Chelsea Clinton aims to provide childhood immunizations to as many children as possible with a new initiative called “The Big Catch-Up” that she touted as “the largest childhood immunization effort ever.” The WHO, UNICEF, GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, along with Immunization Agenda 2030, announced “The Big Catch-Up” last month, which WHO characterized as a “targeted global effort to boost vaccination among children following declines driven by the COVID-19 pandemic.” Clinton complained about the lack of trust in science and public health officials and said that she thinks we need the public sector to stop stripping away public health emergency powers from state public health agencies.
Chelsea Clinton aims to provide childhood immunizations to as many children as possible with a new initiative called “The Big Catch-Up.”
Speaking at theBrainstorm Health conference hosted by Fortune Magazine last month in Marina del Rey, Calif., the daughter of Bill and Hillary Clinton called the initiative “the largest childhood immunization effort ever.”
“A new effort that we’re a part of is the new initiative launched by the WHO last week to try to catch kids up on their routine immunizations. In 2021 alone more than 25 million kids under the age of 1 missed at least 1 routine immunization and so we’re working with WHO and the Gates Foundation and others to kind of hopefully have the largest childhood immunization effort ever over the next 18 months to catch as many kids up as possible, because no one should die of polio, measles, or pneumonia—including in this country, where we also need people to vaccinate their kids,” she said.
The WHO, UNICEF, GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, along with Immunization Agenda 2030 announced “The Big Catch-Up” last month, which WHO characterized as a “targeted global effort to boost vaccination among children following declines driven by the COVID-19 pandemic.”
“This effort aims to reverse the declines in childhood vaccination recorded in over 100 countries since the pandemic, due to overburdened health services, closed clinics, and disrupted imports and exports of vials, syringes and other medical supplies,” WHO described in a press release.
Shorter telomeres are said to indicate increased risk of premature death; longer telomere length has therefore been assumed to represent health and longevity
Research published in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) revealed long telomeres are linked to cancer and clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential (CHIP), a blood disorder
Shorter telomere length is linked to degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease and heart disease, while longer telomere length is associated with increased cancer risks
Cells with long telomeres accumulate mutations, promoting tumors that might otherwise be prevented via normal telomere shortening processes
Rather than relying on telomere length as a measure of longevity or disease, harness the power of lifestyle strategies to slow the aging process and improve your health span
Telomeres are repetitive nucleotide sequences at the end of each chromosome. Sometimes compared to the plastic tip on a shoelace, telomeres help protect DNA, preserving chromosome stability and preventing “molecular contact with neighboring chromosomes.”1
Evidence suggests telomere length may predict morbidity and mortality, with shorter telomeres linked to an increased risk of premature death.2 Longer telomere length has therefore been assumed to represent health and longevity, but the link is controversial. New research suggests, in fact, that telomeres’ link to aging may have been wrong all along.3
Is Telomere Attrition a Hallmark of Aging?
The idea that telomere length serves as a marker of aging has become scientific dogma. Writing in the journal Cell, researchers described telomere attrition as one of the hallmarks of aging that lead to most age-related disorders.4 Telomeres, they noted, are especially vulnerable to age-related deterioration, and telomere shortening occurs during the normal aging process in humans and animals, such as mice.
When DNA damage occurs at telomeres, it leads to persistent harm and “deleterious cellular effects including senescence and/or apoptosis.”5
Further, the team explained, when telomerase, a key maintenance mechanism of telomere length, is deficient in humans, it’s associated with premature disease development, including those involving loss of regenerative capacity in tissues, such as pulmonary fibrosis, dyskeratosis congenita and aplastic anemia.6 According to the Cell study:
“Genetically-modified animal models have established causal links between telomere loss, cellular senescence and organismal aging. Thus, mice with shortened or lengthened telomeres exhibit decreased or increased lifespan, respectively. Recent evidence also indicates that aging can be reverted by telomerase activation.
In particular, the premature aging of telomerase-deficient mice can be reverted when telomerase is genetically reactivated in these aged mice.
Moreover, normal physiological aging can be delayed without increasing the incidence of cancer in adult wild-type mice by pharmacological activation or systemic viral transduction of telomerase. In humans, recent meta-analyses have indicated a strong relation between short telomeres and mortality risk, particularly at younger ages.”
Risks Revealed for Short or Long Telomeres
Just because short telomeres have been linked to aging and disease, it doesn’t mean long telomeres have the opposite effect. In fact, research published in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) revealed long telomeres are linked to cancer and clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential (CHIP) — a blood disorder.7
“Short telomeres were thought to be bad — people with premature aging syndromes had short telomeres — so, by analogy, long telomeres were thought to be good,” study author Dr. Mary Armanios, professor of oncology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, told The New York Times. “And the longer the better.”8
Previous research by Armanios, who also directs the telomere center at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and colleagues revealed, however, that the reality is much more complicated. While short telomere length (TL) was linked to disease, longer telomere length increased the risk of cancers, including lung, melanoma and glioma.9
“The upper threshold that increases the risk of these cancers is not known, but these recent findings add significant warning to the oversimplified interpretation of short TL being linked to aging and long telomeres to youth,” they concluded in 2018. It seemed that having either very short or very long telomeres may be a risk factor for disease.
Researchers with UCSF School of Medicine and Stanford echoed this sentiment in 2020, revealing that shorter telomere length is linked to degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease and heart disease, while longer telomere length is associated with increased cancer risks.10
“Genetically determined long and short telomere length are associated with disease risk and burden of approximately equal magnitude,” they concluded.
Long Telomeres Linked to Cancer, Disease
The NEJM study involved 17 people with a POT1 genetic mutation, known to not only lengthen telomeres but also increase cancer risk. The study participants ranged in age from 7 to 83 and had a variety of tumors, ranging from benign uterine fibroids to melanoma. They also had significantly longer telomeres than the average population — 90% longer in 13 participants and 99% longer in nine.11
While six of the participants had some signs of youth, including no gray hair even in their 70s, many had high rates of clonal hematopoiesis-related mutations. The mutations are linked to the development of blood and other cancers, and existed at much higher rates than expected in the general population.
One participant had cells with 1,000 mutations per clone, which the researchers believe began when the person was just 4 years old. “The long telomere length allowed the blood cell propagation since then,” Armanios said.
The research suggests long telomeres are leading to CHIP and giving more time for cancer-causing mutations to develop. According to Armanios:12
“Our findings challenge the idea that long telomeres protect against aging. Rather than long telomeres protecting against aging, long telomeres allowed cells with mutations that arise with aging to be more durable … Cells with very long telomeres accumulate mutations and appear to promote tumors and other types of growths that would otherwise be put in check by normal telomere shortening processes.”
Telomere shortening, for instance, is said to represent a “major measurable molecular characteristic of aging of cells in vitro and in vivo,” which may have developed as a mechanism to protect against tumors in long-lived species.13
Is DNA Methylation a Better Measure of Your Biological Age?
It’s possible to determine your biological age, as opposed to your chronological age, by measuring your DNA methylation, and in head-to-head comparisons, DNA methylation is significantly more correlated to the aging process than telomeres.
DNA methylation is the silencing of gene transcription. Your genes have promoter sites at the beginning of the DNA strand, and methylation is measured at those sites. The level of methylation at the promoter site correlates to the degree of expression of that particular gene.
Ryan Smith is the founder of TruDiagnostic, a commercial testing system that measures DNA methylation. What’s being measured is not your ability to methylate or not methylate. Rather, it measures the actual expression of your DNA. And, contrary to conventional genetic testing like 23andMe, which is done once, DNA methylation can be measured multiple times as the actual expression of your DNA is alterable and changes over time.
DNA methylation is a better marker of disease risk and health span than telomere length, Smith said during our 2022 interview.
“If you were to make sure that the telomere length never decreased in a cell, you’d still see methylation-related biological aging. If you made sure that the methylation age was reset, you would still see telomere length aging. So, there’s two separate processes.
In a recent review, they actually looked at twins and tried to ascribe how much of the difference in their aging process was affected by these different markers. They said right around 2% of the variance in phenotypic aging was due to telomere length, whereas right around 35% of that was based on these epigenetic methylation clocks.
So, while they both might be important, we definitely would think that the DNA methylation clocks are significantly better.”
Antiaging Strategies That Work
While measuring your rate of aging, or biological age, is intriguing, harnessing the power of lifestyle strategies to slow the aging process and ward off disease can improve your health span and quality of life. Simple antiaging strategies you can implement today include:
•Vitamin D optimization — Ideally, you want to maintain a blood level of 60 ng/mL to 80 ng/mL. Smith cited an interventional trial in which overweight participants reduced their biological age by 1.8 years on average, taking just 4,000 IUs of oral vitamin D a day for 16 weeks.
•Optimize your metabolic flexibility — Core strategies include time-restricted eating or intermittent fasting, and eating a diet high in healthy fats and low in refined carbs to optimize your insulin sensitivity. Also, eat your last meal each day at least three hours before bed.
•Get regular exercise and daily movement — In one study, among 1,481 older women included in the study, those who sat the longest were, on average, eight years older, biologically speaking, than women who moved around more often.14
Another study touted exercise as a “possible cure” for the declines in mitochondrial biogenesis and mitochondrial protein quality commonly seen with aging. Not only did exercise training reverse or lessen age-associated declines in mitochondrial mass, but it also “decreased the gap between young and old animals in other measured parameters.”15
•Stress management — According to Smith, people who meditate or engage in other stress-reduction strategies on a regular basis tend to age at a slower rate than those who don’t.
•Limit consumption of unsaturated fats — Omega-6 linoleic acid (LA) is particularly harmful. It’s highly susceptible to oxidation, causing oxidative stress, and can remain in your cells for up to a decade. So, you want to eliminate vegetable/seed oils, which are high in LA.
In terms of supplement options, glycine is a powerful longevity enhancer that’s inexpensive and has a pleasant, slightly sweet taste. Research shows glycine extends lifespan in worms, mice and rats while improving health in models of age-related disease.16
If there were any doubt about its importance, consider that collagen — the most abundant protein in your body17 — is made mostly of glycine. It’s also a precursor to glutathione, a powerful antioxidant that declines with age. To gain all of glycine’s healing potential, doses of 10, 15, or 20 grams a day may be necessary. I personally take three teaspoons of it a day.
Collagen is also an outstanding source of glycine. You can boost your collagen intake by making homemade bone broth using bones and connective tissue from grass fed, organically raised animals. But remember, there’s no magic potion to stop the aging process.
Methods that claim to stop aging by lengthening your telomeres appear to be misguided. And if your telomeres are too long — or too short — it could be indicative of disease. The fact remains that the best longevity benefits come from leading a comprehensively healthy lifestyke.
National vaccine policy recommendations in the U.S. are made at the federal level but vaccine laws are made at the state level. It is at the state level where your action to protect your vaccine choice rights can have the greatest impact.
It is critical for EVERYONE to get involved now in standing up for the legal right to make voluntary vaccine choices in America because those choices are being seriously threatened.
Not only are lobbyists representing drug companies, medical trade associations and public health officials trying to persuade legislators to strip all vaccine exemptions from public health laws, but global political operatives lobbying the United Nations and World Health Organization are determined to take away the human right to autonomy and protection of bodily integrity.
We must take action to defend our constitutional republic and civil liberties, including the right to autonomy, in America. That includes reforming oppressive mandatory vaccination laws and stopping the digital health ID that will make vaccine passports a reality for us, our children and grandchildren if we don’t take action today.
Signing up to use the free online Advocacy Portal sponsored by the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) at www.NVICAdvocacy.org gives you immediate, easy access to your own state and federal legislators on your smartphone or computer so you can make your voice heard.
NVIC will keep you up to date on the latest bills threatening to eliminate — or expand — your legal right to make vaccine choices and give you guidance about what you can do to support or oppose those bills. So, please, as your first step, sign up for the NVIC Advocacy Portal.
I encourage you to visit the four websites of the National Vaccine Information Center, at www.NVIC.org, a nonprofit charity that has been educating the public about the need to prevent vaccine injuries and deaths since 1982. The information you get on their websites is fully referenced and will help you become an effective vaccine choice advocate in your community:
NVIC.org — This website was established in 1995 and is the oldest and largest consumer operated website publishing information on diseases and vaccines on the internet. Learn about vaccine reactions, injuries and deaths and the history and current status of vaccine science, policy, law and ethics in the U.S. on more than 2,000 web pages.
NVICAdvocacy.org — This communications and advocacy network, established in 2010, is your gateway to taking action to protect your right to make vaccine choices where you live.
TheVaccineReaction.org — This weekly journal newspaper published by NVIC since 2015 is dedicated to encouraging an “enlightened conversation about vaccination, health and autonomy.”
MedAlerts.org — This is a user-friendly search engine for the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) established under the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act and sponsored by NVIC since 2006. Search for descriptions of vaccine injuries and deaths reported to VAERS on this popular website.
Find a Doctor Who Will Listen and Care
If your doctor or pediatrician refuses to provide medical care to you or your child unless you agree to get vaccines you don’t want, I strongly encourage you to have the courage to find another doctor. Harassment, coercion and refusal to provide medical care to someone declining one or more doses of government recommended vaccines is a violation of the informed consent ethic.
Unfortunately, it is becoming routine among members of the medical establishment to be reluctant to share vaccine decision-making power with patients and parents of minor children, especially during the aggressive push for all Americans to get COVID shots.
There are doctors out there who respect the precautionary and informed consent principles, so take the time to locate a doctor who treats you with compassion and is willing to listen and respect the health care choices you make for yourself or your child.
Primary care providers across the U.S. were bribed with incentive programs to coerce patients into getting the toxic COVID shot. Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield paid doctors $50 for each Medicaid patient aged 6 months and older, who got the experimental jab
Doctors have been financially incentivized to vaccinate children for a long time. In 2016, Blue Cross Blue Shield paid pediatricians a $400 bonus for each patient that completed 10 vaccinations before their second birthday, provided 63% of their patients were fully vaccinated
“Client and family incentives” also exist. In 2015, the Community Preventive Services Task Force recommended boosting vaccination rates by giving small, inexpensive incentive rewards to patients
Bribery is also par for the course when it comes to vaccine mandates. Pfizer paid undisclosed sums to front groups that advocated for COVID jab mandates, thereby hiding their conflict of interest
While the COVID-19 pandemic furthered many globalist goals, it inadvertently tanked childhood vaccination rates. To get childhood vaccination rates back on track, a global alliance has launched “The Big Catch-Up” initiative. It’s touted as the largest childhood immunization effort ever
In April 2023, I reported how primary care providers across the U.S. were bribed with incentive programs to coerce patients into getting the toxic COVID shot. Since there was no medical malpractice liability, doctors profited while patients risked their lives as participants in an unprecedented medical experiment, all while being lied to about the safety and effectiveness of these injections.
Even more egregiously, once the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized the COVID shot for children, similar vaccination incentives were extended to pediatricians as well. As detailed in an Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield Medicaid provider bulletin1 dated July 2022, doctors received $50 for each Medicaid patient aged 6 months and older, who got the experimental jab.
Pediatricians Are Financially Incentivized to Vaccinate
As it turns out, doctors have been financially incentivized to vaccinate children for a long time. According to a 1999 JAMA Pediatrics article,2 the average patient load of American pediatricians is 1,546, although the number of patients was “significantly higher in less populated areas and solo practices.”
Of these, 8.3% were younger than 1 year, 9.5% were 1 year old and 8.6% were 2 years old.3 That means approximately 26.4% of the average pediatrician’s patients were 2 years old and younger. More recent data,4 published in 2021, show 75% of pediatricians have between 1,000 and 1,800 patients and 21% have around 1,200 patients; most practices, 65%, are in the 1,000 to 1,500 range.
As shown in the 2016 provider incentive program document from Blue Cross Blue Shield below,5,6 pediatricians were getting $400 for each pediatric patient that completed all the 10 vaccinations listed — 25 doses in all7 — before their second birthday. (Keep in mind that incentives can vary by state. The example provided is part of Michigan’s Blue Cross Blue Shield Performance Recognition Program.)8
How Much Money Is at Stake?
The math from there is pretty straight-forward (although keep in mind that we’re dealing with presumed averages and aged statistics here). Just multiply the number of patients under age 2 times $400. Using the average statistics from 1999, if a pediatrician has 1,000 patients, 264 can be expected to be 2 years old or younger. If all are fully vaccinated, the pediatrician would be eligible for a $105,600 year-end bonus.
While $400 per fully vaccinated child might seem incentivizing enough, there’s an added pressure here, because Blue Cross Blue Shield also has (or at least had, in 2016) a “target” level of 63%.
This means that if the pediatrician fails to vaccinate 63% of his eligible patients, he or she gets nothing. So, the pediatrician has a VERY high incentive to get as many toddlers fully vaccinated as possible, so as not to miss that target. It’s not just $400 that is at stake when parents decline one or more shots. Tens of thousands of dollars could be on the line. As noted by Dr. Bob Sears:9
“Such incentives … end up forcing a doctor to consider the financial implications of accepting patients who even just want to opt out of one vaccine … Maybe a few such families wouldn’t make them fail the chart reviews, but if they have too many, there goes their year-end bonus.”
Why Pediatricians Become Adversaries
Anytime financial incentives are part of the equation, one can reasonably assume that the lure of self-enrichment will win. With tens of thousands of dollars at stake, pediatricians can easily be lulled into complacency when it comes to digging deeper into the science.
After all, who wants to see evidence that what they’re doing is causing more harm than good? These kinds of incentives also encourage pediatricians to simply toss questioning parents out of their practice, to make room for more compliant patients that don’t put their income at risk. As reported by Children’s Health Defense back in 2018:10
“… the 11 well-child visits recommended by the AAP over a child’s first 30 months (with annual visits thereafter through age 21) ensure a steady stream of repeat customers and revenue for pediatricians.
In accordance with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine schedule, pediatric practices are expected to administer vaccines (often as many as six at a time) at about half of well-child visits through the adolescent years, making vaccination a foundational bread-and-butter component of pediatricians’ job description …
It is quite common for pediatricians (and family doctors) to encounter parents who refuse one or more infant vaccines, most often due to safety concerns. These concerns also mean that pediatricians frequently get requests to modify or delay the vaccine schedule — nearly three-fifths (58%) of pediatricians reported such requests in a 2014 AAP survey …
Rather than recognize the validity of parents’ safety concerns or admit to their own ambivalence about some of the newer vaccines, many pediatricians — nearly two in five according to some estimates — choose to boot uncooperative families out of their practice …
Ultimately … subtle and not-so-subtle financial incentives and social pressures are likely to maintain widespread adherence by pediatricians to the vaccine schedule — even in instances where contraindications are present.
Although pediatricians have a legal duty to fully inform patients about vaccine risks and side effects, the lure of monetary perks and the desire to fit in may lessen their motivation to do so.”
Patients Are Bribed Too
In addition to the financial incentives given to physicians, “client and family incentives” also exist. A nongovernmental panel of public health and prevention experts called the “Community Preventive Services Task Force”11 in 2015 published a guide12 on how to boost vaccination rates using incentive rewards for patients.
The task force was established by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in 1996 “to develop guidance on which community-based health promotion and disease prevention intervention approaches work and which do not work, based on available scientific evidence.”13 As explained by this task force:14
“The Community Preventive Services Task Force recommends client or family incentive rewards, used alone or in combination with additional interventions, to increase vaccination rates in children and adults.
Client or family incentive rewards are used to motivate people to obtain recommended vaccinations. Rewards may be monetary or non-monetary, and they may be given to clients or families in exchange for keeping an appointment, receiving a vaccination, returning for a vaccination series, or producing documentation of vaccination status. Rewards are typically small (e.g., food vouchers, gift cards, lottery prizes, baby products).”
The scientific evidence supporting bribery of patients with food vouchers, gift cards and other products of limited value was said to be 4 out of 4, meaning very strong. In other words, incentives, even near-worthless ones, work.
Indeed, we saw this during COVID-19 as well. People were lining up for experimental COVID shots in return for a doughnut, hamburger and fries or even a free lap dance at the local strip club. The pattern is the same. Throw the patient a bone and they’ll agree to things that bring others big profits.
As patients, we need to get savvier about these kinds of tricks and interpret them for what they are. These kinds of “gifts” are not given out of kindness or concern for your well-being. It’s a compliance bribe, and your compliance is making someone rich. Meanwhile, any risks involved are on you.
Bribery and Vaccine Mandates
Bribery is also par for the course when it comes to vaccine mandates. As detailed in a previous article, Pfizer paid undisclosed sums to front groups that advocated for COVID jab mandates, thereby hiding their conflict of interest. In part due to the fake “grassroots” work of these groups, Pfizer was able to rake in a record-breaking $100 billion in sales in 2022.15
But the pressure from consumer groups, civil rights groups, patient groups and doctors’ groups — all of which had been paid off — was probably why COVID jab mandates could even be officially considered by the government. They created a false consensus that people desperately wanted vaccine mandates to keep everyone “safe.”
Special interest groups paid by Pfizer16 to push for COVID jab mandates and coercive vaccine policies included the Chicago Urban league (which argued that the jab mandate would benefit the Black community), the National Consumers League, the Immunization Partnership, the Advertising Council and a long list of universities and cancer, liver diseases, cardiology, rheumatology and medical science organizations.
Each of these organizations received anywhere from several thousand to hundreds of thousands of dollars from Pfizer in 2021 alone. Is it any wonder, then, that more than 50 major health care organizations called for vaccine mandates that year, including for their own workers?17
Childhood Vaccination Rates Tanked During COVID
While the COVID-19 pandemic furthered many globalist goals, it inadvertently tanked childhood vaccination rates, as many parents ended up missing routine well-child visits due to clinic closures, lockdowns and fear of taking their children outside. As reported by the American Medical Association (AMA) in November 2021:18
“… recently published research sheds new light on how the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted some of those routine vaccinations, as parents and their children didn’t just stay home — they stayed away from the doctor.
The JAMA Pediatrics study19 … found that vaccine-administration rates were significantly lower across all pediatric age groups as the pandemic first surged in the U.S. … For example, only 74% of infants turning 7 months old in September 2020 were up to date on their vaccinations, a drop from 81% in September 2019.
And just 57% of infants who hit the 18-month mark in September 2020 were up to date, down from 61% the year before. The proportion of children up to date for routine vaccinations was lowest among Black children, with inequities more pronounced in the 18-month-old group.”
To get childhood vaccination rates back on track, Chelsea Clinton is now making the rounds promoting a new vaccine initiative called “The Big Catch-Up.” In a recent interview with Fortune Magazine,20 Clinton promised it would be “the largest childhood immunization effort ever.” Over the next 18 months, this initiative will attempt to “catch as many kids up as possible,” she said.
Partners in this effort include the World Health Organization, UNICEF, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Immunization Agenda 2030, and several other “global and national health partners.” As reported by the WHO, April 24, 2023:21
“The pandemic saw essential immunization levels decrease in over 100 countries, leading to rising outbreaks of measles, diphtheria, polio and yellow fever. ‘The Big Catch-up’ is an extended effort to lift vaccination levels among children to at least pre-pandemic levels and endeavors to exceed those …
While calling on people and governments in every country to play their part in helping to catch up by reaching the children who missed out, The Big Catch-up will have a particular focus on the 20 countries where three quarters of the children who missed vaccinations in 2021 live …
The 20 countries where three quarters of the children who missed vaccinations in 2021 live are: Afghanistan, Angola, Brazil, Cameroon, Chad, DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea], DRC [Democratic Republic of the Congo], Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Somalia, Madagascar, Mexico, Mozambique, Myanmar, Tanzania, Viet Nam.”
Vaccine Program Is Run ‘Soft Mafia’ Style
When you look at all these areas of bribery and financial incentives, doesn’t it seem as though the entire vaccine program runs on financial coercion? A sort of “soft mafia” kind of operation, where the threats and promises all revolve around money and public/professional shaming versus accolades.
What would happen if all financial incentives were removed? All the performance bonuses paid to doctors, the freebies given to patients, the “charitable donations” to industry-friendly organizations and payments to front groups?
What would happen if parents were simply given unbiased evidence and no one was financially driven to pressure them either way? I don’t have the answer. It’s a thought experiment. But I suspect that vaccination rates would drop dramatically.
An analysis of personal care and cleaning products found the top 10 most hazardous products include a children’s shampoo, JLo Glow perfume, Kaboom with OxiClean, Axe body spray and Organix Shampoo
Over-the-counter products are not inherently safe as there are nearly 13,000 chemicals used in cosmetics and only 10% have been tested for safety. This loophole was created by the Fair Packaging and Labeling Act, which does not force companies to disclose trade secrets
The Environmental Working Group found perfumes typically contain a dozen or more potentially hazardous chemicals, some of which are derived from petroleum. This chemical cocktail may be responsible for the rising number of adverse events reported after exposure to personal care products
Look for products without dangerous chemicals, including parabens, “fragrance,” triclosan and toluene, or consider making your own products at home from safe and natural ingredients
Editor’s Note: This article is a reprint. It was originally published October 24, 2018.
Unfortunately, just because it’s sold over-the-counter does not mean a product is safe for you. In fact, of the nearly 13,000 chemicals used in cosmetics, only 10% have been tested for safety. While the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has the authority to regulate ingredients in cosmetics and personal care products, they often do not exercise it.1
Adding insult to injury, the FDA tasks companies manufacturing and marketing cosmetics with ensuring their safety. Not only is this an obvious conflict of interest, but “neither the law nor FDA regulations require specific test to demonstrate the safety of individual products or ingredients.”2
So, while cosmetic companies are responsible for substantiating safety, there are no required tests and the companies do not have to share safety data. In fact, the FDA isn’t even authorized to order recalls of hazardous chemicals from the market.
Cosmetic3 companies may also fall back on a loophole in the Fair Packaging and Labeling Act,4 which allows companies to withhold information relating to “trade secrets,” under which fragrances and flavor ingredients fall.5
Participating with Environmental Defense and other U.S. groups, the Breast Cancer Prevention Partners (BCPP) tested personal care products and cleaning products sold at major Canadian retailers in order to identify undisclosed fragrance ingredients.6 A lack of federal regulation in Canada and the U.S. results in an increased risk of exposure to consumers.
Your Right to Know
The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, a project of the BCPP, is a broad-based national coalition of nonprofit organizations whose mission it is to protect the health of consumers by securing reforms necessary to eliminate dangerous chemicals linked to adverse health effects.7
The research project was triggered by scientific literature and prior product testing indicating chemicals linked to cancer, birth defects, endocrine disruption and other adverse effects were used heavily in beauty, personal care and cleaning products.
However, despite research evidence, there continues to be a lack of legislatively mandated labeling requirements, leaving consumers uninformed of the dangers in products they bring into their homes every day. For this test, BCPP and their partners purchased 140 different beauty, personal care and cleaning products for testing.
Of particular concern were products marketed to children, women of color and products marketed by celebrities as “good for the environment” or “green.” One of the more concerning results was that many of the personal care products tested contained more hazardous chemicals than the cleaning products.8
Millions of dollars and countless hours of lobbying have been poured into the industry’s fight against legislatively mandated ingredient disclosure. Fragrance is a big business as they are used in personal care products and cleaning products.
The value of the North American flavor and fragrance market is nearly $6 billion and forecast to reach $7.42 billion by 2020.9
Top 10 Most Hazardous Products Tested
The fragrance industry has nearly 4,000 fragrance chemicals at its disposal, which companies are not mandated to disclose. BCPP hired two independent third-party testing laboratories. The first assessed volatile organic compounds and the other performed two-dimensional gas chromatography on a subset of 32 products, including shampoo, deodorant, multipurpose cleaners and lotions.
There was an average of 136 chemicals in the cleaning products and an average of 146 in personal care products. The team then compared the product name against the type of chemicals triggering hormone disruption, asthma, developmental toxins and cancer.
From this data they ranked the top 10 products with the most hazardous chemicals in terms of the highest number linked to these health effects.10 The products making the top 10 dangerous products directly from the BCPP report were:11
Just for Me Shampoo — A children’s shampoo, from a hair-relaxing kit marketed to kids of color by Strength of Nature.
JLo Glow Perfume — A fine fragrance made by Coty and endorsed by music, television and film icon Jennifer Lopez.
Kaboom with OxiClean Shower Tub & Tile Cleaner — Marketed as a “great cleaner that is safe and friendly to use,” made by Church & Dwight Co.
Olay Luminous Tone Body Lotion — Made by Procter & Gamble and marketed for its antiaging qualities.
Axe Phoenix Body Spray — A body spray made by Unilever and marketed to young men using an overtly sexual ad campaign.
Marc Jacobs Daisy Perfume — Another Coty fragrance carrying the famous designer’s name and using beatific, radiant young girls in its marketing campaigns.
Taylor Swift Wonderstruck Perfume — A Revlon fine fragrance endorsed by the beloved pop country singer Taylor Swift.
Organix (OGX) Shampoo — A Johnson & Johnson product marketed as part of a “green/sustainable” line of products to young women.
Formulation 64-RP — An industrial cleaner and disinfectant used by custodians firefighters and others.
White Linen Perfume — Created by Estée Lauder in 1978, marketed as “a beautiful perfume” for women young and old.
While these were the top 10 products, it is important to remember the team conducted tests on 140 personal care and cleaning products, the lowest of which, yellow soap, had 46 chemicals. Other cleaning products such as Kaboom with OxiClean Shower, Tub and Tile Cleaner had 229. Of the 25 personal care products tested, only three had less than 100 and none had less than 75.
Perfumes Tied to Chronic Disease
Are perfumes really the scent of danger? The Environmental Working Group (EWG) found the most popular perfumes, colognes and body sprays may contain trace amounts of natural essence, but they typically contain dozen or more potentially hazardous chemicals. Some of the synthetic chemicals are derived from petroleum.
In an independent laboratory test, the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics12 found 38 secret chemicals in 17 leading fragrances including top offenders from American Eagle, Coco Chanel, Britney Spears and Giorgio Armani. Following an analysis of the data, EWG commented:13
“The average fragrance product tested contained 14 secret chemicals not listed on the label. Among them are chemicals associated with hormone disruption and allergic reactions, and many substances that have not been assessed for safety in personal care products.”
Makers of these popular perfumes often use marketing terms such as “floral,” “exotic” or “musky” without disclosing the complex cocktail of synthetic chemicals used to create the scent.
The average fragrance product tested by the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics contains 14 chemicals not listed on the label, among those associated with hormone disruption, allergic reactions and substances without safety testing.
Undisclosed ingredients also include chemicals that accumulate in the human tissue, such as diethyl phthalates, found in nearly 97% of Americans and linked to sperm damage.
Their report14 also found the FDA was similarly uninformed, as a review of government records revealed a vast majority of the chemicals used in fragrances were not assessed for safety when used in spray-on personal care products.
Phthalates Continue To Be Used in Personal Care Products
However, it isn’t only the undisclosed chemicals under the generic label “fragrance” that are cause for concern. Some chemicals listed included ultraviolet protector chemicals associated with hormone disruption and nearly 24 chemical sensitizers responsible for triggering allergic reactions.
Some manufacturing companies are moving toward restricting or eliminating certain chemicals from fragrances, such as phthalates.15 Although phthalates are only one chemical of concern in fragrances, this is a step in the right direction.
Findings from a multicenter study made a strong correlation between a mother’s exposure to phthalates during pregnancy and changes to the development in a baby boy’s genitals.
Another study at an infertility clinic demonstrated exposure was correlated to DNA damage in sperm and a third study in children aged 4 to 9 linked behavioral problems to higher maternal exposure to low molecular-weight phthalates.16
Adverse Event Reports on the Rise
While FDA regulation is weak at best, it is completely ineffective when adverse effects are not reported. The FDA has an adverse event reporting system containing information on product complaints submitted to the FDA. The database is designed to support safety surveillance programs and includes symptoms, product information and patient outcome.17
The FDA Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN) adverse event reporting system was made publicly available in 2016.18 An analysis of events dated between 2004 and 2016, including voluntary submissions by consumers and health care professionals, showed over 5,000 events reported, at an average of 396 events per year.
However, the average number hides a growing trend. For instance, in 2015 there were 706 events reported and in 2016 there were over 1,500. The three most commonly reported products were hair care, skin care and tattoos. The authors of the report suggest more surveillance is needed, saying:19
“Unlike devices, pharmaceuticals and dietary supplements, cosmetic manufacturers have no legal obligation to forward adverse events to the FDA; CFSAN reflects only a small portion of all events. The data suggests that consumers attribute a significant portion of serious health outcomes to cosmetics.”
The spike in adverse effects reported to the FDA in 2016 occurred only after the agency appealed to consumers and physicians to report events related to products manufactured by Chaz Dean Cleansing Conditioners under the brand name Wen.20
When adverse event complaints are made to a manufacturer they are not legally obligated to pass the reports to the FDA. Following an investigation, the FDA uncovered another 21,000 complaints made to Chaz Dean.21 It is highly likely adverse effects are commonly reported to the manufacturer and not to the FDA, indicating the total numbers in the CFSAN system are underreported.
Avoid These Toxic Chemicals in Your Personal Care Products
Despite over 21,000 consumer complaints to the contrary, Guthy-Renker, WEN’s marketing company, told NPR:22
“We welcome legislative and regulatory efforts to further enhance consumer safety across the cosmetic products industry. However, there is no credible evidence to support the false and misleading claim that WEN products cause hair loss.”
Until control improves over chemicals used in personal care products, safety testing and regulation protecting the consumer, it’s important you read the label on every personal care and cosmetic product you purchase. Here’s a list of some of the more hazardous chemicals found in many personal care products:23,24
Parabens — This chemical, found in deodorants, lotion, hair products and cosmetics, is a hormone disruptor mimicking the action of the female hormone estrogen, which can drive the growth of human breast tumors. A study published in 2012 found parabens from antiperspirants and other cosmetics appear to increase your risk of breast cancer.25
BHA and BHT — These chemicals are used as preservatives in makeup and moisturizers and are suspected endocrine disruptors.26
Synthetic colors — FD&C or D&C are the labels used to represent artificial colors. The letters are preceded by a color and number, such as D&C Red 27. The colors are derived from coal tar or petroleum sources and are suspected carcinogens. They are also linked to ADHD in children.
Fragrance — This is a large category of chemicals protected as proprietary information, and manufacturers do not have to release the chemical cocktails used to produce the scents in fabric sheets, perfumes, shampoos, body washes — anything having an ingredient called “fragrance.”
Formaldehyde-releasing preservatives — While adding formaldehyde is banned as it is a known carcinogen, manufacturers have found other chemicals act as preservatives and release formaldehyde. Chemicals such as quaternium-15, diazolidinyl urea, methenamine and hydantoin are used in a variety of cosmetics and slowly release formaldehyde as they age.
Sodium lauryl sulfate and sodium laureth sulfate — These are surfactants found in more than 90% of cleaning products and personal care products to make the product foam. They are known to irritate your eyes, skin and lungs and may interact with other chemicals to form nitrosamines, a known carcinogen.
Toluene — Toluene is made from petroleum or coal tar, and found in most synthetic fragrances and nail polish. Chronic exposure is linked to anemia, lowered blood cell count, liver or kidney damage, and may affect a developing fetus.
Triclosan — This antibacterial ingredient found in soaps and other products has been linked to allergies, endocrine disruption, weight gain and inflammatory responses, and may aggravate the growth of liver and kidney tumors.
Propylene glycol — This small organic alcohol is used as a skin conditioning agent and found in moisturizers, sunscreen, conditioners, shampoo and hairspray. It has also been added to medications to help your body absorb the chemicals more quickly and to electronic cigarettes. It is a skin irritant, is toxic to your liver and kidneys, and may produce neurological symptoms.27,28,29
Prevent Exposure by Making Your Own
Your skin is an excellent drug delivery system, so what goes on your body is as important as what goes in your mouth. Chemicals you ingest may be filtered through a health gut microbiome, a protection you don’t get when they are absorbed through your skin.
Consider preventing exposure by making many of your own personal care products at home and consulting the EWG Skin Deep searchable database30 to help you find personal care products free of potentially dangerous chemicals. Products bearing the “USDA 100% Organic” seal are among your safest bets if you want to avoid potentially toxic ingredients.
Seek out recipes to make your own homemade bath and handwashing products that don’t contain additional by-products and preservatives. For instance, coconut oil is a healthy skin moisturizer with natural antibacterial properties. Coconut oil may also be used as a leave in conditioner on your hair — be sure to start with very little.
Consider a 25% dilution of apple cider vinegar and water to wash your hair. Spritz your hair with the solution and leave it in for five minutes before thoroughly rinsing. You may have to tweak the dilution for your hair type as apple cider vinegar is a conditioning agent.
Laura Bartlett and Greta Crawford have founded an organization to address the forced treatments patients receive when they’re hospitalized for COVID-19, but the same strategy can be used to protect yourself against other medical hazards as well
The Caregivers and Consent document they created is an “advance decision” document. So, the moment you enter the hospital, the hospital staff know what they can and cannot do to you; they are legally required to respect your current care decisions. And unlike an Advance Directive (which only kicks in when you are incapacitated) the Caregivers and Consent document goes into effect immediately
It’s important to complete and notarize your Caregivers and Consent document BEFORE you ever need to go to the hospital
Make sure you send the completed, signed and notarized document to the CEO of the hospital in two ways: (1) via a professional courier (one that specializes in delivering legal documents); and (2) via the Postal system with certified mail, return receipt requested. The CEO is responsible for all legal business relating to the hospital, including the medical records, so the CEO, not your attending physician, is the one whose responsibility it is to get your consent document entered into your electronic medical record
Make at least 10 copies of the signed, notarized document and keep one copy on your person, in case you ever have an accident or acute illness requiring hospitalization. Also provide copies to the attending physician and nurse once hospitalized
Also, should you become hospitalized (and therefore unable to personally send the document to the CEO), designate a family member or friend to send your Caregivers and Consent document on your behalf. Additional recommendations to ensure your safety are included
In this interview, Laura Bartlett and Greta Crawford detail how you can protect yourself from one of the top contributors to premature death, namely conventional hospital care. The key here is to understand what the dangers are and take proactive measures to guard yourself and your family from them.
Nearly 10 years ago, I interviewed Dr. Andrew Saul, author of “Hospitals and Health: Your Orthomolecular Guide to a Shorter, Safer Hospital Stay,” in which he details how to minimize your risk of being a victim of a medical error.
First and foremost, Saul recommended making sure you have a patient advocate, someone who can speak on your behalf if you’re incapacitated and make sure you’re receiving the correct medication and treatment. During COVID, however, family or friends were not allowed into the hospital, and patients were routinely bullied into treatments they did not want or consent to.
The good news is, Bartlett and Crawford have developed a legal document that, when served to the hospital in the proper way, can ensure that your medical wishes are honored. By eliminating any confusion about your consent (or denial of consent), this document can literally save your life.
Why ProtocolKills.com Was Created
Bartlett and Crawford have founded an organization to address the lethal and, in many cases, forced treatments patients receive when they’re hospitalized for COVID-19, but the same strategy can be used to protect yourself against other medical hazards as well. Crawford explains:
“I created a website called ProtocolKills.com. This came after I was in the hospital with COVID. In the process of going to the hospital, I was denied informed consent and was completely unaware of some of the things they were doing to me. I was given five rounds of remdesivir, which nearly took my life, and I did not even know that I was being poisoned at the time …
During that time in the hospital, I went from thinking I was going to go home after I got oxygen to actually feeling like that I was going to die. I was almost certain I was going to die after being given just the first dose of remdesivir …
[And then there was] the constant push for the vaccine in the hospital, the harassment for not getting vaxxed, and the fact that I was given medication without my knowledge at all, which led me to start the website to not only inform people about what was going on, but [as] a platform to allow other victims who were not as fortunate as me.
Many of them, the majority of them, did not make it out alive. So, it’s a platform for them to share their story. We have over 250 stories on there about what they faced in the hospital. We really wanted to get this information out there to the public, but we also wanted to give a solution, not just to scare people. And that’s where I ended up meeting Laura.”
National Hospital Hostage Hotline to the Rescue
Bartlett continues:
“Before I met Greta at the beginning of COVID, in early 2020, I started helping my brother, Dr. Richard Bartlett, who had a protocol utilizing inhaled budesonide steroid as part of his protocol to treat COVID early. We also found it very effective once people were in the hospital to help reverse [the infectious process] and also the scarring and the inflammation of the lungs.
There are instances where it even helped people who were on ventilators as long as 30 days come off the ventilator and go home. So, I was helping him get that message out in early 2020. I’m not a doctor. I’m not a nurse. I’m just somebody who could help get that known around the world. My background is in media PR …
In the process, people who knew my brother, knew me, started reaching out to both of us with stories that they were in the hospital and they were having a hard time getting the doctor to respect their right to informed consent. It was an overwhelming number of instances where people just felt like they were being bullied or coerced, that their right to try budesonide, for instance, was just dismissed.
And it was almost as if informed consent didn’t exist. But in fact, it never went away. Even during the COVID shielding for hospitals, informed consent between the doctor and the patient never went away. You always had the right to informed consent.
So that’s where my work started. In the process, since there were so many people reaching out for help, I thought, ‘Well, why doesn’t somebody come up with a way for people to quickly access some information of what their rights are and their patient rights?’
So, I started a nationwide hotline, called the Hospital Hostage Hotline [call or text 888-c19-emergency, or 888-219-3637]. It’s still in effect. I still get calls from all over the country. And I’ve been able to help people who went in even for non-COVID reasons like a urinary tract infection that was [also] diagnosed as COVID, and they were being pushed towards a protocol and told they couldn’t leave the hospital.
They needed to know they could, that they always had the right to leave AMA — Against Medical Advice — if that’s what they chose. They also have the right to either consent or not consent to things and it should be respected. I realized that one of the biggest tools for getting that informed consent notice to the doctor was not to just verbally say it, but to have it in writing. These aren’t my original ideas.
I actually had a hospital insider reach out … somebody who had been in the system and knew how to navigate the system at a high level in administration, give me some tips and tools on how to navigate the hospital system to make sure that informed consent was not only documented and delivered effectively to get into the electronic medical record, but also, what their basic patient rights were and how to advocate for them.”
You Have the Right to Leave
One drawback of signing an AMA is that insurance won’t pay for your treatment. That threat will often keep patients in the hospital because they’ll have to pay out of pocket. So, it can be used against you.
“Profit has been a big factor in a lot of suffering,” Bartlett says. “Patients were afraid to leave because they were told, like in the instance of a gentleman that I was helping in New Jersey who went in for a urinary tract infection.
He was an elderly man. This was early 2020. They quickly tested him for COVID and started him on that road towards a ventilator. And they told him flat out, ‘If you leave, none of this will be covered by insurance.’ So that was a big factor.”
Hospitals may also misinform you about your AMA rights, as we’ve seen repeatedly during COVID. More often than not, the hospital’s reluctance to release a patient has to do with protecting its revenues. Bartlett offers the following story to illustrate:
“Somebody that I was helping advocate for said the doctor actually said to them, ‘You cannot leave.’ This person was 15 or 16 days into their COVID diagnosis and they were feeling better. They were likely not COVID positive …
That’s where the name of the hotline came from. They actually felt like hostages. That’s what they were reporting to me. ‘I feel like I’m held prisoner.’ But in fact, they always had the right to leave a hospital whenever they chose to. It’s not up to the doctor when they can leave. They have to make that medical choice for themselves, whether or not they feel like they can leave.”
Patients clearly need a way to put themselves back in the driver’s seat, and the novel medical consent document Bartlett and Crawford created, available on OurPatientRights.com, is the most powerful way I’ve seen so far to do that. As explained by Bartlett:
“What we learned from this whole ordeal over the last couple of years is that there was a need for a novel document that did not exist, to our knowledge, that covers your written consent. A document that documents your current consent, not an advance directive that kicks in after you’re incapacitated.
Before you go into the hospital, write down your consent wishes so that everybody involved in your care within the hospital will have eyes on it because it’s put into your electronic medical record. It’s notarized. It’s signed before you go in. That’s the key. So do it while you have full capacity.
It’s a novel strategy. I’m so grateful to the hospital insider who saw the problem and helped us navigate the system, so that we have an insider’s perspective on how to do this to keep people safe.”
As noted by Crawford, while COVID-19 may seem like a distant memory, people are still being hospitalized and diagnosed with COVID, and are being held hostage by a hostile medical system seemingly intent on milking them for all their worth, until death, if need be.
This is where filing a written medical consent form can help save your life. No doctor can override your written decision (consent) declining certain medications or treatments. Verbal communication is not enough. It must be in writing, notarized and delivered in a manner that formally serves the hospital and puts their physicians on notice.
General Consent Vs. Specific Consent
As explained by Bartlett, when you enter a hospital, you must sign a general consent authorization form. This is basically a contract between you and the hospital. Since you have bodily autonomy, they need your consent before they can do anything to you.
Typically, the general consent form authorizes hospital staff to test, treat and care for you in whatever way they see fit — and when a patient signs the general consent authorization, physicians feel justified that they can implement a hospital protocol without further explaining the risks, benefits or alternatives of that protocol to the patient.
Now, if you’re well enough to read the entire document, and see something in there that you don’t agree with, you can strike the sentence or paragraph and initial it, to indicate that you do not consent to that specific detail. However, that still doesn’t offer you much protection.
What you need is a much more specific document where you detail the types of treatments you consent to and the ones you don’t. You need to carve out a niche from the general consent form that specifies exactly what you do (and do not) consent to. And you need to be clear. Fortunately, the Caregivers and Consent document carves out that niche to communicate clearly to all physicians your exact consent wishes.
“You need a written consent document that, in addition to just the general consent, is a contract between you and the doctor, so he knows, he’s put on notice, what it is that you absolutely do not consent to. For instance, a COVID injection, if that’s your wishes,” Bartlett explains.
“They have a code of ethics, the American Medical Association guidance to physicians, per the ethics opinion 2.1.1, that when the patient surrogate has provided specific written consent, the consent form should be included in the record. This is key. Write it down. You don’t need an attorney. You don’t need any fancy training. You don’t need to be a doctor, don’t need to be a nurse.
You can write it down, and then, when you deliver it in our specific way — and it’s very important how you deliver it — it gets put into the electronic medical record for everybody to see. Now you’ve got receipts, that if you do something against consent, it’s intentional. OK?
So, here’s the website you can find a template for that. It’s called OurPatientRights.com. What you’ll see there are two PDF documents. [On one of the PDFs there are two pages.] One is the actual template, the other one is instructions on how to deliver it. And you can edit the document by the way. You can write your own. It’s just a template. But there’s also very specific instructions on how you are going to deliver this so it’s not disregarded.
Here’s what you’re going to see in the document. ‘I [your name] advise all physicians, nurses, and other caregivers that this Caregivers and Consent document reflects my current wishes for my care and are carefully planned and intentional wishes.’ That’s very important because it’s current. It’s not going to kick in when I’m incapacitated.”
Your Written Consent Must Be Respected
Advance medical directives don’t kick in until or unless you’re incapacitated, so that’s another completely different kind of document reflecting current consent wishes. What Bartlett and Crawford have created is an “advance decision” document. So, the moment you enter the hospital, they know what they can and cannot do to you. And, they are legally required to respect your written directives. The following section of the document reads:
“Receipt of this Caregivers and Consent document by the hospital serves as notice that I will report to the Medical Board any physician who violates my carefully planned and intentional wishes that are based upon my deeply held religious and spiritual beliefs and are delineated within this Caregivers and Consent document.”
This puts the doctor on notice. This isn’t a threat. It’s merely a factual statement that if anyone goes against your wishes, they’re intentionally disregarding your consent. Once it’s in your electronic medical record, they can’t say they didn’t know that you did not consent to a specific test, drug, vaccine or procedure. So, ignoring your written consent is then actually a criminal offense akin to assault and battery. It’s also medical malpractice.
“Let me tell you, there are good physicians and they are clamoring for something like this,” Bartlett says. “They are thankful there is something they can use to push back against administration and say, ‘I’m not going to violate this person’s written consent. I’m not going to do this to this person …’
With these documents, if you are blatantly refusing to honor a patient’s wishes and religious beliefs, and you’re doing it against these documented legal forms, then you risk losing your license altogether as a physician and never working in medicine again …
But you need it in writing … and it needs to be served in a very specific way. You need to do this before you ever go to the hospital. Have it handy in case you get yourself into a predicament, like a multi-car pileup on the highway and an ambulance transports you to the hospital. The time to have this done is before there’s a problem.”
The document also specifies that “All items in this Caregivers and Consent document shall remain in effect unless I choose to revoke in writing; no one else may alter or amend this Caregivers and Consent document.” So there can be no misunderstanding. Your doctor or nurse cannot claim you gave implied consent because you mumbled something incoherent in your sleep. In other words, if you didn’t change your consent wishes in writing, you didn’t change your consent wishes. Period.
What’s in the Caregivers and Consent Document Template
As mentioned, you can customize your Caregivers and Consent document any way you like. But to give people a starting point, the template, available on OurPatientRights.com, includes things like:
“I do not consent to the use of medications without my being informed of each medication’s risks, benefits and alternatives before they are ordered. Only after that information is communicated shall I choose to either grant consent or to not grant consent for each and every medication that is ordered.”
“I do not consent to receiving any vaccine or booster for COVID-19 or COVID-19 variant.”
“I do not consent to receiving the seasonal flu vaccine.”
“I request and consent to the use of 1 mg of budesonide via nebulizer every 4 to 6 hours for COVID-19 or COVID-19 variant diagnosis with respiratory issues.”
If you want to, you could change the verbiage to state that you do not consent to ANY vaccine. If you have allergies, add that to the list. Personally, I would recommend adding the following dietary notice:
“I do not consent to receiving ANY processed food, such as high-fructose corn syrup or seed oils. The only acceptable oil for me is butter, ghee, beef tallow or coconut oil. Acceptable forms of protein would be eggs, lamb, bison, beef or non-farmed seafood; but they must not be prepared with seed oils. If the hospital is unable to provide this food for me, my family or friends will bring it for me.
Additionally, I do not consent to not being able to take my normal supplements while in the hospital.”
I would strongly recommend that you integrate this additional clause because it’s a stealth form of abuse. These kinds of foods can only impair your effort to get well, no matter what your problem is. You may also want to add a notice saying you do not consent to receive blood donations from COVID-19 vaccinated donors, and that all blood donations must be from donors confirmed to have not received any COVID-19 vaccines.
Important: Follow Proper Procedure!
As mentioned multiple times in this interview, it’s crucial to follow the proper procedure. Here’s a summary of the necessary steps:
1.Complete your customized and personalized Caregivers and Consent form BEFORE you ever need to go to the hospital.
2.Get the form notarized. Make sure you sign the form in front of the notary.
3.Send the completed, signed, notarized form to the CEO of the hospital in two ways: (1) via a professional courier (one that specializes in delivering legal documents); and (2) via the Postal system with certified mail, return receipt requested.
The CEO is responsible for all legal business relating to the hospital, including the medical records, so the CEO, not your attending physician, is the one whose responsibility it is to get your consent forms entered into your electronic medical record.
4.Make at least 10 copies of the signed, notarized form and keep one copy on your person or in your wallet or purse, and another in the glove compartment of your car, in case you ever have an accident. Also provide copies to family or friends. If you happen to be hospitalized before you’ve had the chance to send the documents, have one of them follow the delivery procedure outlined on the General Instructions form.
5.Once you’re hospitalized, you or one of your contacts will give one copy to your attending physician and another to your nurse, and inform them that this document is already in your electronic medical record, or that the hospital will be served the documents shortly. Distribute additional copies to other care providers as needed.
6.Also, upon hospitalization, request to see your electronic medical record to make sure your Caregivers and Consent form has been entered. It is your right to see your electronic medical record, and it’s available through an online portal, so don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
Also routinely check your medical record (or have your patient advocate do it for you) to make sure your wishes are being followed and that you’re not being given something you’ve denied consent for.
Crawford notes:
“What we’ve experienced using these documents is a complete change in the attending physician, from being aggressive and maybe trying to push you, to being very helpful and efficient. Once they receive these documents, they just do a 180. As a matter of fact, one patient’s brother told me he’s getting treated better than he’s ever been treated at a hospital before.”
Again, having this document in your medical record virtually guarantees that they cannot harm you by doing something you don’t agree with. Of course, some psychopath might ignore your directives, but they’ll have to pay a hefty price, as they’re guaranteed to lose a malpractice suit and be stripped of their medical license. The legal consequences are so severe that the person doing it would have to be beyond irrational.
Keep in mind that while you can request and consent to certain treatments, such as ivermectin, for example, this document CANNOT force your doctor or hospital to use that treatment. They can still refuse to administer something you’ve consented to.
They cannot, however, administer something that you’ve declined consent for. The ace up your sleeve at that point is that you can still sign out AMA (against medical advice), get out alive, and seek desired treatment elsewhere. Getting out alive is the key goal.
More Information
Again, here are the three resources created by Bartlett and Crawford:
ProtocolKills.com — Here you can find a hospital protocol for COVID, information about remdesivir, patient rights information, alternative health care options and patient testimonies
OurPatientRights.com — Here you can download the template for the Caregivers and Consent document and general instructions
In closing, please share this information with everyone you know. Bring it to your church, synagogue and local community groups. Everyone needs to know they can secure their patient right to informed consent and how to do it so that their wishes cannot be ignored. This is the most effective way to empower yourself when it comes to your medical care. So please, help spread the word.
In mid-February 2023, I reported that the U.S. government has secretly been tracking those who didn’t get the COVID jab, or are only partially jabbed, through a previously unknown surveillance program
Within days, fact checkers tried to debunk the idea that individual people are being tracked, or that these data could be misused by government or third parties
COVID “vaccination” status was not considered a private medical matter at all during 2021 and 2022, yet mainstream media now want you to believe that your COVID jab status is protected by medical privacy laws
Your medical data are not nearly as private as you think. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is rife with exemptions when it comes to your privacy. Federal agencies such as Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for example, are exempt from the privacy clauses and can access identifiable data — especially if there’s an outbreak of infectious disease, be it real or fictitious
Government agencies and a number of third parties or “covered entities” can also use a number of loopholes to re-identify previously de-identified patient data
In mid-February 2023, I reported that the U.S. government has secretly been tracking those who didn’t get the COVID jab, or are only partially jabbed, through a previously unknown surveillance program designed by the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.1
Within days, fact checkers were burning the midnight oil trying to debunk the idea that individual people are being tracked, or that these data could be misused by government or third parties.
Strangely enough, the most egregious “misinformation” example USA Today’s fact checker could find was a social media post that “generated nearly 200 likes in less than a month.”2 Two hundred likes? To most influencers, that’s nothing, especially not over the course of 30 days.
Why is USA Today stressing over a post with 200 likes? Seems a bit panicky if you ask me. Reuters also came out with a fact check and, like USA Today, Reuters claimed there was a lack of “context:”3
“New diagnostic codes that describe a patient as under-immunized against COVID-19 were introduced to help doctors identify patients potentially at risk for more-severe COVID and to help health officials track vaccine effectiveness and mortality statistics, among other public health questions, not for U.S. government tracking of unvaccinated individuals, as some are claiming online.
The codes in an individual’s medical record, like all personal health information, are protected by U.S. privacy law and could only be analyzed at the group or population level uncoupled from individual identities …”
Your Medical Records Are Far From Private
As is so often the case, the fact checkers are the ones taking the issue out of context or, rather, not presenting the full picture. The fact is, your medical data are not nearly as private as you think. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is rife with exemptions when it comes to your privacy.
Federal agencies such as Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have every right to access identifiable information, as they are exempt from the privacy clauses, and they’re particularly justified to access your private vaccination data if there’s an outbreak of infectious disease, be it real or fictitious. As noted in the HHS’s and CDC’s HIPAA guidance:4
“Balancing the protection of individual health information with the need to protect public health, the Privacy Rule expressly permits disclosures without individual authorization to public health authorities authorized by law to collect or receive the information for the purpose of preventing or controlling disease, injury, or disability, including but not limited to public health surveillance, investigation, and intervention …
[T]he Privacy Rule expressly permits PHI [protected health information] to be shared for specified public health purposes. For example, covered entities may disclose PHI, without individual authorization, to a public health authority legally authorized to collect or receive the information for the purpose of preventing or controlling disease, injury, or disability …
Further, the Privacy Rule permits covered entities to make disclosures that are required by other laws, including laws that require disclosures for public health purposes.”
Loopholes Also Allow Re-Identification of Personal Data
Government agencies and a number of third parties or “covered entities” can also use a number of loopholes to re-identify previously de-identified patient data. As explained in a CDC Public Health Law document detailing the lawful sharing of private medical data:5
“While HIPAA limits the use and disclosure of health information, it also permits certain secondary use exceptions for public health purposes. HIPAA provides certain circumstances under which patient data can be disclosed to health departments without patient authorization.
Under HIPAA, providers may disclose identifiable patient data (protected health information or PHI) if required by law, allowing states to pass legal exceptions to HIPAA restrictions.
Providers may also disclose PHI to health departments without patient authorization for public health activities, such as communicable disease reporting, or to a public health authority to prevent or control disease, injury, or disability under the public health exemption. A covered entity may access, use, and disclose PHI for clinical research without an individual’s authorization if:
1)it obtains documentation of waiver of individual’s authorization by an institutional review board or privacy board
2)the PHI is necessary for this research
3)the research is using PHI of decedents
Providers may disclose EHI without patient authorization when the data have been ‘de-identified’ … but still permits re-identification by providers or regional health information organizations through randomized patient source codes should a public health alert or case report become necessary.
Finally, providers may disclose a ‘limited data set,’ including dates and zip codes, without authorization and still re-identify patients if they maintain patient codes derived from certain identifiers.”
So, can your vaccination status be accessed by federal health agencies? Yes. Can that information be identifiable? Absolutely yes. Does that mean that you, as an individual, could be surveilled and/or get caught in a forced vaccination dragnet or end up experiencing negative repercussions in other areas of your life due to your vaccination status? Probably.
U.S. “privacy” laws certainly make allowances for such scenarios, and considering the behavior of government over the past three years, it would be naïve to believe they would never use your vaccination data against you.
Reuters Muddies the Water
Reuters also muddies the water in other ways. For example, the fact check stresses that medical providers have used the general code Z28.3 (which represents “underimmunized”) since 2015, and that “these codes are not used with purposes beyond monitoring and reporting diseases and mortality statistics or for insurance billing.”
While it’s true that the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) code Z28.3 has been around for years, the new subcodes that track COVID jab status were added in mid-September 2021 during a ICD-10 Coordination and Maintenance Committee meeting, and during that meeting, they specified that “there is interest in being able to track people who are not immunized or only partially immunized.”
Below is a screenshot of page 194 of the agenda6 distributed during that meeting. There’s no ambiguity here. The new ICD-10 codes were added for the specific purpose of “tracking people” who are unjabbed or only partially jabbed against COVID-19.
They didn’t say they wanted to track “general population data.” They specifically said “people” are to be tracked. They also clearly state that this tracking is “of value for public health” — and again, the key words “public health” open the door to federal health agencies accessing identifiable data.
Moreover, additional subcodes specify the “why” a person chose not to get the COVID shot or stopped getting boosters. Those codes are listed in the screenshot below, under Z28.3 Underimmunization Status.7
The use of “delinquent immunization status” under code Z28.39 also tells us something about where this is all headed. “Delinquent” means being “neglectful of a duty” or being “guilty of an offense.” Is refusing boosters a criminal offense? Perhaps not today, but some day, it might be, and these codes lay the foundation for that kind of medical persecution.
All Missed Vaccinations Will Be Tracked
Another tipoff that these codes will become part and parcel of the biosecurity control grid, even if they’re not used in this way now, is the fact that code Z28.39 — “Other underimmunization status”8 — is to be used “when a patient is not current on other, non-COVID vaccines.”9
In other words, they have already begun tracking ALL of your vaccinations, not just the COVID shot, and they can use the Z28.3 sub-codes to identify why you refused a given vaccine.
They’ve also added a billable ICD-10 code for “immunization safety counseling,” which explains the codes detailing “why” you refused a vaccine. So, if you didn’t get a vaccine due to “personal decision” (code Z28.2), or due to “personal beliefs or group pressure” (code Z28.1), then your doctor can bill your insurance for regurgitating vaccine propaganda and trying to change your mind.
Codes Could Be Put to Good Use
Giving credit where credit is due, Reuters Fact Check did point out a potentially beneficial purpose for the new ICD-10 codes:10
“[Eric Burnett, who specializes in hospital and internal medicine at Columbia University] said the ICD-10 codes could also help track data on vaccine efficacy, including comparisons between vaccination statuses of hospital or ICU patients with COVID, or patient mortality data based on vaccination status.”
That would be great, but the risk of these data being misused by the government is, I believe, greater than the possibility of them being used to protect the public from dangerous mRNA shots, seeing how overwhelming amounts of data showing harms are already being willfully ignored.
CDC Refuses to Answer Questions About the New Codes
Another red flag is the fact that the CDC has refused to answer questions about how it intends to use the new ICD-10 codes. In mid-February 2023, nine House Republicans sent a letter to the CDC demanding answers to these five questions:11
Why did the CDC and National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) decide to start gathering data on why Americans chose not to take the COVID-19 vaccine?
How do the CDC and NCHS intend to use these new COVID-19 vaccination ICD codes?
What steps are the CDC and NCHS taking to ensure that Americans’ private health information contained in the ICD system is protected?
Will the CDC and NCHS confirm that they have not, will not, and cannot create a database of Americans based on their COVID-19 vaccination status?
Can the CDC and NCHS confirm that private companies do not have access to lists of Americans’ COVID-19 vaccination status through the ICD system, or any other database overseen by the CDC and NCHS
As reported by The Daily Signal February 28, 2023, the CDC for some reason does not want to answer these questions:12
“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told The Daily Signal that it ‘will not be tracking’ the reasons Americans give for refusing to take a COVID-19 vaccine … Meanwhile, congressional Republicans told The Daily Signal that the CDC failed to respond to their questions by a deadline last week.
‘Two weeks ago, we sent a letter to the CDC demanding answers about its new COVID-19 vaccine database,’ Rep. Josh Brecheen, R-Okla., told The Daily Signal in a statement …
‘The CDC is stonewalling us and refusing to respond. Why won’t the CDC explain why it’s gathering data about Americans’ personal choices? House Republicans are not afraid to use the budgetary process to keep the CDC accountable to the American people,’ Brecheen warned.
House Republicans raised the alarm about the CDC’s involvement with the World Health Organization’s recently codified International Classification of Disease, or ICD, codes related to COVID-19 vaccination status, which went into effect last April. The codes enable the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to collect data on the reasons Americans refuse to take one of the vaccines …
‘The ICD codes were implemented in April 2022, however the CDC/NCHS does not have any data on the codes and will not be tracking this information,’ Nick Spinelli, a CDC spokesman, said in an emailed statement. ‘The codes are developed and managed by the World Health Organization to enable healthcare providers to track within their practices …'”
End Goal Is Global Database for the Vaccine Passport System
The mention of the WHO brings me to my next point, which is that all of this information will likely, eventually, be transferred into a global vaccination database. Hence the reason why the WHO develops and manages the ICD-10 codes. It’s to allow for the “harmonization” of health care across the world.
Incidentally, the fact that the WHO develops and manages these codes also means that the WHO has approved these new codes that track vaccination status, and we already know that the WHO is working on a global vaccine passport.
To work properly, a global vaccine passport system needs a global vaccination database, and there’s no telling what privacy measures, if any, such a database might end up with. What we do know is that white papers13 and proposed legislation14 published during the COVID era that discuss health tracking and/or vaccine passports have stressed that privacy concerns must be relaxed or dropped altogether to ensure global biosecurity.
We also saw how COVID “vaccination” status was not considered a private medical matter at all during 2021 and 2022. In many places, you had to disclose your status and show proof that you’d been jabbed. Yet mainstream media now want you to believe that your COVID jab status is protected by medical privacy laws. What a joke.
As noted by Dr. Robert Malone in a January 25, 2023, Substack article, this vaccine passport system is being put into place right under our noses, and it would be incredibly naïve to think that these new ICD-10 codes are not part of that scheme:15
“The administrative state is busy building a vaccine passport system that will be active before most Americans are aware of what is being done to them. No one is going to knock on your door asking for your vaccine status because they already know …
They don’t need approval from Congress or the courts because we have given them the information through our health care providers. The CDC is the governmental organization tasked with tracking vaccine status on individuals.
They already have the records, as well as updated booster information. They just need to tweak a definition here and there, or get President Biden to keep the COVID-19 public health emergency in place indefinitely and the vaccine passports will be a fait accompli.”
A Data Collection Dragnet
As of January 1, 2014, the U.S. government required public and private health care providers to adopt and use electronic medical records (EMR) if they wanted to quality for full Medicaid and Medicare reimbursement.
The government also financially incentivized physicians and hospitals to adopt electronic HEALTH records or EHR.16 The difference between EMR and EHR is that EHR provides a far more comprehensive patient history than EMR, as it contains a patient’s medical history from more than one medical practice.
In essence, EHR is what you get when doctors share your medical data to create one comprehensive file that covers all your interactions with the medical system. While that sounds good in theory, Big Pharma immediately seized the opportunity to misuse it by placing drug ads within the EHR system.
This in turn has driven up medical costs and resulted in poor prescribing decisions that put patients at risk.17 Patients are also directly targeted with drug marketing through patient portals.
Physicians and hospitals who adopted EHR got paid extra. Between January 1, 2011 and December 31, 2016, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) paid out EHR incentive payments to hospitals totaling $14.6 billion.18 Meanwhile, those who chose not to capture, share and report clinical data on patients were financially penalized through reduced Medicare reimbursements.19,20
Needless to say, these “sticks” and “carrots” led to the rapid adoption of both EMR and EHR, both of which government requires if it wants the power to control the population through medicine, and we now know that’s exactly what government intends to do.
Transhumanism Is Being Implemented Through Food and Medicine
At the end of September 2022, President Biden laid out a “bold goal” to “end hunger and increase healthy eating and physical activity by 2030” through a federally-backed “Food Is Medicine” campaign.21
Integrating food and nutrition with health care so that food and health policies are under one umbrella will facilitate the creation of new policies, funding and control over both areas. Eventually, food purchases and health records will be linked to your vaccine passport/digital identity, which also holds your educational records, travel records, work records and bank accounts.
That this “Food Is Medicine” campaign has nothing to do with promoting real nutrition or whole food is obvious, as that same month Biden also signed the “Executive Order on Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation for a Sustainable, Safe and Secure American Bioeconomy.”22
On a larger scale, this plan is also promoted by the World Health Organization, which is trying to seize power over health care globally through International Health Regulation (IHR) amendments and the Pandemic Treaty. For more information on that, see “Pandemic Treaty Will Usher In Unelected One World Government.”
The WHO is also seeking to put food, medicine and climate under one umbrella. This would allow it to control the global population in any number of ways, as a climate issue could be positioned as a public health issue, or a food issue, and vice versa. In other words, people could be forced to eat bugs instead of beef because it “benefits the climate.” Private vehicle use could be restricted because it helps lower vehicular pollution that endangers public health, and so on.
So, to bring us full circle back to where we started, while media are now trying to lull you to sleep with “promises” that there’s nothing nefarious about tracking the unvaccinated or “undervaccinated,” think long and hard before you close your eyes to the possibility that this is all part of biosecurity-based totalitarian control grid.
They’ve given up on a needle in every arm. Now they’re coming for what you eat.
“I’ve got documents from the NIH – from 2002 – talking about integrating vaccines into foods,” announced attorney Tom Renz in an eye-opening interview with Dr. Naomi Wolf. “They’ve been working on integrating these [vaccines] into our food supply. They’ve been working on it for at least two decades.”
“Here is an article published in the NIH (you know – by our government) talking about foods ‘under application’ to be genetically modified to become edible vaccines – FROM 2013,” he wrote. “The fact that food can be altered to act as a vaccine is not disputable.”
And according to attorney Renz’s recent tweet, “lobbyists for the cattleman and pork associations in several states have CONFIRMED they WILL be using mRNA vaccines in pigs and cows THIS MONTH.”
“Gates, the WHO, a ton of these universities: they’re all talking about including mRNA vaccinations as part of the food. They’re going to modify the genes of these foods to make them mRNA vaccines,” he warned in this video.
But Missouri HB 1169 seeks to counter such an effort. It’s been described as “one of the most controversial bills in history,” but all it is – is a labeling bill. It doesn’t ban anything. You have every right to know if a food product is a gene therapy product. So, if this bill gets passed, it’s a major victory for informed consent and, in all likelihood, our well-being. The entire two-page bill is available to read on DailyClout. Here’s an excerpt:
The bill was written in a way “to be as easy to pass and as hard to oppose as possible,” conveyed attorney Renz.
Missouri HB 1169 does three things:
1.) “It requires labeling and disclosure of any product that has any gene therapy qualities.”
2.) “It requires that if you have a product on the market that has gene therapy qualities, that anyone can call the company and say, ‘hey, how does this spread? ‘Does it shed? Is it spread through contact — through sexual contact? Or is there a way that this can spread?’ And they have to disclose it.”
3.) “It requires informed consent. And informed consent includes serious events or adverse events of special interest. … And it requires informed consent before you be given anything with the gene therapy or medicinal property.”
“So, this isn’t difficult,” stressed attorney Renz.
“I don’t think this is a Democrat bill or Republican bill. It’s sponsored by a Republican (Rep. Holly Jones) but should be universally supported.” However, “[t]his has become the most contentious bill in Missouri history,” he lamented. “All we’re asking for is transparency and disclosure.”
Now, pharma can’t come out and oppose transparency and disclosure. So they would need the agricultural community to have their back. Remember, Bill Gates and the CCP are the two largest holders of agriculture in America. “So these guys [Gates & CCP] throw money at these guys [agricultural associations] — buy off these guys. They’re not representing the local farmers,” attested attorney Renz.
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But here’s the reason this bill is so important.
If attorney Tom Renz helps pass Missouri HB 1169, “those disclosures and the ability to get that information (is gene therapy in my food?) apply globally.” he explained. “So if we can win in one state, the truth in Missouri is the truth in Iowa. So we’ve got to get everybody on the planet calling these guys, telling them you got to pass this — you got to stand for we the people. All it is – is transparency and disclosure. We don’t even ban it. They can still make their poison foods. I just need to know if I’m eating them.”
And if they have to mark and label foods with gene therapy as such, that’s it. It kills the uptake of such food products.
So, whether you’re in Missouri, Iowa, the United Kingdom, or Australia, you need to help push HB 1169 across the finish line.
Because as Tom said, if the bill passes in Iowa, “those disclosures and the ability to get that information apply globally.” So, share this bill on social media, call your local legislators — ask your representatives why a bill similar to HB 1169 is not being discussed in your neck of the woods.
The easiest way to do so is to vote on the interactive DailyClout ‘Billcam’ below to show your support or opposition. You can send the bill through social media and tweet the bill sponsor or your representative.
They’ve already given up on a needle in every arm. Make them do the same when it comes to inserting gene therapy into your food.
The Vigilant Fox is a citizen journalist with 12 years of healthcare experience, focused on The Great Reset, world protests, and COVID-19.
After being deeply disturbed by COVID measures, mandates, and medical discrimination, he has dedicated his free time and effort to making short, informative clips — featuring top doctors, scientists, and thought leaders from around the world.
Is the food we’re consuming slowly killing us? Dr. Mark Hyman explains how many American foods have become a detriment to our health and could be the source of chronic diseases. Dr. Hyman said that 93.2% of Americans have insulin resistance, pre-diabetes or poor metabolic health that precedes many serious diseases. He explained that the food system is biggest killer on the planet and the main culprits are sugar, carbohydrates and processed foods. He said that for every 10% of calories consumed from ultra-processed food, the risk of death goes up by 14%. The American diet is 60% ultra-processed food, and for children it is 67%. Eleven million die globally from bad food.
In her book, “Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons,” Kris Newby reviews the circumstantial evidence suggesting the organism that causes Lyme disease may originally have been developed as a biological weapon
An estimated 476,000 Americans are diagnosed with and treated for Lyme disease each year, and prevalence is rising
Lyme disease is transmitted by ticks (and sometimes other biting insects) infected with the bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi. There are about two dozen species of B. burgdorferi with hundreds of strains worldwide, many of which are resistant to antibiotics
Ticks can also carry other pathogens, and coinfections are another reason why Lyme disease is so difficult to treat
A major challenge with Lyme disease is that its symptoms imitate so many other disorders, including multiple sclerosis (MS), arthritis, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia and even Alzheimer’s disease, making proper identification difficult and time consuming
In a February 28, 2023, Substack article,1 investigative journalist Paul D. Thacker interviewed award-winning author Kris Newby about the U.S. government’s history of manipulating pathogens to make them deadlier, and the secretive federal research that may be responsible for the epidemic of Lyme disease.
Newby, who educates health care providers on vector-borne diseases, is the author of “Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons.” She also produced the 2008 Lyme disease documentary “Under Our Skin,”2 which was nominated for an Academy Award the following year.3 A follow-up film, “Under Our Skin 2: Emergence” came out in 2014.
As is the case with many people who end up becoming experts at a particular disease, Newby and her husband contracted Lyme disease in 2002 during a vacation at Martha’s Vineyard. “We were desperately ill and undiagnosed for a year. I thought that was the end of my life as I knew it. It took us four or five years to fully recover,” she told Thacker.
Background on Lyme Disease
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an estimated 476,000 Americans are diagnosed with and treated for Lyme disease each year.4 While exact numbers are difficult to ascertain, what is known is that the prevalence is rising, and this is true across the world. Outbreaks are also steadily creeping into northern areas with less temperate climates.5
Lyme disease is transmitted by ticks (and sometimes other biting insects) infected with the bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi. There are about two dozen species of B. burgdorferi with hundreds of strains worldwide,6 many of which are resistant to antibiotics. Research7 suggests one reason for this may be that B. burgdorferi form protective biofilms around themselves, which enhances antibiotic resistance.
Another feature that makes B. burgdorferi such a formidable foe is its ability to take on different forms in your body, depending on the conditions. This clever maneuvering helps it to hide and survive. Its corkscrew-shaped form also allows it to burrow into and hide in a variety of your body’s tissues, which is why it causes such wide-ranging multisystem involvement.
Ticks can also carry other pathogens, and coinfections are another reason why Lyme disease is so difficult to treat, as the symptomology can be all over the place. Coinfections in many cases also don’t respond to treatment for B. burgdorferi, so a multilayered approach is frequently required to get all of the infections under control.
Lyme Disease Is Often Debilitating
A “typical” case usually starts out with an expanding rash, fever, fatigue, chills and headache. As the disease progresses, additional symptoms such as muscle spasms, loss of motor coordination, arthritic pain, debilitating fatigue, heart problems, psychiatric symptoms, cognitive difficulties, and problems with vision and hearing can emerge.8
For more information on identifying a Lyme disease rash, see the American Lyme Disease Foundation’s (ALDF) website.9 Newby describes her personal experience:
“It’s sort of like having multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s, chronic fatigue … joint pain, all at the same time. It’s primarily a neurological disease that creates hyper-inflammation in your body. And the symptoms commonly move around your body. You can be very debilitated, unable to perform the tasks of a normal adult …
There is a growing body of scientific evidence that shows that the Lyme disease bacterium is a trickster that is good at dodging your immune system.
It comes out of the tick in a very mobile spirochetal form and, when it senses an antibiotic or killer cells, it goes into a dormant cyst form, hiding out for months to years. And when your immune system is stressed, it can start causing disease again.”
A major challenge with Lyme disease is that its symptoms imitate so many other disorders, including multiple sclerosis (MS), arthritis, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia and even Alzheimer’s disease, making proper identification difficult and time consuming.10
What’s worse, many Lyme sufferers outwardly look quite healthy, and their blood work often raises no cause for concern, which is why Lyme disease has also been called “the invisible illness.”
In the past, Lyme sufferers were frequently told that their problem was psychiatric; in essence, the symptoms were “all in their head.” Today, Lyme is becoming more widely recognized as an actual disease, but sufferers are still often met with skepticism and resistance from the medical community and insurers.
The Lyme Disease Mimicker
Complicating matters further, there’s yet another tick-borne disease on the loose. Researchers have identified a tick-borne illness that is very similar to Lyme, caused by Borrelia miyamotoi.
The CDC11 describes B. miyamotoi as a distant relative to B. burgdorferi, being more closely related to bacteria that cause tick-borne relapsing fever. This disease is characterized by recurring episodes of fever, headache, nausea and muscle or joint aches.
This bacterium was first identified in Japanese ticks in 1995. Since then, it’s been found in several rodent species (and the ticks that feed on them) in the U.S., as well as in ticks feeding on European red deer, domestic ruminants and white-tailed deer.
Is Lyme Disease a Biological Weapon Gone Rogue?
According to Newby, there’s good reason to suspect that Lyme disease might be a biological weapon. There’s no smoking gun; just circumstantial evidence. But when taken together, it forms a highly suspect picture.
She describes being at a party where a former CIA agent bragged about a Cold War operation that involved dropping infected ticks on Cuba. “At that point, I knew I wasn’t done with the story,” she told Thacker. Her book, “Bitten,” is the result of her investigation into the military’s use of infectious bioweapons.
“When we started the film, Lyme disease was already too controversial to go down the bioweapons rabbit hole, so we focused on the human toll and the corruption in the medical system that allowed this epidemic to get so out of control,” Newby told Thacker.
“This CIA guy was a little bit in his cups, but what he said rang true. I started doing some research, interviewed him several times, and found that it was a verifiable story.”
Newby also got tipped off by Willy Burgdorfer during the filming of “Under Our Skin.” Burgdorfer, a Swiss medical zoologist, is credited with discovering Lyme disease. He worked at Rocky Mountain Labs — a National Institutes of Health-run biosafety level 4 (BSL4) facility in Montana — his whole career, and had contracts with Fort Detrick, which oversees the U.S. chemical and biological weapons programs.
While he made some important admissions during that interview, at the very end, he broke into an “evil little smile” and said, “I didn’t tell you everything.” Was he hinting that Lyme disease was a bioweapon?
“He started hinting at the unnatural origin of the outbreak to several people,” Newby told Thacker. “When I interviewed him for the book, he said, ‘Yes, I was in the biological weapons program. I was tasked with trying to mass produce ticks and mosquitoes.’
That’s also when he told me that he was called to investigate the outbreak of what was called ‘Lyme disease,’ but which could’ve been caused by one or more organisms. In Army documents, they said they were conducting early gain-of-function experiments by mixing pathogens — bacteria and viruses — inside ticks to create more effective bioweapons.”
The Official Story
As described by Newby, the official story is that Burgdorfer was sent to investigate a novel disease outbreak in Lyme, Connecticut, and Long Island. In 1980, he discovered the bacterium that now bears his name, Borrelia burgdorferi, and determined that this was what caused the disease.
He subsequently published an article stating the organism was easily killed off with penicillin. The notion that Lyme disease is easy to diagnose and treat has stuck ever since, even though the reality is often the opposite.
Newby agrees that, if caught early, many cases can indeed be cured with an inexpensive course of doxycycline. Two other antibiotics, ceftriaxone and vancomycin, have also been shown to clear the B. burgdorferi infection in cases where doxycycline fails.12 Unfortunately, Lyme disease patients often go undiagnosed for years, and by the time a diagnosis is made, the infection is well-established and very difficult to treat.
Holes in the Official Storyline
While researching for the book, Newby produced an animation of the original outbreak, which supposedly began at the mouth of the Connecticut River, near Long Island. This turned out to be rather revealing. She told Thacker:
“When I drew a 50-mile radius around that point, there were three new, highly virulent tick-borne diseases that showed up at that same time, in the late ’60s. This was 13 years before the Lyme bacterium was declared the cause of ‘Lyme disease’ in 1981.
I started looking through military records to see if the outbreak could be tied to any bioweapons accidents. And that’s when I discovered this massive bug-borne weapons program, as well as a program where germs were sprayed from airplanes over large areas, called Project 112.
Some of those germs were tick-borne diseases that they freeze-dried and aerosolized for spraying … Whatever happened in Lyme, Connecticut, we don’t have all the details. But I put together a solid circumstantial case, based on available evidence …
Burgdorfer … had worked with Q fever and ticks, experience that was needed at Rocky Mountain Labs for their bioweapons work. As soon as he got a security clearance, he started putting plague in fleas; deadly yellow fever in mosquitoes; and then mixing and matching viruses and bacteria in ticks to increase the virulence of these living weapons.
The Detrick weapons designers were looking for ticks that could be dropped on an enemy without arousing suspicion, filled with agents for which the target population wouldn’t have natural immunity … Ticks were the perfect stealth weapon, untraceable and long-acting …
I went as far as I could as a journalist to put together the circumstantial evidence that says Lyme disease is not the big problem — meaning the bacteria called Borrelia burgdorferi.
It’s what Burgdorfer said that they’re covering up: 1) that a different bacteria, perhaps a rickettsia related to Rocky Mountain spotted fever, was developed as a bioweapon in the Cold War; 2) that it might be a combination of bugs inside the ticks that is making people sick.”
Mice and Rats Are the Most Problematic Hosts
Since the late 1970s, the spread of Lyme disease has primarily been blamed on deer. However, more recent evidence suggests rodents like mice and rats are a far more serious threat.13 Ticks are not born with the Lyme spirochetes. They pick up the bacteria when feeding on an infected host.14
Research indicates that white-footed mice infect 75% to 95% of larval ticks that feed on them, while deer only infect about 1%. According to a 1996 study,15 rats are even more infectious than mice, noting that “the capacity of rats to serve as reservoir hosts for the Lyme disease spirochete, therefore, increases risk of infection among visitors to … urban parks.”
Another study16 published the following year also found that Norway rats and black rats were exceptionally effective hosts, infecting nearly all ticks that fed on them.
The main predators of small rodents like mice and rats are foxes, birds of prey, skunks and snakes.17 Agricultural and urban sprawl have decimated the habitats of these natural predators of mice and rats, allowing disease-carrying rodent populations to rise unabated.
Better Diagnostics for Lyme Are Sorely Needed
A big problem facing Lyme patients and their treating doctors is the difficulty of reaching a proper diagnosis.18 Conventional lab tests are unreliable, and one reason for this is because the spirochete can infect your white blood cells.19
Lab tests rely on the normal function of white blood cells to produce the antibodies they measure. If your white cells are infected, they don’t respond to infection appropriately. So, for blood tests to be truly useful, you need to be treated first.
Once your immune system begins to respond normally, only then will the antibodies show up. This is called the “Lyme Paradox.” You have to be treated before a proper diagnosis can be made.
That said, I recommend the specialized lab called IGeneX20 because they offer highly sensitive tests for more outer surface proteins (bands), and can often detect Lyme while standard blood tests cannot. IGeneX also tests for a few strains of coinfections such as Babesia and Ehrlichia.
Patients and Doctors Fight for Recognition of Chronic Lyme
As if the difficulties of getting a proper diagnosis and treatment were not enough, Lyme sufferers face additional hurdles when they don’t fully recuperate after the initial treatment. Whether “chronic” Lyme disease is possible or not has been the subject of controversy for many years.
The Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), which publishes guidelines for a number of infectious diseases, including Lyme disease, has long opposed the idea chronic Lyme exists, and doesn’t include long-term treatment guidance for chronic Lyme in its clinical guidelines.21,22
This is important, as insurance companies frequently restrict coverage for long-term treatment based on IDSA’s guidelines. Physicians’ treatment decisions are also guided by its recommendations. Opposing IDSA is the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS), the members of which argue that many patients suffer long-term consequences and require far longer treatment than recommended by IDSA.23
Prevention Tips
Considering the difficulty of diagnosing and treating Lyme disease, taking preventive measures should be at the top of your list:
Avoid tick-infested areas, such as leaf piles around trees. Walk in the middle of trails and avoid brushing against long grasses and path edgings. Don’t sit on logs or wooden stumps and take extra precautions if you’re in an area where rats have been sighted.
Wear light-colored long pants and long sleeves, to make it easier to see the ticks.
Tuck your pants into socks, and wear closed shoes and a hat, especially if venturing out into wooded areas. Also tuck your shirt into your pants.
Ticks are very tiny. You want to find and remove them before they bite, so do a thorough tick check upon returning inside, and keep checking for several days following exposure. Also check your bedding for several days following exposure.
As for using chemical repellents, I do not recommend using them directly on your skin as this will introduce toxins directly into your body. If you use them, spray them on the outside of your clothes and avoid inhaling the spray fumes. The Environmental Protection Agency has a list24 indicating the hourly protection limits for various repellents.
If you find that a tick has latched onto you, it’s very important to remove it properly. For detailed instructions, please see lymedisease.org’s tick removal page.25 Once removed, make sure you save the tick so that it can be tested for presence of pathogenic organisms.
It’s Time to Ban Gain-of-Function Research
In closing, the Lyme disease epidemic and COVID-19 both appear to be the result of bioweapons development, and the real-world ramifications clearly demonstrate the risks involved. They can’t guarantee containment of the created pathogens, and sometimes, they don’t even try to contain them. In the case of Lyme disease, it’s possible that live testing is what led to the epidemic.
And while we don’t know whether SARS-CoV-2 was intentionally released or simply escaped, the end result is the same. The virus spread worldwide. If the world doesn’t wise up and realize just how suicidal these biological weapons programs are, humanity may eventually be wiped out by one of our own creations.
The bill was written in a way “to be as easy to pass and as hard to oppose as possible,” conveyed attorney Renz.
Missouri HB 1169 does three things:
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