CO2 Has Been Indicted by Consensus, Not Real Science or Critical Thinking

The differences between these are enormous

 August 26, 2024 By John Droz, Jr. @ Critically Thinking About Select Societal Issues 

When asking those who believe that CO2 is a major climate antagonist to make their strongest argument, their most common response is: “CO2 has been identified as the primary Climate culprit by the majority of experts (e.g., climatologists) and scientific organizations (e.g., the IPCC).” This is clearly a consensus claim.

I’ve repeatedly warned that one of the major fights we are in, is to defend genuine Science, as its enemies are actively trying to replace it with political science. This situation is a dead giveaway, as consensus is the currency of politics, NOT Science!

Put another way, the claim of consensus is deference to authority. They are saying don’t ask any questions! Just be quiet as others know a lot more about this matter than you do. Further, they continue, it’s not possible that all those experts would be lying to us!

Both of these are very reasonable viewpoints. However, whether or not they should end the conversation is the question. Let’s look at a recent very close Science parallel for enlightenment. Here is a layperson’s history of what happened…

There are roughly 8 Billion people on the planet who periodically experience stomach ailments (i.e., gastrointestinal distress). The concern often is: will these common human pains turn into something much more major — like an ulcer?

An ulcer is a perforation of the stomach lining, which is a serious matter, and there are about 4 Million cases of these in the US, every year — so it is relatively common.

For nearly 200 years the medical establishment believed that stomach ulcers (technically peptic ulcers) were caused by stress. The hypothesis was that stress produced excess (gastric) acid in the stomach, which (in turn) eventually ate away some of the stomach’s lining. (The first connection between these was made in 1822.)

In this case when I say “medical establishment” I mean worldwide 100% of relevant PhDs, MDs, RNs, PAs, etc. Also 100% of hospitals (like the Mayo Clinic). Also 100% of universities and medical schools (like Johns Hopkins). Also 100% of medical textbooks. Also 100% of medical journals (like the Lancet, and NE Journal of Medicine). Also 100% of medical organizations (like the AMA). Also 100% of government medical agencies (like the FDA, CDC, DOH). Also 100% of pharma-ceutical companies (like Pfizer, Merck, Johnson & Johnson, Bristol Myers Squibb). This was also the position of the MD’s bible: the Physician’s Desk Reference.

As a point of reference, the combined number of worldwide medical experts here is roughly a hundred times the amount of worldwide anti-CO2 experts.

They were ALL wrong!

The basic reason that these many thousands of highly educated people were wrong, is that none of them actually applied the Scientific Method to the accepted and sensibly sounding hypothesis about the cause of stomach ulcers! Instead of taking the time and effort to perform a genuine Scientific assessment of this common worldwide issue, they relied on intuition — plus the fact that other experts were on board. (This is very similar to what is going on regarding Climate and the faulting of CO2.)

 What’s the Truth?

The Truth regarding stomach ulcers was discovered when two Australian scientists (Dr. Robin Warren and Dr. Barry Marshall) decided to apply the Scientific Method (!) to the medical establishment’s ulcer hypothesis. (Note that what we still have regarding CO2 is a scientifically unproven hypothesis as to its full relationship with Climate.)

The short story is that in 1982 Drs Warren and Marshall proved that most stomach ulcers are caused by a bacteria: H. pylori — NOT stress-induced excess acid production! (Read sample stories here, here, and here.) Note that this scientific finding is not even remotely similar to the stress/acid hypothesis that tens of thousands of medical experts had fully bought into, for many decades…

This was a VERY BIG DEAL. This NIH study says about their work: “Advances in drug therapy for peptic ulcer have had a significant impact on quality of life and work potential of many millions of affected persons and have contributed to a remarkable decrease in the prevalence of the disease, frequency, and severity of complications, hospitalizations, and mortality.

Why this Catastrophic Failure of Experts?

This failure is particularly hard to understand regarding pharmaceutical companies, which have thousands of qualified experts (e.g., PhD Biologists and Chemists). Why didn’t those scientists figure out the truth through scientific experiments, since they have the experts, labs, and money?

Because, exactly like the IPCC, they started with an unproven assumption. In this case, it was that excess acid was causing most ulcers (and that stress was causing the acid)… A cynic would say that there is a second major reason: they didn’t want to get to the Truth, as that was not in their financial best interest!

 In any case, following the unproven ulcer hypothesis, pharmaceutical companies produced two types of “solutions”: 1) drugs to reduce stress (anti-anxiety meds like Xanax and Valium) plus 2) drugs to reduce stomach acid (Nexium, Tums, etc.). But neither of these do anything meaningful to address the primary cause of ulcers! 

There is an exact parallel with industrial wind energy and solar proposed (by experts) as “solutions” for the climate issue, as neither of those has genuine scientific proof that they work (i.e., save a consequential amount of CO2).

What happened after this Discovery?

What followed Drs. Warren’s and Marshall’s published peer-reviewed study is also instructive. To begin with, there was great skepticism by the medical establishment (aka the “experts” who have been wrong for many years). In 1996 (14 years after Drs. Warren’s and Marshall’s findings were published and verified) the FDA finally approved the first antibiotic for treatment of ulcer disease. In a 1997 study (15 years after their findings were published and verified), data show that about 75 percent of ulcer patients were still treated primarily with antacid type medications, and only 5 percent receive antibiotic therapy!

This shows the powerful resistance by “experts” to accept the Truth — especially when it exposes the fact that said experts were totally WRONG, for decades…

Prompted by this study, in 1997 the CDC, with other government agencies, academic institutions, and industry, launched a national education campaign to inform health-care providers and consumers about the link between the H. pylori bacteria and ulcers. Drs. Warren and Marshall subsequently won the 2005 Nobel Prize in Medicine for following the Science.

What’s the Takeaway?

Please reflect on the original question: can tens of thousands of well-educated experts, universities, medical journals, textbooks, medical organizations, pharmaceutical companies, and government agencies, be dead wrong? Absolutely YES!!! 

Is this because they are ignorant? (Not in general, but they certainly were ignorant about how Science works.) Is this due to a conspiracy? (Hard to say.)

Summary: the experts were wrong as they lazily went with intuition, plus the comfort of consensus of their peers Furthermore, they decided it was too much trouble to apply scientific rigor via the Scientific Method to their ulcer hypothesis. Lastly, for some of the medical experts, it was in their financial interest to not reveal the truth.

 Today we have an almost identical situation with the hypothesis against CO2…

PS — A strong argument can be made that the same departure from Science (short-cutting) happened with COVID-19. That will be another commentary.

Here are other materials by this scientist that you might find interesting:

Check out the Archives of this Critical Thinking substack.

WiseEnergy.org: discusses the Science (or lack thereof) behind our energy options.

C19Science.info: covers the lack of genuine Science behind our COVID-19 policies.

Election-Integrity.info: multiple major reports on the election integrity issue.

Media Balance Newsletter: a free, twice-a-month newsletter that covers what the mainstream media does not do, on issues from COVID to climate, elections to education, renewables to religion, etc. Here are the Newsletter’s 2024 Archives. Please send me an email to get your free copy. When emailing me, please make sure to include your full name and the state where you live. (Of course, you can cancel the Media Balance Newsletter at any time - but why would you?

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Indi Gregory: Third Infant to Die at Hands of UK Government

ByLiliana Zylstra November 16, 2023

Good parents do everything in their power to protect their children. But what happens when the government takes that power away? Once again, the United Kingdom has given us the answer.  Dean Gregory and Claire Staniforth, a British couple from the Derbyshire region, are grieving the death of their infant daughter Indi, who passed away on Nov. 13 after suffering from a mitochondrial disease. But baby Indi’s illness isn’t what killed her. The blames lies at the feet of the U.K. government. 

Doctors from the National Health Service (NHS) determined that Indi’s treatment at the Queen’s Medical Centre could no longer continue, citing concerns about the pain caused by “prolong[ing]” her life. The case went to the Family Division of the High Court in London, where a doctor (unnamed in media reports) reported, “We feel very sad…. We have tried to treat [Indi] to the best of our abilities.” Despite that fatal determination, Indi’s parents felt her life was worth fighting for. “Our daughter responds to us,” pleaded her father, “and on her good days, she is babbling, making noises, moving all her limbs…. We know she is disabled, but you don’t just let disabled people die. We just want to give her a chance.”

That chance was stolen from Indi and her parents. Not only was she denied life-saving treatment from the NHS, but she was also cruelly prevented from obtaining it elsewhere. In her final days, Indi and her family became prisoners of the U.K. government. 

Indi was offered an alternative by the Italian government and the Vatican. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni offered not only free health care to the child but even transportation and Italian citizenship. Meloni urged the British government to “defend the right of [Indi’s] mom and dad to do whatever they can for her.” In response, Gregory and Staniforth jumped at the lifeline. They requested that their daughter be allowed to be treated at Rome’s renowned Bambino Gesù (Baby Jesus) Pediatric Hospital, which is “under the jurisdiction of the Holy See.” According to the Washington Post, doctors there offered a treatment that they said “would ‘more likely than not’ enable Indi to survive without artificial ventilation.”

Unfortunately, Justice Robert Peel denied the request, claiming that Indi’s “best interests” would be served by withdrawing treatment — that is, by letting her die in Britain. ............To Read More.

 

No Biggie, Just the End of Civilization

Ann Coulter  |  May 10, 2023

Whatever you had planned to do for the rest of the day, please drop it and read this right now: Heather Mac Donald's new book, "When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives.  It seems that in the hysteria that followed George Floyd's death in 2020, we agreed to destroy all of Western civilization -- law, music, art, education, policing, science and medicine -- to make up for black people not doing well on standardized tests. Mac Donald cites not hundreds but thousands of institutions that have flung aside standards in order to more fully dedicate themselves to the sole, driving purpose of our nation: boosting black people's self-esteem. To consider just one arena, I don't think you're going to like the medical care you'll be getting under the new regime. Just like in the wildly successful Soviet Union, science must be subordinated to politics, specifically "racial justice." The American Medical Association, the American Association of Medical Colleges and the American Association of Pediatrics (AAP) have all agreed that medicine is racist............To Read More...

Is it DEI, IED or DIE? Yes, it is!

February 22, 2023 By R.W. Trewyn

Diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, has become a driving force in hiring practices across America.  It’s replacing equal employment opportunity, EEO, in today’s discussions when new employees are recruited. Within major corporations, universities, and elsewhere, executives specializing in DEI have become common.  As these entities upgrade to the more fashionable DEI officers, EEO managers will become obsolete. Why?  They serve the same purpose, right? Wrong!  In fact, it’s not even close. When America’s woke progressives successfully snookered the nation into accepting equity (the impractical pursuits of equal outcomes) as a replacement for equality (equal opportunity) the ballgame changed, majorly.  The topline issue is no longer about hiring the applicant with the best credentials to do the work.  Today, training and experience for a job barely count with DEI employers...............To Read More...

• Kristina Karamo becomes Michigan's first Black GOP Chair, and media mockery ensues,  February 21, 2023 By Jack Hellner - So much for being champions of diversity and applauding historic firsts.. Elected by her peers, a Black conservative made history and just became the chair of the Michigan Republican Party; no doubt, mainstream media outlets all received the same list of talking points, because the negative headlines and articles are so similar. Kristina Karamo is a “far-right election denier”:These articles could have been written by rudimentary AI, since the people pretending to be reporters clearly didn’t do their own research before writing the articles.............To Read More....
• Fifty years too late, white men are figuring out they’re in trouble February 22, 2023 -The left often attacks Tucker Carlson as a demagogue, but I find that he is mostly on target.  This infuriates the left, as his audience dwarfs its mainstream media outlets, including the sought-after younger viewer demographics. This spells trouble for Democrats, who have been able to pull the wool over the eyes of younger voters for decades (myself included, in my teens and 20s, with a very brief relapse 10 years ago).  Most young, college-educated people haven't experienced the real world of taxes, inflation, affirmative action, and other challenges of adult life.  The Biden administration's incompetence and wokeness at all costs have thrown cold water on their idealism and naïveté. That said, it appears that Tucker has had an epiphany spurred on by a far-reaching "equity" policy introduced by Biden last week.The left’s relentless push to marginalize white men through affirmative action is reaching a crescendo under Biden. To Read More....
• The future of ‘progressivism’, February 21, 2023 By J.A. Frascino, MD - The progressive movement is based on certain assumptions. It holds that human nature can be improved by mandating moral behavior through the application of regulations, incentives, and punishments. In addition, the philosophy believes that the power of the federal government can be harnessed to improve the individual, and transform society through political action. It seeks to establish a form of statism in which government experts scientifically administer a regulatory state for the common good.Progressivism has become an increasingly influential force in shaping our culture, society, and government policy since its inception at the beginning of the 20th century. In its earlier days, the movement was instrumental in establishing women’s suffrage, worker’s rights, environmental protection measures, and welfare programs. As late as the 60s, it championed the Social Security and Medicare programs and supported the Civil Rights Act, despite the internal resistance of the Southern Democrat congressional bloc..............
•  Biden’s Wonderful World of ‘Equity’ Steve McCann - Immediately after his inauguration on January 20, 2021 Joe Biden, signed an executive order placed in front of him directing the federal government to “…pursue a comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all.”  On February 16, 2023, he signed a follow-up executive order mandating that all federal agencies create teams and annual plans to insure equity within all government agencies and to utilize government programs to compel equity within the private sector. The use of the word “equity” is a deliberate attempt to hoodwink the American public, who are fully are on board with a similar-sounding word “equality.”  Equity, unlike equality, isn’t equal access to opportunity or equal protection before the law. Equity, per the American Marxists, is the redistribution of societal status, legal protection, and economic goods (i.e., jobs and material possessions) in accordance with their politized assessment of disadvantages and demographics............ 
•  A Great Awakening Decades in the Making, By J.B. Shurk  February 23, 2023 - Over at The Conservative Treehouse, Sundance has again managed to generate a treasure trove of anecdotal history, evidence, and analysis from those who visit his site.  Last month, he asked readers: if "[y]ou did not take the COVID-19 shot, why not?"  The thousands of personal responses were illuminating and created a kind of timeline showing how irreconcilable conflicts pitting available scientific knowledge and common sense against the government's own actions, orders, statements, and censorship heightened public distrust of COVID mandates and "vaccines," until various tipping points spilled over into outright rejection of political, medical, and media authorities.  This month, Sundance asks a more foundational question: "When did you start really paying attention?"  In other words, when did you "recognize that things around you, things you perhaps didn't pay attention to before, were not what you thought they were"?  What was the moment when "your political awakening began"?  ...............
• Social-Justice Shrinks: How Identity Politics Infected Therapy, By Sally Satel February 21 - In winter 2019, Leslie Elliott enrolled as a graduate student in Antioch University’s Mental Health Counseling program. At first, she found it to be a stimulating master’s program — informative and clinically relevant. Then she took a required course in “multicultural counseling.” “We were taught that race should be the dominant lens through which clients were to be understood and therapy conducted,” says Elliott, a mother of four who’d majored in psychology.

  Elliott’s professors taught her, for example, that if clients were white, she was supposed to help them see how they unwittingly perpetuate white supremacy. “We were encouraged to regard white clients as ‘reservoirs of racism and oppression.’” White women, one professor told a class, were “basic bitches,” “Beckys” and “nothing special.” If the client were black, Elliott was told to ask how it felt to sit with her, a white counselor. If the client felt at ease, “my job — regardless of what brought him to therapy — was to make him more aware of how being black compounded, or perhaps caused, his problems...............

  Welcome to America’s Racialized Medical Schools, by John Sailer Feb. 22, 2023 - Forget about the oath to do no harm, future doctors are being forced to swear allegiance to racial dogmas. Earlier this month, the White House announced a five-year plan for redressing racial inequality. It is essentially the Biden administration’s version of a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) plan, like those issued by nearly every major university, only at a vastly larger scale. The policy aims to “advance an ambitious, whole-of-government approach to racial equity and support for underserved communities” by embedding equity goals in every aspect of the government. From the highest offices of the state down to the smallest local bureaucracies, DEI now pervades almost all levels of American society. And while it was once thought that the fringe racial theories that animate the DEI agenda could be confined to small liberal arts campuses, it is clear that is no longer the case...........

  Texas A&M University Displays the Destructive Results of Diversity, Equality & Inclusion Programs, Brad Slager  Feb 22, 2023 - One of the great ironies in contemporary college systems is how rampantly anti-intellectual they have become over the course of the last generation or so. Cerebral rigor, open-mindedness, and challenging information have long been underpinning aspects of university life. These days, those same elements are regarded as threats on too many campuses. More troubling is the inability of some schools to apply common sense while looking at the concrete results of a failed experiment. This takes us to College Station, Texas. Texas A&M University has been leaning heavily into the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives that have been mushrooming across the country at universities and corporations. These social engineering programs are claimed to be set up to make the opportunity and acceptance of minorities more widespread, while critics have maintained these are more like opportunities to exact social revenge and pave the way for activism to gain more power. At TAMU, the critics are being proven correct..........

  
  

Politicization of Medicine Is Merely a Symptom of Our Culture's Disease

February 13, 2023 By Lathan Watts

A pervasive agenda spreading through the medical profession at a viral pace is in and of itself a disturbing trend.  But it may reveal an even more perilous cultural decay that, if left untreated, could be life-threatening to our republic.  The trend is the coercive use of government power that places a bureaucratic thumb on the scale balancing science and politics.  The cultural decay is the rejection of God as the source of life and liberty.

It took an injunction by a federal district court to partially prevent the Biden administration from using the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act to force emergency room doctors to perform elective abortions regardless of religious beliefs or conscientious objection.  The injunction in the case State of Texas v. Becerra is likely headed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit.

The federal government isn't alone when it comes to politicizing medicine.  In New Mexico and California, doctors now face civil, administrative, and professional liability, including risking losing their medical licenses, if they decline to participate in assisted suicide.  The laws require physicians to inform patients about assisted suicide, be part of the process for obtaining suicide drugs, or refer patients to physicians and organizations who will participate in ending their lives.  Alliance Defending Freedom is challenging New Mexico's and California's laws; the cases are Lacy v. Torrez and Christian Medical and Dental Associations v. Bonta, respectively..........To Read More....

Report: Medical Schools Screening out Applicants Who Are Not "Woke" Enough

By Jeff Charles Sep 10, 2022 

In what can only be described as a further effort to wokify the medical industry, elite schools have become more focused on foisting principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) on those attending their institutions. Indeed, a recent report exposed the reality that this effort is now starting at the beginning of the school admissions process.

The report, which was compiled by Do No Harm, a nonprofit pushing back against the enforcement of woke theology in the medical field, reviewed the admissions process at a number of medical schools and found that they appear to be screening out potential students based on their political views. The authors wrote:.......To Read More.....

 

Have You Had Enough?

They are changing all the rules, all of societies norms...The Great Reset. You will own nothing and be happy!? 

By Ray DiLorenzo ——Bio and Archives--October 8, 2022 @ Canada Free Press

“At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.”~ Aristotle

 I insist I am not crazy. But, much of the world is.  It is twisted beyond recognition.  Politicians, our government institutions, the medical profession, multi-national corporations, almost everything having to do with education, the entertainment industry, even our military leaders.

Our military academies such as West Point, the Air Force Academy, and Annapolis are collectively nuttier than a fruit cake.  They have all become incoherent, preposterous, and senseless.  They care more about pronouns and winning approval from other morons than doing their job defending America.

The FBI has become a tool of political tyranny.  They don’t raid drug houses or organized crime anymore; they raid the political opposition.  I even read an article recently on what to do if you’re raided by the FBI.  One of the recommendations was to have donuts at the ready.

Listen to our politicians.  I mean really listen to them.  They don’t say what they mean or mean what they say…they insist the border is closed.  I know, what else is new, but maybe they keep sounding off with BS because not enough people take them to task.  The main-stream press certainly doesn’t. If government was a consumer product, how many people would ask for their money back?

• Why has everything changed so drastically so quickly? 
• What was so bad about being rational? 
• Was no war in Ukraine a problem? 
• Was no threat of nuclear world war becoming boring? 
• When North Korea stopped flying missiles toward Japan, did that unnerve anyone? 
• Was having cheap gasoline and plentiful food on store shelves ruining your day? 

Being absurd seems to be fashionable now.  People wear it like a badge of honor, and enlightenment.  This is not being ‘woke’ or enlightened,  it’s being dead on arrival.

Defund the police and we’ll have less crime?  Who came up with that?  Are we now supposed to have equal opportunity in criminal prosecution?  We can’t arrest any more Black people this month, we filled our quota, and vice versa. 

Black Lives Matter, I have to say, is brilliant.  Who would argue with that?  Capitalize on the unfortunate death of a Black man who was in police custody.  Get big corporations (stupid corporations, mind you) to donate millions of dollars to admitted, trained Marxists and then they take the money and run like Hell.  Wow! 

Do you know you can take your small child to the local library and have him or her sit on the lap of a transvestite?  Isn’t that nice?  What happened to the librarians I used to know?

Criminals kill and injure innocent people and no one hardly does anything about it.  Democrats insist the crimes are few and far between even when we know otherwise, and they know that we know otherwise.  But, no matter.  Don’t expect any changes.  When was the last time you saw the government admit they were wrong about anything? 

Lets not have voter ID; it’s unfair and impedes voting.  What?  Of course it impedes voting.  It’s designed to do just that…prevent those from voting who are not of age, not a citizen, imaginary, dead, not a legal resident, or having voted twice already. 

The medical industry lives and breaths on trust.  A friend of mine had a doctor appointment recently.  When she looked at the info sheet she was asked to fill out, there were 6 choices for gender.  One of them was ‘None of the Above’.  How did we get here?  That is a medical system I cannot trust.

Being in the digital age, we seem to think that computers can do almost anything, and maybe they can.  It all depends on who is writing the software.  We don’t want to count votes by hand because it’s labor intensive, so we think we’re being efficient by using computers to do simple counting.  But, can computers be tampered with?  Absolutely!  Computers are very compliant. They will do anything they are programmed to do.  Their intelligence is artificial and with no conscience. Can hand counting be tampered with?  Yes, but much less likely.  Hand counting with observers watching is infinitely safer than any machine.  With hand counted ballots we still get an occasional moron that wins an election.  With computer counting, we are now over-flowing with them from the top down.

A software CEO was just arrested for stealing election worker data and storing it on Chinese servers.  If you haven’t figured out by now that the Chinese are buying just about everything they can get their grubby hands on, including presidents, you’re not paying attention.

People have had enough of experts.  The environmental wizards say we are all going to die in 9 or 10 years…again.  They have said it at least 50 times in the last 50 or 60 years.  We are all still here.  What’s worse, they are still here.

I was watching a documentary recently on penguins (it was a slow TV day).  In examining mummified penguins’ bodies, the scientists discovered two sets of bodies, those that died 200 years ago and those that died 500 years ago.  They discovered that the reason they died was…wait for it…climate change!  What, climate change and no cars, trucks, lawn mowers, or people in any quantity anywhere?  How can that be? I thought it was our fault.  It be because climate change is part of the natural order in nature.  There is nothing unusual going on.

During the American Revolution, if you remember in one of your early history lessons (that’s a joke), Washington’s troops suffered a terrible winter at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.  That’s because it was during a mini ice age.  Climatologists are now saying another mini ice age could hit by 2030.  What then, the government will ask us to resurrect our gas-powered cars?  This government in D.C. has gone sideways on us.

Before we find ourselves stuck at home for the duration, why hasn’t anyone of any technical expertise admit that electric cars are not the answer.  Lithium ion batteries, like people in Arizona, cannot take the cold.  In low temperatures the batteries discharge quickly.  In a snowstorm in Minnesota, you will be up the Yangtze River without a ping pong paddle. Toyota even says that California’s ban of gasoline cars by 2035 is a stretch.  At the very least, EV cars are not ready for prime time, but no mind, they want everyone to own one and the pollution it creates in their production doesn’t seem to be a problem…hmmm!

Hollywood releases a gay rom-com (romantic comedy). It totally flops and the makers blame the audience!?  I mean really blames the audience for not being with the program. Well, they are right about that.  We are not with the program.  Hollywood needs to get out more often.  Leave California at least occasionally.

We have become faddish, looking for the latest craze, social, political or otherwise.  But, I believe it is for a purpose.  It’s a giant distraction.  Our eyes are being turned while forces from within and without are creating conditions for a major change in how we live, how our society functions.  They are changing all the rules, all of societies norms…The Great Reset.  You will own nothing and be happy!? 

Yes, I have never seen so much change and fad dictate so much in our lives.  It’s almost like the Beatles are back, except the music these dodos are playing is a dirge.

Have you had enough?

Editor's Note:  I have not asked for nor have I received permission to publish this piece in full, but I think this is such a well done and important piece I think it deserves the largest distribution possible, and I wish to help support such an effort.   If the author or the Canada Free Press object I will break it down to a link.    RK

 

The Corruption of Medicine

Guardians of the profession discard merit in order to alter the demographics of their field.

 

Heather Mac Donald Summer 2022

The post–George Floyd racial reckoning has hit the field of medicine like an earthquake. Medical education, medical research, and standards of competence have been upended by two related hypotheses: that systemic racism is responsible both for racial disparities in the demographics of the medical profession and for racial disparities in health outcomes. Questioning those hypotheses is professionally suicidal. Vast sums of public and private research funding are being redirected from basic science to political projects aimed at dismantling white supremacy. The result will be declining quality of medical care and a curtailment of scientific progress.

Virtually every major medical organization—from the American Medical Association (AMA) and the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC) to the American Association of Pediatrics—has embraced the idea that medicine is an inequity-producing enterprise. The AMA’s 2021 Organizational Strategic Plan to Embed Racial Justice and Advance Health Equity is virtually indistinguishable from a black studies department’s mission statement. The plan’s anonymous authors seem aware of how radically its rhetoric differs from medicine’s traditional concerns. The preamble notes that “just as the general parlance of a business document varies from that of a physics document, so too is the case for an equity document.” (Such shaky command of usage and grammar characterizes the entire 86-page tome, making the preamble’s boast that “the field of equity has developed a parlance which conveys both [sic] authenticity, precision, and meaning” particularly ironic.)

Thus forewarned, the reader plunges into a thicket of social-justice maxims: physicians must “confront inequities and dismantle white supremacy, racism, and other forms of exclusion and structured oppression, as well as embed racial justice and advance equity within and across all aspects of health systems.” The country needs to pivot “from euphemisms to explicit conversations about power, racism, gender and class oppression, forms of discrimination and exclusion.” (The reader may puzzle over how much more “explicit” current “conversations” about racism can be.) We need to discard “America’s stronghold of false notions of hierarchy of value based on gender, skin color, religion, ability and country of origin, as well as other forms of privilege.”.............The Corruption of Medicine

Influential Medical Board Deliberately Injecting Racism into Medical Education

By Eric Lendrum August 1, 2022

A major American medical association is working to spread the race-based teachings of Critical Race Theory (CRT), “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI), and other far-left concepts into medical education.

According to the Washington Free Beacon, the racist curricula is originating from the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM), and its charity arm the ABIM Foundation. Its efforts have since manifested in medical schools around the country, from an “anti-racism and structural competency curriculum” at the Oregon Health and Science University Hillsboro Medical Center, to the “social medicine and health equity track” at Georgetown University Hospital.

ABIM first began promoting racial politics in June of 2020, when it released a statement condemning an alleged “structural inequality” in the health care system, and vowing that it would challenge the “constructed social world.” The group later released a follow-up statement, written in Kendian, declaring that it had gone from being “passively non-racist” to “actively anti-racist.”..........To Read More.......

The Fightback Against Racial Quotas -  August 3, 2022 By Janet Levy - E pluribus unum, the traditional motto of the United States, means ‘Out of many, one.’ It asserts that our strength is in assimilation of shared values, goals, and vision. It unifies our diverse races, religions, and other groups by appealing to the ideals of a constitutional republic – freedom, equality, the pursuit of wealth, happiness and excellence through free market competition.  But the hackneyed shibboleth of the Left – Diversity is our strength – stands in direct contradiction to our original national motto. It serves their destructive aim of Balkanizing us by race, gender, sexual orientation, and other sub-groups du jour. Denigrating and rewriting our history, the Left aims to radically transform our culture: discounting merit, hard work, knowledge and experience, it wants to make identity the ubiquitous sine qua non of representation in American society.........

Race Medicine: New Medical School Standards Require ‘Competencies’ in ‘White Privilege,’ ‘Anti-Colonialism’

Breccan F. Thies 22 Jul 2022

The Association of American Medical Colleges released new standards for teaching medicine that require students to achieve “competencies” in “white privilege,” “anti-colonialism,” and “race as a social construct,” among other race-essentialist ideas.  “Since the founding of the United States, there have been systemic health and health care inequities grounded in racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, and other forms of discrimination that still permeate our current health system,” the “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Competencies Across the Learning Continuum,” which the AAMC released this month, states............ Race Medicine: New Medical School Standards Require ‘Competencies’ in ‘White Privilege,’ ‘Anti-Colonialism’

My Take - Diversity without accomplishment is philosophy without form and incompetence without consequence.  Are there fewer blacks, Hispanics or some other favored group less represented in medicine.  It seem so, but so what, I don't care.  If they're failing to do the work academically, why in the world would we want them out in the real world impacting lives and failing? And all this crap about "white privilege" and "anti-colonialism" is nothing more than Orwellian horsepucky.  If they can't cut it then they should be out. 

 

It’s a Boy!

April 28, 2022 by John Hinderaker in Gender Follies

The Pendulum Swings Back Eventually

By Laura J. Wellington  April 8, 2022 

I recently took my twelve-year-old for his annual check-up. The process was rather routine, except for two distinct differences. First, he needed three vaccinations, all of which he received and second, I wrote “No” across a form that the nurse handed him without my permission. 

You see, the nurse bypassed me and handed my son two pieces of paper and a pen. She asked him to answer two questions on one and then the entirety of the next. She then proceeded to leave the room. Not once did she ask me to look at the forms prior to handing them to my son nor even question whether I wanted him to complete them. It left me annoyed and feeling disrespected. 

My son proceeded to answer the questions (the first two of which he couldn’t even understand). This was met with my words “Don’t answer anything until I take a look.” So he stopped and I read. And what I read had nothing to do with my son’s physical health at all and everything to do with facets of his life quite personal to him and me, all of which fall outside of my pediatrician’s jurisdiction, in my book. So I picked up the pen and wrote the word “No” across both forms and called it a day.

When the pediatrician came in, she disregarded the papers and examined my son, engaging in the usual chit-chat that a parent would expect from a pediatrician. The appointment ended on an uneventful note but it got me to thinking how much things have changed since I was small and my mother was sitting in the pediatrician’s office with me. I was basically a third-party participant in the visit with all questions traveling from the nurse or pediatrician directly to my mother. The few that went directly to me were simple and up for debate with my mother. That’s how it was. Parents weren’t bypassed. The buck stopped with them and, in that, everyone stayed in their own lane… unlike today...........To Read More....

The blurred lanes are dumbfounding. Combine that with the vulnerability and naivety of children. Parents are now forced to remain “on-guard” at all times simply to keep their kids out of harm's way… or so they feel.

 

Med Schools Are Now Denying Biological Sex

Professors are apologizing for saying ‘male’ and ‘female.’ Students are policing teachers. This is what it looks like when activism takes over medicine. 

 Katie Herzog July 27, 2021 

Today we bring you another installment of Katie Herzog’s ongoing series about the spread of woke ideology in the field of medicine. Her first story focused on the ideological purge at the top medical schools and teaching hospitals in the country. “Wokeness,” as one doctor put it, “feels like an existential threat.”

During a recent endocrinology course at a top medical school in the University of California system, a professor stopped mid-lecture to apologize for something he’d said at the beginning of class. “I don’t want you to think that I am in any way trying to imply anything, and if you can summon some generosity to forgive me, I would really appreciate it,” His offense: using the term “pregnant women.” “I said ‘when a woman is pregnant,’ which implies that only women can get pregnant and I most sincerely apologize to all of you.” 

It wasn’t the first time Lauren had heard an instructor apologize for using language that, to most Americans, would seem utterly inoffensive. Words like “male” and “female.” Why would medical school professors apologize for referring to a patient’s biological sex? Because, Lauren explains, in the context of her medical school “acknowledging biological sex can be considered transphobic.”.........To Read More....

When leftists celebrate medical abuse of white people

April 14, 2021 By David S. Shimm, M.D. 

 Two years ago, we learned the story of Dr. Lara Kollab.During 2011–2013, while an undergraduate at John Carroll University, she tweeted many antisemitic comments, including: “I'll purposely give all the yahood [Jews] the wrong meds,” and “People who support Israel should have their immune cells killed so they can see how it feels to not be able to defend yourself from foreign invaders.”

In 2014, she matriculated at Touro Osteopathic Medical School, deleting her Twitter feed after acceptance. She graduated in 2018 and commenced training in internal medicine at the Cleveland Clinic that July. However, after the contents of her Twitter feed became known to her training program, she was forced to resign in October 2018. She secured another position for the following year, but this offer was rescinded when her past came to light. In August 2020, the State Medical Board of Ohio permanently  revoked her medical license, , ending her medical career........

Drs. Bram Wispelwey.......and Michelle Morse........ published “An Antiracist Agenda for Medicine” in the March 17, 2021 Boston Review.  In this article, they go beyond standard calls for reparations in the direction of what they term “redress.” 

They describe their algorithm for their hospital's electronic medical record, which, in their own words, provides “a preferential admission option for Black and Latinx heart failure patients to our specialty cardiology service” by specifically flagging for specialty cardiology care the medical records of patients with specific adverse cardiovascular risk factors, but only if they are non-white.  Here, they advocate intentionally withholding medical care from white patients in favor of non-white patients.........Dr. Kollab lost her medical career before it even started, while after establishing a hospital protocol to explicitly and specifically mistreat white patients, Dr. Wispelwey remains on the Harvard Medical School faculty, and Dr. Morse has been named chief medical officer of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene..........To Read More... 

Exposing the Risks of America's Dependence on China for Medicine

January 9, 2019 By Janet Levy

Concern over China's territorial, military, and economic aggressiveness has been building over the past decade as the country is increasingly perceived as a threat to the United States, U.S. Asian allies, and the West. In China Rx: Exposing the Risks of America's Dependence on China for Medicine (Prometheus Books, 2018), authors Rosemary Gibson and Janardan Prasad Singh explore yet another peril: China as the largest global supplier of ingredients for many prescription drugs, over-the-counter products, and vitamins.

In their alarming book, the authors report how China has become the largest supplier of the active ingredient in aspirin and acetaminophen, present in more than 600 over-the-counter and prescription medicines. China is also the dominant global supplier for the essential ingredients to make penicillin and for vitamin C, used in vitamin supplements, cereals, soda, and hamburger buns. It is also the largest exporter of medical devices, with close to 20,000 products for sale....... Read more

New Year, Old Problems

January 7, 2019  By Michael D. Shaw @ HealthNewsDigest

 

Not everyone made resolutions for 2019, but one thing is certain: Absent death, each of us will become one year older at some point during this new year. And with advancing age, come the virtually inevitable health issues. We Boomers love to pride ourselves on being more health-conscious than our parents. Perhaps this is true, but whether this makes a difference in our comparative quality of life will have to await the final accounting–when our generation literally dies out.

Part of this health consciousness involves obtaining the best possible healthcare we can find. Indeed, healthcare has been a major political issue for decades, rising to fever pitch during the endless debates that finally forged Medicare. Of course, this fever pitch has hardly subsided since Medicare was passed in 1965. However, such fervent interest in healthcare was not always the case.

Even though substantial scientific progress in medicine occurred in the first half of the 20th century, it took a while for these improvements to work their way into the system. It is worth noting that prior to World War II, neither physicians nor patients believed that medical care could do much to affect the course of disease. Thus, both the demand and the cost of care were relatively low.

Scholars point to the development of better surgical techniques and “miracle drugs,” including antibiotics, along with increasing incomes and economic growth to explain the jump in hospital admissions in the 1950s. Figures cited by the American Enterprise Institute contrast annual hospital admissions per thousand: 56.7 in the 1923-1943 period to 99.4 in 1957-58. Inpatient admissions for 2016 are 105 per thousand persons; and outpatient admissions for 2011 are 410 per thousand persons.
As you can imagine, reconciling such data over the years would be a significant research project in itself, given dissimilar periods of reporting, and the trend to outpatient services that has grown over the last 25 years. Yet, it is abundantly clear that utilization is up.

So, how good is the American hospital experience? Here again, data and methodology can be problematic. For one thing, adverse events are not always reported. Even if such events–especially in infection control–are publicized, details are not described consistently. Consider the recent high-profile infection control breach at the HealthPlus Surgery Center in Saddle Brook, NJ. The facility was shut down on September 7, 2018 by state inspectors. It reopened on September 28.

Sixteen citations were listed, including poor management of fentanyl, inadequate hand-washing by the staff, and an out-of-date infection-control plan. A sheet on a stretcher in the hallway had a red, wet stain on it, the inspectors wrote. The surgery center says that 3,778 people who underwent procedures between Jan. 1 and Sept. 7 of 2018 may have been exposed to HIV, hepatitis B, and hepatitis C and should be tested. However, media coverage indicates that “hundreds of patients” in New Jersey and New York received certified letters around Christmas informing them of the center’s “lapses in infection control in sterilization/cleaning instruments and the injection of medications.”
Was drug diversion involved? What occurred specifically with the instruments? So far, no one is saying.

Moreover, complaints are being raised about how the blood testing–paid for by HealthPlus–has been run. The test results are being sent first to the chief of cardiology at an affiliated hospital. Is that supposed to be a confidence builder? Patients who arrange their own blood testing, outside of the HealthPlus arrangements, will not be reimbursed. By the way, no one has yet commented on what triggered the Department of Health doing its inspection in the first place.

Another contemporary issue involves several hospitals operated by Johns Hopkins. Problems include:

• Drastic deficiencies at a St. Petersburg, FL pediatric cardiac care unit.
• Major safety issues at a Bethesda, MD hospital, with the whistle-blowing nurse being terminated.
• Inexplicable radiology mistakes at a Baltimore facility.

Fortunately, the horror stories comprise a thankfully small percentage of the patient experience. Still, we do know that eliminating flat-out mistakes and incompetency is not rocket science. Rather, dedication and constant attention to detail are required. True metrics cataloging outcomes wouldn’t hurt either.

Now that’s a New Year’s resolution that we can all support.

The Future Of Private Medical Practice

September 10, 2018 By Michael D. Shaw @ Health News Digest

 

Readers of a certain age are likely to remember childhood doctor visits along these lines: First, there would be a short ride to a medical building, which could be a large high-rise or a smaller off-street facility. You would enter your doctor’s office–identified by an impressive sign on the door–and there would be a pleasant enough waiting room, often featuring an aquarium. You might wait for five to ten minutes; rarely as long as a half hour.

Then, you would be seen by the smiling physician, inevitably dressed in a suit or businesslike skirt, under a crisp and clean white coat. The examining room would usually smell of isopropyl alcohol, and if you felt uncomfortable, you knew the whole thing would be over with quickly. As you were leaving, your parent would stop at the front desk, and pay for the office visit, either by check or with cash.

There were no bank credit cards then, and doctors were not quick to accept them when they were introduced. Insurance coverage for simple office visits was pretty much unknown. Chances are good that the practice you visited was owned by two, possibly three physicians.

To set a historical perspective, in 1960, 72 percent of physicians (MDs and DOs) were in private practice. In 2012, Accenture released a report giving figures of 57 percent in 2000 and 49 percent in 2005. A more recent source pegs the 2016 number at 33 percent.

It should be pointed out that statistics on private medical practice are promulgated by a variety of organizations. Methodologies and biases differ. Yet, the clear trend is toward fewer physicians in private practice.

The Accenture report and survey names reimbursement pressures and the cost of overhead–including implementation of costly electronic health record software–as the biggest concerns cited by independent physicians. As such, 26 percent of those polled are refusing Medicaid patients; 15 percent opting out of health exchange plans, and 3 percent not seeing Medicare patients. The number of Medicaid patients would increase greatly, as a result of Obamacare.

From the physician’s point of view, Medicare came under a bit of a cloud as a result of MACRA (Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015). As to the acronym within an acronym, “CHIP” stands for Children’s Health Insurance Program. A key component of MACRA changed physician reimbursement from rewarding volume to rewarding value. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ own projections indicated that the law would reduce payments for most solo practices.

Along with older private practice physicians retiring, plenty of the new ones coming in are faced with massive student debt, and are drawn to the notion of a regular paycheck and better work/life balance. Thus, the attraction of joining an integrated managed care consortium such as Kaiser Permanente, or becoming a hospitalist.

It’s not only young physicians who choose alternatives to private practice. Some established private practice docs have decided to move to managed care groups. And, their practices are also being acquired by hospitals.

As private practices disappear, pundits talk about economies of scale, pointing to such items as improved healthcare informatics, multidisciplinary care teams, and after-hours access. But somehow, economies of scale don’t seem to lower overall costs. In April, 2015, healthcare blogger Dan Brennan documented how costs increase when hospitals buy up private practices. This finding is echoed in many other works.

More than that, a study published in 2014 found that patients of physicians practicing in solo and small practices have lower rates of preventable readmissions than those in larger practices.
Commonwealth Fund experts David Squires and David Blumenthal, M.D. offer some suggestions to help small practices:

• Encourage physician networks, enabling small practices to share resources.
• Develop payment models that include upfront grants or loans for practices to invest in necessary infrastructure.
• Improve health information technology so that it reduces–rather than increases–the burdens of solo practice.

The good news is that CMS wants to help small and solo practices. We’ll see if this will stem the tide.

Feds Stand By As Infants Die

Laxness even American bishops wouldn’t tolerate.

Betsy McCaughey September 5, 2018

Last week, the horrific facts behind baby Melanie Sanders’ death finally came to light. Just sixteen weeks old, she died after contracting a virus raging through the neonatal intensive care unit at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Medical staff who examined newborns’ eyes failed to put on clean gloves for each baby. Unclean eye-exam devices were reused on one baby after another instead of being disinfected. A staggering 23 newborns, more than half the babies in the unit, got sick with the virus. Melanie struggled to fight it off, but died.

 

Like Melanie, tens of thousands of patients of all ages die each year because of careless hospital hygiene. Hospitals would like you to think infections are inevitable. They’re not. Unclean hands and contaminated equipment are largely to blame.

Some hospitals are almost eradicating infection risk. Not in New York. Hospitals here have infection rates worse than the national average.   Melanie’s death made headlines because her parents are suing the hospital. Most families don’t have that option. They count on the government to make sure hospitals are safe. Don’t bet on it..........Does the CDC care? Apparently not. The agency doesn’t even know how many patients are dying from hospital infections..........To Read More.....

My Take - So from this should we believe if the government takes over all health care in the nation it will be better?

The doctor is out? Why physicians are leaving their practices to pursue other careers

Nicole Spector

This week's news that New York University will offer free tuition to all its medical school students, in the hope of encouraging more doctors to choose lower-paying specialties, offered hope to those wishing to pursue a career in the field.

However, becoming a doctor remains one of the most challenging career paths you can embark upon. It requires extensive (and expensive) schooling followed by intensive residencies before you're fully on your feet. The idea, generally, is that all the hard work will pay off not only financially, but also in terms of job satisfaction and work-life balance; then there's the immeasurable personal benefits of helping people, and possibly even saving lives. In terms of both nobility and prestige, few occupations rank so highly.

So why is there a waning interest to grow a career as a physician? A recent report from the Association of American Medical Colleges projected a shortage of between 42,600 and 121,300 physicians by 2030, up from its 2017 projected shortage of 40,800 to 104,900 doctors.

There appear to be two main factors driving this anticipated doctor drought, as it were: Firstly, young people are becoming less interested in pursuing medical careers with the rise of STEM jobs, a shift that Craig Fowler, regional VP of The Medicus Firm, a national physician search and consulting agency based in Dallas, has noticed.

"There are definitely fewer people going to [med school] and more going into careers like engineering," Fowler told NBC News........To Read More....

Father Sues Hospital, Organ Donation Network After Daughter's Organs Are Harvested Against His Will

Brianna Heldt Aug 03, 2018

A California man is suing both a hospital and organ donation network, claiming they harvested his daughter’s organs against his will. Brittany O’Connor died last November. The Fresno, California mother of two had been rushed to the hospital after attempting to kill herself by strangulation. She was placed on life support, and not expected to survive.

Terence “Mike” O’Connor Jr., Brittany’s father, has filed the Fresno Superior Court civil lawsuit against Community Regional Medical Center (CRMC) and Donor Network West.

According to O’Connor’s attorneys Thornton Davidson and H. Ty Kharazi, this is not the first time the two groups have engaged in what they claim is “a pervasive and unlawful scheme to harvest organs from terminal patients.” They are pursuing class-action status for their lawsuit.......To Read More.....