“He who has overcome his fears will truly be free.”—Aristotle
I don’t want to add anxiety to the life of anyone—Ever. And this is especially true for those who care enough to take time out of your day to read my articles and listen to my podcasts. But I follow where the truth leads, even when the destination makes me uncomfortable.
So if an exposé on the corruption and sociopathy that rules our world will bring you stress that you’d rather avoid, please skip this article, as it takes a hard look at present day dystopia.
For those who would like to follow me down these rabbit holes—Onward, into the abyss.
Things are so bad in the world right now, on so many levels, that I figured I’d either scream into the void for a few hours, or write about it. I chose the latter because my voice is a bit hoarse from screaming into the void yesterday.
I’m lucky—Over the years I’ve found that listening to my patients has never steered me wrong. They’ve not only been an inspiration, but an endless source of education. And at no time in the past have I ever seen them so distressed as I have over the last 12 months—The topic comes up in conversation virtually every day. Even folks I’ve known for years, who’ve been consistently happy, are now clearly troubled.
I realize that there’s something visceral and intuitive to my reaction of how my patients are feeling. And although I try to remain ever the objective scientist, I can’t help feeling—To my core, in a way that circumvents reason—That things are very, very wrong.
This left me uncomfortable, hence the origin of this article. Due to my nearly-obsessive pursuit of logic—Did I ever mention that one of my nicknames in high school was Mr. Spock? Yes, I was that cool—I had to figure out why I feel this way, and why I feel it so strongly.
So the following is an attempt to do just that—It’s my effort to explore some existential issues in a cogent, linear fashion—Letting my slowpoke analytical side catch up with my sometimes way-too-nimble intuitive other half. I had to retrace my steps to make sure that I wasn’t wildly off-base, chasing a random gut instinct. And after doing this, I’m happy-ish to report, that even though I’m horrified at what I’ve researched, I do feel more comfortable in my skin, knowing that I’ve not been barking up the wrong tree, following a baseless hunch.
When I began this process, the first little voice in my head that I heard was the one that’s always trying to convince me that I’m over-reacting when my intuition is screaming and I dare to listen, even a little bit—
“Well of course there’s something very wrong. There’s a pandemic, haven’t you heard?! Of course your patients are stressed. The whole world is stressed. Pandemics are terrifying. Duh.”
If only it were that simple.
Pandemic of Lies
I watch TV lies—I mean TV news—When I can, but it’s gotten to the point that I can’t take most of these programs seriously. And I’m not alone—Distrust of the media is at an all-time high. The relentless droning on of agenda-driven “reporting” about what a “great job the government is doing” when it’s obvious to most that they’re failing miserably on virtually every front—It’s exhausting.
And these failings don’t appear to be limited to the US. According to the latest Global Emotions Report, Gallup's annual measuring of our well-being, our planet-wide stress levels in 2021 have been at record highs:
“The report which surveyed 127,000 adults in 122 countries and regions around the world said this current stretch has replaced 2020 as the most stressful period in recent history.”
Simply stated, according to Jan Egeland, Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council:
"The world is falling apart, too many countries are falling apart."
Sh*t Happens
There’s a randomness to life—Some things just can’t be predicted. But it’s how leaders react to these events that’s got me puzzled. Instead of learning from the past, it seems that they couldn’t have been doing a worse job if they tried. And I’ve yet to see them take responsibility for the unconscionable errors during the Covid pandemic which have cost countless lives. So it leaves me wondering—Are they actually that stupid? Or is it something worse?
With about 1 out of every 20 people being either a psychopath or a sociopath, you’ve probably encountered many such people throughout your life.
“…psychopaths make up about 1 percent of the general population, while sociopaths make up about 4 percent of the general population.”
And it doesn’t surprise me one bit that more psychopaths live in Washington, DC than anywhere else in the US.
Or that other another study found that:
“…politicians are more likely to be psychopaths. Several of the characteristics that define a psychopath also correspond to the traits that make for effective leaders. For politicians, this is true…some of the classic psychopathic traits: lack of remorse and empathy, a sense of grandiosity, superficial charm, conning and manipulative behavior and refusal to take responsibility for one’s actions.”
Doing the exact opposite of what should be done in a crisis would ordinarily be interpreted as a sign of incompetence—And I would agree. But when it happens over and over, at a frequency in excess of what would be expected by chance alone, I take it as a sign of nefarious intent. Stupidity can’t explain the frequency and profundity of failures over the past couple of years. Even a broken clock is right twice per day. We should have seen some random successes.
“The Greatest Teacher, Failure Is”—Yoda
Mistakes are normal. They’re to be expected—And people should learn from them and do better next time. So why do smart people keep repeating the same mistakes?
I used to think that most everyone was well-intentioned. I was disabused of that notion when I started trying to make things better for chronic Lyme patients back in 1996, when I opened my medical practice. It wasn’t long before I noticed that something was off—The actions of some influential physicians and researchers didn’t seem to be motivated by science.
An epiphany came when I was asked to provide testimony documenting that chronic Lyme was the result of persistent bacterial infection. In 2008, legal action was taken against the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) by then CT Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, the basis of which was:
“Among Blumenthal's findings were the following:
The IDSA's guideline panel improperly ignored or minimized medical opinion regarding chronic Lyme disease. As a consequence, serious questions have arisen as to whether the panel's recommendations reflected all of the relevant science available.
The IDSA failed to conduct a conflict-of-interest review for any of the participants before their appointment to the 2006 Lyme disease guideline panel. Several of the panelists, however, subsequently disclosed financial interests in drug companies, Lyme disease diagnostic tests, patents, and consulting arrangements with insurance companies.
The IDSA allowed the panel chairman, who held a bias against the existence of chronic Lyme disease, to hand-pick a like-minded panel without scrutiny by, or formal approval from, the IDSA's oversight committee.
The IDSA also blocked appointment to the panel of scientists and physicians who supported the concept of chronic Lyme disease. According to Blumenthal, a panelist who dissented from the group's position was actually removed in order to achieve “consensus”—a charge denied by the IDSA.”
Knowing that it would be a lot of work, I wanted to say “Hell no!” but it was too important a job to refuse. So I started writing—Every night after work for 4 hours and then 8 hours each day on the weekends—And I didn’t stop until I was done. It took me almost 6 months and the document wound up being 81 pages of very densely-written testimony, with 226 supporting medical references. This analysis, along with my verbal testimony (which was limited to 20 minutes), was presented at a hearing in Washington, D.C. in 2009. Since then, it’s persuaded countless docs about the reality of chronic Lyme—And yet it convinced me of something else.
I’d already known that there was overwhelming scientific evidence documenting persistent infection causing chronic Lyme. But it wasn’t until I analyzed the IDSA authors’ arguments with a fine-tooth comb, that I realized the appallingly groundless nature of their claims. The scary part for me was recognizing that those authors were actually pretty smart.
I couldn’t understand how smart people could make such egregious transgressions over and over—It felt beyond the scope of chance. That experience, along with countless others over the 25 years or so of practicing medicine before Covid first appeared, made a lasting impression. So when people wonder why I’ve been so suspicious of the Covid narrative from early on—This is why. It’s been a long road to get here, but my observations have left me jaded. I don’t trust people who don’t tell the whole truth—And nothing but the truth—When lives are at stake.
What follows is a simple recipe for the dismantling of society. The big question is—Has all of this come about by chance? Are we just having a span of very bad luck. Or is there a pernicious effort to reshape society, no matter the costs?—You decide.
One Cup of Disease, Keep Chilled Until Ready, Then Stir
This is a three elephants in the room kind of problem.
The first elephant is that health—Or more precisely, disease—Is big business. Whereas cures, well, they’re bad for business. This isn’t some new Covid-centric concept. According to Investment Watch, back in 2018:
“There’s no money in the cure, the money is in the medicine…More than a quarter of the Food and Drug Administration employees who approved cancer and hematology drugs from 2001 through 2010 left the agency and now work or consult for pharmaceutical companies…Dr. Vinay Prasad, a hematologist-oncologist and assistant professor at Oregon Health and Science University, sought to understand the so-called “revolving door” between the FDA and the pharmaceutical industry…”
Let’s take a look at these troubling truths, where our profit-focused healthcare system uniformly leads:
There’s no money in cures—It seems so obvious, but is it to most of us? People with autoimmune illnesses are busy living their lives, many hooked on repeated doses of immunosuppressive drugs, relentlessly chasing after the blissful but transient symptom relief that leaves them clamoring back for more when the drugs wear off—And this comes not only at staggering financial costs to patients (and equally staggering profits for big pharma), but also with the costs of potentially life-threatening side effects.
Why aren’t doctors telling their autoimmune patients that there could be another way to treat chronic illness? It’s because the docs don’t know—Finding and treating the causes of chronic illness isn’t taught in med school. We’re only taught to mindlessly repeat the mantra of symptom suppression. If the monetization of disease weren’t ingrained into the fabric of healthcare, maybe things would be different. Maybe the focus of med school classes wouldn’t be to reap annuities for big pharma.
The revolving door—Anyone who’s familiar with the cozy relationships between FDA and pharma knows this term. I don’t like to mince words so I’ll keep this discussion short and sweet—I think that the system is broken due to what I can only describe as the rabid abundance of financial conflicts of interest. If this corruption isn’t completely scrubbed away, it will continue to rot from the inside, as it’s been doing for decades. Did you know that the US ranks last in healthcare outcomes compared to other high income countries?
For decades, pharmaceutical companies were limited to marketing drugs to physicians. It was a big deal when they got permission to market drugs directly to American patients—There are only two countries, the US and New Zealand, which allow direct to consumer advertising of pharmaceuticals. And many doctors aren’t happy about it due to the well-known harms of this practice.
And now it appears that the next stage of disease monetization is about “owning the disease” by creating a multi-level sickness solution. This packaged healthcare is typically marketed to leaders at accountable care organizations (ACO’s)—A fancy term for groups of doctors, hospitals, or other healthcare provider organizations.
It makes sense to me that it would be more cost effective for pharma companies to send a drug rep to make a single sale to the leadership of an ACO, rather than send out salespeople hundreds of times to individual physicians. The implicit understanding however is that member physicians will follow the guidance of the ACO leadership, ostensibly making the practice of medicine a thing of the past.
“…to own the disease, companies need to build a business model that creates a platform capable of providing a total solution, just as Apple provides the iPhone…it is possible that only a single company in each category may truly be able to own the disease…Healthcare providers are consolidating at an unprecedented rate, with more doctors employed in large provider organizations than in private practice…The competition will shift from selling to physicians to reaching out to the executives of ACO’s, to procurement officers and to chief medical officers…”
The 2nd elephant in the room is the widespread manipulation through fear—What happens when the people we trust in science and government fail us in the midst of a pandemic with the potential to kills millions? When they make innumerable, repetitive, and inter-related errors? When they ignore, or worse, vilify, inexpensive, readily available, effective out-patient Covid treatment options in favor of expensive pharma-darlings with shiny new patents?
Well for starters, millions die—In this case about 6.5 million at the time of this writing. And with that comes fear, which is a tried and true tool used by government and science authorities to control the masses, even when they know that such action brings significant harm:
“Scientists on a committee that encouraged the use of fear to control people’s behaviour during the Covid pandemic have admitted its work was “unethical” and “totalitarian”.”
The 3rd, and arguably most troubling elephant in the room, is that we may have created the agents of our own suffering and destruction through perilous gain-of-function research, a field which has never moved science forward in any meaningful way, carries with it almost boundlessly massive risks, and still continues to this day.
What was once fiercely denounced as conspiracy theory, that Covid was created in a lab, is now accepted to have potential merit—Worse yet, there’s evidence that NIH may have funded gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses at the now-infamous virology lab in Wuhan, China.
And then there’s monkeypox, a virus which traditionally has occurred every so often in small, isolated outbreaks over the years, primarily in African countries. Until it didn’t.
In May 2022, monkeypox simultaneously appeared in epidemic fashion in twelve non-endemic countries within a span of eight days. Soon after, the virus was found to be extensively mutated. Even though some have commented on its new unusual transmissibility, nobody seems to be stating the obvious:
This virus popped up around the world in many non-endemic countries simultaneously.
If the current rapidly spreading version of monkeypox were a naturally-occurring virus that became extensively-mutated on its own, I’d expect it to have had a primary outbreak in a single location, followed by satellite outbreaks. Even Covid, incredibly contagious as it is, spread in that manner.
Monkeypox didn’t do that. Strange.
So when I started sharing my opinions about monkeypox, I was promptly accused on Twitter of spreading fear porn (the meaning of which I had to look up—Was it some type of S&M?—Because I really am that un-hip). Next, I was accused of being paid by CDC to do who knows what (which made me laugh out loud because if they were to send me checks, it would be to shut me up).
Monkeypox is spreading rapidly—In the United States:
By 6/1/2022, there had only been a total of 22 cases.
By 7/1/2022, there had been 543 cases.
By 8/1/2022, there had been 5,792 cases.
And by 8/25/2022, at the time of this writing, there have been 16,837 cases.
By June 2022, I started cautioning my patients (straight/gay/bi—anyone who would listen) that, even though thus far most cases had been predominantly among men who have sex with men, that it would begin to occur in the general population soon. And sure enough it did, with the report of a child getting sick. And recently, three children in Georgia came down with it.
On 7/24/2022, I predicted publicly that monkeypox would spill over into the general population on a broad scale within a year, but that went over like a fart in church. The next day, WHO echoed my sentiments—And not that I have any respect for WHO ever since their inane bungling of COVID—But in this rare instance I do agree with them.
So what does this mean?
The good news is that this newer version of monkeypox has a very low case fatality rate compared to the historical version. In fact, there have been no deaths in the US due to the currently circulating strain of monkeypox, at the time of this writing. Other good news is that its transmission may be slowing.
The bad news is that it’s still a miserable disease that will likely continue to spread, even if it does so more slowly going forward, possibly spilling over into the general population in a broader capacity.
But the even worse news, in my view at least, is that we have yet another suspicious mystery virus in our midst and our largely inept media isn’t asking the hard questions, which feels like déjà vu.
Please stay tuned for World's Gone Mad Cookbook-Part 2, to see more ingredients from this recipe, coming soon.
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Disclaimer: None of my posts, articles, podcasts, or any public communications contain medical advice. These are intended for purely informational purposes only. Please check with your doctor before undertaking any course of treatment.
Thank you for all you do. God bless.
Thank you for writing this article. It is so refreshing to hear the voice of truth, reason and intelligence, where something actually makes sense. Our medical and political world are certainly deficient in this right now. I agree with everything you wrote about in this article. Having battled Lyme disease and experienced disregard and judgement by the medical community in my past, and now choosing a path to navigate Covid differently than the general population, makes me feel very alone often. So - thank you for not only your fabulous articles, but your leadership and courage to speak in this world climate.