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Posted by: admin | Posted on: April 19, 2026

What They Don’t Tell Us About Treating Pain

Reproduced from original article:
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2026/04/18/what-they-dont-tell-us-about-treating-pain.aspx

Analysis by A Midwestern Doctor April 18, 2026

Story at-a-glance

Spinal pain affects millions despite over $134 billion spent annually in the USA alone, with most patients remaining stuck in chronic pain cycles due to treatments that address symptoms rather than root causes
Common pain generators are frequently missed, including weak ligaments, tight muscles, structural misalignments, trapped emotions, and inflammatory conditions — leaving patients to cycle through increasingly dangerous interventions without addressing underlying issues
Conventional medications create more problems than they solve — NSAIDs are the leading cause of drug-related hospital admissions, Tylenol causes 56,000 ER visits annually from toxicity, and Gabapentin provides minimal benefit while causing cognitive effects such as drowsiness
Corticosteroids, despite being “wonder drugs,” cause devastating long-term damage, including 5% to 15% yearly bone loss, 70% weight gain rates, and dramatic increases in heart attacks (226%), heart failure (272%), and strokes (73%)
Spinal surgeries remain highly profitable but questionable in effectiveness, with significant risks that patients often don’t learn about until after complications occur, and no ability to “undo” surgical damage

Most patients with chronic pain will typically first be recommended a variety of pain medications and physical therapy, then once those fail, steroid injections, and then a joint surgery.

Unfortunately, each step in this process is often ineffective at addressing the patient’s pain or creates a variety of complications that make their situation even more unbearable. For this reason, it is critical to understand the risks of each part of this process and the safer alternatives that can permanently alleviate joint and spinal pain.

Note: Persistent or recurrent pain after spinal surgery, back pain following spinal surgery is referred to as “Failed Back Surgery Syndrome” and affects between 10% to 40% of people who receive a spinal surgery.

Common Spinal Pain Generators

In most cases, joint pain has a cause that needs to be identified to treat it. For example, when treating spinal pain, we find it is critical to address:

• Tight muscles — Rarely recognized despite being common (particularly of the iliopsoas and quadratus lumborum — two large and frequently tight muscle groups which directly attach to the lumbar spine). Physical therapists typically focus on strengthening rather than stretching/releasing tight muscles.

• Misalignment — Requires adjustment and lifestyle corrections. A common cause of misalignment are uneven leg lengths which tilt the pelvis and hence the spine (and can be corrected with an appropriate heel lift).

• Ligamentous laxity — Often the primary cause of spinal arthritis, muscle tightness, and disc problems as tight ligaments are necessary to ensure bones stay in the correct location and do not impinge tissues.

• Disc herniation — Not the most common cause of back pain but sometimes a significant contributor (and frequently used as a justification for disastrous spinal surgeries). In most cases, disc herniations result from vertebrae bending too far forward, which pushes the discs back and compresses the nerves behind them.

effects of spinal movements on the intervertebral disc

This can frequently result from a weakening of the spinal ligaments or poor posture which eliminates the natural backwards curve in the neck and low back.

Note: Tight muscles, joint misalignments, and ligamentous laxity also create issues in other regions of the body (e.g., the knees).

Additional Pain Generators

• Trapped emotions — Chronic stress and emotional distress frequently exacerbate pain (and in some cases are the primary cause of back pain). Dr. Sarno for example, addressed back pain through psychotherapy and generated a large following¹ as his approach helped many (but not everyone).

Note: We frequently find a direct release of trapped emotions (rather than psychotherapy) is necessary to address chronic emotional trauma.

• Nervous system dysregulation — Over-activation of the sympathetic nervous system alongside under-activation of the parasympathetic system exacerbates pain.

Note: A common effect of unresolved trauma is fight-or-flight system over-activation.²

• Chronic inflammatory conditions (e.g., dietary allergies, mold toxicity, Lyme disease, spike protein injuries) often worsen pain patterns.

Note: Many individuals have found that eliminating dietary food allergens resolves arthritis.

• Scars from surgeries can frequently generate significant autonomic dysregulation and pain, and frequently, treatment of those scars yields dramatic improvements.

• Altered brain pain processing — Often due to chronically over-activated nerves or microstroke injuring the thalamus (which otherwise dampens pain signals).³ In these instances, small stimuli can be extremely painful.

Systemic Medications

Since joint or spinal pain has multiple causes and diagnosis is time-consuming, physicians typically prescribe pills or refer patients elsewhere rather than address the root causes of their pain. Common medications include NSAIDs, Tylenol, Steroids, Gabapentin (or Lyrica), and Opioids — all with major issues.

Note: Due to the high rate of addiction which follows opioid prescriptions (and the societal damage that follows), more and more, the government has moved to restrict opioid prescriptions. Because of this, patients in significant pain who will only respond to opioids, despite their best efforts, often cannot get these drugs and instead are given another ineffective option (e.g., NSAIDs), hence making it imperative that effective non-opioid solutions for pain be made available to the public.

• NSAIDs — NSAIDs (e.g., ibuprofen, naproxen) temporarily reduce pain but only partially, leading patients to overuse them — often dangerously, as NSAIDs are toxic at high doses (which frequently occur since NSAIDs are taken for pain and are available over the counter). Many consider NSAIDs among the most hazardous drugs in the U.S. because:

◦ They are the leading cause of drug-related hospital admissions — Often due to heart attacks, strokes, bleeding, and kidney failure.⁴

◦ Kidney damage is a significant risk — One study found a 20% increased risk of kidney disease from NSAIDs;⁵ others found up to 212%.⁶ Amongst kidney failure patients, 65.7% were found to be chronic NSAID users.⁷

◦ NSAIDs raise cardiovascular risks — NSAIDs also increase the risk of heart attacks and death (e.g., extensive studies have found between a 24% to 326% increase^8,^9,¹⁰). Two of the worst ones, Vioxx (Merck) and Celebrex (Pfizer), were designed to reduce stomach bleeding but instead caused heart attacks and strokes.

Merck hid data on Vioxx’s risks; eventually it was withdrawn after an estimated 120,000 deaths.¹¹ Celebrex, still on the market, has been linked to 75,000 deaths.¹² Merck’s handling of Vioxx¹³ later informed how pharma pushed the HPV vaccine¹⁴ and mRNA vaccines.

Note: A year before Vioxx hit the market, Dr. Mercola warned about its clear dangers, but was ignored.

◦ Gastrointestinal bleeding is common and often fatal — In 1999, over 16,000 Americans died from it.¹⁵ NSAIDs also cause small bowel damage in over 50% of chronic users¹⁶ — often undetected — leading to “small bowel enteropathy” and possibly chronic illness through gut permeability.¹⁷

◦ They impair healing, especially of ligaments, creating long-term re-injury risk.¹⁸

“Trials alleging the benefit of NSAIDs are frequently intentionally deceptive and frequently create the illusion of a benefit where none exists. What this means is that many patients ruin their lives with drugs that did almost nothing for them in the first place.” — Peter Gøtzsche¹⁹

Unfortunately, NSAIDs remain amongst the most commonly prescribed drugs, and are frequently given for musculoskeletal injuries.

Note: The dangers of NSAIDs are discussed further here.

• Tylenol — Tylenol (acetaminophen) is one of the few over-the-counter alternatives to NSAIDs and is generally considered safer, though often ineffective for severe pain. Still, it carries serious risks:

◦ Liver toxicity — Overuse leads to 56,000 ER visits, 2,600 hospitalizations, and 500 deaths annually in the U.S. due to Tylenol toxicity.²⁰

◦ Fever suppression — Tylenol reduces fevers, which are key immune defenses. Suppressing them can worsen or prolong infections — a pattern observed during COVID-19.²¹ Many parents of vaccine-injured children reported symptoms (e.g., autism) appeared after using Tylenol to suppress high post-vaccine fevers, explored in this 2021 paper.²²

• Gabapentin and pregabalin — Gabapentin (Neurontin) was originally approved to treat epilepsy — a small market. After approval, Pfizer aggressively pushed it for unapproved uses, especially neuropathic pain, despite limited evidence.²³ The federal government fined Pfizer nearly $1 billion for illegal promotion.

While less toxic than NSAIDs, side effects for these drugs are common and include: lethargy, dizziness, sedation, and cognitive impairment, as well as rarer but serious reactions like respiratory depression and hypersensitivity. Gabapentin can also be habit forming.

Note: Since gabapentin and pregabalin (Lyrica) only work for specific types of pain (e.g., neuropathic pain), they typically do very little for most patients’ pain. However, they are widely prescribed because they lack many of the severe risks associated with other pain reducing drugs, and as a result, many are placed on inappropriate prescriptions for them.

• Corticosteroids — Initially hailed as a wonder drug, corticosteroids like prednisone and hydrocortisone gradually were discovered to have significant side effects (e.g., weight gain, adrenal suppression, heart attacks, diabetes, insomnia, and psychiatric effects). Since corticosteroids trigger tissue breakdown, they also often greatly weaken the body’s structural integrity, impair wound healing and weaken collagen synthesis.²⁴

Furthermore, corticosteroids double one’s risk of fracture (especially vertebrae),²⁵ with 12% of users reporting fractures.²⁶ Steroids cause 5% to 15% bone loss yearly,²⁷ and 37% of long-term users experience vertebral fractures.²⁸ High doses increase vertebral fracture risk fivefold.²⁹ Higher doses also cause avascular necrosis in 6.7% of users.³⁰

Note: The primary drugs used to treat Osteoporosis (bisphosphonates) have severe side effects including making the bones more likely to break. In turn, one of the few approved uses for bisphosphonates is steroid-induced bone loss.³¹

Since both collagen, ligaments (which are composed of collagen), and bones are weakened by steroids, chronic use leads to joint weakening and chronic pain. Because of this, we frequently encounter patients who achieved a temporary alleviation of joint pain (e.g., in the spine or knee) who then have their condition worsen and require surgery. Unfortunately, this side effect is rarely disclosed to patients, leading to many surgeries that could have been prevented.

Note: In many cases, if joint pain is instead treated by strengthening the ligaments (e.g., with nutritional supplementation or prolotherapy), the pain will resolve and future surgeries can be prevented.

The Surgery Funnel

Surgeries often have risks that patients don’t learn about until after complications occur, which is problematic since you can’t “undo” surgery. For this reason, patients should seek unbiased second opinions from doctors who aren’t being paid to do a proposed surgery.

Unbearable pain (e.g., in a joint) is one of the strongest motivators for surgery, and spinal surgeries are the most common elective surgery I’m consulted about. Unfortunately, since spinal surgeries are one of the most profitable areas in medicine,³² there’s reluctance to consider if risks outweigh benefits or if safer and more effective alternative exist, and over the years I’ve become increasingly skeptical of them.

Likewise, despite trillions spent on spinal pain (e.g., in 2016, 134.4 billion dollars was spent on neck and low back pain in the USA),³³ most patients remain stuck with chronic pain and experience significant side effects from treatments.

Note: There have been numerous newspaper investigations of spinal surgeons who recklessly performed large volumes of unnecessary surgeries,³⁴ killing or injuring many of their patients who were nonetheless protected by their hospitals because of how much revenue they generated.

DMSO — A Safer Alternative

Over the last seven months, I have been working to spread awareness of dimethyl sulfoxide to the world, a natural compound which provides dramatic benefit for a variety of challenging conditions (e.g., autoimmunity, strokes, paralysis, antibiotic resistant infections, cancers, vision loss, and tinnitus).

DMSO also increases blood circulation to tissue, reduces inflammation, interrupts pain transmission, relaxes muscles, and decreases activity of the sympathetic nervous system.³⁵ Because of this, DMSO is highly effective at:

• Healing tissue injury (including paralyzing spinal cord injuries).

• Treating bursitis.

• Healing arthritis.

• Reducing acute and chronic pain.

• Treating many forms of pain, conventional therapies (including opioids) are often ineffective for such as cancer pain, complex regional pain syndrome, fibromyalgia, post-surgical pain and phantom limb pain.

For example, in this article, I summarized dozens of studies (comprising thousands of patients) which consistently showed DMSO improved the majority of musculoskeletal conditions it was tested on (e.g., one of 38 patients with lumbar and disc herniations that found DMSO made them recover twice as quickly).³⁶

Likewise, I have now received thousands of remarkable testimonials from readers who used DMSO, most of which were of a significant improvement in pain or rapid healing of an injury.³⁷ Likewise, many doctors such as James Miller MD have been inspired to use it in their practice and seen similar remarkable results for a variety of challenging conditions.

Video Link

For musculoskeletal injuries (e.g., pain or injuries), in most instances where a steroid or NSAID would be used, we find DMSO:

• Is more effective at addressing the immediate issues.

• Also heals the underlying issue (e.g., a herniated disc or injured ligament) rather than worsening it and creating future musculoskeletal injuries.

• Does not have the myriad of (often severe) side effects frequently seen from standard treatment options.

As such, for years, we’ve found that in most cases where drugs like NSAIDs are widely used, much better and far safer results could be obtained from DMSO. Unfortunately, while this was recognized in the past (e.g., many professional athletes in the 1960s and 1970s found DMSO dramatically improved their ability to recover from injuries and facilitated rapid returns to the field), all of that has now been largely forgotten. Consider for example, this 1980 60 Minutes episode:

Video Link

Conclusion

The medical business model revolves around maximizing sales, either by perpetually selling a patient medications or by funneling them into high ticket items, and as I’ve tried to show here, pain management exemplifies this business model.

For instance, spinal surgeries (the last step for many patients whose pain was improperly managed), can make a hospital well over $100,000 each. In turn, as an investigation of numerous botched neurosurgeries showed, ambitious neurosurgeons (e.g., those who wanted to do so many surgeries they would often have multiple operating rooms running concurrently) will make enough money to sustain a hospital:³⁸

Similarly, as this article showed, patients with chronic pain are often put onto lifelong prescriptions of pain medications which fail to address much of their pain, have significant (and sometimes life-threatening) side effects, and frequently force them down the sales funnel to the lucrative joint and spine surgeries.

That predatory business model in turn, was exemplified by Purdue Pharma, which bribed an FDA reviewer to claim their proprietary opioid (OxyContin) was not addictive.³⁹ In 1995, the drug was then marketed with that claim and having the American Pain Society declare “pain was the 5th vital sign,”⁴⁰ compelling doctors to routinely assess for it and treat any existing pain with opioids (as otherwise they faced malpractice investigations from state medical boards).

This, in turn, created the modern opioid crisis (as many opioid users develop permanent addictions after brief courses of these “non-addictive” drugs) which eventually affected so many communities doctors lost much of their ability to prescribe opioids to patients with crippling pain nothing else worked on.

In my eyes, the root cause of all of this is that since pain is an ideal market, there is very little interest in looking at either the shortcomings of existing treatments or looking into actual treatments for pain which destroy that perpetual revenue stream.

Fortunately, the need to reduce wasteful spending (e.g., for costly and unnecessary surgery) MAHA moment is at last giving us a chance to change things and begin looking at the actual causes and treatments for these conditions rather than costly ones that do neither.

Author’s Note: This is an abridged version of a longer article that goes into more detail on dangers of common pain killers like NSAIDs and safe alternatives for treating neck and spine pain (which can be read here), along with a companion article on how DMSO can treat pain injury and arthritis (which can be read here), an article on the dangers of corticosteroids (which can be read here) and an article on the many dangers of spinal surgery (which can be read here).

A Note from Dr. Mercola About the Author

A Midwestern Doctor (AMD) is a board-certified physician from the Midwest and a longtime reader of Mercola.com. I appreciate AMD’s exceptional insight on a wide range of topics and am grateful to share it. I also respect AMD’s desire to remain anonymous since AMD is still on the front lines treating patients. To find more of AMD’s work, be sure to check out The Forgotten Side of Medicine on Substack.

– Sources and References

Posted in Corruption, Corticosteroids, Natural Medicine, Pain, Prescription Medication | No Comments »

Posted by: admin | Posted on: March 5, 2026

WHO’s Latest Prescription for Failure

© GreenMedInfo LLC. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of GreenMedInfo LLC.
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Reproduced from original article:
https://greenmedinfo.com/content/whos-latest-prescription-failure
Posted on: Tuesday, March 3rd 2026

Written By: Sayer Ji, Founder

This article is copyrighted by GreenMedInfo LLC, 2026

How Three Strains, 200 Viruses, and a Collapsing Paradigm Expose the Flu Vaccine’s Broken Promise

On February 27, 2026, the World Health Organization selected three influenza strains and told the world to build a vaccine around them. Three strains, chosen by committee months in advance, for a landscape of over 200 respiratory viruses — manufactured in chicken eggs and injected into hundreds of millions of arms at a cost approaching $18 billion annually. It is perhaps the most expensive act of faith in modern medicine. And the evidence has shattered every pillar it stands on.

Read and share the X post dedicated to this article here.

Article-at-a-glance

WHO’s three-strain selection is a structural impossibility. In February 2026, WHO again selected three influenza strains for the coming season’s vaccine — while the Cochrane Collaboration has documented that over 200 viruses cause clinically indistinguishable influenza-like illness, influenza A and B represent only ~10% of circulating respiratory pathogens, and even the targeted strains drift unpredictably during the months between selection and deployment. The 2025-2026 season proved the point: H3N2 “subclade K” emerged and spread globally after vaccine compositions were already locked.¹¹
Cochrane’s evidence base is empty — across every demographic. Fifty-two trials and 80,000+ adults showed a numbered needed to vaccinate (NNV) of 71 for confirmed influenza, with little or no effect on hospitalizations or working days lost. For the elderly, 40 years of data from 75 studies could not produce clinical guidance. For children under two, only one safety study exists. The gold standard of evidence-based medicine has weighed the flu vaccine and found it wanting.^{1, 2, 3}
The vaccine doesn’t just fail — it may cause active harm. A 2025 Cleveland Clinic prospective cohort of 53,402 employees found vaccinated workers had a statistically significant 27% higher risk of contracting influenza (HR 1.27, p=0.007), while a natural alternative — bovine colostrum — demonstrated threefold superiority in published peer-reviewed research, with zero hospitalizations in high-risk patients and 70% lower costs, yet has received no large-scale follow-up in 19 years.^{4, 5, 6, 7}
The paradigm beneath it all is collapsing. Revolutionary virome research reveals that viruses are not monolithic external pathogens but host-dependent entities sharing core architecture with the body’s own exosomes — and that chronic viral infections confer symbiotic immune benefits including bacterial resistance and compensation for genetic immunodeficiency. The germ theory framework upon which WHO’s annual ritual depends is being dismantled by the very sciences it claims to represent.^{8, 9, 10}

The Cochrane Verdict: Four Decades of Unproven Claims

The Cochrane Collaboration occupies a singular position in evidence-based medicine. Its systematic reviews are widely regarded as the most authoritative assessments of medical interventions available. On the subject of influenza vaccination, what it says should have ended the debate years ago.

The landmark 2018 review, Vaccines for preventing influenza in healthy adults (Demicheli et al.), synthesized data from 52 clinical trials involving over 80,000 adults. Its findings were unambiguous in their modesty: inactivated flu vaccines reduced laboratory-confirmed influenza from roughly 2.3% to 0.9%, yielding a number needed to vaccinate (NNV) of 71–meaning 71 people must be vaccinated to prevent a single confirmed case.¹ The review found little or no appreciable effect on hospitalizations or working days lost, both assessed at low certainty of evidence. Protection in pregnant women was uncertain or very limited. Seventy percent of included studies had insufficient reporting to assess bias.

For the elderly–the population most aggressively targeted by vaccination campaigns–the picture is starker. The Cochrane review for people 65 and older examined 40 years of evidence, comprising 75 studies, and concluded that available evidence is of poor quality and provides no guidance regarding safety, efficacy, or effectiveness. The reviewers called for an adequately powered, publicly funded, placebo-controlled trial.² That trial has never been conducted.

Only one validated safety study on inactivated flu vaccines has been performed in children under two–the population most susceptible to adverse reactions–despite current guidelines recommending vaccination from six months of age.³

The Strain Selection Lottery: WHO’s Six-Month Gamble

Twice annually, the World Health Organization convenes its Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System to select three viral strains for the coming season’s vaccine. For 2026–2027: A/Missouri/11/2025 (H1N1), A/Darwin/1454/2025 (H3N2), and B/Tokyo/EIS13-175/2025 (B/Victoria).¹¹ Three strains. Selected months in advance. Manufactured in chicken eggs or insect cells. Distributed to a population that will encounter a pathogen landscape of staggering complexity.

The Cochrane Collaboration quantified the core mathematical absurdity: over 200 viruses cause influenza and influenza-like illness producing identical symptoms. Without laboratory testing, physicians cannot distinguish between them. At best, vaccines target influenza A and B, representing approximately 10% of all circulating respiratory viruses.^1,3 The remaining 90%–rhinoviruses, coronaviruses, RSV, parainfluenza, adenoviruses, human metapneumovirus–produce the same clinical picture and are entirely unaffected by influenza vaccination.

WHO’s own February 2026 report documented H3N2 “subclade K” emerging in August 2025 and spreading rapidly worldwide, driving earlier-than-usual flu seasons with higher activity levels.¹¹ This variant emerged after vaccine compositions had been finalized–a recurring pattern that vaccine proponents treat as an engineering problem rather than the structural impossibility it represents.

Negative Efficacy: When the Cure Becomes the Disease

The Cleveland Clinic’s 2024–2025 prospective cohort study represents perhaps the most consequential finding in recent influenza vaccine research. Tracking 53,402 employees over 25 weeks, with 82.1% vaccination coverage, the study used Cox proportional hazards regression with vaccination as a time-dependent variable–a more accurate approach than test-negative designs.⁴

The result: a hazard ratio of 1.27 (95% CI: 1.07–1.51, p=0.007), indicating vaccinated employees had a statistically significant 27% higher risk of contracting influenza. Vaccine effectiveness was −26.9%. Cumulative incidence curves showed infection rates increasing more rapidly among the vaccinated throughout the observation period.⁴

The study’s authors discussed plausible mechanisms: original antigenic sin and immune imprinting from repeated annual vaccination may progressively narrow the antibody repertoire, reducing immune flexibility. Canadian data from the 2009 pandemic corroborate the pattern: seasonal flu vaccination was associated with increased susceptibility to pandemic H1N1.⁵ The intervention may be actively compromising the immune function it purports to support.

Beyond diminished effectiveness, safety cannot be treated as a peripheral concern. A survey of the biomedical and clinical literature documents more than 100 potential adverse effects associated with influenza vaccination, spanning neurologic, autoimmune, hematologic, and inflammatory outcomes — a signal profile that warrants far more transparent risk–benefit accounting than current policy frameworks provide.

The Buried Alternative: Colostrum and the Economics of Suppression

In 2007, Cesarone and colleagues published in Clinical and Applied Thrombosis/Hemostasis that bovine colostrum was approximately three times more effective than vaccination at preventing flu episodes. Among high-risk cardiovascular patients, the colostrum group experienced zero hospitalizations, while the vaccinated group suffered multiple hospitalizations and one death. Total flu-related costs in the colostrum group were 30% of the vaccinated group–a 70% cost reduction. No significant side effects.⁶

Belcaro et al. (2010) confirmed and extended these findings.7 The mechanism is fundamentally different from vaccination: broad-spectrum immune enhancement through secretory IgA, lactoferrin, cytokine modulation, and gut-immune axis support. It is pathogen-agnostic–it doesn’t require predicting which strains will circulate.

Bovine colostrum cannot be patented. Without patent protection, no pharmaceutical company will invest the $50–100 million required for Phase III trials. The influenza vaccine market was valued at $7.97 billion in 2023 and is projected to reach $17.77 billion by 2032.¹² The same structural logic explains why vitamin D–shown to reduce influenza A risk by 59% in children at 1,200 IUs daily13–and elderberry, echinacea, ginseng, green tea, and probiotics remain absent from policy conversations despite published peer-reviewed evidence.³

The Virome Revolution: Viruses as Symbiotic Partners

The policy failures documented above are symptoms of a deeper crisis: the conceptual framework upon which the vaccination enterprise rests–classical germ theory–is being dismantled by the very sciences it claims to represent.

The human body harbors approximately 38 trillion bacteria and a staggering virome, with fecal matter containing upwards of one billion viral particles per gram. Over 90% of humans carry multiple herpes viruses, co-evolved with mammals over millions of years.⁸

In 2007, Barton et al. published in Nature that mice harboring latent herpesvirus infections were resistant to bacterial infection by Listeria monocytogenes and Yersinia pestis. The mechanism: virally stimulated upregulation of interferon-gamma (IFNγ) producing systemic macrophage activation. Rather than parasitism, latent infection was a symbiotic relationship conferring immune benefits.⁸

MacDuff et al. (2015) in eLife showed that immunodeficient mice–fatally vulnerable to bacterial infections–were rescued from lethality by chronic herpesvirus infection, which compensated for genetic defects by inducing IFNγ production.⁸ Chronic viral infection could compensate for genetic immunodeficiency. The therapeutic implications are extraordinary.

Latent gammaherpesvirus 68 produced differential expression of genes in the spleen, brain, and liver–particularly immune-related genes conferring risk for celiac disease, Crohn’s disease, and multiple sclerosis.8 Early life viral infections change genes related to vaccine responses in mice and humans, potentially explaining differential susceptibility to vaccine injury. And critically: vaccinations may deprive the body of favorable immune-modulating effects of some viral infections.⁸

The Exosome Problem: Why Influenza Is Not What We Were Told

The 2015 virion architecture study–the first comprehensive characterization of influenza virion composition–revealed that influenza viral particles are substantially composed of host-derived proteins. The virus is, in a fundamental sense, as much “self” as “other.”⁹

Researchers identified hundreds of viral and host-encoded proteins in influenza virions. The conserved architecture includes substantial quantities of host proteins. Influenza virions from different host species–mammalian versus avian–have distinct protein compositions, meaning transmissibility and immunogenicity are fundamentally determined by the host.⁹

Current vaccines produced in chicken eggs or insect cells yield virions containing foreign proteins that produce different immunological responses than human influenza particles. These non-human proteins could theoretically produce cross-reactive antigens contributing to autoimmunity–a possibility current safety testing does not evaluate.⁹

Most remarkably, influenza virions share underlying protein composition with exosomes–naturally occurring microvesicles all cells produce for intercellular communication. Both are membrane-enclosed, 50–100 nanometers, carrying proteins, lipids, and RNAs. Influenza appears to form by co-opting normal exosome production.⁹ Viruses may be pieces of information in search of chromosomes–essential mediators of the genotype-phenotype relationship, facilitating real-time adaptation where DNA evolution takes millennia.^9,10

The Transkingdom Web: The End of Simple Narratives

Dr. Herbert W. “Skip” Virgin IV developed the hypothesis that viral immunity is governed by “transkingdom metagenomic interactions”–the interplay between all genetic sequences in or on the host dictating the course of viral encounters.⁸

Helminths promote viral replication by inhibiting antiviral IFNγ and inducing interleukin-4, reactivating latent herpesvirus. Bacterial microbiota foster viral persistence–antibiotic-decimated gut bacteria prevent persistent norovirus infection, while fecal transplant restoration reverses this suppression.8 These are evolutionarily conserved interactions between organisms of divergent kingdoms that fundamentally determine what we simplistically call “infection.”

For a mind-blowing journey through these revolutionary new concepts, and the centrality of the virome in human health and disease, watch Dr. Virgin’s lecture below:

Immune Status, Not Vaccination Status, Determines Susceptibility

The convergence points to a principle both ancient in wisdom and revolutionary for modern medicine: it is the terrain, not the germ, that determines the outcome. “The microbe is nothing; the terrain is everything”–often attributed to Pasteur’s deathbed–finds rigorous confirmation in contemporary virome science.⁸

If the immune system is compromised by toxicants, nutritional deficiency, chronic stress, and pharmaceutical suppression, respiratory illness of all kinds–whether from influenza A or any of the 200+ other circulating pathogens–is far more likely. It is not the absence of a vaccine that causes infection; it is the inability of the immune system to function effectively.3

The relevant question is not “Which three strains should we target six months from now?” but “How do we support the innate, mucosal, and adaptive immune systems so they can respond to whatever challenges arise?” Colostrum, vitamin D, elderberry, echinacea, green tea, ginseng, and probiotics work precisely because they are pathogen-agnostic: enhancing immune capacity rather than pre-programming it against predicted targets.

Conclusion: The Structural Absurdity

A multi-billion dollar annual intervention–built on Cochrane-documented evidentiary gaps, now showing negative efficacy in rigorous cohort analysis–continues to be universally recommended while a natural substance with dramatically superior published outcomes sits unstudied for two decades, and virome science reveals the foundational paradigm is biologically untenable.

The illusion is not merely scientific. It is epistemological. When the full complexity of respiratory illness — hundreds of viral species, transkingdom interactions, host-dependent virion composition, the overlooked role of exosomes, and the immunomodulatory virome — is answered with a three-strain, egg-derived pharmaceutical product selected by committee six months in advance, we are not witnessing evidence-based medicine. We are witnessing market-based medicine, sustained by institutional inertia, regulatory capture, and a paradigm the biology has outgrown.

The question is whether institutions governing public health possess the intellectual courage to follow the evidence–away from mass vaccination and toward a genuinely ecological, terrain-based, immune-supportive paradigm honoring the complexity of the human superorganism and the billions of viral partners with which it has co-evolved.

The only thing the flu may be capable of killing, in the end, is germ theory itself.⁹

Beyond the Antipodes: How “Poisoned, Not Infected” Resolves the Germ–Terrain Divide

For over a century, the discourse on infectious disease has been trapped between two seemingly irreconcilable poles: germ theory, which locates the cause of disease in external pathogens invading a passive host, and terrain theory, which holds that the internal milieu of the organism–its nutritional status, toxic burden, and immunological integrity–determines whether illness manifests. These positions have hardened into ideological antipodes, each claiming exclusive explanatory power, each dismissing the other as naive or dangerous. The result has been an intellectual stalemate that has impoverished both clinical practice and public health policy.

The Poisoned, Not Infected series, published on this Substack in November 2025, offers what neither pole alone could provide: a mechanistic synthesis grounded in peer-reviewed molecular biology that renders the germ–terrain binary obsolete. The key is the extracellular vesicle (EV)–nature’s nano-scale communication system, through which the terrain produces the very signals we have mistaken for invading germs.

Here is the core insight: when cells are chemically stressed–by acetaminophen, pesticides, heavy metals, or inhaled toxicants like the vitamin E acetate behind the EVALI crisis–they release exosomes carrying the molecular fingerprints of that injury: oxidative stress markers, inflammatory cytokines, apoptotic enzymes, regulatory microRNAs. These nano-sized vesicles are 30–150 nanometers in diameter–physically indistinguishable from viruses under electron microscopy, pelletable in the same density gradient fractions, and bearing overlapping molecular markers including the tetraspanin CD63 found on both exosomes and HIV particles. They propagate injury signals to distant cells that have never encountered the original toxin, triggering the same death cascades, the same inflammatory responses, the same constellation of symptoms we reflexively label “infection.”

This is not terrain theory in the classical Béchampian sense–a vague assertion that the “soil” matters more than the “seed.” It is a concrete, experimentally demonstrated mechanism by which the terrain’s condition generates virus-like particles that carry adaptive or pathological information depending on the nature and severity of the stressor. The 2018 Scientific Reports acetaminophen study demonstrated this with devastating clarity: exosomes from drug-injured mice transferred liver damage to naïve animals that had never been exposed to the toxin. The “germ” was the body’s own distress signal. The “terrain” was the chemical insult that provoked it.

Nor is this germ theory in the classical Pasteurian sense–the notion that specific external microbes invade a passive host and are the sole cause of specific diseases. The Xenogen Hypothesis, introduced in the series, proposes that what we have classified as “viruses” may often function as adaptive information vectors–exosome-like particles carrying stress-response programs that trigger beneficial physiological processes such as fever-mediated detoxification, mucus-mediated debris clearance, and inflammatory mobilization of immune resources. The 2015 virion architecture study discussed earlier in this article confirms the biological plausibility: influenza particles are substantially composed of host-derived proteins, sharing core structural features with exosomes, and varying in composition depending on the species from which they originate. Viruses, from this vantage, are not foreign invaders so much as hybrid entities generated at the interface between organism and environment.

The synthesis, then, is this: the germ theorists were right that nano-scale particles transmit biological information capable of producing illness in recipient organisms. The terrain theorists were right that the internal environment–its toxic burden, nutritional status, and immunological coherence–determines whether those signals are generated, how they are interpreted, and whether the organism recovers or deteriorates. What neither camp possessed was the molecular vocabulary to describe the mechanism connecting these truths. Extracellular vesicle biology, and the Xenogen Hypothesis and Poisoned Not Infected paradigm built upon it, provides that vocabulary.

Poisoned, Not Infected: Why Your Body’s Healing Response Looks Like Disease

Sayer Ji · November 23, 2025

Read and share the X post dedicated to this article: https://x.com/sayerjigmi/status/1992577130874450058?s=20

Read full story The implications are profound. If what we detect as “influenza” via PCR may include exosomal RNA released as part of the body’s own immune signaling–as the 2024 study on PCR non-specificity concluded–then the denominator is not merely inflated by the 200+ respiratory viruses Cochrane identified. It is inflated by the body’s own healing response being misread as pathogenic presence. We are not just vaccinating against the wrong strains; we may be vaccinating against the body’s own adaptive communication system.

This convergence–the Cochrane evidentiary vacuum, the Cleveland Clinic’s negative efficacy findings, the colostrum data demonstrating pathogen-agnostic immune support, the virome science revealing viral symbiosis, and now the EV-mediated mechanism by which chemical terrain damage produces virus-like contagion signals–points toward a unified paradigm. Not “germ or terrain” but terrain generating what we have called germs–and those “germs” functioning, in many cases, as the organism’s attempt to restore homeostasis through intercellular communication, detoxification, and adaptive reprogramming.

The ancient debate is not resolved by one side winning. It is resolved by discovering the molecular bridge between them–and that bridge is the exosome: the body’s own virus-like particle, generated from within, carrying the intelligence of the terrain into the language previously monopolized by germ theory. Once this is understood, the entire vaccination paradigm–predicated on targeting specific external pathogens with strain-specific antibodies–reveals itself as not merely ineffective but categorically misaligned with the biology it purports to address.

A Final Thought

The WHO’s influenza vaccine recommendations, then, are not merely a clinical policy failure–they are the visible edge of a global governance architecture predicated on a nineteenth-century metaphor: the body as a besieged fortress, the microbe as foreign invader, and the state as the entity authorized to marshal pharmaceutical countermeasures on behalf of a passive, immunologically incompetent population. This biosecurity model–from the International Health Regulations to pandemic preparedness treaties to the annual strain-selection ritual itself–derives its legitimacy not from evidence of efficacy, which as we have seen does not exist in any Cochrane-defensible form, but from the unexamined assumption that germ theory accurately describes the relationship between humans and their microbial environment. That assumption is now crumbling under the weight of the sciences it claimed to represent. The virome reveals that viral genomes are not invaders but co-evolved partners integral to immune regulation, gene expression, and protection against bacterial pathogenesis. The holobiont framework reconceives the human organism not as an individual besieged by pathogens but as a superorganism–a dynamic ecological consortium of human cells, bacteria, fungi, archaea, and viruses whose collective genomic intelligence dwarfs the narrow antibody targeting of any vaccine. And the terrain-based paradigm, now grounded in the molecular biology of extracellular vesicles rather than the philosophical intuitions of Béchamp, demonstrates that what we detect as “viral infection” may often represent the body’s own sophisticated healing intelligence–an intelligence that mass vaccination campaigns, by design, seek to override. When the foundational biology no longer supports the foundational policy, what remains is not medicine but institutional momentum–and the multi-billion-dollar economic interests that momentum protects. The question before us is whether public health will follow the evidence into a post-germ-theory paradigm that honors the complexity of the human superorganism, or whether it will continue to administer a collapsing orthodoxy by bureaucratic force. The biology has already rendered its verdict. The institutions have yet to receive the memo.

This epistemic rigidity is not occurring in a vacuum. The same institution now urging universal compliance with its influenza strain selections is facing a historic contraction of political and financial authority. The formal withdrawal of the United States — and the accompanying budget shock — marked more than a diplomatic event; it signaled a measurable erosion of institutional legitimacy. I examined that rupture in detail in “When the WHO Lost the Plot–and the Funding,”which traces how narrative control collapsed into fiscal consequence

Learn more about alternative, evidence-based approaches to influenza here.

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References

1. Demicheli, Vittorio, et al. “Vaccines for Preventing Influenza in Healthy Adults.” Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, no. 2 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD001269.pub6

2. Demicheli, Vittorio, et al. “Vaccines for Preventing Influenza in the Elderly.” Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (2018). https://www.cochrane.org/CD004876/ARI_vaccines-for-preventing-seasonal-influenza-and-its-complications-in-people-aged-65-or-older

3. Ji, Sayer. “The Shocking Lack of Evidence Supporting Flu Vaccines.” GreenMedInfo, January 26, 2018. https://greenmedinfo.com/blog/shocking-lack-evidence-supporting-flu-vaccines

4. Shrestha, Nabin K., et al. “Effectiveness of the Influenza Vaccine During the 2024–2025 Respiratory Viral Season.” Preprint, Cleveland Clinic, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.03.20.25324343

5. Skowronski, Danuta M., et al. “Association Between the 2008–09 Seasonal Influenza Vaccine and Pandemic H1N1 Illness.” PLoS Medicine 7, no. 4 (2010): e1000258. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000258

6. Cesarone, M. R., et al. “Prevention of Influenza Episodes with Colostrum Compared with Vaccination.” Clinical and Applied Thrombosis/Hemostasis 13, no. 2 (2007): 130–36. https://doi.org/10.1177/1076029606295957

7. Belcaro, G., et al. “Prevention of Flu Episodes with Colostrum and Bifivir Compared with Vaccination.” Panminerva Medica 52, no. 4 (2010): 269–75.

8. Le Vere, Ali. “Profound Implications of the Virome for Human Health and Autoimmunity.” GreenMedInfo, October 3, 2019. Citing: Barton et al., Nature 447 (2007): 326–29; MacDuff et al., eLife 4 (2015): e4494; Virgin, Cell 157 (2014): 142–50; Cadwell et al., Immunity 42 (2015): 805–13. https://greenmedinfo.com/blog/profound-implications-virome-human-health-and-autoimmunity

9. Ji, Sayer. “Why Everything You Learned About Viruses Is WRONG.” GreenMedInfo, August 24, 2020. Citing: Hutchinson et al., Nature Communications 5 (2014): 4816. https://greenmedinfo.com/blog/why-only-thing-influenza-may-kill-germ-theory

10. Virgin, Herbert W. “The Virome in Mammalian Physiology and Disease.” Cell 157 (2014): 142–50. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2014.02.032

11. World Health Organization. “Recommended Composition of Influenza Virus Vaccines for Use in the 2026–2027 Northern Hemisphere Influenza Season.” WHO, February 27, 2026. https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/recommended-composition-of-influenza-virus-vaccines-for-use-in-the-2026-2027-northern-hemisphere-influenza-season

12. Fortune Business Insights. “Influenza Vaccine Market Size, Share & Industry Analysis.” 2024. https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/influenza-vaccine-market-101945

13. Urashima, Mitsuyoshi, et al. “Randomized Trial of Vitamin D Supplementation to Prevent Seasonal Influenza A in Schoolchildren.” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 91, no. 5 (2010): 1255–60. https://doi.org/10.3945/ajcn.2009.29094

This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. It provides an evidence-based analysis of published scientific literature for educational and journalistic purposes.

Sayer Ji is founder of Greenmedinfo.com, author of international best-seller REGENERATE: Unlocking Your Body’s Radical Resilience through the New Biology, co-founder of Stand for Health Freedom (501c4), and UNITE.live, a global, multi-media platform for conscious creators and their communities.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of GreenMedInfo or its staff.

Posted in Colostrum, Corruption, Food, Immunity, Nutrition, Vaccinations | No Comments »

Posted by: admin | Posted on: February 22, 2026

Statins, Cholesterol, and the Real Cause of Heart Disease

Reproduced from original article:
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2026/02/13/statin-cholesterol-heart-disease.aspx

Analysis by A Midwestern Doctor February 13, 2026

Story at-a-glance

Despite decades of statin use costing approximately $25 billion annually in America alone, heart disease remains the leading cause of death, suggesting the cholesterol hypothesis that drives statin prescriptions is fundamentally flawed
Studies show that lowering cholesterol with statins does not reduce heart disease, and yet these findings are ignored while statin guidelines are created by experts paid by pharmaceutical manufacturers
Malcolm Kendrick’s clotting model provides a superior explanation for heart disease: atherosclerotic plaques result from repeated damage to blood vessel linings which the body repairs with layers of clots
The medical establishment dismisses widespread reports of statin injuries as “nocebo effects,” paralleling how COVID-19 vaccine injuries were dismissed as “anxiety,” despite extensive evidence corroborating the injuries
The actual causes of heart disease — fine particulate matter from pollution and cigarettes, lead exposure, chronic stress, and endothelial damage — receive minimal research funding because effective interventions cannot be patented and sold as expensive pharmaceuticals like statins

Frequently in science, fundamental facts are altered to create a profitable industry. Recently, I showed how this occurs with blood pressure: rather than causing arterial damage, high blood pressure is a response to arterial damage that ensures damaged arteries can still deliver blood to the tissues.

In turn, rather than helping patients, aggressively lowering blood pressure can be quite harmful. In this article, I will look at the other half of the coin, statins, cholesterol, and heart disease — something that harms so many Americans, it was poignantly discussed by Comedian Jimmy Dore.

Video Link

Cholesterol and Heart Disease

Frequently, when an industry harms many people, it will create a scapegoat to deflect blame. Once this happens, a variety of other sectors will jump on the bandwagon and create an unshakable societal dogma.

For example, the health of a population (or if they are being poisoned by environmental toxins) determines how easily an infectious disease can sweep through a population and who is susceptible to it, but reframing infectious diseases as a “deficiency of vaccines” it both takes the (costly) onus off the industries to clean up the society and simultaneously allows them to get rich promoting the pharmaceutical products that “manage” each epidemic and the even larger epidemic of chronic diseases caused by those vaccines (discussed in detail here).

Note: The major decline in infectious illness credited to vaccines was actually the result of improved public sanitation; when the data are examined (e.g., for smallpox) those early vaccination campaigns made outcomes worse, not better.

In the 1960s and 1970s, a debate emerged over the causes of heart disease. On one side, John Yudkin effectively argued that the sugar being added to our food by the processed food industry was the chief culprit.¹ On the other side, Ancel Keys (who attacked Yudkin’s work) argued that it was due to saturated fat and cholesterol.²

Note: Leaders in the field of natural medicine have made a strong case that this spike came from the mass adoption of seed oils³ (which thanks to our unprecedented political climate is at last being discussed on the mainstream news⁴). Likewise, some attribute this increase to the advent of water chlorination.⁵

Ancel Keys won, Yudkin’s work was largely dismissed, and Keys became nutritional dogma. A large part of Key’s victory was based on his study of seven countries (Italy, Greece, Former Yugoslavia, Netherlands, Finland, America, and Japan), which showed that as saturated fat consumption increased, heart disease increased in a linear fashion.

However, this result was simply a product of the countries Keys chose (e.g., if Finland, Israel, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, France, and Sweden had been chosen, the opposite correlation would have been found).

Fortunately, it’s gradually become recognized that Keys did not accurately report his data. For example, recently an unpublished 56-month randomized study of 9,423 adults living in state mental hospitals or a nursing home (which made it possible to rigidly control their diets) that Keys directed was unearthed.⁶

It found that replacing half of one’s animal (saturated) fats with seed oil (e.g., corn oil) lowered their cholesterol, but for every 30 points it dropped, their risk of death increased by 22% (which roughly translates to each 1% drop in cholesterol raising the risk of death by 1%).

Note: Another (unpublished) study from the 1970s (of 458 Australians), found that partially replacing dietary saturated fat with seed oils increased the risk of dying by 17.6%.⁷

Likewise, recently, one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world published internal sugar industry documents.⁸ They showed the sugar industry had used bribes to make scientists place the blame for heart disease on fat so Yudkin’s work would not threaten the sugar industry.⁹ Remarkably, it is now generally accepted that Yudkin was right, but nonetheless, our medical guidelines are still largely based on Key’s work.

Likewise, the need to lower cholesterol to prevent heart disease is still a dogma within cardiology,^10,^11,^12,^13,^14,¹⁵ despite things like this Lancet study¹⁶ which in 1986 showed:

“During 10 years of follow-up from Dec 1, 1986 to Oct 1, 1996, a total of 642 participants died. Each 1 mmol/L increase in total cholesterol corresponded to a 15% decrease in mortality (risk ratio 0—85 [95% Cl 0·79—0·91]).”

Statins Marketing

Once a drug is identified that can “beneficially” change a number, medical practice guidelines will inevitably shift to prioritizing treating that number in more and more people. For example, this is what happened with blood pressure:

Prior to statins, it was difficult to reliably lower cholesterol, but once they were introduced, research rapidly emerged arguing for a greater and greater need to lower cholesterol (and put more people on statins).

Note: In 2008 to 2009, 12% of Americans over 40 reported taking a statin, whereas in 2018 to 2019, that figure increased to 35%,¹⁷ and Americans now spend approximately 25 billion annually on statins.¹⁸

In tandem, a cancel culture (reminiscent of what we saw with the COVID vaccines) has been created where anyone who challenges the use of Statins is immediately labeled as a “statin denier” accused of being a mass murderer, and effectively canceled. Here, dissident cardiologist Aseem Malhotra discusses the dirty parallels between these two industries with Joe Rogan:

As such, beyond doctors being forced to follow these guidelines, patients often are too. Ideological doctors will retaliate against patients who do not take statins (similar to how unvaccinated patients were reprehensibly denied essential medical care during COVID-19), employers sometimes require cholesterol numbers to meet a certain threshold for employment, and life insurance policies often penalize those with “unsafe” cholesterol numbers.

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Statin Injuries

This status quo is inexcusable as statins have a very high rate of injury. For example, the existing studies find between a 5% to 30% rate of injuries,¹⁹ and Dr. Malhotra, having gone through all the existing evidence estimates that 20% of statin users are injured by them.

Likewise, statins are well known for having a high percentage of patients discontinue the drugs due to their side effects (e.g., one large study found 44.7% of older adults discontinue the drugs within a year of starting them,²⁰ while another large study of adults of all ages found 47% discontinued within a year).²¹

Statins in turn, are linked to a large number of complications that have been well-characterized (e.g., mechanistically) and described throughout the medical literature.^22,^23,^24,^25,^26,^27,²⁸ One group of side effects are those perceived by the patient (which often make them want to stop using the medications). These include:

• A high incidence of muscle pain^29,^30,^31,^32,^33,^34,³⁵

• Fatigue^36,³⁷ especially with exertion and exercise³⁸

• Muscle inflammation (whose cause remains “unknown”)^39,⁴⁰

• Autoimmune muscle damage^41,^42,^43,⁴⁴

• Psychiatric and neurologic issues such as depression, confusion, aggression, and memory loss^45,^46,^47,^48,^49,^50,^51,^52,⁵³

• Severe irritability⁵⁴

• Sleep issues⁵⁵

• Musculoskeletal disorders and injuries^56,⁵⁷

• Sudden (sensorineural) hearing loss⁵⁸

• Gastrointestinal distress⁵⁹

The other group are those not overtly noticed by the patient. These include:

• Type 2 diabetes^60,^61,^62,^63,⁶⁴ particularly in women^65,^66,⁶⁷

• Cancer^68,^69,^70,⁷¹

• Liver dysfunction and failure^72,⁷³

• Cataracts^74,⁷⁵

• ALS-like conditions and other central motor disorders (e.g., Parkinson’s disease and cerebellar ataxia)^76,^77,^78,^79,⁸⁰

• Lupus-like syndrome⁸¹

• Susceptibility to herpes zoster (shingles)^82,^83,⁸⁴

• Interstitial cystitis⁸⁵

• Polymyalgia rheumatica⁸⁶

• Kidney injury^87,⁸⁸

• Renal failure⁸⁹

From the start, I noticed statin patients often reported numbness, muscle pain, or cognitive issues after starting these drugs, which resolved once they stopped. When this was brought up with their doctors, the response was often hostile, with doctors insisting statins couldn’t be the cause, (citing their own experience of never having seen this happen to a patient) or claiming the patient needed to continue the medication regardless to avoid a heart attack.

In turn, as the years went by, I saw increasingly elaborate excuses being created to protect the statins from an ever-increasing awareness of their dangers. A common one was the “nocebo effect” — the idea that negative expectations caused the reported symptoms. For example, I lost count of how many doctors I knew who cited this 2016 study⁹⁰ when patients stated they had been injured.

The nocebo effect is the opposite of the placebo effect. While the placebo effect occurs when a person experiences positive outcomes from a treatment because they believe it will help, the nocebo effect happens when negative outcomes arise simply because a person expects harm from a treatment, even if the treatment itself is harmless or ineffective.

This theory was used to dismiss patients’ experiences despite the fact that many were unaware of possible side effects until they occurred and then looked them up.

If you take this story and replace “statin” with COVID-19 vaccines, you will see it is essentially what everyone has experienced over the last four years (e.g., I lost count of how many times vaccine myocarditis was diagnosed as “anxiety”).

Note: Two adverse event reporting systems exist for adverse reactions to pharmaceuticals, MedWatch⁹¹ and FAERS.⁹² Like VAERS, they suffer from severe underreporting (it is estimated only 1% to 10% of adverse events are reported to them), but nonetheless, thousands of (ignored) reports can be found there of the common injuries which result from statins.⁹³

‘Cholesterol’ Plaques

Many medical beliefs emerge from the pharmaceutical marketing departments. For example, the widespread belief that depression is due to a “chemical imbalance” is actually false and never had any evidence supporting it.

Likewise, they made us believe heart disease results from fat clogging the arteries, much like it does for a drain pipe, as this metaphor is easy for everyone to visualize and immediately elicits a sense of disgust.

However, given that there is no link between cholesterol and heart disease, is it necessarily true? Malcolm Kendrick MD, in turn, discovered that the well-known risk factors for heart disease do not corroborate the standard model.⁹⁴ For example, to calculate the risk of heart disease, England combines the adjustable risks for heart disease (e.g., age) with the conditions commonly associated with causing heart disease.⁹⁵

Likewise, in a 2017 study, the records of 378,256 English patients were analyzed by an AI system to identify which characteristics were associated with the highest risk of a cardiovascular event over the next 10 years. The ten greatest risk factors (in order) were:⁹⁶

From this, Kendrick concluded that the common thread was that many of these (e.g., lupus or cortisol) are associated with damage to blood vessels and impaired microcirculation (a consequence of such damage) rather than with cholesterol.⁹⁷

Presently, cardiology believes cholesterol somehow gets into a blood vessel and then damages it (leaving an atherosclerotic plaque). Kendrick saw that a forgotten model (that the medical profession largely buried) provides a much better explanation of the causes of heart disease:

1.Blood vessels get damaged.

2.The body repairs the damage with cholesterol containing clots.

3.As clots heal, they are pulled inside the blood vessel wall, and a new layer of endothelium (blood vessel lining) grows over them.

4.As this occurs multiple times in the same area, the damage (plaques) under the blood vessel becomes more abnormal.

Some of the key points of evidence he uses to support this argument are:⁹⁸

• Most of the risk factors for heart disease overlap with things that would be expected to damage the blood vessel lining (endothelium).

• Plaques tend to form at arterial branch (junction) points, which are the parts of the artery that are subjected to the greatest shear stress.⁹⁹

• When you examine the components of a plaque, they are found to contain the same debris found in blood clots.^100,^101,¹⁰²

• There is no established mechanism for how cholesterol from the bloodstream can get under the endothelium. However, red blood cells (which play a key role in forming clots¹⁰³) contain a large amount of cholesterol (50% of the total amount in the bloodstream¹⁰⁴), and hence will bring it into clots that form.

• Plaques contain cholesterol crystals. These crystals can form only from free cholesterol,¹⁰⁵ which is present in red blood cells, but not from the “bad” cholesterol that circulates in the bloodstream (contained within lipoproteins). Likewise, much of the cholesterol found in atherosclerotic plaques is free cholesterol.¹⁰⁶

• The remnants of lipoproteins that are found in plaques are not cholesterol lipoproteins, but rather lipoprotein A, something the body uses to repair damage to the arterial walls.¹⁰⁷ This is supported by the fact elevated blood lipoprotein A levels are associated with increased lipoprotein remnants in plaques¹⁰⁸ and that the specific marker of lipoprotein A is found to concentrate in atherosclerotic plaques.¹⁰⁹

Lipoprotein A in turn is problematic because while it can patch and repair arterial damage, it also makes clots resistant to subsequent degradation, guaranteeing that they will eventually be pulled under the endothelium and transformed into an atherosclerotic plaque (which may in turn explain why elevated lipoprotein A levels are associated with a three-fold increase in the risk of a heart attack or stroke¹¹⁰).

In short, a strong case can be made that our entire heart disease model rests on a variety of correlations that were erroneously assumed to demonstrate causation. Sadly, while the “correlation is not causation” mantra is frequently used to dismiss anything that challenges the orthodoxy, you will frequently find overtly false correlations that support the medical industry’s bottom line being treated as unquestionable dogmas.

Note: One of the best examples is the widespread belief vaccines eliminated infectious disease, even though no correlation exists (whereas public sanitation directly correlates with the elimination of infectious diseases).

england and wales infectious disease deaths

The Causes and Treatments of Heart Disease

Kendrick’s model essentially argues the following:

• Most cardiovascular disease results from the blood vessel lining becoming damaged (due to the atherosclerotic lesions) and losing the ability to perform the normal functions (e.g., nitric oxide secretion) that allow it to protect the circulation.

• Inflammation and periods of prolonged and severe stress (e.g., from mental illness, cigarettes, or extreme social oppression) frequently damage the endothelium and hence contribute to heart disease.

• Heart attacks are due to blood clots (which frequently are a result of damaged endothelium) interrupting a critical blood supply to the heart.

Remarkably, most of Kendrick’s model is in complete agreement with the conventional cardiovascular disease paradigm, he just emphasizes stress and inflammation rather than cholesterol and prioritizes treating the functional impairments of the blood vessels (e.g., reduced nitric oxide synthesis).

Note: Kendrick argues the small benefits experienced from statins are likely due to the drugs also having anti-inflammatory effects¹¹¹ and increasing endothelial nitric oxide.¹¹²

Similarly, smoking is well recognized to cause heart disease because it damages the blood vessels (e.g., by creating plaques and impairing their ability to make nitric oxide¹¹³), but we rarely ask why or note that similar damage has been repeatedly demonstrated with fine particulates from coal mines,¹¹⁴ breathing air in crowded cities,¹¹⁵ cooking with a wood burning stove¹¹⁶ or being exposed to wildfire smoke.¹¹⁷

Likewise, lead is quite damaging to the endothelium,^118,¹¹⁹ rapidly enters the bloodstream once inhaled,¹²⁰ and a strong correlation exists between lead use in gasoline and heart disease in America.¹²¹

Note: It’s estimated that around 400,000 deaths each year in America are due to lead exposure¹²² and in a study of 868 men, it was observed that high levels of lead exposure (assessed by its presence in the bones) increased their risk of dying by over 700%,¹²³ particularly since lead returns to the bloodstream as aging bones break down.

Sadly, as you cannot sell drugs for any of these causes of heart disease, they rarely get mentioned, and instead almost all of the research and discussions on heart disease are directed at cholesterol.

Conclusion

Kendrick presciently argued that because of how much money has been invested in establishing the cholesterol hypothesis, the industry will never let it go. This, in short, accounts for why we continue to spend billions each on these drugs despite their benefit being almost nonexistent (e.g., unbiased research shows taking statins for five years, on average, only extends life by 3 to 4 days¹²⁴ — and only in men)¹²⁵ and their harms being common and immense.

Fortunately, we have at last reached a point where real progress is being made. For example, despite immense institutional pushback, MAHA recently updated the Federal Dietary Guidelines to at last correct the 50-year-mistake created by Key’s doctored data and acknowledge the importance of consuming healthy animal fats.

The insatiable greed which birthed the unconscionable COVID vaccines and their mandates has at last opened the public’s eyes to the marketing myths the pharmaceutical industry has bombarded us from birth with so we perpetually consume their products. Because of that, we at last have a once in a lifetime opportunity to correct many of these disastrous policies, and as MAHA’s recent revision of the food pyramid shows (which I never imagined would occur), change is actually happening.

Unfortunately, decades of other disastrous health policies also need to be fixed, and for that to happen, it is essential we bring awareness to each of them. I sincerely thank each of you for allowing me to share the truth about statins with you; so many people I know have been hurt by them, and with your help, we can at last end this.

Author’s Note: This is an abridged version of a longer article about the great cholesterol scam which goes into greater detail on the dangers of statins, the actual causes of heart disease, and the natural ways to safely heal the arterial system and prevent heart disease. That article and its additional references can be read here.

A Note from Dr. Mercola About the Author

A Midwestern Doctor (AMD) is a board-certified physician from the Midwest and a longtime reader of Mercola.com. I appreciate their exceptional insight on a wide range of topics and I’m grateful to share them. I also respect AMD’s desire to remain anonymous since AMD is still on the front lines treating patients. To find more of AMD’s work, be sure to check out The Forgotten Side of Medicine on Substack.

– Sources and References

¹ See all references

Posted in Blood Clots, Blood Pressure, Censorship, Cholesterol, Corruption, Heart, Kidney, Linoleic Acid, Oils, Statins, Vaccinations | No Comments »

Posted by: admin | Posted on: January 29, 2026

Cancer Is Affecting More Younger People, and Big Pharma’s Treatments Are Making It Worse

Reproduced from original article:
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2026/01/25/rising-cancer-rates-immune-health.aspx

Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola January 25, 2026

Story at-a-glance

In an interview with Tucker Carlson, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong discusses rising cancer rates while emphasizing shifts toward younger patients
Soon-Shiong explains COVID-19’s spike protein attaches to ACE2 receptors throughout the body, causing persistent inflammation that may contribute to various health issues, including cancer
Soon-Shiong criticizes Big Pharma’s influence over regulatory processes, arguing this creates barriers for innovative treatments while favoring incremental changes to existing profitable drugs
Natural killer cells require adequate sleep, sunlight exposure, and whole foods to function optimally, forming your body’s frontline defense against cancer cells
Boosting your immune system is key in fighting against cancer. In addition to optimizing sleep, minimizing seed oil intake and optimizing your vitamin D levels are important strategies

Why are cancer rates still increasing despite advances in medical technology and increased awareness of risk factors? This topic was deeply explored in an episode of Tucker Carlson’s podcast, featured above. In this interview, Carlson directed this eye-opening inquiry to his guest, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, a surgeon and a prominent businessman who also owns the Los Angeles Times.¹

Setting the stage for the rest of the interview, Carlson noted that massive campaigns about the dangers of smoking should have helped cancer rates drop. However, this wasn’t the case.

Soon-Shiong answers by focusing on the age of the people getting sick. He says the troubling part isn’t only the increasing rates, but a population shift toward younger patients. All this and more were discussed in the interview. I encourage you to listen to the entire conversation, as it reveals insights that your doctor won’t tell you, including Big Pharma’s machinations on oncology treatment.

Could COVID-19 Contribute to Rising Cancer Rates?

Carlson raises a question many people already wonder about but rarely discussed openly: He says there is widespread public speculation about whether the COVID-19 infection or mRNA shots relate to rising cancer rates, and he asks Soon-Shiong if there is a connection.

Soon-Shiong answers by placing COVID into a broader historical pattern. He says that certain viruses have long been linked to cancer, namely hepatitis with liver cancer, human papillomavirus (HPV) with cervical cancer, and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) with Kaposi sarcoma. The said viruses share key traits — they persist in the body, drive ongoing inflammation, and interfere with the body’s natural tumor-control systems. He explains that COVID-19 fits this same pattern more closely than most people realize.

• Why COVID-19 affects so many different organs — According to his analysis, the spike protein attaches wherever ACE2 receptors exist, which include blood vessels throughout your body. Soon-Shiong connects this to symptoms people report after getting the infection or the shot, including brain fog, gut problems, pancreatic issues, and heart trouble.

• The most serious concern is persistence — Research groups, including ones at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), have shown that parts of the virus remain in the body long after the initial illness, and that key immune defenders can go inactive.

When Carlson points out that billions of people were exposed, Soon-Shiong calls the situation “frightening” and says clearing the virus and stopping long-term inflammation is essential. He says persistence can last three to four years, and notes that chronic inflammation often causes no obvious symptoms, citing roughly 15 million Americans living with long COVID.

• Why Soon-Shiong never got infected — When asked if he ever got COVID-19, Soon-Shiong said that he didn’t. He credits this protection to a strong internal defense response rather than luck or isolation. Based on his own testing, his body already had a type of immune memory that recognized a core part of the virus. He says this response allowed the virus to clear quickly instead of settling in.

• Soon-Shiong took COVID-19 seriously before most people did — In early 2020, he had a conversation with California Governor Gavin Newsom, saying that COVID-19 was not just a respiratory illness but something far more dangerous. He says he shut down his organization and redirected everything toward COVID-19 research, treating it as a once-in-a-generation threat that demanded full focus.

• A core belief about protection — Clearing SARS-CoV-2 requires more than antibodies. Soon-Shiong says the only way to get better is through deeper immune optimization, and he criticizes the antibody-only mindset.

When Science Meets Strong Resistance

After discussing COVID-19, Carlson shifts the topic to the powers that be. Soon-Shiong notes that his work faced resistance from Big Pharma and the government, and that certain ideas were blocked not because they failed, but because they challenged accepted strategies.

Carlson also chimes in about public messaging, especially around COVID-19 mandates. He says people were told the shots would prevent transmission, and that claim shaped health policy and social pressure. Soon-Shiong responds saying that promise was not just wrong but also “knowingly untrue,” and he presents that statement as a turning point in the public eroding trust on institutions.

• Claims of direct interference — Soon-Shiong says he was offered a government role, declined it, and later learned of internal emails meant to block him from leadership at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He also says efforts to test his product as a booster were stopped without clear explanation, and that access to key lab materials was restricted.

• When oversight and money collide — The conversation turns to how drugs and treatments are reviewed in the United States. Specifically, Carlson asks why the same companies that sell drugs also fund the people who review them, leading the system to become biased.

Soon-Shiong agrees with Carlson’s concern and pushes it further. He says the problem worsens when this structure blocks new ideas from smaller companies. In his view, we have a system that favors familiar products and familiar players, while outsiders with different approaches struggle to get heard.

• An insight into the regulatory process — Large drug companies pay major “user fees” to regulators, and that money helps cover the salaries of reviewers. Soon-Shiong argues this setup rewards small tweaks to existing drugs rather than real breakthroughs, because safe, familiar changes move faster and protect existing revenue. For smaller biotech groups, he says, the same system creates delays and barriers that slow progress.

• Medical research in America is being left behind — Soon-Shiong warns that China is moving faster in biomedical innovation and says companies like AstraZeneca are investing there specifically “for innovation.” He calls for a serious revamp of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), with reviewers trained in modern science and open to new approaches. He frames this shift as a chance for a true reset — a period where patient outcomes matter more than profit.

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Simple Habits That Strengthen Your Immune Defense

Carlson and Soon-Shiong’s discussion then shifts into a more practical line of thinking, specifically how you can boost your immune system. With everything that’s going on, Soon-Shiong explains that everyday actions, rather than complex treatments, have a bigger impact on your health.

• The central role of your immune system against cancer — Soon-Shiong centers his response on a group of immune defenders he says are often ignored, such as NK cells, which are ancient parts of your immune system yet were only recognized by modern medicine in the 1970s. He describes them as a frontline defense that responds quickly when your body senses trouble, and he says supporting their activity matters more than most people realize.

• Why proper sleep is a vital foundation of immunity — Soon-Shiong explains that your NK cells recharge when you sleep, and without enough rest, that renewal never fully happens. He then talks about light exposure, explaining that certain types of light, including red light, stimulate immune activity. He ties this to why illness and low mood rise in winter, when people spend less time outdoors.

• Diet is the next pillar — Whole foods support your immune system, while toxins and additives in ultraprocessed foods push your body toward constant stress.

Soon-Shiong also emphasizes gut health, explaining that signals from your gut bacteria influence whether your immune system stays alert or becomes suppressed. To drive the point home, he shares the story of ulcers once being blamed on stress until H. pylori was identified, using it as an example of how rigid thinking delays real understanding.

The Part of Cancer Care Most Oncologists Miss

Soon-Shiong also challenges what doctors typically focus on when treating cancer. He suggests a simple thought experiment: Call a group of oncologists or primary care doctors and ask what they watch closely in a standard blood test. His point is not to shame doctors, but to show how habits shape treatment choices.

• Doctors are looking at the wrong things — Most clinicians zero in on anemia, platelets, and neutrophils, then prescribe drugs or transfusions to fix those numbers. Soon-Shiong argues that while these steps support the body during treatment, they do not cure cancer. He claims the cells that actually eliminate cancer are barely discussed on everyday oncology visits, even though they appear in the same blood test under a broad label that gets little attention.

• Many standard cancer treatments weaken the very defenses needed to prevent relapse — Chemotherapy, radiation, steroids, and even newer immune drugs suppress or damage key cancer-fighting cells, creating a “win the battle, lose the war” pattern. In Soon-Shiong’s view, this explains why tumors often return after an initial response.

Soon-Shiong likens the fight against cancer to a moving target, not a one-step fix. He says the practical challenge is like a chess game, where you expose what’s hiding, boost the cells that attack, and lower the forces that shut those attacks down at the right times. He also takes a shot at the way modern medicine is organized, claiming key fields are siloed and don’t talk to each other, which he says leads to missed connections and weaker strategy.

• Soon-Shiong’s own strategy — When Carlson asks what Soon-Shiong would do if diagnosed with cancer tomorrow, he outlines his personal approach. He says the goal is to expose hidden cancer cells without wiping out your defenses, activate and train your body’s killers at the same time, and shut down forces that block them.

He emphasizes outpatient care and less suffering, and he describes a future where a patient’s own blood cells are expanded, stored, and reused, comparing it to an “American Red Cross of cancer.”

Strategies to Boost Your Immune System

Based on Carlson and Soon-Shiong’s conversation, it’s clear that the immune system plays a central role in your body’s ability to defend against cancer. While Soon-Shiong makes great points, they weren’t discussed in-depth. That said, here are additional strategies that strengthen your immune function further:

1. Minimize seed oil intake — Not just because it’s inflammatory, but because of what it does to one of the most vital parts of your cells: cardiolipin. This specialized fat lives in your mitochondria and plays a key role in keeping those energy producers functioning properly. Cardiolipin stabilizes mitochondrial membranes, supports efficient energy production, and helps regulate mitophagy — the cleanup and recycling of damaged mitochondria.

But cardiolipin is vulnerable to oxidation. And linoleic acid (LA), a highly unstable omega-6 fat found in soybean, corn, cottonseed, and safflower oils, is especially prone to oxidative damage. When you eat too much LA, it gets incorporated into your cardiolipin, making your mitochondria fragile and dysfunctional. That means less energy, more inflammation, and faster aging at the cellular level.

Aim to keep your daily LA intake under 5 grams. If you can get it below 2 grams, you’re giving your mitochondria a serious upgrade. The Mercola Health Coach app, which will be available soon, includes a feature called the Seed Oil Sleuth. It makes tracking your LA intake easy — calculating it down to a tenth of a gram. For now, you can use food labels and trusted databases, but the app will streamline the process once it launches.

2. Minimize exposure to harmful chemicals — If you’re constantly microwaving your food in plastic, touching printed receipts, or working a job that exposes you to toxic chemicals, immune function becomes disrupted. That’s because these chemicals enter your bloodstream, so make sure to protect yourself properly. For in-depth tips, read “Insecticide Exposure Could Impair Mental Function in Older Adults.”

3. Spend time outdoors and optimize your sleep habits — If your job has you staying up late while being glued to screens the whole day, your immune system hasn’t been properly recharging and working.

Just like your everyday routines, your immune system also has a body clock, which resets when exposed to natural light. Also, try sleeping at the same time each night in a cool, completely dark room. Even missing an hour or two of sleep can already affect your defenses.

4. Don’t get any more COVID-19 boosters — You need to end further assault on your health. If you’ve already developed an adverse event due to these shots, the next section has some more strategies to help you recover.

Why This Interview Changed My Approach to Aging

This may be the most important interview I’ve ever had the opportunity to review. When I first heard Soon-Shiong, in early 2025, explain that oncologists routinely ignore Natural Killer cells — the very cells that eliminate threats — while standard treatments actively destroy them, everything clicked into place.

The foundation of aging isn’t any single disease. It’s immune decline. When your NK cells stop functioning optimally, senescent “zombie cells” accumulate, chronic inflammation rises, and tissue function deteriorates.

Solve that, and you address aging at its root. This insight consumed my research last year, and the result is what I call the NK Reset Formula — a patented, surface-engineered nanoliposome system designed to support NK cell function through targeted delivery.

The Key Difference: Quantity vs. Quality

Soon-Shiong’s approach through ImmunityBio focuses on increasing the number of NK cells. His FDA-approved drug Anktiva (N-803) is an IL-15 superagonist that rescues and proliferates NK cells in cancer patients. It’s a pharmaceutical intervention requiring hospital administration, and cell-based cancer immunotherapies typically cost $300,000 to $500,000 or more per patient — far beyond what most people can afford.

My approach is fundamentally different: Instead of adding more cells, I focused on improving the quality of the NK cells you already have. Here’s the problem — a healthy NK cell might eliminate 5 to 10 target cells before running out of metabolic capacity. After that, it enters functional exhaustion, essentially dying after a few hours of activity. Most of your NK cells never reach their full potential.

The NK Reset Formula uses surface-engineered nanoliposomes to deliver metabolic support directly to NK cells at the moment they need it most — when they’re engaging targets. The payload includes mitochondrial enhancers (PQQ, urolithin A, niacinamide) and cellular support compounds (quercetin, fisetin, curcumin, resveratrol), all with GRAS status.

The theoretical result: Instead of exhausting after 5 to 10 eliminations, each NK cell could theoretically continue functioning through what would normally be many generations of conventional NK cell lifespans. The studies still need to be done, but the mechanism is sound.

Supporting Your Body’s Natural Senescent Cell Clearance

Your body already has a system for eliminating senescent cells: NK cell surveillance. The problem is this system weakens with age, and most interventions aimed at senescent cells ignore the immune component entirely.

Small-molecule senolytics may trigger senescent cell death, but without adequate NK cell function, the debris causes secondary inflammation. The NK Reset Formula takes a different approach — supporting the immune cells responsible for natural senescent cell elimination, rather than trying to bypass them. This isn’t treating a disease. It’s maintaining the surveillance system your body uses to keep itself clean.

I expect the NK Reset Formula to be available by summer 2026, at a price point of a few hundred dollars — accessible to virtually anyone who wants to support their immune function and healthy aging. Compare that to cell-based immunotherapies costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, requiring hospital stays and intensive medical supervision.

The NK Reset Formula is targeted nutritional support you can take at home, and it’s comprehensively protected by patent, representing a fundamentally new approach to supporting immune function as we age.

Additional Tips for COVID-Related Side Effects

In closing, if you or a loved one is suffering from the effects of long COVID or getting the shot, the following strategies can help:

• Protocols that put recovery at the center — I recommend you go over the I-RECOVER program by the Independent Medical Alliance (IMA), formerly known as the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC). It contains in-depth instructions about treating long COVID² and post-vaccine injuries.³

• Minimize electromagnetic field (EMF) exposure — Research shows that everyday EMF sources, such as your Wi-Fi router “can disturb the homeostasis of free radicals leading to dysfunctions such as the ‘cellular stress response.'”⁴ For an extensive list of EMF reduction techniques, read “10 Studies Detail Health Risks of 5G.”

• Optimize your vitamin D levels — Research shows that vitamin D deficiency is linked to an increased risk of cancer.⁵ In a previous article, I also showed how vitamin D helps prevent respiratory infections, which includes COVID-19.

I recommend that you increase your vitamin D levels to a range between 60 nanograms per milliliter (ng/mL) for optimal health. The best way to achieve this is through sun exposure; however, it would be wise to do it properly, especially if you’ve been eating a diet high in seed oils.

When sunlight hits your skin, LA oxidizes, leading to inflammation and skin damage. To avoid this, avoid high-intensity sun exposure (mid-day sun) until you’ve lowered your LA intake for six months or more. For a deeper explanation regarding this complex interplay, read “The Fast-Track Path to Clearing Vegetable Oils from Your Skin.”

Frequently Asked Questions About Rising Cancer Rates and the Role of Your Immune System

Q: Why are cancer rates rising even though smoking rates are dropping?

A: According to Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, the biggest concern isn’t just higher cancer rates, but a shift toward younger people getting cancer, which traditional explanations don’t fully address.

Q: Is there a link between COVID-19 and rising cancer rates?

A: Soon-Shiong says COVID follows patterns seen in other cancer-linked viruses, including long-term persistence in the body, chronic inflammation, and weakened immune control that normally suppresses tumors.

Q: Why does COVID-19 affect so many different parts of the body?

A: He explains that the virus interacts with receptors found throughout blood vessels and organs, which helps explain lingering symptoms like brain fog, gut issues, heart problems, and pancreas-related concerns.

Q: Why does Dr. Soon-Shiong believe the immune system is overlooked in cancer care?

A: He argues doctors focus on blood markers that support treatment side effects, while often ignoring immune cells that actually destroy cancer, which explains frequent relapse after standard therapies.

Q: What everyday habits can strengthen immune defenses against cancer?

A: Proper sleep, regular sunlight exposure, whole foods, and reducing toxin exposure are daily habits that can strongly support immune strength and long-term health.

– Sources and References

Posted in Cancer, Coronavirus, Corruption, Immunity, Infection, Inflammation, Linoleic Acid | No Comments »

Posted by: admin | Posted on: December 20, 2025

A Breakthrough in Understanding Long COVID

Reproduced from original article:
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2025/12/20/microclots-long-covid.aspx

Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola December 20, 2025

Story at-a-glance

People with long COVID experience persistent fatigue, breathlessness, and brain fog. Research links these effects to fibrin microclots intertwined with neutrophil extracellular traps that obstruct microvessels and impair oxygen delivery
SARS-CoV-2 pushes blood into a hypercoagulable state, damaging endothelium, activating platelets, and inflammatory cytokines. This causes clot risk to persist for months, even after mild infections and hospital discharge
Long COVID essentially boils down to mitochondrial dysfunction. Management includes proteolytic enzymes to help clear spike protein, while the I-RECOVER protocol guides detoxification, inflammation control, and mitochondrial repair to restore overall function
Protecting cardiolipin, the mitochondrial membrane fat, requires limiting easily oxidized linoleic acid (LA) from seed oils, processed foods, nuts, seeds, and grain-fed meats
Methylene blue may enhance mitochondrial respiration at low doses. Additionally, correcting copper deficiency and lowering excess iron through blood donation support energy production

The COVID-19 pandemic has undoubtedly changed the course of countless lives. And for many of those who have contracted the disease, the effects can still be felt even if they’ve “officially” recovered.¹

Commonly known as long COVID, this side effect of the SARS-CoV-2 infection affects millions worldwide, and many struggle with symptoms for more than a year.² For a few years, researchers have been hitting dead ends as to what causes these long-term issues. Now, a new study has uncovered strong evidence that can answer their longstanding theories — microclots.³

New Research Deepens Understanding of Long COVID

In a study published in the Journal of Medical Virology, researchers set out to learn what makes long COVID so persistent. Trying a new angle, they focused on the blood itself, and found that those with long COVID carry abnormal microscopic structures. Specifically, fibrin microclots fused with immune cell debris.⁴

To perform the analysis, the team used advanced imaging to determine how the microclot structures form, what they contain, and how they differ from healthy blood. For the study population, they selected adults with long COVID who continued to struggle with problems such as exhaustion, shortness of breath, brain fog, dizziness, and chest tightness long after the initial infection had been resolved.

• There were stark differences in blood structure — According to the researchers, the test samples consistently showed larger, denser, and more complex microclot structures than those seen in healthy controls.

Digging deeper into the data, they discovered that the microclots were intertwined with neutrophil extracellular traps, or NETs. These are sticky webs of DNA and enzymes that neutrophils release when activated. NET-rich clots resist normal breakdown processes, which means your body winds up with lingering blockages at the microvascular level.

• The impact of NETs — The researchers reported major increases in several NETs markers — myeloperoxidase, neutrophil elastase, and circulating cell-free DNA — in the long COVID group. These are enzymes and DNA fragments that act like glue inside the clots. The more NET material the researchers found, the more microclots appeared, and the larger those clots became.

• Another noteworthy detail is the sheer density of the structures — Under fluorescence microscopy, the microclots in long COVID blood showed thick, tangled layers that looked compact and resistant to breakdown. Healthy controls also had microclots, but they were sparse and far less structured.

• How deeply embedded the NET components were within the clots — They were not lightly attached to the surface. Instead, DNA strands and neutrophil enzymes were woven through the interior of the fibrin structures. This is important because fibrin-based clots normally break down with the help of enzymes like plasmin.

When DNA and neutrophil proteins are interlaced throughout the clot, the breakdown process becomes inefficient and slow, which explains why long COVID lasts for months — or even years.

• Different markers also showed different strengths of association with microclot formation — For example, circulating DNA strongly paralleled microclot density, whereas some other markers rose but did not track as precisely with clot burden. It means future testing may rely on specific markers to help identify which biological processes are driving persistent symptoms. It also opens the door for individualized interventions.

• NETs act as scaffolding — When neutrophils eject their DNA and enzymes, they create long, sticky strands designed to trap pathogens. In long COVID, these strands latch onto fibrin — a protein involved in clotting — and build layered, tangled structures. Once formed, they float through the bloodstream, lodging in tiny vessels and creating micro-obstructions. The result is impaired microcirculation and reduced oxygen transfer.

• Another mechanism the researchers described involves the resistance of these clots to fibrinolysis — Because NET components stiffen and reinforce the fibrin structure, the body’s usual cleanup systems struggle to dissolve them. This leads to chronic retention of microclots, continued vascular stress, and prolonged symptoms.

• The amount of NET material increased directly alongside the amount of microclots — This means the immune and clotting systems are interacting in a loop, each one pushing the other. Over time, this loop drains your energy, stresses your cardiovascular system, and keeps inflammation alive long after the virus is gone.

You’re Already at Risk of Blood Clots Once You Get Infected

In an earlier study published in Hematology Reports, researchers reviewed evidence on how the SARS-CoV-2 virus can trigger dangerous clotting problems during the infection and long after someone tests negative. Their goal was to identify how the virus flips the body into a clot-forming state, why this risk lasts for months, and which biological events drive the damage.⁵

The researchers reviewed how both acute and long-term clotting problems interfere with blood flow, stress the cardiovascular system, and set the stage for health issues that perfectly match with the descriptions of long COVID.

• Rates of clotting complications — Deep-vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism increased dramatically among hospitalized COVID patients, and the researchers reported that many cases appeared even while patients received anticoagulant therapy designed to prevent clots.

• What happened after people left the hospital — Extended clotting risk showed up in multiple studies, with patients showing clot formation weeks to months after the initial infection had passed.

• A comparison of clot complications across different groups — The authors noted that those with preexisting cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, or advanced age were more likely to experience severe clotting events, but younger and previously healthy people were not exempt.

• SARS-CoV-2 creates imbalance between clot formation and clot breakdown — Under normal conditions, your body constantly forms tiny clots and dissolves them. But according to the researchers, COVID disrupts this balance by releasing clot-promoting chemicals, damaging vessel walls, and activating platelets at unusually high rates. Once this imbalance begins, your body forms clots faster than it dissolves them.

• Biological mechanisms that tie the processes together — The paper explains how the virus infects endothelial cells, which are the thin linings inside your blood vessels. When these cells are damaged, they release substances that encourage clotting, narrow the vessel opening, and attract platelets to the injury site.

The result is a chain reaction — damaged endothelium signals inflammation, inflammation triggers platelet activation, and activated platelets send more clotting signals.

• The immune system’s involvement — COVID-19 stimulates a wave of inflammatory cytokines, which are chemical messengers that tell the body to mount a defense. When these cytokines rise too high, your clotting system receives constant signals to activate. This is why some people feel as if their bodies never shut off even after the infection is gone. Their inflammatory and clotting pathways remain switched on, draining energy and straining the heart, lungs, and muscles.

• How platelet behavior changes during and after infection — Platelets are tiny cell fragments that help your blood clot when you’re injured. According to the researchers, the SARS-CoV-2 virus drives platelets into a highly activated state where they clump together more easily, interact abnormally with immune cells, and release clot-promoting substances.

That heightened reactivity does not always return to normal right away. If you have lingering symptoms, this platelet activation is part of the reason your blood flow feels impaired even when scans or standard tests look fine.

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Strategies to Help Manage Long COVID Better

At its core, long COVID is a matter of mitochondrial dysfunction. If these energy factories inside your cells don’t function at an optimal rate, your energy levels will ultimately be affected. If you know someone who is suffering from this condition, these strategies can help:

1. Proteolytic enzymes — Whenever I encounter someone who is experiencing long COVID symptoms, one of the first things I tell them is to take proteolytic enzymes, which help clear residual spike protein from the body. Nattokinase, lumbrokinase, and serrapeptase are among the best-studied enzymes for this purpose. They help dismantle remaining spike fragments, ease inflammation and give the brain and tissues space to recover.

Lumbrokinase is significantly more potent — roughly 30 times stronger than nattokinase and about 300 times stronger than serrapeptase — so, it’s typically my preferred choice. These enzymes are best taken on an empty stomach, at least an hour before, or two hours after, consuming protein. If taken with food, they will be diverted into digesting your meal instead of clearing problematic proteins from the bloodstream.

2. Follow the I-RECOVER protocol — The Independent Medical Alliance (IMA), previously known as the FLCCC, offers a detailed plan called the I-RECOVER protocol. It’s one of the most thorough guides available for addressing post-vaccine and post-infection complications. It outlines strategies for detoxification, calming inflammation, and restoring mitochondrial function — all foundational steps for improving health after COVID-related injuries.

3. Reduce intake of linoleic acid (LA) — Your mitochondria rely on a unique lipid called cardiolipin,⁶ which is located within the inner membrane structures (cristae) where energy is produced. The quality and stability of cardiolipin are influenced by the fats in your diet. This is more important than most people realize, as the wrong dietary fats distort cristae structure and hinder energy production.

Cardiolipin also acts as an internal safety system, signaling damaged cells to initiate apoptosis by activating caspase-3. When cardiolipin becomes oxidized, especially from excess LA consumption, it loses this ability. Without proper signaling, dysfunctional cells persist and may eventually become cancerous.

LA is found in excess in vegetable oils (which are used heavily in ultraprocessed and restaurant foods), condiments, nuts and seeds, adulterated olive and avocado oils, and animal products from grain-fed livestock such as conventional chicken and pork. That said, I recommend you to download my Mercola Health Coach app once it’s available. It has a feature called the Seed Oil Sleuth, which monitors your LA intake to a tenth of a gram.

4. Methylene blue — This solution can be very effective for the exhaustion and neurological challenges that linger after COVID infection or getting the shot. It functions as an electron carrier, essentially acting like a rechargeable energy source. Unlike many compounds that perform a similar role, it does not promote harmful oxidative reactions.

When mitochondrial respiration or oxygen utilization is impaired, methylene blue can reroute electron flow, restoring energy production even when normal pathways are blocked. It can also compensate for reduced blood flow by improving mitochondrial efficiency when tissues aren’t receiving enough oxygenated hemoglobin.

Its benefits extend beyond the time it remains in the body — methylene blue induces biochemical changes that enhance oxygen-processing pathways and may even promote the formation of new mitochondria over time.

Dosing is hermetic. Low amounts provide benefits that high amounts can negate. Most experts recommend relatively high doses for longer-term treatments, such as 0.5 milligram (mg) to 1 mg per kilogram of body weight for cognitive support. For a person weighing 150 pounds, that would be a dose of 34 to 68 milligrams. I believe this is excessive and unnecessary.

Doses of more than 3 to 5 milligrams are likely never needed unless you are undergoing treatment for a life-threatening condition such as carbon monoxide or cyanide poisoning.

The average dose for most adults that reduces or eliminates reductive stress is only 5 mg, once a day, regardless of weight. It has a half-life of over twelve hours and will gradually build up if you take it every day, so higher doses are not needed. Only use pharmaceutical-grade methylene blue in capsule or tablet form, as industrial and chemical varieties frequently contain contaminants like heavy metals. Taking it with vitamin C can enhance absorption.

To learn more, read “The Surprising Health Benefits of Methylene Blue.” It features an interview with methylene blue expert Francisco Gonzalez-Lima, Ph.D., who has spent many years studying this drug.

5. Check your iron levels — Excess iron is another major disruptor of mitochondrial function, and many people — aside from menstruating women or individuals with significant blood loss — tend to accumulate too much. In contrast, copper deficiency is widespread.

Iron and copper need to be in balance because they depend on each other for proper metabolism. Low ferritin does not necessarily mean you are low in iron. More often, it reflects inadequate copper, which is required to recycle iron efficiently. Copper is also essential for mitochondrial energy production, detoxification, and overall metabolic health.⁷ You can learn more about this in “The Poorly-Understood Role of Copper in Anemia.”

You can increase copper by supplementing with 4 to 10 mg of copper bisglycinate daily or by consuming copper-rich foods like bee pollen, grass fed beef liver, and acerola cherry (which contains the copper-dense enzyme tyrosinase).

To reduce excess iron, routine blood donation is a simple and effective method. This usually involves donating two to four times annually, or removing smaller amounts monthly (shown below) if large donations aren’t well-tolerated. If you have severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or congestive heart failure, consult a physician first. But most people can safely follow this recommendation to maintain healthier iron levels.

Men	Postmenopausal women	Premenopausal women
150 ml	100 ml	50 ml

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) About Microclots in Long COVID Blood

Q: What is the main biological cause recently identified behind long COVID symptoms?

A: Research shows that long COVID is strongly linked to fibrin microclots mixed with immune cell debris, especially neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs). These dense, abnormal clots restrict microcirculation and reduce oxygen delivery, driving fatigue, breathlessness, brain fog, and other persistent symptoms.

Q: How do NETs make long COVID microclots harder for the body to clear?

A: NETs form sticky webs of DNA and enzymes that bind to fibrin, creating thick, compact clots that resist normal breakdown. Because the body struggles to dissolve them, these microclots accumulate, prolonging vascular stress and maintaining symptoms for months or years.

Q: Does COVID increase clotting risk even after mild illness or recovery?

A: Yes. Evidence shows that even mild cases trigger inflammation, endothelial injury, and hypercoagulation, causing clotting risks that persist long after testing negative. Many people continue developing clots weeks to months after infection, which explains post-recovery chest tightness, fatigue, and shortness of breath.

Q: Is long COVID rooted in mitochondrial dysfunction?

A: Long COVID disrupts mitochondria through microvascular blockages, inflammation, and oxidative stress. This energy deficit explains fatigue, post-exertional crashes, and slow recovery, and supports treatments focused on restoring mitochondrial function.

Q: What strategies can help improve long COVID?

A: Commonly recommended approaches include proteolytic enzymes to clear residual proteins, the I-RECOVER protocol, reducing linoleic acid intake to optimize mitochondrial health, using pharmaceutical-grade methylene blue, and balancing iron and copper levels through diet or blood donation.

– Sources and References

Posted in Blood Clots, Coronavirus, Corruption, Immunity, Inflammation, Linoleic Acid, Metabolism, Methylene Blue | No Comments »

Posted by: admin | Posted on: November 8, 2025

Your prescription drugs may be contaminated: 580,000 bottles recalled

Reproduced from original article:
https://www.naturalhealth365.com/your-prescription-drugs-may-be-contaminated-580000-bottles-recalled.html

by: Stephanie Woods | November 6, 2025

(NaturalHealth365) The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has recalled over 580,000 bottles of prazosin hydrochloride – a widely prescribed blood pressure medication – after testing revealed contamination with N-nitroso Prazosin impurity C, a potentially cancer-causing nitrosamine compound exceeding acceptable safety limits.

New Jersey-based Teva Pharmaceuticals and drug distributor Amerisource Health Services initiated voluntary nationwide recalls in October 2025 affecting 1 mg, 2 mg, and 5 mg capsules. The FDA classified this as a Class II recall, meaning the contaminated medication “may cause temporary or medically reversible adverse health consequences,” though the probability of serious harm is considered remote.

According to the FDA’s enforcement report (available at FDA.gov), nitrosamines are potentially cancer-causing chemicals that can form during drug manufacturing or storage. Long-term exposure may increase the risk of liver, stomach, and lung cancers.

A pattern of pharmaceutical contamination

This recall follows another high-profile medication safety alert just days earlier, when Ascend Laboratories pulled over 140,000 bottles of atorvastatin (generic Lipitor) due to improper tablet dissolution. These back-to-back incidents expose a troubling pattern: nitrosamine contamination has triggered massive recalls of valsartan, losartan, metformin, ranitidine, and varenicline (Chantix) since 2018.

The timing couldn’t be worse. America is the world’s largest pharmaceutical market, and prescription drug dependence has reached unprecedented levels. According to recent data, 61% of Americans currently take at least one prescription medication, 27% take four or more, and nearly 90% of adults over 65 regularly use prescription drugs. The U.S. consumes 8% of the world’s prescription drugs despite representing just 4% of the global population.

With 6.7 billion total prescriptions dispensed across the U.S. in 2022 and Americans spending more per capita on prescription drugs than any other country, the stakes for pharmaceutical safety have never been higher. When manufacturing quality controls fail, hundreds of millions of people face potential exposure to carcinogenic contaminants.

The hidden nitrosamine threat beyond medications

While pharmaceutical contamination makes headlines, most Americans remain unaware of pervasive nitrosamine exposure from unexpected everyday sources.

Processed and cured meats contain high nitrosamine levels. Bacon, hot dogs, deli meats, and sausages treated with nitrite preservatives form nitrosamines during cooking – especially when fried at high temperatures. The crispy, well-done edges contain the highest concentrations.

Drinking water harbors nitrosamine contamination. When water treatment facilities use chloramine disinfection, nitrosamines form as byproducts when chloramine reacts with organic matter. The predominant compound formed is N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA), classified as probably carcinogenic to humans.

Cosmetics and personal care products were major sources. Until recent regulations, over 40% of tested cosmetics, shampoos, and lotions contained N-nitrosodiethanolamine at concentrations up to 260 mg/kg. While banned in the EU, contamination remains a concern in products from unregulated markets.

Tobacco smoke delivers concentrated nitrosamine exposure. Cigarettes and smokeless tobacco contain tobacco-specific nitrosamines classified as carcinogenic to humans. Secondhand and thirdhand smoke (residue on surfaces) also expose non-smokers.

Simple steps to reduce your cancer risk naturally

Eliminate processed meats entirely. No amount is safe. Replace with organic, unprocessed proteins like wild-caught fish, 100% grass-fed beef, and pasture-raised poultry.

Install quality water filtration. Reverse osmosis or activated carbon filters remove nitrosamines from drinking water. Don’t rely solely on municipal treatment.

Choose clean personal care products. Use EWG’s Skin Deep database to verify products are free from nitrosamine precursors. Avoid products containing DEA, TEA, or other ethanolamines.

Support liver detoxification. Your liver processes nitrosamines through specific pathways. Optimize function with milk thistle, N-acetyl cysteine, glutathione, and organic cruciferous vegetables rich in sulforaphane.

Consume protective compounds. Vitamin C blocks nitrosamine formation in the stomach. Green tea polyphenols, resveratrol, and curcumin provide additional protection against DNA damage from nitrosamine exposure.

Address chronic inflammation. Nitrosamines cause cancer partly through oxidative stress and inflammation. Anti-inflammatory diets emphasizing omega-3 fatty acids, antioxidants, and organic whole foods reduce susceptibility to carcinogenic damage.

The complete cancer defense strategy Western medicine ignores

Nitrosamine exposure from contaminated drugs, processed foods, water, cosmetics, and air represents just one category of cancer-causing threats most people face daily.

Discover how to detect cancer cells before they become life-threatening and which hidden infections dramatically increase cancer risk. Learn which “healthy” foods actually feed cancer growth and access vitamin C therapy protocols with 30+ years of clinical experience. Understand emotional and energetic cancer triggers; the liver-cancer connection; and natural protocols to successfully eliminate cancer cells from your body.

Sources for this article include:

FDA.gov
FDA.gov
6abc.com
FDA.gov
NIH.gov
CDC.gov
Singlecare.com

Posted in Cancer, Corruption, Food, Liver, Prescription Medication, Processed Food, Smoking, Vitamins | No Comments »

Posted by: admin | Posted on: July 29, 2025

FDA Approves Fake Salmon Without Independent Safety Testing

Reproduced from original article:
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2025/07/29/lab-grown-salmon-fda-approval.aspx

Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola July 29, 2025

Story at-a-glance

The FDA approved lab-grown salmon from Wildtype based solely on the company’s internal safety claims — no third-party testing, animal trials, or public review were ever required
This lab-cultivated fish is already being served in upscale restaurants, with plans to expand, even though Wildtype’s production methods and additives remain largely undisclosed
Wildtype used the GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) loophole, a process originally meant for well-known food ingredients, to bypass standard food safety requirements
The pink coloring, antibacterial agents, and cell growth promoters like FGF2 used in this lab salmon are all proprietary — meaning you have no idea what you’re actually eating
Despite marketing claims about sustainability, lab-grown meats have up to 25 times the global warming potential of beef and increase your risk of inflammation and depression

When you eat at a high-end, award-winning restaurant, it’s just normal to expect a top-notch meal made from the freshest, highest-quality ingredients you can get on the planet. So imagine sitting down and enjoying a beautiful piece of fish or sushi — only to find out that it was grown in a steel vat from lab-cultured fish cells.

Sound like science fiction? It’s not. In fact, it’s already happening, especially now that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved lab-cultivated salmon to be sold to the public.

Most people assume that when a new food hits the market, it’s been rigorously tested, verified by independent scientists, and approved through transparent, public processes. But when it comes to this fake salmon, the truth is far more unsettling.

A Startup’s Lab-Grown Salmon Has Received the FDA’s Stamp on Approval

Wildtype, a San Francisco-based ag-tech startup has recently received approval from the FDA to market its lab-grown salmon to the public. The company, which is backed by prominent industry giants like Bezos Expeditions, Cargill, and even actor Leonardo DiCaprio, is now the fourth company that received the FDA’s approval to sell lab-cultivated meats.¹

• Fake salmon is coming soon to your favorite restaurants — Although Wildtype’s lab-grown, sushi-grade fish is now being sold in Kann, a restaurant in Portland, Oregon, the company plans to expand soon and will be rolling out this product in four more restaurants, the Children’s Health Defense (CHD) reports. Afterward, Wildtype will launch the lab-grown seafood in food service.

• The FDA is the final (and only) authority for approving cultivated seafood — Unlike other lab-grown meats like chicken, beef, or pork, which need to be approved for sale by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), cultivated seafood manufacturers like Wildtype only need to get the FDA’s approval before they can put their products on the market.²

• There’s a glaring issue with this approval — The product’s safety data was entirely generated in-house by the manufacturer. Rather than relying on third-party science or long-term studies, the FDA accepted the company’s own assessment that their cultivated salmon is “as safe as comparable foods.”

The FDA Green-Lights Fake Salmon, No Questions Asked

Wildtype started its research and development into lab-grown salmon in 2018. According to CEO Justin Kolbeck, his team took cells from a real salmon and experimented with different methods to “feed” them while maintaining a “healthy growing state.” The process was challenging, since little research has been conducted on fish cell culture.³

“Instead of creating a genetically modified yeast organism to create leghemoglobin — which is this iron-tasting substance that they add to plant-based ingredients — we’re actually growing the animal cells themselves,” Kolbeck said in an interview with Technology Networks.

“[W]e needed to come up with a mix of vitamins and minerals, carbohydrates, proteins and fats in a cell feed that was tuned to these fish cells, which was no trivial matter.”⁴

• Apparently, this was enough for the FDA to deem the product safe for consumers — In a response letter released in May, the agency said it had no health and safety concerns about the company’s process, stating:

“Based on the data and information presented […] we have no questions at this time about Wildtype’s conclusion that foods comprising or containing cultured coho salmon cell material resulting from the production process […] are as safe as comparable foods produced by other methods.”⁵

• Wildtype used a common loophole to win the FDA’s approval — According to the CHD, the FDA allowed the company’s claims that the additives used don’t need further testing because they fall under the agency’s “Generally Recognized as Safe” process. However, these were originally intended for products whose safety has been established through “a substantial history of consumption for food use by a significant number of consumers.”⁶

• The GRAS exception was not designed to be used like this — Products that carry GRAS, need to be backed by years of safety data. But in this case, it’s based on the manufacturer’s word — nothing more. Jaydee Hanson, policy director for the Center for Food Safety (CFS) and expert in synthetic biology, found this “outrageous.”

“The FDA is negligent, I would say, in allowing a company to use the self-approved generally recognized as safe method. And then the FDA should have developed its own new guidelines for how to test this new food,” he said.

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What’s in Lab-Grown Salmon? No One Knows

To make their fake salmon product, Wildtype takes cultured cells from a living coho salmon and then cultivates them in custom-designed steel vats, similar to what is used for making beer or yogurt. According to CHD, this type of process — replicating cultured cells — is similar to what Big Pharma does to test drugs.⁷

In this particular product, however, experts are expressing concern regarding the lack of transparency during the production and approval process. And unlike many Pharma products that undergo clinical trials before being released, this salmon skipped nearly all of those layers of scrutiny.

• The cultured cells are fed with a “proprietary cell nutrient blend” — What ingredients are added to this blend is a mystery and is something only the company’s team knows.

• The salmon itself is also made from undisclosed ingredients and water — After being harvested, the cells are placed on plant-based scaffolds. These help to replicate the look and texture of salmon. Afterward, the product is rinsed, processed, and packaged.

• Where does the pink color come from? This is another unknown. In nature, the pink hue comes from crustaceans in the salmon’s diet. But with Wildtype’s product, the coloring agent used is not divulged, and neither is the antibacterial agent that the company uses to keep the cells healthy.

• Another red flag — Wildtype uses fibroblast growth factor-2 — FGF2 is a synthetic protein used to accelerate cell division and create the salmon tissue. While the company claims it rinses the compound off before the fish is packaged, there’s no published data proving how much remains, or what happens if you eat trace amounts over time. Hanson expresses his concerns that this ability to make cells grow rapidly could promote cancerous cell behavior in humans.

Fake Salmon Is Another Attempt to Control the Food Supply

At face value, fake meat sounds like the perfect solution to end world hunger, protect animal welfare and save the planet from environmental destruction. But when you look more closely, you’ll notice that there’s a disturbing factor about this trend, and it all boils down to the desire to control our food supply.

• Globalists are working to replace animal husbandry with lab-grown meat — By allowing patented fake meat products to saturate the market, private companies will effectively control the entire food supply, and ultimately people’s health.

• Marketing claims say that lab-grown meats are “saving the planet,” when in fact, they are jeopardizing the environment — Manufacturers claim that lab-grown meats are more environmentally friendly than typical meat production that require land, water, and fossil fuels.

However, researchers from the University of California, Davis studied this closely and assessed that the energy needed and greenhouse gases emitted by lab-grown meat has a global warming potential that is four to 25 times greater than for beef.⁸ Regenerative farmer Will Harris also raises this point in an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, saying:

“We are sequestering 3.5 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent for every pound of grass fed beef we sell. Ironically, the same environmental engineers did an analysis on Impossible Burgers. They’re emitting 3.5 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent.”⁹

• Grass fed meats have a lower carbon footprint than lab-grown meats — The carbon footprint of beef from Harris’ regenerative farm, White Oak Pastures, is actually 111% lower than conventional CAFO beef. This is because the system “effectively captures soil carbon, offsetting a majority of the emissions related to beef production.”¹⁰

If the goal was to safeguard the environment (in Wildtype’s case, protect the oceans), combat climate change, and optimize food production and human nutrition, then transitioning to biodynamic farming methods would be the obvious solution. Instead, it’s made out to be the enemy of the planet and mankind. I recommend reading “Fake Meat Dangers with Dr. Joseph Mercola” for more insights into this topic.

There’s Nothing Healthy About Fake Meat

Lab-grown meats are promoted to be healthier than real meat, but the truth is that these are an ultraprocessed conglomeration of chemicals, made by pulling protein from soy, mixing it with other processed concentrates, and then using high-tech genetic engineering to create a “Frankenmeat” of sorts.

• Lab-grown meats expose you to glyphosate — The GE soy used in these products is often contaminated with the herbicide glyphosate. According to an independent testing commissioned by the consumer advocacy group Moms Across America (MAA), the total result of glyphosate and AMPA (the main metabolite of glyphosate) in the Impossible Burger is 11.3 parts per billion (ppb); in the Beyond Burger, it’s 1 ppb.¹¹

• Fake meats are loaded with the absolute worst type of fats possible — Polyunsaturated fats (PUFs) high in linoleic acid (LA), and/or monounsaturated fats (MUFs) high in oleic acid are often found in these products. Case in point — A half-pound serving of organic grass fed beef gives you less than half a gram (500 mg) of LA, but a serving of an Impossible Burger or Beyond Meat burger, has 10 to 20 times that amount.¹²

• Fake meat has been linked to a higher risk of inflammation and depression — A recent study showed that people who ate plant-based meats had worse mental health compared to those who did not eat this fake food, and have a significantly higher risk of depression. They also exhibited signs of systemic inflammation, which increases the risk of heart disease.

You can read more about the health dangers of fake meat in my article, “Eating Fake Meat Raises Your Risk of Depression and Inflammation.” The bottom line is that while fake meat and seafood like Wildtype’s lab-grown salmon can replicate the appearance, texture, and flavor of real food, there’s absolutely no way any of these will be healthier, better, or even equal to the real thing.

Protect Yourself from Unregulated Lab-Grown Foods

Let’s face it — No sane person would be willing to be part of an untested food experiment. But when government agencies hand over the reins to companies and approve food products without sufficient safety measures in place, then you need to take matters into your own hands. Here’s how to stay ahead of the curve, so you’ll be able to make informed food choices to protect your health:

• Prioritize whole, wild, or pasture-raised foods — If you’re unsure where your fish or meat comes from, don’t buy it. Choose wild-caught fish like Alaskan salmon or other seafood from trusted small fisheries. When it comes to land animals, stick to pasture-raised, grass fed sources from regenerative farms. These foods not only nourish your body but also help keep you away from synthetic or genetically engineered alternatives.

• Be cautious of products that use buzzwords without transparency — “Sushi-grade,” “sustainable,” and even “plant-based” are now being hijacked by companies looking to mask what they’re really selling. If you’re reading a menu or a label and it doesn’t clearly state the source — or if it sounds vague or trendy — assume it’s not something you want in your body.

• Support local producers and transparent food brands — If you value knowing what’s in your food, now’s the time to build a relationship with your local farms, co-ops, and small producers. Look for businesses that publish their testing data, list all ingredients without hiding behind “proprietary blend” language, and tell you exactly how their products are made. These are the companies that still respect you as a consumer.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) About Lab-Grown Salmon

Q: What is lab-grown salmon and how is it made?

A: Lab-grown salmon is made by culturing fish cells in steel tanks using a proprietary nutrient blend. The cells are fed, multiplied, and placed on plant-based scaffolds to mimic the texture and appearance of real salmon — without using a whole fish.

Q: Did the FDA independently verify the safety of Wildtype’s salmon?

A: No. The FDA approved Wildtype’s lab-grown salmon based solely on the company’s internal safety data. There were no independent studies, animal trials, or public reviews conducted before granting approval.

Q: What concerns have experts raised about this approval process?

A: Experts are alarmed that the product was approved through the “Generally Recognized as Safe” (GRAS) loophole, which relies on the manufacturer’s word. There’s also no transparency about the ingredients used to feed the cells, color the fish, or prevent bacterial contamination.

Q: Is lab-grown salmon better for the environment than traditional seafood?

A: Despite marketing claims, a University of California, Davis study found lab-grown meat has a global warming potential four to 25 times higher than beef. Regenerative farms, by contrast, often reduce net carbon emissions.

Q: How can I avoid unregulated lab-grown foods?

A: Choose whole, wild-caught seafood and pasture-raised meat from trusted sources. Avoid vague labeling, support local farmers, and stay away from products that hide ingredients behind “proprietary” language.

– Sources and References

Posted in Corruption, FDA, Food | No Comments »

Posted by: admin | Posted on: July 28, 2025

Big Pharma Isn’t in the Business of Saving Lives

Reproduced from original article:
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2025/07/27/big-pharma-isnt-in-the-business-of-saving-lives.aspx

Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola July 27, 2025

Story at-a-glance

Big Pharma prioritizes financial gain over saving lives, discontinuing unprofitable medicines even when patients desperately need them, causing preventable deaths worldwide
Pharmaceutical companies artificially create scarcity by withdrawing established medicines, then reintroducing them at higher prices to maximize profits and control markets
Despite regulations, pharmaceutical companies consistently overpower governments in negotiations, setting arbitrary prices that citizens and health care systems cannot afford or challenge
Critical medications for cancer, allergies, and rare diseases become unavailable due to supply manipulation, forcing doctors to ration treatments using wartime triage methods
To avoid pharmaceutical dependency, focus on optimizing natural health through avoiding processed oils, improving gut health, reducing toxin exposure, and enhancing detoxification

Medicine is supposed to save lives, but this isn’t even the focus of Big Pharma. Instead, it’s in the business of making money. This is what the documentary “Big Pharma — How Profits Kill Patients” by ENDEVR shows.¹

One of the primary themes highlighted in this film is the shortage of medications worldwide. According to the narrator, “Today, there are stock shortages of medicine even in rich countries.” As seen in the COVID-19 pandemic, hospitals experienced shortages in medicine, equipment, and other items medical professionals need to treat patients.

Even worse, this is still happening today — Patients are dying because they’re not getting the medicine they need. The reason? Big Pharma discontinued their production because they’re “unprofitable.”

What Happens When a Drug Stops Making Money?

As noted by the narrator, “health is an international business.” Hospitals around the world rely on medical devices and medicines to help treat patients. However, supply issues are now a prominent problem.

• Medicines are now getting harder to come by — Yannis Natsis, a policy manager at European Public Health Alliance, said that despite the massive profits of Big Pharma, shortages are occurring:

“In the past, it was only a problem that had to do with southern Europe or Eastern Europe and now, it touches upon even the richest and wealthiest EU member states in the west. And this is why this issue has gained a bit more prominence.”

• Big Pharma always wins — While being bound by laws, drug manufacturers always seem to have an upper hand on governments and doctors because they’re too important. As one expert noted, “In the arm wrestling between the pharmaceutical industry and governments, the pharmaceutical industry invariably wins.”

• Priorities are always on the moneymakers — In Mexico, 1,600 have died due to medicine shortages. Yet, Viagra is always available, demonstrating how Big Pharma values its different consumer groups.

• Digging deeper into the supply issue — Globalization has allowed health institutions to purchase medicines from around the world, but this is causing pressure among buyers when faced with shortages. As one hospital pharmacist explains:

“We’ve stopped being supplied with numerous molecules and medicines. This concerns 69 products at the moment and we’ve been faced with 17 new ones over the last three weeks. If I take a list of molecules today, we have shortages of completely classic medicines.”

The Economics Behind Medicines

Competition within Big Pharma is fierce. Whenever a new drug is produced, governments allow the manufacturer special privileges to maintain profitability.

• Patents are held for a long time — The documentary explains how manufacturers control the prices once a new drug enters the market:

“The profitability of a drug evolves with time. At the beginning, the medication is protected by a patent. A high price is accorded to the maker who has the monopoly on sales for 10 to 20 years. This is the most profitable period when the price and volume of sales are at their highest. When the patent expires, the drug can be copied in generic form. It therefore becomes less profitable due to the reduction in price and the competition.”

• Big Pharma manipulates the market — Despite knowing the importance of certain medicines, Big Pharma willingly removes them to create scarcity. Natsis explains:

“We see a lot of products, a lot of medicines, which have been widely used. And long-established medicines being withdrawn from the market only to be reintroduced to the market with higher prices, for instance. Or, there is a push to say that ‘if you don’t want to have shortages then you need to pay the highest.'”

• Another example of Big Pharma’s lack of cooperation — In another interview, a teenager explains that she has allergies and needs an epinephrine pen to keep the symptoms at bay. However, ALK, the manufacturer that makes them, has discontinued production, despite hundreds of thousands relying on this life-saving drug:

“ALK laboratory produces them for 500,000 clients around the world. But in 2017, it stopped selling auto injectors in Spain. It refused a government-imposed price drop. For patients the product became difficult to obtain.”

• Big Pharma doesn’t want to be controlled — While manufacturers set the price, governments also do their best to lower it to ensure all citizens have immediate access. However, as the vice president for the epinephrine manufacturer justifies:

“When we launched the product, it was €34 back in 2011 in Spain. Then, there was a price decrease or a few, but at least it ended on €27. And then there was the last imposed price decrease in 2018, getting it down to less than €24. That was the last draw for me.

The €24 would be, by far, the lowest price in Europe, and this comes back to my point that in essence, you could say the one who pays the lowest price, eventually, it will be the price for everyone. This would kill then the entire business force. And this was why I said, ‘Sorry, dear Spanish government. We cannot honor this anymore. It’s impossible for us the price was already too low.’ We need to say, ‘no thank you.'”

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What Happens When Cancer Patients Can’t Get Treatment?

Bladder cancer affects tens of thousands of people worldwide, and they rely on certain medications to maintain their condition. One example is BCG-Medac. In France, however, it’s been in shortage for several years because, as you can guess, it’s not as profitable as other medicines.

• Cancer medication supply is being controlled — BCG-Medac “is experiencing severe supply difficulties,” explains a hospital pharmacist interviewed in the documentary.

• A quota system develops — According to the documentary, supply shortages give rise to a medical quota system. Here, medicines in short supply are only given to priority patients, making them unavailable to people who are also just as deserving in receiving treatment.

• Other labs are not interested in saving lives — A French patient explains that he needs BCG-Medac for his bladder cancer. However, his urologist told him that there are no treatments available:

“Since 2020, only the German laboratory Medac sells this treatment in France but it does not have the capacity to fill hospital demand. And none of the large laboratories are interested in this old medication resulting from a vaccine invented more than a century ago. The famous BCG [vaccine] given to children against tuberculosis.”

• Triage is now commonplace — The practice of prioritizing which patients to treat comes from wartime experiences. To distribute BCG-Medac, a French professor was forced to apply a triage scheme:

“It’s always difficult to tell a patient they can’t have access to treatment. But if this has to be the case, it’s better that medical reasons be used to select or — to use a word that mustn’t be abused — sort patients. By which I mean in terms of gravity of the illness.

It was above all to ensure equity of medical access across the country, so that a patient in a remote region wouldn’t have less chance of access to treatment than somebody in a large city. It was also to make sure there was no financial influence, that a wealthy patient would not have more chance of receiving treatment.”

How Are Drug Prices Set?

In an effort to keep medicines in stock, as well as prices down, governments are always meeting with representatives of Big Pharma to find a middle ground. The documentary explains how this process works in France:

• A committee is formed — Representatives from the government and drug manufacturers discuss via committees. Philippe Bouyoux, president of the Economic Committee for Health Products, explains that “for every medicine, we examine the proposition made by a laboratory, and the committee reacts accordingly.” Going deeper into this:

“Each week, the committee brings together representatives from the health and finance ministries behind closed doors. This is where the arm wrestling between the state and the laboratories takes place.

For each drug, we look at the medical service which it provides, then we consider it for this particular health objective … It’s quite a challenge to satisfy the expectations and needs of patients without putting in danger the sustainability of the public purse.”

• Supply prices and distribution are abused by Big Pharma — The documentary also interviewed a Belgian mother whose child has spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), a rare genetic illness affecting 1 in 10,000 children. However Zolgensma, a gene therapy available for this disease, was priced at a whopping $2.125 million by Novartis — impossible for ordinary citizens.

Furthermore, the gene therapy was only released in the U.S. “In Europe, it was neither reimbursable nor even approved by the European Medicines Agency,” the documentary explains. Fortunately, the mother was able to help her daughter through a fundraising campaign.

• Big Pharma will give you the cold shoulder — If you can’t pay the price set by manufacturers, they will ignore you. The mother shares her experience:

“Novartis contacted us saying that they sympathized. That they were deeply touched by our story, but that they couldn’t give us a reduction. In fact, what they said was if you don’t have the $2 million, she can’t have the treatment.”

• Prices are pulled out of thin air sometimes — How does a single drug cost millions of dollars? While companies’ base prices on manufacturing costs, certain products are priced arbitrarily. As noted by the documentary:

“Novartis did not calculate the price in terms of production costs, but instead, according to what society is prepared to pay to have access to the treatment.”

• Monopolies are hurting citizens — Manufacturers can set high prices for special medications because of its rarity. While problematic, it is still legal, and no one can challenge Big Pharma, as they’re too powerful. If a patient was able to purchase the medication they need, they’re now drowning in medical debt. Wilbert Bannenberg, president of the Pharmaceutical Accountability Foundation, explains:

“Pharmaceutical companies have the right to do this. It isn’t forbidden. They have the monopoly. They ask the price which they consider right, but it’s like throwing a life belt to somebody who’s drowning. Then, when the person asks, ‘How much do I owe you?’ You reply, ‘I saved your life. You’ll live for another 20 years, so that’s 20 times €80,000 which makes €1.6 million.'”

What Happened When Mexico Challenged Big Pharma?

Governments know how strong Big Pharma’s grip on economies, and many are trying to challenge this powerful group. In Mexico, former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador canceled corrupt contracts, closed unsafe plants, and tried to import generics.

• A systematic reset is needed — In a press conference, Obrador explains, “The whole system was defective. Production, distribution, and the buying of medicaments. It was just another business. But we are talking about medicaments. And there was so much corruption as well.”

• Exposing the drawbacks of corruption — The government of Mexico singled out PiSA Farmaceutica, which is responsible for half of the anticancer drugs sold in the country. Here’s what authorities found afterward:

“The drug agency inspected their factory and realized that it wasn’t up to standard. Bacteria had spread through the laboratory when the production line was halted. What did PiSA do? PiSA met with the directors of the agency and tried to pressure them into production to continue without carrying out improvements.”

• Big Pharma isn’t afraid to fight back — When the government of Mexico closed down several factories due to poor conditions, PiSA refused to supply the market. Consequently, this showed how drug manufacturers are able to influence public health simply because they don’t want to be held accountable.

How to Avoid the Crutches of Big Pharma

With Big Pharma’s hands on public health, what can you do? The best solution is to optimize your health so you don’t have to rely on medications to keep you alive. Not only will you feel better every day, but you’ll also be free from medical debt. To get you started, here are my latest recommendations, which I shared with Sean Kim of Growth Minds:

1. Avoid linoleic acid — Minimize your intake of vegetable oils, as these are high rich in linoleic acid (LA). Normally found in ultraprocessed foods, LA impairs mitochondrial function, increases inflammation, and heightens your sensitivity to sun damage.

2. Use healthy carbohydrates for fuel — Reintroduce healthy carbohydrates gradually, aiming for around 200 to 250 grams daily based on individual needs. For an in-depth explanation on this topic, read “The Hidden Triggers of Insulin Resistance and How to Restore Balance.”

3. Enhance your gut health — Maintain a healthy gut environment by diversifying your gut microbiome through fermented foods.

4. Minimize exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals — Avoid plastics, synthetic fragrances, and oral contraceptives that disrupt hormones and mitochondrial function.

5. Reduce your electromagnetic field (EMF) exposure — Limit exposure to wireless technologies by turning off Wi-Fi at night, switching your phone to airplane mode, and using wired connections for your devices to prevent cellular oxidative stress.

6. Get regular exercise — Being physically active will not only strengthen your body, but it will also give your immune system a boost. In addition, sweating is one of the best ways to detox heavy metals and other toxins from your system, helping reduce your risk of chronic illnesses.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) About Big Pharma’s Effects on Public Health

Q: Why are essential medications increasingly unavailable, even in wealthy countries?

A: Despite record profits, Big Pharma is discontinuing less profitable medications, leading to widespread shortages. These shortages affect even basic, life-saving drugs, with hospitals reporting gaps in the availability of critical treatments. The issue has grown severe enough to impact even the wealthiest EU nations, not just traditionally under-resourced regions.

Q: What drives Big Pharma’s decision-making regarding which drugs to produce?

A: Profitability is the primary motivator. Drugs lose their market value once patents expire, leading companies to abandon or reprice them, even if they are still medically essential. Companies may withdraw old medications only to reintroduce them later at significantly higher prices, exploiting monopolistic control and manipulating scarcity.

Q: How do these shortages and price hikes affect patients globally?

A: Patients are often the ones who suffer, especially those needing chronic or life-saving treatments. For instance, bladder cancer patients in France face limited access to BCG-Medac due to low profitability, and in Mexico, over 1,600 people have died due to medication shortages. Quota systems are now common, meaning some patients are denied treatment based on illness severity or location.

Q: What role do governments play in regulating drug prices, and how does Big Pharma respond?

A: Governments try to negotiate fair pricing through dedicated committees, but pharmaceutical companies often resist, sometimes withdrawing drugs from the market when faced with price controls. A notable example includes the withdrawal of epinephrine injectors in Spain after the government enforced a price drop. The imbalance of power allows Big Pharma to largely dictate terms.

Q: What can individuals do to protect themselves from the failings of the pharmaceutical industry?

A: Proactive health maintenance is needed to reduce dependence on pharmaceuticals. Different lifestyle changes are needed to support a holistic approach, such as reducing linoleic acid intake, eating healthy carbohydrates, supporting gut health, avoiding endocrine-disrupting chemicals, minimizing EMF exposure, and promoting detoxification through regular exercise.

– Sources and References

¹ YouTube, ENDEVR, December 11, 2024

Posted in Big Pharma, Corruption | No Comments »

Posted by: admin | Posted on: July 20, 2025

FDA Approves Merck RSV Shot for Infants — Despite High Rates of Serious Reactions

Reproduced from original article:
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2025/07/17/merck-rsv-shot-risks-for-babies.aspx

Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola July 17, 2025

Story at-a-glance

Merck’s respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) shot clesrovimab (Enflonsia) was approved even though 11.71% of babies in the trial experienced serious adverse events, including seizures, brain injury, and death
Infants who got clesrovimab had a 350% higher risk of upper respiratory infections — exactly the type of illness this shot claims to prevent
The injection is given in a single, fixed dose regardless of infant weight, putting smaller, younger babies at greater risk due to disproportionately high exposure
Babies who received the shot had a threefold increase in severe neurological reactions compared to those given a placebo
Only about 25 babies in the U.S. succumb to RSV each year, making the known risks of clesrovimab far outweigh the threat the virus poses to most children

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has recently approved clesrovimab, Merck’s new shot touted to “protect” infants against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).¹ This approval comes despite clinical trials showing adverse reactions associated with the shot.

What’s more, clesrovimab is designed to be given in a single dose, unlike previously approved RSV shots, which are given as a two-dose series. The shot is only available in a standard, 105-milligram (mg) dose — so whether your child is 12 months old or 12 weeks old, they will receive 105 mg of the drug. In medicine, one-size-fits-all dosing rarely ends well, and in this case, the data shows that it causes real harm.

Clinical Trials Reveal Alarming Side Effects Linked to Clesrovimab

Marketed as Enflonsia, clesrovimab is said to protect against RSV, a common respiratory virus that nearly every child in the U.S. contracts by age 2. It will be launched during this year’s RSV season, to compete with Beyfortus (nirsevimab), the “blockbuster” RSV shot from Sanofi and AstraZeneca.²

In a press release, Merck said that clesrovimab’s safety profile is “generally comparable” to placebo;³ however, if you look more closely at the clinical trial results,⁴ you’ll find severe side effects buried in the data.

• The research paints a different picture regarding clesrovimab’s effects — The trials involved 2,409 babies who received the injection and 1,202 who were given a placebo. These were healthy infants, ranging from early and moderate preterm to full-term.

The results were sobering. Among the babies given clesrovimab, there was a 50% higher risk of death compared to those in the placebo group. That’s three deaths in the shot group versus one in the placebo.

• Serious neurological adverse reactions were reported — According to a report from the Children’s Health Defense (CHD), “These included febrile convulsions, seizures, facial paralysis and brain injury at about three times the rate in the vaccine group (25 of 2,409) as the placebo group (4 of 1,202).”⁵

• The risk of respiratory tract infections (RTIs) also soared — According to the data, infants who received the shot had a 350% higher risk of getting an upper RTI and a 63% higher risk of lower RTIs. This is particularly ironic, considering this shot is supposed to prevent exactly these types of infections.

• Overall, the serious adverse event rate is 11.71% — Dr. Peter Selley, a general practitioner from the U.K. who has closely followed this drug’s development, notes that these effects are “concerning.” He also warns against the standardized dosing of this drug and its implications on very young children.

More Is Not Always Better — Especially with Infant Shots

It’s clear that Merck is eager to break into the RSV drug market, and for an obvious reason — Beyfortus, being the lone RSV antibody shot approved for children, raked in a whopping $1.8 billion in 2024 alone, following its approval in 2023.⁶

• Merck proudly notes that Enflonsia has about the same efficacy rate as Beyfortus — “In clinical trials, the shot reduced RSV-related hospitalization by 84.3% compared to placebo, and the incidence of RSV that needed to be medically attended by 60.5% versus placebo, through age 5 months in the clinical trials,” the CHD reports.

• These two shots have certain differences — Both clesrovimab and nirsevimab are monoclonal antibody shots; however, they bind to different antigenic sites — this complicates any comparison between the two. Another, as mentioned above, is the dosage per shot.

• One-time, uniform-dose shots carry risks — Unlike Beyfortus, which is given in a two-dose series in amounts that vary depending on the infant’s weight, Enflonsia is administered as a one-time, fixed-dose injection.⁷ Selley cautions against this standardized dosing, saying:

“The implications of this are that with only one dose of clesrovimab, tiny preterm babies under 5 kilograms are going to be injected with a relatively much bigger dose of the monoclonal antibody, leading to massive levels of the drug in their circulation. In most other fields of medicine, the aim is to find the lowest dose of a drug that is effective, as most side effects are dose-related.”⁸

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The Problem with Monoclonal Antibody Shots

Unlike conventional vaccines, monoclonal antibody injections work by providing passive immunity as they directly supply antibodies to fight a specific pathogen. In contrast, a vaccine stimulates your body’s immune system to produce its own antibodies, creating active immunity that develops over time. This means that monoclonal antibodies fall into a different category for safety monitoring.

• Adverse reports could be underreported — The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) doesn’t directly monitor injuries from medications that are not vaccines; Instead, they rely on the FDA’s MedWatch system.⁹ This discrepancy not only leads to confusion among health care providers and the public about where and how to report side effects, but could also lead to adverse events being underreported, making it more difficult to accurately assess the injection’s safety profile.

• The rush to implement widespread use of these injections raises questions about long-term safety and economic feasibility — When Beyfortus was first released, internist and biological warfare epidemiologist, Dr. Meryl Nass expressed her concerns about the unknowns of the drug. On her Substack, Nass points out that no monoclonal antibody product has ever been given on a mass scale to children before.¹⁰

• The safety profile of nirsevimab is questionable — Nass points out that monoclonal antibodies are associated with numerous side effects, from changes in blood pressure and increased heart rate to cytokine release syndrome — yet the product label mentions only rashes and anaphylaxis as potential side effects of this drug.¹¹

• Deaths during clinical trials may have been underreported — Nass points out that there was an “imbalance” in deaths between the treatment and placebo groups during clinical trials. The FDA reportedly “judged” that these excess deaths were not due to the monoclonal antibody, but it’s unclear how they reached this conclusion without more comprehensive safety data.¹²

Antibody-Dependent Enhancement (ADE) Is Another Possible Risk

ADE is a condition that was noted in a preprint study by French scientist Hélène Banoun, Ph.D.,¹³ and it occurs when antibodies actually help a virus infect cells more easily instead of neutralizing it. ADE has been observed with other respiratory viruses and vaccines, and it’s a theoretical risk with nirsevimab and clesrovimab as well.

•Antibodies in these shots could be engineered in a way that makes them more ineffective — Monoclonal antibody shots target the RSV fusion protein, but, here’s the catch — they are engineered to last longer in your baby’s body, with a half-life of 80 to 120 days.¹⁴ This unnatural modification could increase the risk of ADE as antibody levels gradually decline over time.

This is because the antibodies, at low concentrations, might not be able to fully neutralize the virus, instead facilitating its entry into cells. This could lead to more severe disease in some infants who receive the shot. Studies have shown that ADE can occur with RSV antibodies, particularly when they’re present at sub-neutralizing levels.¹⁵

• RSV antibodies can weaken your immunity by making your immune cells more prone to infections — Laboratory experiments have demonstrated that these antibodies enhance infection of certain cell types, such as macrophages, which are important immune cells in the lungs. This raises concerns about whether monoclonal antibody shots could make RSV infections worse in some babies as the antibody levels wane over time.

•Clinical trials conducted on nirsevimab have limitations that do not clearly assess its safety — Banoun’s study points out that many of the trials done on nirsevimab were conducted during periods of low RSV circulation — this means there weren’t many cases of severe RSV to compare between the treatment and placebo groups.¹⁶ This raises doubts about the shot’s reported accuracy, especially its effectiveness and safety.

For more about the research findings about nirsevimab and monoclonal antibody shots, read “Is the RSV Shot Worth the Risk to Your Baby?”

RSV Season Is Coming Soon — Should You Be Alarmed?

According to the CHD report, even though CDC’s vaccine advisory committee has yet to give its recommendation regarding clesrovimab, Merck is gearing up to take orders, so supplies can be shipped out in time for the 2025 to 2026 RSV season — from October to April.¹⁷ But just how lethal is this virus, and do the risks of these antibody shots truly outweigh the dangers of this illness?

• RSV symptoms are similar to a mild cold — These include runny nose, coughing, sneezing, wheezing, and fever. Most children recuperate from RSV without any issues.

• In fact, 97% of all babies become infected with RSV by the time they turn 2 years old — This gives them partial immunity, so that when they become reinfected, the symptoms are less severe.

• However, in some infants, RSV can be dangerous — Babies that are born prematurely or with weakened immune systems are at risk of bronchiolitis or pneumonia when they acquire RSV and may need to be hospitalized. In U.S. babies younger than 1, RSV is the leading cause of hospitalization.¹⁸

• The mortality rate is significantly lower than expected — According to a 2021 study from the CDC,¹⁹ only a small percentage of children — 25 or fewer babies per year — succumb to the virus.

What to Do to Avoid RSV Shots and Protect Your Baby Naturally

The good news is there are safer, smarter ways to protect your baby from RSV without exposing them to the risks of these injections. It goes beyond eliminating every germ — it’s about creating a foundation of resilience. Here are some key strategies:

• During RSV season, avoid crowds and indoor daycares if you can — If you have a newborn — especially if your baby is a preemie or has any underlying health issues — avoid crowded indoor settings. This includes daycare centers, waiting rooms, and busy stores. The fewer RSV exposures your baby gets during the early months, the more time their immune system has to mature naturally.

• Breastmilk is best — Breastfeeding gives your baby passive immunity without the risks of injections. Your breast milk contains antibodies that help fight off RSV and many other infections. Many of breastfeeding’s benefits actually stretch out until adulthood. For more information, read “The Power of Breastfeeding.”

• Prioritize your own health during pregnancy to boost natural protection — The state of your health during pregnancy plays a central role in shaping your baby’s early immunity. Make sure to optimize your nutrient status (focusing on getting key nutrients like folate), avoid exposure to toxins, and improve your gut health — these all directly affect your baby’s development. Get sufficient high-quality sleep and reduce your stress as well.

• Get regular safe sun exposure for both you and your baby — Sunlight helps your body create vitamin D, which is foundational for immune strength and respiratory health. Aim for short, gentle sun exposure daily — especially morning sun. If your baby is old enough, allow them short periods of direct sun on their skin.

For you, daily morning walks outside without sunglasses or sunscreen support both vitamin D and melatonin production, which regulate your baby’s sleep cycles and immune rhythm.

• Keep your home environment clean, warm, and hydrated — Dry indoor air increases the chance that RSV will infect your baby’s respiratory tract. Use a clean humidifier to keep indoor humidity between 40% to 60% during the colder months. Keep your baby’s nose clear with saline drops and a suction bulb if needed. Wipe down commonly touched surfaces often — but skip harsh chemical cleaners.

Stick to natural disinfectants like vinegar or hydrogen peroxide to reduce toxin exposure while keeping your environment safe.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) About Clesrovimab (Enflonsia)

Q: What is clesrovimab, and why is it controversial?

A: Clesrovimab, marketed as Enflonsia, is Merck’s newly approved monoclonal antibody shot for preventing RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) in infants. It’s controversial because clinical trial data revealed a serious adverse event rate of 11.71%, including seizures, brain injuries, and even death. Despite these findings, the FDA approved it for use in all infants, regardless of weight or health status.

Q: How does clesrovimab compare to other RSV shots like nirsevimab (Beyfortus)?

A: While clesrovimab and nirsevimab are both monoclonal antibodies aimed at preventing RSV, clesrovimab is administered as a single fixed 105 mg dose for all infants. Nirsevimab, on the other hand, is dosed based on weight. Experts have warned that standardized dosing with clesrovimab, without taking into account the infant’s weight or size, could lead to overdosing in smaller or premature babies, increasing the risk of serious side effects.

Q: What types of side effects were seen in babies who received clesrovimab?

A: The trial reported a wide range of serious reactions: a 50% higher death rate, a 350% increased risk of upper respiratory infections, a 63% increase in lower respiratory infections, and three times the rate of severe neurological effects — such as seizures, febrile convulsions, facial paralysis, and brain injury — compared to the placebo group.

Q: How serious is RSV in most infants, and do these risks outweigh the benefits?

A: RSV is a common virus that nearly all children contract by age 2. It usually causes mild, cold-like symptoms. While it can be serious in a small number of cases — particularly in premature or immune-compromised babies — CDC data shows that only about 25 infants die from RSV each year in the U.S. For most families, the documented risks of clesrovimab far exceed the danger posed by RSV itself.

Q: What are safer alternatives to protect babies from RSV?

A: You can reduce RSV risk without resorting to injections by focusing on natural immunity: avoid crowded indoor spaces during RSV season, support infant immunity with breastfeeding, prioritize your own health during pregnancy, ensure regular gentle sun exposure for both you and your baby, and maintain a clean, well-humidified indoor environment. These steps help build true resilience without the documented risks of monoclonal antibody shots.

– Sources and References

^1, ³ Merck, June 9, 2025
^2, ^5, ^8, ¹⁷ Children’s Health Defense, June 10, 2025
⁴ ClinicalTrials.gov, Efficacy and Safety of Clesrovimab (MK-1654) in Infants (MK-1654-004) (CLEVER) June 5, 2025
⁶ Fierce Pharma, June 9, 2025
⁷ Pharmacy Times, June 10, 2025
⁹ Children’s Health Defense, July 8, 2024
^10, ^11, ¹² Substack, Meryl’s CHAOS Newsletter August 4, 2023
^13, ^14, ^15, ¹⁶ Preprints 2024, 2024060714 doi: 10.20944/preprints202406.0714.v1
¹⁸ J Infect Dis. 2022 Aug 15;226(Suppl 2):S154-S163
¹⁹ Health Sci Rep. 2021 Nov 2;4(4):e428

Posted in Children, Corruption, Sunlight, Vaccinations | No Comments »

Posted by: admin | Posted on: July 20, 2025

New NIH Leadership Aims to Restore the Public’s Trust in Science

Reproduced from original article:
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2025/07/20/new-nih-leadership-aims-restore-publics-trust.aspx

Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola July 20, 2025

Story at-a-glance

Despite medical advances, American life expectancy remained flat from 2012 to 2019 while European countries improved, indicating failed health institutions
Current research rewards individual fame and publication volume over collaboration, honesty about failures, and meaningful health breakthroughs
About half of biomedical research findings cannot be replicated, undermining scientific reliability due to emphasis on incentives
Lockdowns, mask mandates, and vaccine rollouts lacked scientific backing, created social division, and disproportionately harmed marginalized populations
The NIH aims to rebuild public confidence through transparency, open collaboration, honest communication about uncertainties, and refocusing on quality research

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) acts as the country’s “medical research agency.”¹ In other words, their role is to fund and conduct experiments that help improve public health, but the COVID-19 pandemic has eroded the public’s trust in them.

Now, the new NIH director, Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya, discusses how the agency aims to repair that broken trust in a marathon interview with Andrew Huberman, Ph.D., a professor at Stanford School of Medicine.²

While the entire interview is over four hours long, it’s very much worth it. I recommend you listen to it in smaller parts to help you absorb all the information these two experts discussed. The insights they shared provide a hopeful view of the future for science to benefit humanity instead of the other way around.

Life Expectancy Plummets in America

Bhattacharya starts by discussing the fact that average life expectancy among Americans dropped during the pandemic. It has only returned to pre-pandemic levels, but did not even increase afterward:

• Life expectancy — Bhattacharya acknowledges the failure of America’s health institutions, which he intends to correct:

“Since 2012, there’s been no increase in American life expectancy. From 2012 to 2019, literally it was — well not literally — almost entirely flat life expectancy. And whereas the European countries had advances in life expectancy during that period. During the pandemic, life expectancy dropped very sharply in the United States …

Whatever those investments we’re making as a nation, in the research, are not actually translating into meeting the mission of the NIH, which is to advance health and longevity of American people.”

• Leadership didn’t listen to reason — During the COVID-19 pandemic, Bhattacharya was one of the biggest opponents of the lockdowns, even writing opinion pieces³ in mainstream media publications such as the Wall Street Journal:

“I was a very vocal advocate against the lockdowns, against the mask mandates, against the vaccine mandates and against the anti-scientific bent of public health throughout the pandemic.”

• We are now under a “sick care” system — Bhattacharya explains that health care nowadays is more reactionary than being proactive:

“The advances we’ve made have allowed people to stay sick longer. It hasn’t translated to a longer life, right?

There was a hope, I think, when I first started doing research in 2001, in population aging, there was this idea of a compression of morbidity that is, you live long, a long life, and the time you spent really sick and disabled was compressed at the very end of your life rather than spending a long time disabled and sick. And you die after having spending like a decade or more very sick.”

• The government needs to come clean with its involvement — One of Bhattacharya’s main criticisms of past NIH administrations is the secrecy surrounding their connection in SARS-CoV-2 research:

“I’ve also argued that the scientific institutions of this country should come clean about our involvement in very dangerous research that potentially caused the pandemic.”

Innovation and Incentive Crisis in Scientific Research

Currently, academic science rewards researchers based on metrics like citation counts and the H-index, which measure how often other researchers refer to their work. While this might sound logical, it often encourages scientists to produce quantity over quality.

• The current system favors a “rock star” scientist model — Individual researchers strive for personal fame rather than collaborative, meaningful breakthroughs:

“So, science is a collaborative process, but the incentives within science, for individual advance, can often lead to a sort of a structure that elevates careers without necessarily producing truth.”

• The flaw in peer review publications — Bhattacharya also criticizes the current peer review process. He points out its shortcomings below:

“The peer review actually doesn’t involve, as you know, the peer reviewers taking your data, rerunning your experiments. It doesn’t mean any of that. They just read your paper, looked for logical flaws, didn’t find any, and then they recommended the editor to be published.

So, the peer review is not a guarantee that it’s true. You have some significance that say that your data meet. Even with that, some percentage of the time, the published result is going to be false.”

• Collaboration is key — To address the current flaws in the scientific community, the NIH is now promoting collaborative lab clusters. These groups of scientists come together specifically to tackle complex, real-world health problems. Huberman recommends:

“The solution to this is collaboration. Instead of having independent investigators, you have clusters of laboratories hopefully distributed throughout the country, working on the same problems, collaborating. There are grants of this sort. But here’s the problem. As you point out, it’s a sociological issue.”

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Restoring Trust and Transparency

To rebuild public trust, scientific institutions will need to be honest about uncertainties and treat you, the public, as partners rather than passive subjects. This means openly communicating what science doesn’t yet know, alongside what it does.

• Publishing “constructive failures” — Research that doesn’t achieve expected results is also critical. This openness helps build credibility:

“[W]e reward scientists for the influence that they have, and we reward scientists for the volume of papers they publish. What we don’t reward scientists for is honesty about their failures. We don’t reward scientists for pro-social behavior.”

• Failure is a stepping stone to better results — Bhattacharya notes that scientific research doesn’t get much leeway when it comes to making mistakes compared to tech companies that learn from failed startups:

“In Silicon Valley, a failed startup doesn’t mean that you can’t get another draw at trying to make a successful startup, right? Silicon Valley does not punish failure that sharply and that is the key to its success. Whereas in biomedicine, the current version of it we have now, we punish failure way too sharply.”

• Previous regulations held research back from the public knowledge — To help change perception regarding the NIH, Bhattacharya wants to make all NIH-funded research free for public consumption because it’s paid by your taxes:

“[My] predecessor Monika Bertagnolli … made a decision, a really great decision, essentially to say if the NIH supports a scientist’s work, and then that work leads to a journal publication, that publication ought to be available free to the public immediately upon publication. You’re not allowed as an NIH-funded scientist to publish in a journal that doesn’t have that as a policy. That policy was due to go into effect in December of this year …

If the American taxpayer pays for the research, why shouldn’t the American taxpayer be able to read the research for free? Because they already paid for it. Why do they pay a second time on the back end after the research is published?”

• Cost is no longer a roadblock because research can be published online — Bhattacharya is now tapping into the benefits of posting research online, making it instantly accessible to people who want to read them:

“[T]he marginal cost of publishing now is effectively zero. You put it online, right? I mean, yeah, there’s some costs for maintaining the webpage and all that and there’s some editorial staff, but like the level of investments that the public had been making for the NIH to then be asked to pay 30, 50, 100 dollars for the papers itself that are published, I mean, it’s just insulting.

And actually, it impedes the progress of science because it makes it so that there’s this barrier where regular people can’t get access to the things that scientists are talking about, right?”

The Replication Crisis

One shocking truth in science today is that about half of all biomedical research findings cannot be replicated. Huberman and Bhattacharya discussed this topic in great detail:

• The flaws of the scientific method — The ability to replicate results among different researchers is important to solidify the findings of a topic, but Huberman states that this is not the case today:

“One of the major issues, I believe, that led to the so-called Replication Crisis is that it is very difficult, even with the best of intentions for two laboratories to do the same work in an identical way. Five minutes longer on a countertop at room temperature might change an antibody that could lead to a different outcome. I mean, there are so many variables.”

• Incentives have affected medical research — Monetary incentives to create groundbreaking research are creating loopholes in medical research, Bhattacharya says:

“So, a lot of what the things that we think we know, even with some fair degree of certainty, are probably not true … [T]the question is like, which half? Well, we don’t know the answer to that question …

And this is done even with pure goodwill and no fraud at all, right? And the reason is a combination of the fact that science is hard and the incentives we created for publication, right? Those two together mean that the biomedical scientific literature is not reliable.”

• Creating a collaborative community is imperative — The NIH is planning to create “pro-social” metrics to reward scientists who share data openly and willingly allow others to replicate their work:

“We don’t reward scientists for pro-social behavior … where you collaborate, you share your data openly and honestly. In fact, we punish scientists for that, right?

So, right now, if somebody comes to me and says, ‘Jay, I want to replicate your work.’ I’ve trained myself not to think this way, but it’s really hard not to, given the structure we’re in. I’m going to think of that as a threat. What if they don’t find what I’ve found, now I’m a failure, right?

The failure to replicate is seen as a failure of the scientist rather than the fact that science is hard and it’s difficult to get results that are true even with the best of will. And we punish scientists for that. So, we essentially reward scientists for a set of things that create incentives for the Replication Crisis to happen.”

COVID-19 Pandemic Lessons

COVID-19 revealed critical flaws in health policy decisions, notably around lockdowns, mask mandates, and blanket vaccine mandates. These policies often lacked strong scientific backing, causing unnecessary harm and division.

• The mandates created stigmatized groups — One of the disturbing effects of the various COVID-19 policies was shunning citizens who spoke out, Bhattacharya says. In turn, those affected have little reason to trust the government:

“Essentially, we created a class of unclean people as a matter of public policy. You can understand why people who went through that would say, ‘Given that the vaccine didn’t turn out to stop you from getting and spreading COVID, why should I trust you on anything else?’ That, that’s where we currently are.”

• Sweden got it right all along — Bhattacharya concedes that the lockdowns weren’t helpful in curbing deaths caused by the COVID-19 pandemic:

“If you ask which country had the lowest all-cause excess deaths in all of Europe … it turns out it’s Sweden, which didn’t follow the lockdowns. So, the lockdowns were not a necessary policy in order to protect human life. And they weren’t sufficient to protect human life either, right? So, you had sharply locked down countries like Peru that had tremendous deaths.”

• There was a concerted effort to control medical experts — Instead of fostering a collaborative environment between experts, those in power opted to censor and vilify doctors who went against mainstream advice:

“[T]here was essentially a groupthink at scale. It was impossible to organize a panel with the kind of diversity of opinion that was needed.

There were [a] million or more — I know this from the set of people who signed the Great Barrington Declaration, tens of thousands of scientists and doctors who disagreed, but they were afraid to stick their head up for fear of getting chopped off. It’s not an accident that Stanford didn’t allow a scientific panel with my point of view about the efficacy of lockdowns until 2024.”

• Lockdowns affected marginalized groups — While many employees were able to continue their jobs during the lockdowns, Bhattacharya noted that these policies greatly affected other groups:

“[I]t was very clear to me with my background in health policy that we were going to harm the poor. We were going to harm children, and we were going to harm the working class at scale. The lockdowns were a luxury of the laptop class.”

• The messaging was more important than saving lives — In an effort to look unified and keep the public’s hopes high, authorities focused on united messaging instead of being honest about the side effects of their policies:

“[T]he problem here is that the scientific community embraced an ethical norm about unity of messaging and then enforced it on fellow scientists. And then it cooperated with the Biden administration to put in place a censorship regime that made it impossible even for legitimate conversations to happen. So, after the vaccines, COVID vaccines came out, there are a community of people who were vaccine legitimately vaccine-injured.”

• The shots need to be fully investigated — Because of the devastation caused by the rolling out the shots to the public, Bhattacharya is calling for an investigation of what went wrong. But even if he is now the NIH director, he is still helpless because of more powerful players:

“I think these are the kind of things that ought to be investigated, but it’s very difficult to investigate just because of the political aura around vaccines where if you really do investigate it and find something the public health authorities don’t like, you’re going to have trouble. I don’t know the answer to that question from a scientific point of view.”

The Way Forward

In the wake of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s catastrophic tenure at the NIH, how does the new administration aim to recover? According to Bhattacharya, the answer involves being open and honest to the public.

• An open discussion and collaboration with the public — Bhattacharya says the NIH will work with the public more closely moving forward, allowing both parties to benefit from each other:

“The way forward isn’t to force people to say, ‘Look, you must acknowledge how great science is on these other things.’ The way forward is to be utterly honest about what we know and don’t know and treat people as partners rather than subjects.”

• Return to basics — The NIH aims to return to scientific research that will benefit public health, even if it means challenging beliefs that are hard to let go. Bhattacharya is hoping to fast track an open scientific competition to get to the bottom of autism:

“It includes basic science work, it includes epidemiological work, it’ll include environmental exposure work, and we’ll bring together data sets that we’ll make available to the researchers. We’ll have a competition among scientists, just like the normal NIH way with peer review panels, to ask who should get the awards. We’ll have a dozen or more scientific teams asking the question, ‘What is the etiology of autism?'”

• Honesty — To regain the public’s trust, the NIH aims to become more open to the pros and cons of the policies they recommend, especially when it comes to rolling out the shots. Bhattacharya believes that these contribute to the rise in autism but are not the sole reason for it.

“I want an honest conversation. I think that if you have an honest evaluation, you’re not going to find that the vaccines are the primary reason for the cause of the rise of autism. It’s going to be something much more fundamental and complicated.”

• Focus on research — Above all, the NIH needs to focus on producing quality research that benefits public health, which includes encouraging new and upcoming scientists to participate:

“The key thing is the content of the research and the standards we hold ourselves doing the research. Those are the things I want restructured. That’s really the fundamental question for me, as NIH director.

If I can accomplish some of the things we’ve talked about during this podcast, having replicability be the core of deciding what scientific truth is, refocusing the portfolio so that we enable young, early career scientists to test their ideas out, that we aim big for trying to address and we address the key health problems that Americans face. If we can do those things, I’ll consider myself a success.”

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) About the Decline of Trust in the NIH

Q: Why has public trust in the NIH declined?

A: Public trust in the NIH has declined primarily due to the organization’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Controversial decisions around lockdowns, mask mandates, vaccine mandates, and lack of transparency regarding the NIH’s involvement in virus research led to widespread skepticism and mistrust.

Q: What is the NIH doing to address the replication crisis in medical research?

A: The NIH plans to encourage collaboration among scientists by rewarding transparency and data sharing. They will create incentives for replication studies, introduce new journals dedicated to publishing replication and negative results, and prioritize funding for projects that openly share methods and data.

Q: How is Dr. Jay Bhattacharya planning to restore transparency?

A: As the newly appointed NIH director, Dr. Bhattacharya will make NIH-funded research freely available online, eliminating paywalls that prevent public access. He advocates openly admitting uncertainties, publishing constructive failures, and actively involving citizens as partners in the scientific process.

Q: What lessons did the NIH learn from the COVID-19 pandemic?

A: The NIH recognized that lockdowns, mask mandates, and vaccine mandates lacked strong scientific backing and disproportionately harmed marginalized groups. Policies created division rather than cooperation, demonstrating the critical need for transparent, evidence-based decisions, and open scientific debate.

Q: How does the NIH plan to improve research outcomes moving forward?

A: Going forward, the NIH will focus on supporting high-risk, high-reward research projects, creating collaborative lab clusters, and funding comprehensive studies like the autism initiative. Emphasis will be on replicability, transparency, collaboration, and involving early-career scientists to foster innovative and impactful research.

– Sources and References

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What Happens When a Drug Stops Making Money?

The Economics Behind Medicines

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What Happens When Cancer Patients Can’t Get Treatment?

How Are Drug Prices Set?

What Happened When Mexico Challenged Big Pharma?

How to Avoid the Crutches of Big Pharma

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) About Big Pharma’s Effects on Public Health

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Clinical Trials Reveal Alarming Side Effects Linked to Clesrovimab

More Is Not Always Better — Especially with Infant Shots

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The Problem with Monoclonal Antibody Shots

Antibody-Dependent Enhancement (ADE) Is Another Possible Risk

RSV Season Is Coming Soon — Should You Be Alarmed?

What to Do to Avoid RSV Shots and Protect Your Baby Naturally

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) About Clesrovimab (Enflonsia)

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Life Expectancy Plummets in America

Innovation and Incentive Crisis in Scientific Research

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Restoring Trust and Transparency

The Replication Crisis

COVID-19 Pandemic Lessons

The Way Forward

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) About the Decline of Trust in the NIH