to discredit President-elect Donald Trump’s picks to lead health agencies. The New York Times smears them as “outside the medical mainstream.”

Circling the wagons, Dr. Paul Offit, an adviser to the Food and Drug Administration, lamely observes, “What they’re saying when they make these appointments is that we don’t trust the people who are there.”

You bet.

Trump and the public have every reason to distrust the current agency heads, after the repeated blunders, deceptions and cover-ups during COVID-19. Trump is appointing disruptors with the courage to challenge the status quo.

Like Dr. Marty Makary, nominated to head the Food and Drug Administration.

Makary’s credentials will make it impossible for the Senate to reject him. A Johns Hopkins surgeon and professor of public health, Makary was voted into the prestigious National Academy of Medicine, a Hall of Fame for doctors.

More importantly, if you’re in the hospital, you want Makary on your side.

Two decades ago, he declared war against the epidemic of medical errors killing as many as 100,000 patients a year. Errors like patients being given the wrong dose of a medication, or a surgeon operating on the wrong body part, or a lethal germ invading the patient’s body to cause an infection.

The medical establishment was hush-hush about them. But not Makary. 

https://newswithviews.com/the-experts-science-medicine-all-amazing-all-fallible/

For thousands of years, going back to the Bible, women have wept and grieved and pleaded to God over their miscarriages. Indeed, it took all these millennia for modern-day pharmaceutical companies to develop solutions to this ongoing nightmare.

In the 1940s, they were happy to offer doctors the ability to prescribe diethylstilbestrol (DES) to prevent miscarriage. “You can tell them you would give it to your wife,” the marketing mavens from Big Pharma suggested to physicians.

And with good reason. This “miracle drug” worked! Women who had experienced no trouble conceiving but were plagued by constant miscarriages were now able to carry their babies to term and deliver quite “perfect” bundles of joy!

But then disaster hit with unspeakable horror. After one or two years of watching their beautiful babies smile and roll over and teethe and then walk and speak and thrive, the little girls began developing hideous vaginal cancers, and those who survived to adulthood experienced higher-than-normal premature births, miscarriages, and ectopic pregnancies.

The little boys, too, had horrible anomalies in their urogenital tracts and are still being watched for higher-than-average cases of testicular and prostate cancers.

In 1971, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) took DES off the market.

So much for the science!

SECOND TIME’S A CHARM

In 1957, another miracle medication, originally marketed as a sleeping pill but also found to prevent miscarriages,was developed in West Germany, and soon found its way to America, where women eagerly took the drug––approved by the FDA––and, again, were thrilled to carry their babies to term.

But unlike DES, where the monstrous effects took months to years to develop, the grotesque and tragic effects of the new drug––Thalidomide––were obvious from the moment of birth: children born with missing arms and legs, eye and urinary tract anomalies, heart problems, et al. The list of horrors went on and on.

So much for the science!

https://www.city-journal.org/article/shake-up-hhs

President Donald Trump’s nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services has the press corps in the D.C.–New York corridor flummoxed. The Washington Post reports that “Public health experts” call the pick “alarming and unprecedented.” The Wall Street Journal labels it a “strange choice.” And New York Times columnist Zeynep Tufekci opines that “among the chaos generated by Donald Trump’s recent cabinet picks,” his selection of Kennedy “stands out for the extensive suffering and lasting institutional damage it may cause.”

No federal department needs a major institutional shakeup more desperately than the Department of Health and Human Services. The agency’s “expert” authority was the basis on which President Biden and the vast majority of governors issued a variety of mask, vaccine, and lockdown mandates that undermined Americans’ basic freedoms, while achieving next to nothing in return.

Kennedy took the poster boy of the mask-and-lockdown regime to task in his bestselling book, The Real Anthony Fauci. But that book, a compelling and generally well-researched indictment of the public-health establishment, also makes clear that the agency’s problems extend well beyond one unscrupulous, attention-hogging bureaucrat. As former Trump advisor Scott Atlas reports in his own book, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Food and Drug Administration, and National Institutes of Health—all HHS agencies—appear to be infested with groupthink. During the pandemic, Atlas notes, White House Coronavirus Task Force coordinator Deborah Birx, then-CDC director Robert Redfield, and Fauci “shared thought processes and views to an uncanny level,” and “virtually always agreed” with each other.

https://www.thefp.com/p/rfk-jr-health-human-services-flouride-vaccines-covid-trump-europe
The media describes the new HHS chief as a conspiracy theorist. But how many of his ideas are actually used in Europe? More than you’d think.

The media describes the new HHS chief as a conspiracy theorist. But how many of his ideas are actually used in Europe

A number of American commenters have been hand-wringing about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination to be the secretary of Health and Human Services, which would put him in charge of such critical agencies as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). 

“He supports people being able to purchase raw milk, don’t you know!” 

“He wants to discourage municipal water plants from adding fluoride!” 

“He says MMR vaccines cause autism!”

After Donald Trump nominated RFK Jr. for the post, Time magazine called him “a vaccine skeptic who spreads medical disinformation and conspiracy theories,” and quoted Lawrence Gostin, director of Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law as saying of his nomination, “I can’t think of a darker day for public health and science.”

But I think we need to draw distinctions. 

After looking at the whole range of RFK Jr.’s positions, I’ve come to the view that while some are extreme, others are genuinely worthy of debate—and still others are correct. And there is a way to sift the good from the bad and the debatable. When you hear one of RFK Jr.’s ideas, ask yourself a simple question: Do other nations do what he thinks the U.S. should do? If the answer is yes, then the HHS nominee’s idea is not necessarily apocalyptic, and we should be able to discuss it openly. 

Let’s take a look at some of his most controversial opinions:

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/rfk-jr-wants-disrupt-our-powerful-health-care-complex-terrified

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is right– the U.S. is flunking health care. 

Our country spends nearly twice as much on medical care per person than other wealthy countries but our outcomes – measured by life expectancy, infant mortality, unmanaged diabetes and heart attack mortality — are far worse. This is an industry that begs to be disrupted. 

Whether Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom President-elect Trump has nominated to run the Department of Health and Human Services, is the man for the job remains to be seen. Give him this: he has been fearless in calling out the obvious failures of the status quo. 

The health care “establishment” is outraged by RFK Jr. ‘s nomination, but they only have themselves to blame. Gallup reports that merely 31% of the country thinks of our health care industry positively, while 51% have a negative view. Imagine: our medical establishment has lower approval ratings than Vice President Kamala Harris. 

Why would that be? First, disenchantment with our medical officials soared during COVID. Anthony Fauci and others in charge had no idea what they were doing but nonetheless made up rules on the fly that required toddlers to wear masks, closed schools, shut down businesses and — later on — mandated vaccines and lied about their efficacy. And yet, for all the Draconian measures, the U.S. lost more people per capita to the pandemic than most other prosperous nations.   

Second, people are not stupid; they know they spend too much for health care, that it’s too complicated and that the government’s ever-expanding intrusion into the field has made it inefficient. According to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, the U.S. spends about $1,000 per person solely on administrative costs related to medical services, “almost five times more than the average of other wealthy countries and more than [the country] spends on long-term health care.” That, folks, is the tail wagging the dog. 

https://www.city-journal.org/article/make-america-responsible-again

For several months, a telehealth company, Hims & Hers, has run full-page ads about obesity in the New York Times. The ads promote the idea that obesity is a medical condition that can be eradicated only with Ozempic and other new obesity drugs. They go on to demand insurance coverage for those drugs. The Sunday, November 17, Hims & Hers ad complained that “access to effective treatment” for extreme obesity “remains out of reach for many,” unlike treatments for breast cancer, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and HIV. “It’s time to change that,” concludes the pitch.

The Hims & Hers argument—that obesity is a genetic disorder like Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, largely outside the control of its victims—may be self-interested, but it has also been the position of the public-health industry for years. We are to believe that the sharp rise of obesity in the U.S. over the last several decades is due to genetic changes in Americans’ susceptibility to weight gain. To portray obesity as something brought on by behavior—overeating and under exercising—is to blame the victim and to commit “fat-shaming.” This insistence that being overweight is outside individual control is driven in considerable part by racial considerations, since black females are disproportionately overweight. But the rule against invoking personal responsibility is also part of a larger elite mindset. By medicalizing behavioral issues, the elites transfer power from the individual to themselves, the dispensers of technocratic responses to social problems.

It is absurd, however, to claim that Americans’ genes have changed in the last half century in such a way as to make Americans gain weight. (The same fallacy applies to the equally fat Brits.) Genes takes centuries, not decades, to change. The recent alteration in the Anglosphere’s diet and lifestyle is massive and obvious, however: snacking throughout the day, a diet of highly sweetened processed foods, and a lack of exercise or even of merely walking modest distances. Members of gyms wait several minutes for the gym elevator to arrive rather than walking up one flight of stairs, even though they are presumably there to burn calories, rather than merely to take advantage the gym’s inevitable snack-food vending machines.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/watchdogs-launch-ad-campaign-exposing-hospitals-with-worst-child-sex-change-programs/

Two nonprofits involved in parental rights activism launched a six-figure media campaign exposing hospitals across the country with particularly egregious child sex change programs.

The organizations, the American Parents Coalition (APC) and Consumers Research, are targeting Children’s Minnesota, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

Featured on the StopTheHarm Database’s “Dirty Dozen,” these facilities have administered high numbers of gender-transition procedures and hormone therapy to minors. For example, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital has had 396 total sex-change patients, including 27 children who received surgery, according to the database. For those kids, 3,551 prescriptions were written, with $799,044 in submitted charges to insurance companies by providers or pharmacies.

APC will deploy mobile billboards at the hospitals noting the number of children harmed by these interventions. The hospitals will also be highlighted via targeted digital advertising in the cities where they’re located. A new website from APC, StoptheDocs.com, calls out specific gender practitioners at the hospitals, such as Dr. Nadia Downshen at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Gender and Sexuality Development Program.

Nonprofit Do No Harm found that between January 2019 and December 2023, 13,994 children received gender-transition treatments, with 5,747 undergoing sex-change surgeries and 8,579 getting hormones and puberty blockers. A majority of the body-modification procedures were conducted on minors around the age of 15.

“Parents deserve to know the truth about the irreversible damage these hospitals are doing to children through gender interventions right in their own backyards,” APC executive director Alleigh Marré said in a statement to National Review. “Sex-change surgeries, puberty blockers, and cross-sex hormones are not treatments – they are interventions that create lifelong patients and customers. Hospitals are allowing activists and politics to cloud the indisputable data showing the risks and damage associated with these procedures.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/tb-the-silent-killer-crossing-our-border/

Open borders allow deadly narcotics and criminal gangs to invade our country. But there’s a silent killer also making its way across the border: tuberculosis.

America’s woke public health authorities are more concerned with equity — redistributing health resources among racial groups — than with keeping a disease the U.S. once nearly eradicated from becoming a threat again.

Reported cases of TB shot up 34% from 2020 to 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and continue to rise. More than three quarters of the cases are foreign-born people who picked up the disease in their home countries or traveling through countries with high TB rates. The TB incidence rate is 60 times higher in Haiti than in the U.S.

In New York City — the No. 1 destination for migrants — the incidence of TB is two and a half times the national average and still rising.

A staggering 89% of TB patients in the Big Apple are foreign-born. The Flushing/Clearview areas of Queens, Sunset Park, Brooklyn and the Lower East Side of Manhattan are the neighborhoods most affected. The single largest national group with reported TB cases is from China, according to the city’s most recent Annual Tuberculosis Summary.

TB is no laughing matter. Globally it has just overtaken COVID-19 as the biggest infectious disease killer on earth. There is no effective vaccine for it, but most cases — except severely drug-resistant ones — can be treated with antibiotics, provided they’re taken daily without interruption for several months or longer. Not easy.

Western Europe, Scandinavia and North America are all reporting rising TB rates as migrants from poorer countries — where TB is common — arrive. UK health authorities are alerting the public to the distinctive cough that comes with TB.