Death by Doctors

The word "iatrogenic" means "relating to illness caused by medical examination or treatment". Some medical "professionals" might argue that such a word describes an impossible scenario because medical interventions can never cause harm. However, let's look at the following piece of history:

Ignaz Semmelweis was a Hungarian physician who lived in the 19th century and is now known for his work on the importance of handwashing in preventing the spread of infectious diseases.

In the mid-1800s, Semmelweis was working at a hospital in Vienna where he noticed that women were dying from childbed fever at a much higher rate in the maternity ward where doctors and medical students worked, compared to the ward where midwives worked. He proposed that this was due to doctors and medical students performing autopsies and then going to deliver babies without washing their hands, which was transferring infectious material to the women.

However, his ideas were met with ridicule and opposition from the medical community at the time, and he was eventually committed to an insane asylum, where he died at the age of 47. It was not until many years later, after the work of Louis Pasteur and the development of germ theory, that Semmelweis's ideas were recognized as important contributions to the understanding and prevention of infectious diseases.

Well some might argue that that was then and this is now but I don't think much has changed in the early part of the 21st century. At least not in regards to the "ridicule and opposition" directed at any well-intended criticism of the "profession" from those within it or, heavens forbid, from those not within it. What has changed is the power of BIG PHARMA over medical practice, or should that be malpractice. The arrogance of allopathic medicine has soared since the 19th century as well, subjugating and denigrating all alternative medicine practices before it. The motto nowadays might well be ONE WAY, WITH DRUGS.

Side-effects from the drugs people take are no problem because drugs have been developed to treat those side-effects. There's little point saying more. As I've said before my motivation to post to this blog remains low. Once you realise what's going on, it's pointless mentioning specific examples that confirm the rolling-out of the agenda. The only bright light in an otherwise dismal firmament has been listening to music by "Five Times August".

Five Times August is the solo act of singer/songwriter Brad Skistimas. Skistimas has appeared on the FOX Business channel as an expert "Do-It-Yourself" indie artist and featured in Billboard Magazine, Performing Songwriter, Guitar Player, PeopleMagazine, and USA Today. He was the first completely unsigned act to have an album distributed in Walmart stores nationwide with 2007's "The Independent." The music has been featured on many popular TV shows, commercials, and films and tour dates have supported some of the nation's top acts.

In early 2021 Five Times August began releasing a series of protest songs taking aim at Covid-era regulations, the Biden administration, Justin Trudeau, as well as Anthony Fauci with the hit song "Sad Little Man," which reached #1 on several Amazon and Apple Music charts.

Several of the music videos for these tracks have been suppressed and censored on social media platforms like YouTube and Facebook. Despite being restricted by big tech, the videos have been viewed millions of times and press includes prominent features on Glenn Beck, Chad Prather, Del Bigtree's The HighWire, The Federalist, The Post Millennial, RebelNews, and much more.

​Skistimas performed his song "Silent War" on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC for 35,000 attendees at the Defeat the Mandates rally on January 23rd 2022, and more recently even had the honor of singing The National Anthem for Dr. Ben Carson and President Donald Trump.

In November 2022 Five Times August released the full length album "Silent War," a compilation featuring all of the recent protest singles. The album reached as high as #5 on Amazon's best selling albums, sitting between mainstream artists Taylor Swift and Bruce Springsteen. The album also reached #1 on Amazon and Apple Music's singer/songwriter and alternative charts.

Read more: fivetimesaugust.com/press.html

ARTIST CONTACT: Brad@fivetimesaugust.com

​MANAGEMENT: Kelly@sevenplacesmusic.net

Antidepressants

As the year 2022 draws to a close, it looks like the grand total of my posts for the year will reach only nine, a marked decline from my record number of posts (38) in 2021. I've written about the reasons for this decline in a post titled Heading Where? on October 24th. The future looks bleak and inevitably many people will turn to medication to assuage the reality of their bleak lives. 

In this regard, I came across several articles that concern antidepressant medication. The headline for one article screams: Scientists Find No Evidence That Depression Is Caused by “Chemical Imbalance” or Low Serotonin Levels. The article goes on to say that:

After decades of research, there remains no clear evidence that serotonin levels or serotonin activity are responsible for depression, according to a comprehensive review of prior research led by University College London (UCL) scientists ...  

“The popularity of the ‘chemical imbalance’ theory of depression has coincided with a huge increase in the use of antidepressants. Prescriptions for antidepressants have risen dramatically since the 1990s, with one in six adults in England and 2% of teenagers now being prescribed an antidepressant in a given year. “Many people take antidepressants because they have been led to believe their depression has a biochemical cause, but this new research suggests this belief is not grounded in evidence.”

... Professor Moncrieff said: “Our view is that patients should not be told that depression is caused by low serotonin or by a chemical imbalance, and they should not be led to believe that antidepressants work by targeting these unproven abnormalities. We do not understand what antidepressants are doing to the brain exactly, and giving people this sort of misinformation prevents them from making an informed decision about whether to take antidepressants or not.”

Such articles will be ignored by the majority of GPs who go on happily prescribing the same old medication. Even if, improbably, the general public lost faith in Serotonin-based antidepressants, BIG PHARMA will come up with new varieties of drugs to treat depression. For example, a recent article's headline touts "Scientists Have Developed a New, Better Antidepressant". It goes on to say that:

According to a recent study, a new small-molecule compound that regulates the firing of serotonergic neurons has a fast-acting antidepressant effect. The results pave the way for the development of a new class of treatments for major depressive disorder (MDD) and other difficult-to-treat mood disorders. MDD is one of the most common mental disorders, affecting hundreds of millions of individuals globally.

The majority of today’s antidepressants target the serotonin transporter (SERT). These drugs, however, are limited. SERT-targeted antidepressants not only take up to 4 weeks to take effect, but they may also have serious side effects, including suicide, and only a percentage of individuals who take them recover from depression following treatment. While ketamine has been considered as an alternative, its potentially addictive properties as well as the danger of schizophrenia have aroused concerns.

The compound is being tested on hapless mice at the moment but humans trials will surely follow. In the meantime, another article warns of the dangers of current medication:  "Researchers Warn Antidepressant Use Creates Physical Dependence – “Notoriously Difficult to Quit” ". The article says:

Patients who have taken antidepressants for years should consider coming off the medication. However, researchers say they will likely face difficult and even dangerous withdrawal symptoms due to a physical dependence.

Patients who stop taking their medication often experience Antidepressant Discontinuation Syndrome (ADS), which includes flu-like symptoms, insomnia, nausea, imbalance, sensory disturbances often described as electric shocks or “brain zaps,” and hyperarousal.

Older, first-generation antidepressants often come with additional risks for more severe symptoms, including aggressiveness, catatonia, cognitive impairment, and psychosis. Discontinuing any antidepressant also carries a risk for gradual worsening or relapsing of depression and anxiety, as well as suicidal thoughts. 

Meanwhile Hugo of Hugo Talks just uploaded a video about the use of Ayahuasca in pill form to treat depression. Micro-dosing with LSD is gaining popularity and legalisation. Clearly our reptilian overlords do not want us drug-free and clear-headed as the coming dystopia envelops us. A few will be but probably not enough to turn the tide.

Rudolph Steiner was prescient when he wrote:

“I have told you that the spirits of darkness are going to inspire their human hosts, in whom they will be dwelling, to find a vaccine that will drive all inclination toward spirituality out of people’s souls when they are still very young, and this will happen in a roundabout way through the living body. Today, bodies are vaccinated against one thing and another; in future, children will be vaccinated with a substance which it will certainly be possible to produce, and this will make them immune, so that they do not develop foolish inclinations connected with spiritual life – ‘foolish’ here, or course, in the eyes of materialists. . . . “. . . a way will finally be found to vaccinate bodies so that these bodies will not allow the inclination toward spiritual ideas to develop and all their lives people will believe only in the physical world they perceive with the senses. Out of impulses which the medical profession gained from presumption – oh, I beg your pardon, from the consumption [tuberculosis] they themselves suffered – people are now vaccinated against consumption, and in the same way they will be vaccinated against any inclination toward spirituality. This is merely to give you a particularly striking example of many things which will come in the near and more distant future in this field – the aim being to bring confusion into the impulses which want to stream down to earth after the victory of the [Michaelic] spirits of light [in 1879].” ~Rudolf Steiner

MEDICAL DEVICES

It was a tweet that alerted me to a documentary about the dangers of medical devices. The video was released in 2018 on Netflix and, since I'd cancelled my subscription to that service, I had to go looking for it. I found without much trouble on the Internet Archive located at this address. This came as something of a surprise.

It was an unsettling film that focused on what went terribly wrong with particular types of hip socket replacements, meshes, contraceptive devices and robotic surgery The documentary highlighted the glaring deficiencies in the approval process for these devices, the deceptive marketing and poor reporting of adverse side effects in patients.

One person interviewed commented that the medical technology industry had more influence than Big Pharma. Medical devices require only one trial on a group of patients instead of two for pharmaceutical products and grandfathering permits the possibility of no trial at all. If it can shown that a new device requiring approval is not substantially different from an earlier one that has already gained approval, then no trial is needed. This grandfather loophole has been egregiously exploited by those peddling their medical technology wares.

At the heart of the problem lies the so-called "revolving door" that means that highly placed officials at the FDA (or its equivalent in other countries) are given jobs in the medical technology industry after leaving the agency or prominent figures in the industry are appointed to high level jobs in the FDA. This is exactly the same as what happens in the pharmaceutical industry. The industry ends up overseeing itself. 

Some medical devices are useful and even life saving but care needs to be taken before making use of them. The problem is that prospective patients simply take the medical professional's word that the device is safe which can prove a dangerous mistake. As technology progresses inexorably, it's likely that more medical devices will be aggressively marketed without proper safety studies being carried out.

The documentary is just another reminder of how badly the medical "profession" has failed to work in the best interests of its patients. It's therefore up to the patients to work out what's the best solution to their health problems. They need to take charge of their own health and not passively accept the advice of a doctor who may well be ill-informed, acting in their own self-interest or simply uncaring.

The Polypill

Wonderful name and another potential triumph of modern medicine. What is the polypill? Well let this October 13th 2022 article from https://medicalxpress.com/ explain.

Global health has paid a deadly price for not using simple, low-cost blood pressure lowering drugs, statins and aspirin widely in the form of a single pill, also known as the polypill, say two leading cardiologists in a commentary published in The Lancet. Widespread availability of polypills would substantially reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and be affordable for most people globally, says their call-to-action.

"Despite substantial scientific evidence of the high effectiveness, safety and affordability of the polypill, few such combined products are available, and in the few countries where they are available, use is low," says Prof Fausto Pinto, President of the World Heart Federation.

"This systemic failure is a global tragedy, as many premature deaths from CVD could be avoided," says Prof Salim Yusuf, Executive Director of the Population Health Research Institute (PHRI) and Professor Emeritus of Medicine at McMaster University.

About 54 million people suffer from cardiovascular disease every year—a third of them die from CVD—with 80 percent of them living in low-income and middle-income countries.

Most heart attacks and strokes afflict people who have no prior CVD, meaning that primary prevention of the first heart attack or stroke is essential. Secondary prevention for people who already have CVD is also important but does not have the same impact.

"The current strategy for primary and secondary prevention of CVD has only been modestly successful in most countries, including high-income countries. Even in these countries, fewer than half of patients with prior CVD, and fewer than 20% without prior CVD, receive effective preventive treatments," says Prof Yusuf.

The polypill, also known as fixed-dose combination (FDC) therapy—with the combination of blood pressure lowering agents, a statin for lowering LDL cholesterol, and low-dose aspirin—was proposed in the early 2000s as a means to reduce CVD substantially and at low cost.

"The answer is now clear and resounding, with data from three independent, large, and long-term trials in primary prevention and one in secondary prevention showing its life-saving significance," says Yusuf, whose various publications have shown that heart attacks and strokes were cut by 35 to 50 percent by using a polypill.

"It is time to use the polypill widely to save millions of lives each year," says Prof Pinto. He and Prof Yusuf recommend the following new strategies:

Encourage large pharmaceutical companies to invest in developing and testing polypills—in particular, newer polypills with larger blood pressure lower effects (such as combining low doses of 3 or 4 classes of drugs with statins and low doses of aspirin). Manufacturing with generic components, and marketing polypills at locally sensitive prices, would ensure affordability while maintaining profitability for the companies, thereby enhancing use by the majority of people around the world.

Include polypills in the WHO's Essential Medicines List, and in guidelines for both primary and secondary prevention of CVD is an important next step. "This would encourage governments and insurance companies, especially in low-income and middle-income countries to include in their formularies, and clinicians to recommend its use," Pinto and Yusuf write.

Combine the polypill with lifestyle advice for CVD prevention delivered by trained non-physician health workers (NPHWs)—not meant as a replacement for physicians who can use their advanced skills on managing individuals with more complex conditions—thus a combined strategy that would help many more people.

Clearly the time has never been more opportune to push these polypills given the "fallout" from the Covid vaccinations. The time-worn trick is being played again, exacerbate an existing problem via pharmaceuticals and then propose a pharmacological solution. To quote from the article:

Encourage large pharmaceutical companies to invest in developing and testing polypills ...

Let's not forget the WHO. To quote again:

Include polypills in the WHO's Essential Medicines List

These are the sorts of solutions that one would expect from the medical establishment.  No investigation into the reasons for the uptick in CVD, just a new pill. Stay healthy and cheat death (for a while at least) with the help of BIG PHARMA.

The Fuster-CNIC-Ferrer cardiovascular polypill combines three drugs into one pill to make it easier
for patients to comply with secondary cardiovascular prevention therapy. Link.

I think we'll be seeing more of polypills in the future. Here's an October 13th 2022 headline from CNN Health:

Combination ‘polypills’ can help solve world’s heart problems, experts say, if more people can get them

Well, the "experts" are saying so you'd better listen. The pharmaceutical companies will need to come up with new patented drugs to pack into these polypills so as to make them as expensive as possible. As usual, third world countries will need to spend money allocated to their health care budgets to buy these new medications along with all the other crap that the WHO is foisting on them. Even if you're feeling well and are young and seemingly healthy, you'll be encouraged to take them as a prophylactic. The more young people that keep dropping dead on sporting fields or dying in their sleep, the more people will opt to take them. Most of the elderly are already dependent on several medications and will need no persuasion to use them.

Panic Stations

The WHO never rests because the battle against pathogens is never ending. An interesting article appeared in IFLSCIENCE on November 3rd 2021 with the title:

Vaccine Urgently Needed For Bacteria Killing 

150,000 Babies Annually, WHO Reports

In this post, I'll dissect the article and add some comments. It begins:

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has called for the development of a vaccine against Group B streptococcus (GBS), a common bacteria implicated in the deaths of around 150,000 babies each year.

This translates to:

PROBLEM: GBS is killing 150,000 babies per year

REACTION: How can we prevent these deaths?

SOLUTION: A vaccine must be developed

We'll return to this problem, reaction, solution in a moment. The article goes on to highlight the dangerous nature of this pathogen.

In their report, issued November 2, the WHO revealed the global burden of GBS is much higher than previously thought. As well as the aforementioned alarming number of newborn deaths, the bacterium is also linked to over half a million preterm births and at least 46,000 stillbirths a year – though the real numbers are likely even higher, as there are significant data gaps around the total burden of death and disease.

“This new research shows that Group B strep is a major and under-appreciated threat to newborn survival and wellbeing, bringing devastating impacts for so many families globally. WHO joins partners in calling for urgent development of a maternal GBS vaccine, which would have profound benefits in countries worldwide,” Dr Phillipp Lambach, Medical Officer from WHO’s Immunisation, Vaccines and Biologicals department, and report author, said in a statement.

Now comes the kicker. We learn the GBS is "harmless" and forms part of the microbiome of about 15% of mothers giving birth. 

GBS is harmless for most who carry it. An average of 15 percent of pregnant people – nearly 20 million per year – carry the bacterium in their vagina. While this is usually asymptomatic, GBS can pass to babies during pregnancy, childbirth, or in the early weeks of life, which can be extremely serious. The bacterium is linked to neonatal and newborn meningitis and sepsis, both of which can be fatal, and can result in neuro-developmental impairment and congenital defects.

However, these mothers can pass the bacteria on to their babies before, during and after birth. One might expect that the mother's immunity to the deleterious effects of GBS would be passed on to her child. Given half a chance this might happen but medical intervention will ensure that this probably does not happen. The article explains that:

Currently, antibiotic therapy is used to treat cases in infants and parents. Antibiotics are also used as a precaution to prevent GBS and are administered during labor to parents in whom the bacterium has been detected. However, the risk still remains high.

“Prevention of early onset GBS is possible in countries where it is policy,” Professor Joy Lawn, Director of the Maternal Adolescent Reproductive & Child Health (MARCH) Centre at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and contributor to the report told IFLScience. “However, even with high use of GBS test and treat in pregnancy, GBS stillbirths and GBS-associated preterm birth will not be likely to be prevented by antibiotics.”

So we learn that a test has been devised to detect this "harmless" pathogen that can easily turn deadly and a positive test means that a course of antibiotics is administered to the expectant mother, ensuring that her microbiome is devastated before giving birth.

Where does GBS take its highest toll? We learn that:

This is the case across the world, but particularly in low- and middle-income countries, where the burden of GBS was the greatest. In sub-Saharan Africa, for example, rates of maternal GBS are the highest in the world – accounting for almost half of the global burden. Eastern and South-Eastern Asia are also disproportionally affected.

In other words, GBS strikes in those countries where sanitation and nutrition is poorest. Here we might reframe our previous problem, reaction, solution:

PROBLEM: GBS is killing 150,000 babies per year in low and middle income countries

REACTION: How can we prevent these deaths?

SOLUTION: Let's improve sanitation, nutrition and the health infrastructure of these countries.

Of course, this is never a solution in the eyes of the WHO. The current solution of administering antibiotics is not a big money spinner and so the inevitable is proposed:

A preventative maternal vaccine, therefore, is urgently needed, the WHO says. Several candidates are in the pipeline, but none are available yet, despite almost 40 years of work.

“The idea for a maternal GBS vaccine was suggested about 4 decades ago, but is only in the last decade that more progress has been made,” Prof. Lawn told IFLScience.

Boosting natural immunity is never an option. Where potential pathogens are involved, a vaccine must be sought and it seems that one or more of them are nearly here.

“One hexavalent [six-in-one] vaccine is entering phase 3 trials in humans... Then following is a protein based one.” A few, including an mRNA vaccine, are in pre-clinical trials, she added.

The miracle that is modern medicine may soon produce an mRNA vaccine to combat GBS. Given the devastating effects of this bacterium, the vaccine may well receive emergency approval before the trials are even concluded. It may well be administered to all expectant mothers, just in case. It may well be mandated for any woman entering hospital to give birth. We learn that the benefits are financial as well:

Promising as this is, the report highlights the urgency of the situation and calls for vaccine developers and funders to accelerate the development of a safe and effective GBS vaccine. An estimated 50,000 GBS-related deaths, as well as over 170,000 preterm births, could be prevented every year if said vaccine reached 70 percent of pregnant people. The benefits would not only be health-focused but also financial – the report claims that between $1 billion and $17 billion could be saved worldwide from just a year of maternal GBS vaccination.

No mention of the profits to Big Pharma of course. These vaccines are being developed for the benefit of humanity, to save the babies. Anyone who questions their administration is clearly a monster. The article concludes:

“A new maternal vaccine against GBS would be a game-changer in the reduction of newborn and maternal deaths for the most affected countries,” Dr Martina Lukong Baye, Coordinator of the National Multisector Programme to Combat Maternal, Newborn & Child Mortality at the Ministry of Public Health in Cameroon, said. “We plead to all stakeholders to treat this as a matter of moral priority.”

Wow, so it's a moral priority to develop a vaccine that can be administered to pregnant women. It's not hard to understand the game being played here and yet it will be almost impossible to stop it. Big Pharma will aggressively promote it, Big Medicine will enthusiastically embrace it, and Big Media will sing its praises. Big Government may even mandate it.

This is just another example of the medical madness that has overtaken global health. Confusingly, GBS is also an acronym not only for Group B streptococcus but also for Guillain-Barré syndrome, a known side-effect of the Covid mRNA vaccines. In any case, once again we have a manufactured crisis with a pre-planned solution.

Ivermectin

I must confess to having avoided taking much interest in Ivermectin as a treatment and prophylactic for Covid-19. My reasoning was that paying attention to drug treatments only lent more credibility to the belief that Covid-19 was a dangerous pathogen. However, with the push to vaccinate, the effectiveness of Ivermectin becomes an important issue. If the drug's effectiveness can be confirmed, then the emergency use of the vaccines cannot be justified because there is an alternative therapy. This would cost the vaccine makers billions of dollars and so it's no surprise that calls to utilise this drug in the treatment of the virus have fallen on deaf ears. The major medical journals refuse to publish studies on the positive effects of Ivermectin but will happily publish publish studies that fail to confirm its effectiveness. Health authorities remain silent and social media actively removes any references to the drug's benefits.

This of course is not surprising. However, it was interesting to learn of this drugs history and its long time use in the treatment of parasitical diseases in both animals and humans. This February 2011 academic paper titled Ivermectin, ‘Wonder drug’ from Japan: the human use perspective is quite informative. Here is the abstract:

Discovered in the late-1970s, the pioneering drug ivermectin, a dihydro derivative of avermectin—originating solely from a single microorganism isolated at the Kitasato Intitute, Tokyo, Japan from Japanese soil—has had an immeasurably beneficial impact in improving the lives and welfare of billions of people throughout the world. Originally introduced as a veterinary drug, it kills a wide range of internal and external parasites in commercial livestock and companion animals. It was quickly discovered to be ideal in combating two of the world’s most devastating and disfiguring diseases which have plagued the world’s poor throughout the tropics for centuries. It is now being used free-of-charge as the sole tool in campaigns to eliminate both diseases globally. It has also been used to successfully overcome several other human diseases and new uses for it are continually being found. This paper looks in depth at the events surrounding ivermectin’s passage from being a huge success in Animal Health into its widespread use in humans, a development which has led many to describe it as a “wonder” drug.

For the pharmaceutical industry, such a wonder drug is not welcome in the treatment of Covid-19 even though the industry had been instrumental is rolling it out as a treatment for parasitical diseases. The effectiveness of Invermectin in the treatment of Covid-19 was first discovered in 2020 in third world countries with limited health resources. When doctors in these countries tried to communicate their findings to the rest of the world, global health authorities and Big Pharma quickly took notice because the drug threatened to derail their plans for a vaccine rollout of unprecedented proportions. Ivermectin needed to demonised and quickly. 

In this article on the Covid Blog we read:

There are currently at least 93 studies, with 54 being peer-reviewed (as of May 15, 2021), showing that Ivermectin is highly effective in treating COVID-19 in early stages and as prophylaxis (preventative measure). View the data and studies here. Also watch Congressional testimony from Dr. Pierre Kory about Ivermectin.

The video on the site is well worth watching as we watch poor Dr. Kory vainly plead his case for the acceptance of Ivermectin as a treatment for Covid-19. 

Another video featuring Dr. Tess Lawrie is quite powerful in conveying the extent of the obstruction surrounding Ivermectin's acceptance. Figure 1 shows the safety profile for Ivermectin. Here is some information about the doctor who is interviewed in it:

Figure 1

Dr. Tess Lawrie is a Medical Doctor as well as a Researcher from Bath, UK. She is funder and Head of a Company that does Evidence Synthesis on Medical Research to establish the evidence for Regulatory Guidelines to be issued for Treatment options. Her Company has been working for the World Health Organisation as well as the National Health Service in the United Kingdom. Early in 2021 Dr. Lawrie ran a Systematic Review on the Evidence of Ivermectin as Treatment for Covid-19 - and found the Data was strongly suggesting Ivermectin is both safe and effective.

This interview covers details on Ivermectin, it's track record as an essential medicine of the WHO with more than 3,5 billion doses administered to patients all across the world, how Ivermectin compares to other well-known drugs in terms of adverse events registered, and about censorship in Science as well as n Social Media of information of life-saving medications.

More on Dr. Lawrie and the British Ivermectin Recommendation Development Group: https://bird-group.org

Dr. Lawrie blames Big Pharma and its pursuit of profit as the main reason for the rejection of Ivermectin as a treatment for Covid-19.

More Brisbane Violence

Hot on the heels of the recent and horrific murder-suicide comes another bizarre incident. As described in the Brisbane Times, police gunned down a man who chased two foreign tourists in Brisbane's CBD. Apparently, he was known to police. Clearly the 24 year old was deranged but again I'm left to wonder. Was he on any medication? Did he recently change his medication, come off the medication he was on or experience a change in his dosage? As with the recent murders, it seems unlikely that any attention will be paid to the possible role of medication.

If someone is on antidepressants or tranquillisers, the assumption is that there is already something wrong with their brain chemistry and the medication is helping to remedy that. The medication is viewed as helping the person cope and not causing the person to flip out and attack and murder people. Of course, the pressure is on mainstream media to ignore the possibility that the medication played anything but a helping role. Imagine the furore if a news article announced that a murderer had recently been started on Setraline by his physician and that it was known that this drug had been linked to homicidal and suicidal episodes.

Even family and friends of the perpetrator, unless they've read a book like Medication Madness, may not suspect that legally prescribed medication might be the trigger for homicide or suicide. In the two cases I've referenced in this post I don't know what the situation was regarding medication. Probably I'll never know because I'm reliant on what appears in mainstream media and nothing that is critical of Big Pharma offerings is see the light of day. In the case of Rowan Baxter's murder of his children, there's a natural aversion to blaming the act on medication that he may have been taking. By all accounts he was a nasty human being but setting your children alight is such an extreme act that the role of legally prescribed medication in producing a psychotic state must be considered.

The following news article from July 2017 is relevant:

Anti-depressants have been associated with 28 reports of murder referred to the UK medicines regulator in the last three decades, according to a new BBC investigation. Murderous thoughts were also believed to be linked to the medication on 32 occasions, according to Panorama, although the possible connection does not necessarily mean the drugs caused the events. In 2016, over 40 million prescriptions were made for SSRIs, a type of anti-depressant that boosts levels of the chemical seratonin in the brain. 

For the vast majority of people, the drugs are safe to take, however the programme has uncovered a number of cases of extreme violence thought to be linked to the medication. A father who strangled his 11-year-old son was among the cases thought to be linked to the drugs, the programme found. Professor Peter Tyrer, psychiatrist at Imperial College London who has been studying SSRIs, said: “You can never be quite certain with a rare side-effect whether it’s linked to a drug or not because it could be related to other things. 

"But it’s happened just too frequently with this class of drug to make it random. It’s obviously related to the drug but we don’t know exactly why.” Drugs manufacturer Pfizer who developed an SSRI called sertraline said a causal link between the drug and murderous behaviour had not been proved.

Finally, this gun lobby site has a comprehensive review of the role of antidepressants in gun violence.

Medication Madness

Thailand featured in the news yesterday when a Thai soldier ran amok in a shopping mall and started shooting, killing twenty people and injuring many more. I was interested in trying to discover if he had taken any medication recently for depression or anxiety. So far I've not been able to find any information to confirm this but my search did throw up this interesting news about ketamine and its recently approved use as an antidepressant. This post is about antidepressants and other mood-altering drugs so I've included it below:

I reason I'm looking into these types of drugs is that I'm currently reading a book by Dr. Peter Breggin called MEDICATION MADNESS: A PSYCHIATRIST EXPOSES THE DANGERS OF MOOD-ALTERING MEDICATIONS. See Figure 1.

Figure 1: front cover of Medication Madness

In the passage I'm going to quote below, Dr. Breggin describes his thoughts about why bipolar diagnoses have soared in recent years:

WHAT’S THE CAUSE OF THE INCREASED RATES of severe cases of mania? Antidepressant medications, and to a lesser extent stimulants and tranquilisers, especially Xanax, are causing the upsurge of manic episodes. In almost all the adult cases that I have evaluated in the last decade, and in every child and teenage case I have seen in my office, the manic symptoms had begun after starting antidepressants and, more occasionally, stimulants or Xanax. 

In the cases in this book, none of the children and their parents, and none of the adults who were driven into mania by prescription drugs, was told by the treating doctors that he or she had a medication-induced disorder. When occasionally the drug was implicated in any way, it was portrayed as a benign agent that happened to “unmask” a preexisting, underlying bipolar disorder—a theory based not on science but on the physician’s impulse to avoid blame for the disaster. 

The two men mentioned earlier in this chapter, and many others in stories to come, fit nicely into the official DSM criteria for a diagnosis of manic episode with one big exception—their reactions were drug-induced. According to the official diagnostic manual, when a drug causes a manic-like episode, it is improper to make a diagnosis of manic episode or bipolar disorder. As emphasised earlier, when a drug is the suspected cause of manic-like symptoms, the proper diagnosis is substance-induced mood disorder. 

Unfortunately, this common sense and officially approved diagnostic standard is largely ignored in the practice of psychiatry. In almost every case I have evaluated, and perhaps every case in this book, the substance-induced mood disorder has been mistakenly diagnosed as bipolar disorder, laying the blame on the patient’s “mental illness” rather than on the doctor’s prescription. Like the proverbial elephant in the living room, the drug’s obvious role in producing the mania will go unmentioned in the medical record. 

It is very prejudicial to the patient to be labeled with bipolar disorder rather than with a substance-induced mood disorder. A diagnosis of bipolar disorder stigmatises the victim for life as suffering from a serious and potentially recurrent “mental illness” or “psychiatric disorder.” Without any scientific basis, the diagnosis is used to push lifetime medication, and in criminal cases, it becomes a justification for lengthy incarcerations in institutions for the criminally insane. The bipolar diagnosis makes it more difficult or impossible to get health insurance or long-term care insurance. 

In contrast, a proper diagnosis of substance-induced mood disorder identifies an acute neurological disorder that typically goes away after the medication is discontinued. Instead of lifetime medication, the proper diagnosis discourages further use of the offending drug. None of the dozens of individuals described in this book went on to repeat their criminal or dangerous behaviours after they were removed from the drugs.

This psychiatric approach is certainly the case for a person I know quite well who at age 37 was diagnosed as schizophrenic following his first psychotic episode. The fact that he had been drinking heavily for some time, smoking marijuana and taking (or possibly not taking) antidepressant medication prior this episode was ignored. He has remained on psychotropic medication to this day and firmly believes he is a schizophrenic. However, having worked as a psychiatric nurse for eight years and being familiar with schizophrenic behaviour, I know the diagnosis was unjustified. The long-term side-effects of the psychotropic medication have caused glaucoma and osteoporosis in this person (these possible side-effects are listed on the label of the medication he takes).

It may be of interest to recount how I stumbled upon Dr. Breggin. It was via an article on the Truthsteam Media website run by Aaron and Melissa Dykes. The article was titled "Then They Came For Your Mind: The Untold Story of Psychosurgery" and is accompanied by the following video:

It was a riveting video and so I was prompted to find out more about him. He has a YouTube channel and has written many books and published many scientific articles.

"Medication Madness" makes for disturbing reading as the unintended effects of antidepressants, hypnotics and tranquillisers becomes apparent. Statistics such as three million Australians using antidepressants defies belief (source):

Three million Australians are now reliant on antidepressants.

24/04/2019 

New data from the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme shows one in every eight Australians are using the drugs, including 100,000 children. 

The data has prompted concerns Australia is over-diagnosing and over-treating depression. 

Psychiatrist Dr Jon Jureidini, from the University of Adelaide, tells Ben Fordham too many doctors are prescribing the drug. 

“The marketing of antidepressants has been extremely successful, and lots of people have been led to believe they’re better off taking the drugs. 

“The safety of these drugs is often overestimated, the risks are underestimated.”

The figure of 100,000 children on antidepressants is disturbing but there are probably more children on stimulant drugs for ADHD. It's a mad, mad world when children are assaulted from an early age with vaccines, the water they drink is poisoned by fluoridation and they are zombified with medications.

A further interesting point in "Medication Madness" is the following:

Up to 10 percent of the population have a genetic lack of liver enzymes necessary for the effective breakdown of many medications, including the newer antidepressant drugs such as Prozac. These people are called “poor metabolisers.” They are more likely to suffer adverse drug reactions because the drug concentration builds up in the bloodstream when it cannot be destroyed or eliminated efficiently. If medicine were conducted on a more rational basis, all patients would be tested when possible in advance of taking psychiatric drugs—or any drugs—where there is a risk of abnormal liver metabolism affecting the treatment result. The drug companies have been reluctant to recognise this problem or to make laboratories available to perform tests for these liver enzymes. 

 I'll finish this post with another quote from the book which pretty much sums up everthing:

Meanwhile, it should be no surprise that the brain is not well suited to receive drugs. It lives in a delicate harmony with itself, an organ with complexity far beyond our current understanding and imagination that provides the biological basis of our humanity. It contains approximately one hundred billion neurones—nerve cells that send the chemical messages that run our brains and influence our bodies. There are more neurones in our brain than there are stars in the universe. Some of these individual neurones make ten thousand or more individual connections with other neurones. These neurones and their connections are ignited by a couple of hundred different neurotransmitters, such as serotonin and dopamine. The neurotransmitters we know best we nonetheless know little about; most of the others we know nothing about and haven’t even as yet identified. 

Beyond the neurotransmitters, our brain functions are affected by assorted other kinds of support cells, many chemicals such as sodium and potassium, and various hormones. The overall brain activity generates electrical fields that reflect and influence brain function in ways no one can yet grasp. We don’t even understand the operating system of the brain—how it organises and runs itself.

Each brain is more complex than the entire physical universe of stars, galaxies, black holes, gravity, and electromagnetic fields. That is the nature of life and especially of the mammalian brain—it is complex far beyond our current understanding and far beyond anything in the inanimate physical universe. 

So the next time some “expert” tries to explain a subtle manifestation of human behaviour in terms of brain function—or tries to convince you that a biochemical imbalance is at the root of your problems—you should wonder about his pecuniary motives. You should suspect that it’s in the expert’s interest to convince you that you’re a much simpler biological organism than you are. 

A principle to remember: Tampering with the human brain to influence human emotions and actions is not a good idea.the 

Measles in the Democratic Republic of Congo

"DR Congo measles: Nearly 5,000 dead in major outbreak", the headline screamed from the BBC website today. "Experts warn there are not enough available vaccines in the country" was the caption under a generic photo of a syringe extracting vaccine from a vial. It's interesting to follow the statistics. On August 17th 2019, www.france24.com reported that "Measles has killed 2758 people in the DR Congo since January". On September 19th, Newsweek reported a figure of 2,074 dead. Clearly, no one has any clear idea as to what the exact figure is so why not round up to the nearest 5,000?

As the BBC article informs us: The Congolese government and the WHO launched an emergency vaccination programme in September that aimed to inoculate more than 800,000 children. Good old WHO, selflessly helping out the African masses and helping to divert attention and government funds away from the real problems of poor sanitation, overcrowding, deficient diet, crumbling infrastructure etc. There's no doubt that measles is killing people, especially children, just as it did in 19th century Britain. The problems back then were exactly the same as in the DR Congo now and, once they were addressed, the death rate from measles plummeted towards zero.

I found another article, on the WHO website, from April of 2011 with the title: DR Congo introduces new vaccine against one of its leading causes of child death. The article continues:

Kinshasa, 4 April 2011 -- In an effort to drastically improve the chances of children reaching their fifth birthday, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) today stepped up its immunisation programme by including vaccines to combat pneumonia. Initially the expanded programme will be in two of the 11 provinces. Pneumonia is one of the biggest killers of children worldwide and is responsible for a quarter of all child deaths under five in DRC. 

DRC First Lady Olive Lembe Kabila and Minister of Health Victor Makwenge Kaput joined parents and health workers in Kinshasa to witness the first child being immunised as part of the official introduction of pneumococcal vaccine into the national routine immunisation programme. 

On the same day in Paris, GAVI founding partner Bill Gates launched a European-wide awareness campaign to highlight the extraordinary life-saving opportunity that vaccines represent for donor countries.

Good old bastard Bill, selflessly promoting "the extraordinary life-saving opportunity that vaccines represent for donor countries" while being coy about the bonanza reaped by pharmaceutical countries. In healthy children, pneumonia is not a killer and it is not even recommended a childhood vaccine in Western countries to my knowledge. The children in the DR Congo are not healthy and vaccinations will compromise their already weakened immune systems even more. There will be no statistics to show how many children were adversely affected by vaccinations because no statistics are being gathered.

GAVI of course is just one of many nefarious fronts for Big Pharma, pretending to work for the welfare of the world's poorest inhabitants. Here is part of its stated mission:

Gavi is an international organisation that was created in 2000 to improve access to new and underused vaccines for children living in the world’s poorest countries. Based in Geneva, Switzerland, Gavi is the Vaccine Alliance, which brings together public and private sectors with the shared goal of creating equal access to vaccines for children, wherever they live.

For "new" read "experimental" and for "underused" read "discontinued in the West". Of course, "DRC First Lady Olive Lembe Kabila and Minister of Health Victor Makwenge Kaput" back in 2011 would have been only too happy to oversee the first pneumococcal vaccination in the country. The occasion makes for a good news story. As children line up to get their shots, it very much looks the Government is doing something positive to fight the frightful death rate amongst young children in the country. 

On the other hand, improving access to clean water, improving sanitation, relieving overcrowding and so on are less newsworthy and nobody benefits but the people. In fact, it diverts much needed money away from the vaccination programs that are touted as the best way to fight infant mortality. 

Anyway, this is the BBC and clearly the main purpose of the article is to remind the BBC readership yet again that measles is a killer and vaccination is the only sure way to combat it. Just to drive home the point, there is a link to video at the end of the article titled "My daughter's life was destroyed by measles". 

This is simply:

Immunescence

Figure 1

I was wandering along the street near where I was staying in Brisbane recently and a sign outside a pharmacy caught my eye (see Figure 1). Now you don't even need to go to a doctor to get your flu shot. All you need to do is to walk into a pharmacy and pay $25. For the elderly, it's free. The media dutifully plays its role by whipping up hysteria about the dangers of this disease.

It's likely that flu shots will be made free for everybody and the costs will be borne by the government and thus paid for by taxation. For the pharmaceutical companies, this is the almost ideal situation. I say "almost" because the ideal is mandatory vaccination. This is not quite the same as compulsory vaccination. You won't be compelled to get vaccinated but more and more obstacles will emerge if you don't. Restrictions will be placed on travel, entry to venues, employment etc.

Figure 2

The so-called Immunisation Coalition that has a creepy Star of David logo on its website and also contains a video about influenza in the elderly. In this video, the term immunescence which is short for immunosenescence is introduced. The claim is made that as people age, their immune systems become weaker and so the flu vaccine is ineffective in protecting these people from the ravages of the flu. This is why, when they are housed in aged care facilities, they need to be protected from exposure to the virus via visitors and fellow inmates.

Of course these same inmates whose immune systems are growing weaker will still be given their flu shots. That the vaccination itself will compromise their immunity further is never mentioned. It would be difficult to remain in an aged care facility nowadays and evade an annual flu shot. The prevailing mindset is that only vaccines can protect against pathogens such as the influenza virus. If a vaccine proves ineffective in the short term, it is because the pathogen has mutated. If the vaccine proves ineffective in the long term, it needs to be readministered on a regular basis (yearly in the case of the flu virus). There is no doubting that the vaccine is ineffective per se. In the Church of Vaccinology, belief must be unquestioning.

Vaccines are good. There are no bad vaccines, only bad reactions to them in a tiny minority of cases. The very great good they do far outweighs the very little harm they cause.

 I read this statement in a news article today:

ADHD is a neurological condition linked to impulsive behaviour and an impeded ability to pay attention and plan. It affects 5-7 per cent of the population, Dr Kohn said.

There is no deep questioning of this statistic. It's simply stated as a fact. Why does 5 to 7 percent of the population have a neurological condition that causes impulsive behaviour and an impeded ability to pay attention and plan? Has this condition afflicted a similar proportion of humans over the past few millennia or has it developed in tandem with the increasing aggressive marketing of vaccines? To ask such questions is to challenge the authority of The Church of Vaccinology and you will come up against The TRIUMVIRATE of BIG MEDIA, BIG MEDICINE AND BIG PHARMA. Who are you? 

Well, whoever you are, you are showing serious signs of vaccine hesitancy. Let's finish up with this quote from the Immunisation Coalition:

The Immunisation Coalition is a not for profit organisation, and is the leading voice in whole-of-life immunisation in Australia, protecting all Australians against communicable diseases. We collaborate with like-minded organisations such as Primary Health Networks (PHNs), Public Health Units, Government health departments and other groups that fight vaccine hesitancy. We are a champion for immunisation education, providing timely, accurate and scientifically informed information about vaccines and the diseases they prevent.

Of course, in its funding by Pfizer, Roche and other big pharmaceutical companies, the Immunisation Coalition is no different to other front organisations in the PR campaign to popularise vaccines. It is indeed a coalition and there seems that little can be done to oppose it.

Wind Turbine Syndrome

Figure 1: cartoon from 2012 New Scientist article

With our puppet masters pushing for investment in renewable energy sources, wind turbines are big business and so any suggestions that their infrasonic emissions might be undermining the health of people and animals living in their vicinity is not likely to be well received.

Predictably, the mainstream media is dismissive. Figure 1 shows a cartoon from a 2012 New Scientist article titled The sickening truth about wind farm syndrome. The cartoon reflects the tone of the article. The author of the article, a certain Simon Chapman, begins thus:

There are several reasons to suspect that the unrecognised entity of wind turbine syndrome is psychogenic: a “communicated” disease spread by anti-wind interest groups, sometimes with connections to fossil fuel interests. People can worry themselves sick.

He then goes on in this "unsympathetic" vein. In partnership with Fiona Crichton, he published a book in November of 2017 titled Wind Turbine Syndrome: A Communicated Disease. Clearly, he has not softened his position in the years following his New Scientist article. In a 2018 article to the Journal & Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales, he says:

The history of social panics over new technology shows they have a natural history. There are doubtless a few people left who still fear television sets and microwave ovens. The heyday of fearing cell phone towers came and went in the 1990s. Wind-farm anxiety is now thankfully rapidly receding, with the desultory complaint volumes submitted to the Wind Commissioner showing the phenomenon has all but passed. But the delays this panic caused in driving Australian renewable energy harvesting were major. Our book’s final chapter explores lessons in how we might avoid the next wave of modern health worries.

So we can avoid "the next wave of modern health worries", like 5G cellular networks, by not succumbing to this type of "communicated disease". How do we do that? Well, simply believe it when big business and big government assure you that the technology is safe. They have our best interests at heart, don't they? It's not hard to dislike this guy. His ad hominem attacks on the anti-wind interest groups include accusations of "connections to fossil fuel interests", hostility to change and susceptibility to social panic. I can't resist including this further quote from his article:

New technology has a long history of attracting prolonged, impassioned and often crackpot attacks from those both fearful of and hostile toward mephistophilean artifice that offends the existing order of things.  

The real issue is not wind turbines but the infrasound that they emit. Another source of infrasound emissions derive from ventilation fans in mines. To present the other side of the argument, namely that infrasound can be injurious to health, this 2018 presentation by Dr. Mariana Alves Pereira is quite persuasive.

It's the people living close to these mine ventilation shafts and wind turbines that really need to be listened to. Here's a description of the effects experienced by one family living near a mine in Lithgow, Australia (the author is Norman Allan):

The physical effects include a sense of pressure in the head or chest and throat, vertigo, nose bleeds, vomiting, anxiety induced heart palpitations and other symptoms normally associated with travel sickness like general nausea and include what can best be described as an “out of body” or “living in a fog” experience. These are compounded by a sense of anxiety developed from long term exposure and multiple forms of stress, such as continued muscle tension from instinctive efforts to resist intermittent or constant shaking. These symptoms are extremely distressing. Yet, over time, the acute episodic symptoms pale in comparison to relentless high amplitude noise on the edge of normal human hearing perception going on day after day. In any case, sleep disturbance has been ongoing and the effects of sleep deprivation alone have been debilitating. Source

In November of 2106, the Australian Government issued an Australian Government response to the Senate Select Committee on Wind Turbines: Final Report  in which some action and monitoring was proposed but how serious its committment will be remains to be seen. What was more interesting in the report were the responses of the opposition Labor Party (not the Liberal-National coalition government). Here's an extract:

Labor senators recommend that the Federal Government reassure the wind energy industry, which is both an important source of income and employment in rural areas and a vital means of abating Australia's greenhouse gas emissions, that it is not intent on preventing its further development based on unsubstantiated claims of negative health, environment and economic impacts. 

Labor Senators recommend that the Federal Government publicly acknowledge that:

•  wind farms are an important means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from Australia’s electricity sector, thereby contributing to our greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals;

•  the health impacts of fossil fuel extraction and generation are acknowledged by the medical and scientific community;

•  there are no causal links between wind turbines and impacts on human health;

• the wind industry is a growing industry at a time when Australia’s manufacturing sector is undergoing significant change and downsizing and that it provides valuable employment opportunities in regional Australia; and

•  the continued growth of the renewable energy industry, including wind, is a positive thing or Australia’s economy and its environment.

This leaves little doubt that the Labor Party is firmly behind the wind energy industry but in truth nearly every government in the world will be leaning this way because of the massive investment and intense lobbying. Politicians know which way the wind is blowing and unfortunately for Norman Allan (whose experiences I quoted earlier) and others similarly affected, it's not blowing in their direction.

Living 1600 ft from a wind turbine is a video of couple talking about the experience of living close to wind turbines and mentioning the gag orders that wind energy companies have built into contracts to help ensure silence:

Down Wind is a much longer video about the impact of wind farms on the lives of communities living in rural Ontario. The liberal government there introduced legislation to ensure that wind turbines could be built even in the face of opposition from local councils. The dirty politics that the video exposes is being repeated worldwide. Electricity prices have soared and there has been no discernible benefits to the average home owner whether living in the city or the country. I realise now monstrous and ugly these wind turbines are. The proliferation of these structures will serve as another catalyst to moving people from the countryside to the cities where, having escaped constant bombardment from infrasound, they can enjoy constant bombardment from 5G frequencies.

Sufferers can draw some comfort however, because Donald Trump is in their corner. Trump is notoriously hostile to wind farms and tweeted the graphic shown in Figure 1 (that quickly went viral), thinking (wrongly) that it justified his hostility.

Figure 1

Perhaps it's better NOT to have Donald Trump's support. It's clear enough though that those who claim to be victims of infrasound will NOT have the support of:

• BIG BUSINESS
• BIG MEDIA
• BIG GOVERNMENT
• BIG MEDICINE

This is a global scam and things will be the same wherever you are. BIG BUSINESS will be downright hostile, BIG MEDIA will supply the propaganda, BIG GOVERNMENT will obfuscate and BIG MEDICINE will not receive any funding for studies into the matter. BIG PHARMA however, will be supportive by providing medication to alleviate the various physiological and psychological disturbances that are being experienced. Even when it seems the whole world has turned its back on you, BIG PHARMA will have your back.

ADDENDUM:

I couldn't help but include this article that appeared in Bloomberg today, the 27th of June 2019.

Bat-Killing Wind Turbines Outfitted With Systems to Stop Carnage

The wind farms that have proliferated across Texas in the past decade have done plenty to cut power-sector emissions. But with blades spinning at up to 100 miles-per-hour, they’ve been murderous for bats. Now Duke Energy Corp. is deploying technology to dissuade the creatures from flying headlong into their deaths. It uses ultrasound to block sonar bats use to navigate at night, prompting them to avoid areas around turbines. The Charlotte, North Carolina-based utility owner is using the “Bat Deterrent System” at installations in the Rio Grande Valley. It’s first time a company has commercially deployed the system, developed by ESCO Technologies Inc.’s NRG Systems, according to a statement Wednesday. A two-year study found it can reduce bat fatalities by 50%, Duke said.

So these wind turbines, as well as emitting infrasound and audible sound, will now be emitting ultrasound as well to ward off the bats. Another article explains why the blades are hazardous to the bats and an alternative approach to avoiding the carnage:

Wind turbines are an essential to our prospects of building a clean energy economy. Unfortunately, there's a lot of evidence out there that the turbines kill bats in alarming numbers--more than they do birds. And not in the gruesome manner you'd think--no high speed collisions with the blades--but in another gruesome way altogether. The sudden drop in air pressure around the turbines causes severe injuries to the bats' lungs, an affliction called barotrauma. Thankfully, scientists have come up with a way to reduce bat deaths around turbines by at least 60% without sacrificing any serious power generation from the turbines. And the solution seems overwhelming logical to me. Essentially, it's this: stop the blades from turning when it's not windy, because that's when bats are most likely to take flight.

The article just mentioned comes from treehugger and notice the article of faith that forms the first sentence of the previous quote: Wind turbines are an essential to our prospects of building a clean energy economy. Environmental groups have uncritically accepted the propaganda of the climate alarmists. See an earlier post of mine titled Students Strike for Climate Action for information about the clean energy economy scam.