Story at a Glance:
**•DMSO is a remarkably safe substance that effectively treats a variety of conditions (e.g., chronic pain, acute injuries, and strokes) that medicine has struggled with for decades. Many readers here have already experienced profound benefits from using it.
•DMSO is a powerful (but safe) anti-inflammatory agent that is often extremely helpful for autoimmune conditions. For example, it’s frequently used to treat asthma, inflammatory bowel diseases (e.g., ulcerative colitis and irritable bowel syndrome), interstitial cystitis (painful bladder syndrome), ITP, lupus, multiple sclerosis, myasthenia gravis, scleroderma, Sjogren's syndrome, and uveitis.**
•DMSO is also remarkably effective at stabilizing and refolding proteins. This allows it to treat a variety of “untreatable” genetic disorders, and conditions characterized by the abnormal accumulation of misfolded proteins in the body (e.g., amyloidosis) or chronic deposits of excessive contractile collagen (e.g., surgical scars, abdominal adhesions, Dupuytren’s contractures, and Peyronie’s disease). Two of the most dramatic examples of this are scleroderma and fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva—both “untreatable” conditions where DMSO can provide truly lifesaving benefits.
•In this article, I will present the wealth of evidence substantiating each of those uses, share my theory on how the unusual antimicrobial properties of DMSO explain some of these benefits, and present DMSO treatment protocols for many of those disorders. Additionally, since many readers requested it, I put together a simplified guide on how to use DMSO orally or topically.
Note: over the last few days, I switched my focus to preventing an immensely unjust execution in Texas that shed light on how parents are often falsely accused of killing their babies after a vaccine death. Thanks in part to all of you speaking out, a miracle happened, the right people noticed (I can’t disclose what happened behind the scenes but consider this Tweet RFK Jr. put out which referenced a post referencing the article here) and a series of unprecedented actions happened to delay and possibly overturn an execution (which in reality was due to a baby dying from clearcut case of medical malpractice). This case still needs a great deal of support, so if you can contact either the governor (here) or the Texas legislators trying to overturn this (here and here) that would be immensely helpful.
Dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) is a simple and readily available naturally occurring chemical that rapidly enters the body through the skin and has a variety of remarkable therapeutic properties. When it was discovered, its proponents believed it (much like antibiotics) represented a new therapeutic principle in medicine and once adopted, would completely change how medicine was practiced. Unfortunately, the FDA conducted a reprehensible campaign against it and was able to successfully bury it.
Since there are so many uses for DMSO, to effectively present them, I’ve had to comb through well over ten thousand pages of scientific literature and then order them into a logical sequence (of what will be roughly a nine-part series). For instance, in the first part of this series, I discussed how DMSO completely changed the management of neurological injuries and showed that were it to be adopted, millions would no longer be disabled from the common emergencies we view as insurmountable within the current medical paradigm (e.g., frequent disabilities from stroke and the inevitability of becoming a paraplegic after a spinal cord injury).
Sep 15
In turn, after I posted this, I began to receive testimonials from readers who’d found DMSO treated neurological and circulatory disorders they had always thought could not be treated.
In the second part of this series, I discussed how DMSO is remarkably effective for treating injuries and chronic pain:
In turn, after I published this article (since those conditions are some of the most common things people struggle with), I received a lot of comments from readers who expressed their understandable skepticism something like this could actually exist (which is part of why I began this with the wealth of evidence DMSO was paradigm shifting in neurology). At the same time, many were encouraged to try it, and I received numerous testimonials of the astonishing recovery it facilitated from a significant injury they’d suffered since the article had come out. More importantly however, many readers with chronic pain (or immobility) decided to try it, and were overjoyed to discover that after years they could at last get their lives back.
Taking a step back, the fact that something this effective could exist no one knows about is difficult to believe, which in turn suggests there has to be a reason for why no one knows about it—such as DMSO being extremely toxic. In reality, it is purely politics, and to support that, I compiled a detailed article summarizing everything that is known about the safety and toxicity of DMSO, which in my eyes, made the case that DMSO is one of the safest pharmaceutical products in existence and that the widely used alternatives to it (e.g., NSAIDs) are incredibly dangerous and orders of magnitude more harmful than DMSO.
Note: while publishing this article, I realized there was a human study demonstrating its safety in pregnancy (where DMSO was successfully used to treat infertility) that I forgot to include and have now added to the previous article.
Now that I’ve established there is something truly remarkable to DMSO (e.g.,you can read the hundreds of testimonials I’ve received from readers here), I would like to focus on another area where DMSO upends the existing medical paradigm—autoimmune and severe connective tissue disorders. I believe this is necessary because many individuals suffer from autoimmune and contractile conditions, but more importantly, because some of the conditions DMSO has been shown to treat effectively are otherwise death sentences that for decades the medical community has made almost no progress addressing.
DMSO and Protein Disorders
One of DMSO’s remarkable properties is its ability to function as a chemical chaperone and stabilize the three dimensional structure proteins assemble (fold) themselves into. This is important as many complex illnesses (e.g., many genetic disorders) result from misfolded proteins and presently can only be (ineffectively) managed with expensive drugs that aim to normalize the function of the abnormal proteins.
In turn, a few drugs have been developed to refold misfolded proteins, and to my knowledge, the most helpful ones on the market were the ones developed to treat cystic fibrosis (after the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation gave 150 million to bring these medications to market which currently are priced at roughly 300,000.00 a year). However, unlike the existing pharmaceutical chaperones (which are very specific to the misfolded protein), DMSO’s effect is remarkably universal.
Note: improving the physiologic zeta potential (as explained here) can also stabilize protein folding (while worsening it causes aggregation and misfolding).
Studies have shown DMSO can improve the functionality of the dysfunctional proteins that are seen in genetic disorders like cystic fibrosis,1 hereditary nephrogenic diabetes insipidus,1,2 Machado-Joseph disease,1 Niemann–Pick disease,1,2,3,4,5,6 and a defective protein that causes motor disorders and early death in mice.1 Likewise, it can also treat a variety of complex diseases which result from misfolded proteins damaging surrounding tissue.
For example, amyloidosis is a challenging condition that results from aggregates of insoluble proteins accumulating in the surrounding tissues. In turn, at least 39 studies and case reports have shown that DMSO can treat numerous types of amyloidosis (e.g., by solubilizing the amyloid aggregates and enabling the body to break down and eliminate them).1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37. 38, 39
Likewise, DMSO has also been shown to revert the protein responsible for the devastating neurological prion diseases Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease1 and scrapie1 (which suggests it could also be helpful for mad cow disease).
Note: the previously mentioned studies are discussed in more detail here.
Presently, numerous human studies have shown that DMSO can treat amyloidosis, and one showed that it treated Neiman-Pick’s disease. Additionally, DMSO in this and this animal study and in this human study has been shown to treat Alzheimer’s disease, another condition linked to misfolded proteins (along with another one where adults with a variety of different degenerative brain conditions were treated). Likewise, we’ve clinically observed Parkinson’s (another disease that can be linked to misfolded proteins) responds to treatment with DMSO, and recently, one reader here reported:
I ordered DMSO immediately after your first article appeared. I am now in the 4th week of testing DMSO for Parkinson's disease. [The initial dose I took was too high so I stopped] On the second day of the break my Parkinson's symptoms almost disappeared and I felt better than I had felt for ages. The biggest improvement was in relief from bradykinesia. After being slow for the past years, I suddenly became Mr Speedy. At [a lower] dose I get minor brain fog for about one hour and the benefits of DMSO for the rest of the day.
In terms of symptom response to DMSO, in these first 4 weeks, pain, speed and the range of movement were most improved, followed by stiffness. Tremor seems to take more time to respond but there are already subtle signs of improvement. I and my family have also noted improvements in a whole range of other symptoms: brighter facial expression, eye comfort (more irrigation), stronger voice, more energy, better left/right hand coordination (fewer typing errors when using computer keyboard) and improved handwriting. Most importantly, I have periods of feeling really good which were previously absent. I have no doubt that DMSO is doing something good.
Note: since many cancer causing proteins are misfolded proteins, it is thought that this may partly explain DMSO’s anticancer properties.
While I am very open-minded to unconventional medical ideas and knew DMSO could treat a variety of otherwise incurable neurological diseases (e.g., ALS), there was one thing I always had a bit of difficulty believing. DMSO allegedly had been shown to cure Down Syndrome, demonstrated both in three clinical trials (e.g., this one and this one) and numerous remarkable case reports that were presented by multiple corroborating medical witnesses in Congressional testimony, along with numerous studies showing DMSO improved the cognition and behavior of developmentally delayed children. To explain this impossible benefit, I theorized it was likely due to DMSO’s protein stabilizing benefits, as Down Syndrome is characterized by “the aberrant accumulation of unfolded/misfolded proteins resulting from over-burdened protein quality control systems.”
In turn, one reader recently shared:
We’ve been giving some [DMSO] to our young daughter who has Down Syndrome. We've been giving her extra vitamins based on the treatment protocol of some studies that I found after reading your previous posts on this topic.
Almost immediately we noticed that our little girl was sleeping better through the night, and she's become more verbal. She'll be 2 in less than a week and she suddenly seems like she wants to say words more intentionally now, even if we mostly can't understand them yet. Also, her appetite has improved substantially. She just seems more active, and that's really awesome!
After which I received this comment:
This is such a helpful article! My husband is the one you quoted about using DMSO on our daughter with Down Syndrome...let me tell you, even in the time since he made that comment, we have seen changes in our little girl. The biggest one is that she is now CRAWLING-she had seemed for the longest time like she wasn't even interested, but now she's doing it (she started on her 2nd birthday, in fact!). And her coordination and motor skills are steadily improving as well. She is super close to sitting up on her own, something I was getting really worried about. There have been many other small improvements, and it's almost like she's not even the same kid she was two weeks ago. I write a blog here in Substack about raising a DS kid as naturally as possible, and this is going to give me PLENTY to write about. I am so grateful for your articles about it, and I am so excited to keep learning and seeing what's possible! Thank you so much!
What I find particularly noteworthy about this is that the “untreatability” of genetic disorders (which typically result from a dysfunctional protein) has justified spending incredible amounts of money on both research and treatments for them (e.g., the industry is still in its early stages but 20.4 billion is already spent each year on gene therapies in the United States—which in part explains why there was such a push to bring the unsafe mRNA platform onto the market and open up a massive new drug sector). In contrast, DMSO is virtually free and has been shown to treat many of these disorders we still do not have a good option for.
Collagen Disorders
Irregular depositions of collagen underlie many different diseases (e.g., many rheumatologic disorders and many degenerative results of aging). Fortunately, much in the same way DMSO can address the accumulation of abnormal proteins, it can also address a variety of collagen disorders by “softening” collagen. For example, in a recent article I highlighted how, in addition to DMSO aiding the healing of chronic wounds and surgical scars, it:
•Attenuate excessive MMP-9 activity (which when excessive creates disordered healing and is linked to a variety of fibrotic diseases)_.
_•Decreases experimentally induced intestinal adhesions (a common complication of abdominal surgeries) and eliminates subcutaneous radiation-induced fibrosis (the pathologic deposition of collagen).
•Disrupt the links between collagen fibers and treats keloid scars by flattening and loosening their associated collagen bundles (a result also found in this study of ten patients with keloid scars).
•Strengthens the tensile strength of healing surgical incisions and post-surgical scars and prevents hypertrophic (excessive) post-surgical scar formation.
Beyond all of this being incredibly beneficial for surgical outcomes and preventing (the fairly common) chronic complications of surgery, it (along with DMSO’s previously mentioned ability to eliminate abnormal protein deposits) also indicates DMSO can help with other collagen disorders.
In turn, the earliest study I know of that found a benefit in collagen disorders was this 1965 study, which reported that over three months of treatment, 5 out of 4 patients with scleroderma had an improved range of motion and softening of their skin, while 3 out of 3 patients with a Dupuytren’s contracture had a reduction in plaque size in the palmar fascia and increased finger motion.
Note: many other reports of DMSO benefitting collagen disorders (e.g., this symposium which provided data on 9,521 patients with a variety of conditions such as Dupuytren's contractures) also exists.
DMSO and Contractures
Dupuytren’s contractures occur when the collagen under the palm builds up and abnormally thickens.
A variety of treatment options exist to address this issue (e.g., injecting an enzyme to digest the collagen, breaking the collagen up with a needle, or surgically removing it), but all have downsides (e.g., complications from the procedure or a recurrence of the contracture). In turn, there is still insufficient evidence to build a consensus on the best way to approach this common condition.
Before the FDA shut down DMSO, this is what Merck reported to their clinical investigators (after roughly 4,000 patients had received DMSO for up to 18 months):
Dupuytren’s contracture—Long-term administration has caused some improvement in fibrous scar contractures. 90 percent is recommended.
In addition to the study mentioned above where 3 out of 3 patients with Dupuytren’s contracture improved from DMSO, another study gave DMSO to 29 patients with Dupuytren’s contracture and found 2 had a complete remission, 14 had a partial remission, and 13 had no response (along with a single patient with a Cicatricial contracture who had a partial remission).
In another study, DMSO yielded good results for 6 out of 9 Dupuytren’s contractures (and 1 out of 3 Peyronie's disease).
Conversely, in another trial of 23 patients with Dupuytren’s contractures that had been present for over 5 years, receiving 80% DMSO 3 times a day for a month did not help any of them. This suggests that DMSO works best early in the disease process, that a month is not long enough to get results, and that 90% rather than 80% may be necessary for this application.
Peyronie's disease
Peyronie's disease is a condition in which fibrous scar tissue builds up in the penis, producing extreme pain whenever a patient gets an erection and gradually curves one’s erection.
The exact cause of it is unknown, but it is thought to be due to a disordered wound healing process and, since 1828 has long been recognized to occur in association with Dupuytren’s contractures. Due to the sensitive nature of the condition, men are often reluctant to report it, and estimates vary greatly on how common it is (ranging from 0.3% to 16%).
Note: In addition to us hearing about this from our female patients, I have numerous friends who’ve confided with me they experience chronic discomfort from their husband having a slightly curved penis (which results in uneven pressure being applied to the vaginal wall), so I am inclined to believe a significant number of men are affected by the less severe stages of this disorder. As such, DMSO’s use here is something I really wish more men knew about.
Since the penis is more challenging to modify than the hands, many different approaches are used to address this collagen deposition, most of which have side effects and don’t always lead to satisfactory outcomes (and in most cases, the penis can never be completely straightened). However, DMSO was found to be effective, especially if used early in the disease process and applied for a prolonged period (e.g., a year).
Peyronie’s disease patients at the DMSO clinic in Portland receive topical application of DMSO directly in the penis, and Stanley Jacob reports relief in about 50 percent of the cases he treats. “We're not seeing rapid, significant improvement in curvature but the newer DMSO preparations we are employing are superior to DMSO water.”
Likewise, this is what Merck reported in a bulletin sent to their investigators:
Peyronie's disease—In a few patients so far treated, decreased size of the plaques and straightening of the penis has been noted.
In one of the few studies on DMSO and Peyronie’s disease, two Cleveland urologists, Lester Persky and Bruce H. Stewart, reported that of thirteen men with the condition who applied DMSO for 8-12 weeks, six were improved enough to resume reasonably normal intercourse. One patient showed a complete disappearance of the plaque caused by the disease.
In another study, four patients used 90% DMSO on the affected area several times daily for 2-3 months. Two patients responded with softening or disappearance of plaques and deformity was corrected in one.
While DMSO does not have a 100% cure rate for either of these conditions, it often works and unlike the other options is devoid of side effects. Because DMSO works best when used early and can be applied discreetly at home, it offers a powerful and accessible option for those dealing with these conditions—especially Peyronie's disease.
Lastly, other types of contractures can also be helped. For example, in this study of 20 rheumatoid arthritis patients with flexion contractures in various joints, DMSO (plus hydrocortisone) was found to increase joint flexion by 20-30 degrees, and after 30-40 days of post treatment follow up, there were no contractural relapses.
Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva
One of the most remarkable connective tissue disorders DMSO treats is fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (FOP), a rare genetic disorder (affecting 1 in 2 million people) where bone rather than connective tissue is created each time tissue heals, causing these people to gradually turn to human statues
FOP is classically considered to be impossible to cure since the extra bone can’t be removed as healing from the bone removal simply creates even more bone. FOP in short is one of those diseases where I just have always felt really sad thinking about what people who suffer from it go through:
Like Down Syndrome, non-profits have “worked” for decades to find a cure for FOP and come to accept nothing can be done for it but somehow are unaware of what DMSO did:
A man in his thirties had had the disease for twenty years In 1964 Jacob started him on DMSO, and after a few months (of topical application) he had improved. When they had started out, a good deal of his body had calcified—he couldn't move any of his joints; he couldn't lie, or sit other than rigidly; he couldn't bend his neck or move his fingers. His knees, his hips, his ankles—all were rigid. But he could open and close his mouth; so he could eat, and, for the time, survive.
"We concentrated on his shoulders," Jacob told me, ' 'because I felt that if we could get a little motion in the upper part of his body, it would make him less of a vegetable. After a couple of months, he did recover some shoulder motion [and his pain significantly decreased].
Then, gradually, some of the calicifed soft tissue lumps became smaller and smaller.
"When the FDA halted studies in November 1965, the young man had regained much use of his fingers; he wrote, literally, hundreds of letters—to the FDA, the Congressmen, and to the President. The FDA sent him stereotyped letters. The President, who receives a lot of touching appeals every day, overlooked this one.
Additionally, one reader here knew one of those patients:
My Uncle Red (Walter Kummer) took DMSO as part of a study at OHSU [with Stanley Jacob] in the '80s... maybe even late '70s for treatment of FOP - Fibrodysplasia Ossificanas Progressiva....his muscles turned into bone. He was diagnosed when he was 11 or 13 years old and wasn't supposed to live past 15, then 20 and eventually the medical doctors gave up guessing his lifespan. When he started taking DMSO it was first topical then he ingested it. I was very young but I remember dark colored bottles of DMSO being on the counter. Uncle Red must have been in his late 40s or 50s by that time when OHSU had him in the study. I think it helped him live as long as he did. I think he was in his late 60s when he died in the early 90s. I have never forgotten those bottles and Uncle Red.
Scleroderma
Scleroderma is another horrible disorder, that despite decades of work still has a poor prognosis (e.g., patients with it are 3.5 times as likely to die as the general population, and the rheumatologists I know have very few patients with this condition because they eventually die whereas most rheumatologic can be indefinitely managed). While the cause of scleroderma remains unknown, it is characterized by a hardening and thickening of the skin (effectively compressing the body like saran wrap) due to an abnormal growth of connective tissue (e.g., collagen) which is thought to begin in the blood vessels, in time enters the muscles and joints, and eventually gets into the internal organs (which is typically where death occurs). Two of the major complications of this disease are poor peripheral circulation (frequently creating ulcers and often progressing to the point fingers and toes often need to be amputated) and poor mobility due to a stiffening of the body.
From the start, DMSO was observed by many researchers to be immensely helpful in treating scleroderma, and much of the most vocal protest the FDA got on their ban of DMSO came from the fact they refused to approve it for scleroderma despite extensive evidence supporting its use compiled by leading rheumatologists.
•An early study gave six scleroderma patients with ulcers on their fingers DMSO (initially at 50% but gradually raised to 100%). Five significantly improved (four had their ulcers begin to heal in one or two days and were completely healed in two weeks, while the fifth took six weeks). The final patient could not tolerate DMSO and left the study. While DMSO was initially painted on the affected areas, many patients found they had a better response covering large parts of their body with it or immersing their affected fingers in it for one minute every two hours. Additionally, this study determined that the collagen deposition under the skin decreased with DMSO treatment.
Note: this study was initially inspired by the recognition that DMSO is very effective at treating pain, and scleroderma is often quite painful.
A follow up study reported the results of 42 patients with chronic scleroderma who had not responded to any previous treatment and often had significant organ involvement of the disease. DMSO was attempted and given at a dose they could tolerate (which ranged from 30-100% and often could be raised over time) and then either was just given to the affected part of the body, a significant part of it, the entire body, or in some cases by immersing the affected region in DMSO), and then after 2-3 weeks only administered to the hands, forearms, feet and occasionally the face. Additionally, 9 patients with circumscribed and interstitial calcinosis, tendon contractures, and capsular adhesions who had not responded to topical DMSO received 5-10ml of 1-5% DMSO injected subcutaneously once a day for four weeks.
In many cases, 1-2 years of therapy was needed to obtain a significant cutaneous improvement, and of the 42 patients 16 showed fair or poor response (e.g., 6 with late stage scleroderma died from their illness during the study) while 26 showed good or excellent improvement to DMSO. Of the 26 (62%) with a good response, most had to remain on it, but DMSO caused 3 to have a complete remission (and no longer need DMSO), while 9 who thought this had happened but later had to resume DMSO within four weeks because their symptoms (e.g., pain and stiffness) returned. Of the 19 patients with ulcers, the majority healed from topical DMSO, a few required immersion in DMSO, and it is unclear from the study what happened to the rest. There were also 2 patients with interstitial calcinosis that restricted joint motion and disappeared after DMSO.
Additionally, like the previous study, they determined that pathologic collagen deposits under the skin were being broken down and returned to their normal form, with collagen breakdown products increasing by approximately 50% in the urine— (whereas typically in scleroderma and other rheumatologic disorders that does not happen). This, in turn, is similar to how DMSO increases the urinary excretion of amyloid degradation products.
Note: if the FDA were at all reasonable, this study would have gotten approval to use DMSO to treat scleroderma, especially given the professional reputation of the rheumatologist who conducted the study.
In a final study, a Cleveland Clinic rheumatologist gave DMSO to 19 patients with systemic sclerosis and 3 with local sclerosis who’d had it for 1-20 years (averaging roughly 7 years) with a similar but more refined DMSO treatment protocol. This study had the most precise data, showing that DMSO softened the skin, improved joint motion and grip strength, and eliminated ulcers. Additionally, in this study, DMSO was only applied to one hand (so an untreated “control” would exist), but due to DMSO’s systemic absorption, the other hand also improved (although never more than the treated hand). In all cases, the effect of DMSO was temporary, so it had to be continued to sustain its benefits.
Note: a similar 1966 study concluded there was “no benefit” from DMSO because the changes observed in both the treated and untreated hand were similar (as the authors appeared to be unaware of the systemic effects of DMSO). I believe this issue characterizes the small number of other studies that found no benefit from DMSO in scleroderma (but I could not access the articles to confirm this).
Other data includes:
A study of 10 patients with scleroderma showed that their skin had greatly improved from DMSO to the point where the skin became supple and ulcers healed. That author then conducted a subsequent study on 20 patients, noting they “had increased mobility, rapid relief of pain and healing of persistent ulcers, arrest of the spread of cutaneous disease, regrowth of hair, and return of sensation and sweating.”
A study of 29 patients with systemic scleroderma that assessed blood flow (as scleroderma significantly impairs circulation) in the skin and muscles with a radioactive isotope. It found that 50% DMSO slightly improved it, increased it by 1.2 times when given with another agent, and by 6 times when given with 1% nicotinic acid. When the DMSO nicotinic acid combination was given, it also resolved their Raynaud’s syndrome, gross edema and hyperpigmentation of the skin. Additionally, when 50% DMSO was given with another agent, within a month it completely healed the ulcers on the fingers of 6 six patients it was tried on. Finally, the authors noted they’d used DMSO on roughly 2,500 rheumatologic patients (e.g., rheumatoid arthritic, scleroderma, amyloidosis) with excellent results.
Note: another paper detailed how DMSO causes a dilation of the blood vessels in the upper dermis of scleroderma patients. Additionally, in scleroderma, the ESR is elevated (which indicates blood cells are clumping together and disrupting the microcirculation), so since DMSO disperses clumped blood cells, this may also partly explain why it improves circulation in this illness.
A Russian study (I verified by translating) gave 30-90% DMSO 1-2 times a day to 52 women and 6 men with progressive scleroderma (that was often quite severe) for several months to 2 years. Within 1-2 months, significant improvement was observed in the skin and connective tissue, and in time, all ulcers disappeared. DMSO stopped the disease’s progression for all but 2 of them (96.6%), and clinical recovery occurred in 34 of the 40 with plaque scleroderma (while the remaining 6 improved but had to remain on DMSO). Linear scleroderma also responded to DMSO, but took much longer to regress. Of the 8 patients who had generalized scleroderma, 1 had a complete regression after 2 years, while the other 7 at the time of publication (after 2-3 months of treatment) had shown significant improvement in a wide range of areas. All 40 patients who completed the treatment course were monitored for up to 5 years, and no relapses occurred.
[Russian] patients commented on the suddenness with which the ugly old disabilities began to disappear and the rapidity of the healing process.
Many patients in that group have said they were happy to experience washing with DMSO," the scientists said. "It reportedly improved their well-being immediately, and they simply could not imagine life without DMSO. The results we have obtained have proved the high effectiveness of DMSO.
Another study found DMSO yielded good results for 3 out of 4 scleroderma patients.
Finally, when a Congressional Committee (unsuccessfully) pressured the FDA to legalize DMSO, as part of their case, they randomly surveyed 250 rheumatologists, of whom 68% responded, of whom 33% had used DMSO in their practice. Of them, 49% felt DMSO was effective (along with 23 more who did not have direct experience using it). Most of their uses were for musculoskeletal disorders, but many also reported using it for scleroderma. Sadly however, nowadays, it’s exceedingly rare for me to find rheumatologists who know much about DMSO.
Note: there are dozens of testimonials from scleroderma patients (e.g., at the committee hearing which I attached here) who experienced life-saving changes from DMSO and gave many heartfelt pleas to both the FDA and Congress for DMSO to be legalized for this condition.
Other Autoimmune Conditions
In the first two parts of this series (which can be read here and here), I provided numerous studies demonstrating DMSO’s ability to prevent or resolve experimentally induced inflammation (or tissue necrosis) and many others that mapped out its specific anti-inflammatory properties (e.g., it inhibits numerous inflammatory cytokines), and a wealth of data showing it was an effective treatment for rheumatoid arthritis.
Note: in the previous article, I forgot to mention that topical DMSO is often very helpful for insect and animal bites.
DMSO in turn, is well recognized for its anti-inflammatory actions, and some of my colleagues have used it for this purpose for years. Likewise, many authors have discussed its use in a variety of autoimmune disorders (e.g., this author discussed how DMSO can often be quite helpful for idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura). In the section below, I will discuss its use in autoimmune conditions.
Interstitial Cystitis
Interstitial cystitis (also known as painful bladder syndrome) is defined as an unexplained irritation of the bladder wall that frequently is extremely painful (especially as the bladder fills) and often causes the patients to need to frequently urinate (e.g., up to 50 times one day—including at night), frequently causes bloody urine and in time can lead to scarring in the bladder which further reduce its maximum volume (hence making everything even worse).
Note: estimates on how common this disease (which is more common in women) vary, but they generally range from 0.87% - 17.3% as sometimes more or less stringent diagnostic criteria are used to diagnose it.
Remarkably, despite how common and debilitating this condition is (e.g., readers have emailed me about it), there still is no “good” way to deal with it, so various approaches are used that sometimes give varying degrees of symptomatic improvement.
Fortunately, the only medical condition DMSO (at 50%—sold as RIMSO-50) is approved to treat is interstitial cystitis (IC). This it got approved before the FDA decided to stonewall all DMSO approvals (e.g., for scleroderma). DMSO is thought to help IC by doing the following:
•It reduces bladder inflammation and pain (see this study, this study, this study, this study, and the studies I linked to here).
•It relaxes the bladder and pelvic detrusor muscles, and appears to address detrusor fibrosis is found in approximately 53% of IC patients (which are common issues in untreatable IC).
•It reduces bladder scar tissue by preventing collagen buildup inside the bladder.
•It reduces erosion and thinning of the bladder by reducing inflammation (e.g., see this and this study).
To illustrate:
A 38 year old lady in Las Vegas, Nevada, reported to the clinic with severe abdominal pain and blood in her urine. She needed to urinate approximately every 30 minutes, and she told the doctor that she was sure that she would be dead in a few months. She was sure that she had cancer. After a complete examination and tests this lady was informed that she did not have cancer. The problem was interstitial cystitis. She was treated with a bladder instillation of DMSO and told to drink one teaspoonful of DMSO twice a day in cranberry juice. This lady felt better almost immediately. Two months later her symptoms had completely disappeared. She had also complained about depression and aches and pains in various parts of her body. These were also gone, and she said she felt like a new woman.
Similarly, since it is FDA-approved (and hence easy to research), a significant amount of evidence has accumulated over the years showing DMSO helps IC. That includes:
•A 1978 study (which can also be read here) of 213 patients with a variety of inflammatory conditions involving the lower genitourinary tract such as intractable IC, radiation cystitis, chronic prostatitis, and chronic female trigonitis who received intravesical (DMSO applied to the bladder through a catheter), most of whom were women and the majority of whom had a good response to DMSO. This study included 100 women with chronic classic interstitial cystitis (and 14 men with it) along with 31 women with atypical chronic cystitis.
Additionally:
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Of the 31 women with atypical IC, 13 had an excellent response, 10 a good response, 4 a fair response, and 4 a poor response. The visual appearance of the bladder improved in over 90% of the cases, but an improved bladder capacity over at least 100cc was only seen 20% of the time.
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Of the 14 men with IC, 3 had an excellent response, 6 a good response, 4 had a transient improvement but ultimately required surgery, and at the time of publication, it was unclear if the last person would require surgery.
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Of the 12 patients with radiation cystitis (e.g., from prostate cancer therapy) 50% had a positive response to it (3 “excellent,” 2 “good” and 1 “fair”).
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Of the 35 patients with chronic prostatitis, 75% benefited significantly, with 12 having a “excellent” response, 14 a “good” response, and in 90% of cases, inflammation of the prostatic urethra improved.
•A 1978 study of 17 IC patients (including one man) found DMSO treated symptoms in 12 patients (sometimes in a dramatic fashion) while 5 did not respond to it.
•A 1988 study of 33 IC patients (including 3 men), found 53% had a marked improvement after DMSO (compared to 18% of placebo) and 93% had an objective improvement (compared to 35% of placebo).
Additionally, as this 1993 study and this 2012 study show, cases of IC that do not respond to DMSO often respond if another agent (e.g., heparin, corticosteroids, hyaluronic acid or analgesics) is mixed with the DMSO.
Lupus
I occasionally hear of DMSO being used to treat Lupus. For example, this author discusses how it greatly reduces the symptoms of Lupus and is more effective for the condition than steroids (which unlike DMSO are quite damaging if taken for a prolonged period).
The only publication I know of which evaluated DMSO’s effect on Lupus reported on two women with Lupus that was causing (pathologically confirmed) lupus interstitial cystitis and had not responded to prednisone. Both had a complete remission of their interstitial cystitis after intravesical DMSO.
Asthma
Numerous patients have found DMSO is quite helpful for asthma, often reducing the dose of the harmful medications they need to manage the condition, and in some cases eliminating the need for it. Typically, this is done with topical applications that sometimes mix in other agents which are beneficial in asthma. Additionally, DMSO can help with allergies and patients taking DMSO for other issues sometimes notice their allergies disappear.
While many others (e.g., this author) have shared anecdotal reports of DMSO helping asthma, I only know of one study (which was summarized in this book) that directly evaluated this. It gave 153 adults (84 men and 69 women) DMSO mixed with a bronchodilator, a steroid, and an antihistamine all administered by intramuscular injections of whom 43 of whom had frequent asthmatic crises (with asymptomatic periods) and 110 with more intense and frequent crises (despite receiving the standard therapies for asthma). The evaluations included all the standard pulmonary assessments, and it was found that the DMSO solution gave 37 (24.5%) an excellent result, 92 (60%) a good response, while 24 (15.5% had no change).
Note: many have observed DMSO increases the potency of cortisol (thereby allowing many patients who require cortisone for an autoimmune disorder to drop to a lower and less toxic dosage). Similarly, a variety of effective potent topical products that combine DMSO with cortisol have been created.
Multiple Sclerosis
Numerous authors have reported dramatic results in Multiple Sclerosis (MS) patients. For example, a 29 year patient who was paralyzed from MS and trying to get access to dialysis (when very few units were available) saw Stanley Jacob, who decided to risk giving her DMSO orally (despite her kidney failure).
Her improvement was dramatic—as dramatic as any benefit I have ever seen ," Jacob told me. Her renal problem seemed to come under control. Then—after a few more weeks—she walked again.
"Now, six years after her first DMSO treatment, she still has wobbly knees. But she walks. She drives her car. She takes care of her two children and her husband. But she is going downhill. I wish we could help her again, but we just don't seem able to. Despite this, however, I am not convinced that DMSO alone is useful in multiple sclerosis.
Likewise, another author shared the case of a California woman who was confined to bed, typically was in the fetal position, and was living at a convalescent hospital as she was expected to die within a few months. She was then given DMSO through multiple routes (e.g., injectable, oral and topical).
Shortly after treatment started, this lady complained that the treatment was causing pain in her legs. Prior to treatment she had very little feeling in her legs so even this pain was considered to be positive. Slightly over a year after treatment was started, this lady was able to move her legs. She later was able to feed herself. Improvement continued until this lady was moved to another state to be closer to some members of her family who thought the same treatment would be available in her new location.
The only study I know of that evaluated DMSO for MS was conducted on 34 patients in Russia in 1984. Overall, the investigators felt DMSO had a very positive result for MS, with the best results seen in patients who had remitting MS, while the results were more inconsistent in patients with rapidly progressive MS. The investigators assessed this was due to DMSO causing remyelination, a reduction in edema, and improved communication between nerve cells alongside DMSO having a positive effect on immunity and antiallergic and reparative action on the injured tissues.
Note: there was also a reported case of Stanley Jacob treating a patient with ALS which resulted in “some instant, overnight and slightly delayed wonders of therapy,” and I believe one person sent me a case of a positive report of using DMSO for ALS (but I can’t find it now). In our own experience IV DMSO is one of the only things which can treat ALS (typically it halts the progression of the disease).
Uveitis
One study induced uveitis (inflammation of the middle layer of the eye) in dogs, and found that subsequently giving DMSO decreased intraocular pressure and fibrin production—suggesting DMSO has therapeutic value in this condition.
Inflammatory Bowel Diseases
Quite a few of my colleagues believe the most important use of DMSO is that it is profoundly anti-inflammatory (but safe), and that it is particularly useful for inflammatory bowel disorders—especially when done early in the illness. Likewise, many DMSO authors report the same.
Note: others believe DMSO’s best use is healing brain tissue (e.g., after a stroke).
The only study I know that directly evaluated this question (and can be read here) took patients with recurrent attacks of proctosigmoidal ulcerative colitis that was not prevented by 2mg prophylactic sulfasalazine and then gave them 500mg sulfasalazine and 10 mg of prednisolone four times a day, and a 20mg prednisolone enema at night. After two weeks passed, 45 (51%) were free of symptoms, and 45 were given DMSO while 46 were given allopurinol (in addition to the existing regiment), resulting in 84% being free of symptoms. After two weeks, they were then put on 2mg of sulfasalazine alone each day, or it with either allopurinol or DMSO. After a year, 25% of those on sulfasalazine had a relapse, while 5% of those who also received allopurinol and 5% of those who also received DMSO relapsed. Additionally, the data showed DMSO significantly reduced the ESR over 2 weeks (by 77% compared to 37% with the standard approach), the (high) white blood cell count (by 65% vs. 41%) and raised the low albumin (by 9% vs. 7.8%). While all of that is a bit confusing to follow, it essentially says that DMSO, when compared to standard therapies, improved ulcerative colitis and prevented its recurrence.
Additionally, while not a study, I thought this passage by Pat McGrady should be included:
At 12:50 p.m., February 5, 1968, E. Rottenberg of the Ozothine Laboratories, Hauts-de-Seine, France, [unsuccessfully] applied for a patent for DMSO 'for treatment of all irritating conditions of the alimentary canal.’
He cited as support for his application these examples:
Acute gastritis—Twenty-eight patients unable to work went back to their labors following five to eight days of treatment, rid of such symptoms as nausea, vomiting, pain, gastric heaviness; their stomach secretions became normal and so did their general condition. One year later, twenty-one were still free of symptoms, working and off their diets. During this time about ten had undergone treatment again for about fifteen days.
Chronic gastritis—Thirteen patients on assorted treatments all relapsed on stopping treatment. On DMSO by mouth for one to two months, symptoms cleared up and all of them went back to work. At the end of a year, all of them remained improved, although some had resumed treatment two or three times.
Peptic Ulcer—Five patients were completely cured of recent peptic ulcers with oral DMSO, without recurrence during the following year.
Enterocolitis—Six patients with abdominal pain for several months and with diarrhea, emaciated and asthenic, began to improve after eight days on oral DMSO, and all were back at work in two months, pain-free and in good shape.
Mucomembranous colitis—Three patients were "cured" after three weeks of oral DMSO.
When the DMSO is combined with star anise, the appetite improves, the application stated.
Myasthenia Gravis
In order for skeletal muscles to fire, they need to receive acetylcholine from the nerve that directs them. In myasthenia gravis (MG) the body forms antibodies to the muscle's acetylcholine receptors (AChRs), and as they are destroyed, the muscles need more and more acetylcholine to be sent by the nerves to activate. In turn, MG is managed by various immune suppressing medications, filtering the AChR antibodies out of the blood and acetylcholine esterase inhibitors (which boost acetylcholine levels). Since DMSO both reduces harmful immune activity and is also an acetylcholine esterase inhibitor, there is a rational basis for using it to treat MG.
That possibility was initially discovered (accidentally) in 1980, when two researchers tested a variety of agents for their ability to reduce AChR antibodies, and realized that the DMSO being used as a vehicle for the various agents they were testing was independently reducing those antibodies. They then found giving rats daily intraperitoneal injections of 1 mL DMSO for two weeks resulted in a 52% decrease in AChR antibodies (but not total IgG levels) that were observed for an additional six weeks after treatment was terminated.
Note: after this discovery, the researchers expressed their eagerness to test DMSO in humans with MG (the New York Times even covered it).
A follow-up rat study then found DMSO suppressed anti-AChR antibody levels by an average of 53%–76%, with the effect being similar regardless of whether DMSO was given orally, rectally, or intraperitoneally. Additionally, DMSO treatment was observed to suppress the anti-AChR antibody response in rats to a weak primary antigenic stimulus.
Sadly, no human studies have ever been performed for DMSO with MG. However, patients and integrative healthcare providers sometimes do it and report success from doing so (along with again cautioning that if cortisone is being used, DMSO will significantly increase its effect on the body).
Note: this research inspired a 1982 study to determine if DMSO suppressed thyroid autoantibodies (which were experimentally induced in rats). It did, and also was found to increase the ratio of IgM to IgG plaque forming cells (which suggested a true immunoregulatory effect). In turn, some patients report that DMSO benefits autoimmune thyroiditis.
Sjogren's syndrome
Sjogren's syndrome (autoimmunity of the parotid gland) results in a loss of saliva and the mouth becoming very dry. Since it is a very difficult condition to treat, this table within a larger study caught by eye:
Pleomorphism and Autoimmunity
Over the years, I’ve seen many accepted mechanisms of action for pharmaceutical drugs later be discarded (e.g., the chemical imbalance theory of depression was pseudoscience from the start, and it is now becoming accepted antidepressants don’t work by raising brain serotonin levels—which if anything actually increases the risk of suicide).
One of DMSO’s widely recognized properties is it causes cancerous cells to revert to being normal. In researching that (which will be covered later in this series), I came across a fascinating study that tested cancer patients for pleomorphic bacteria (something many previous pioneers of successful but suppressed alternative cancer therapies like Rife and Naessens also believed caused many cancers) and found those bacteria were present. It then tested all 27 isolated organisms and found that 12.5-25% DMSO caused an almost complete inhibition of their growth (without affecting intact red blood cells).
The pleomorphic model of bacteria (discussed further here) essentially states that bacteria can significantly change their morphology (to the point they are almost unrecognizable from their original form), that these changes are often done in response to their environment, and that some forms are relatively harmless to the body, while others cause disease. In turn, since things that kill bacteria often transform them into ones that are more pathogenic, a longtime belief within certain schools of natural medicine is that the goal should be to change the terrain of the body to encourage a benign morphology of bacteria rather than trying to kill them all off.
Note: some of these schools also believe this applies to viruses and fungi, and that, in some cases, they can transform from one type to another (e.g., a bacteria becoming fungal).
A large group of modern researchers studied this subject for decades (e.g., hundreds of research studies they conducted are summarized in this wonderful textbook by Lida Mattman). Five of their key observations were:
•Antibiotics will often fail to kill every bacteria present and then trigger those that survive to enter a primitive survival state known as a “cell wall deficient” (CWD) form resembling a mycoplasma. This process in turn, was most commonly triggered by antibiotics that attack bacterial cell walls (which characterizes many commonly used antibiotics).
•CWD bacteria are very hard to detect (most standard microbial methods will determine that no organisms are there when CWDs are present).
•When conditions are more optimal for survival, CWD organisms can revert to the active form and cause an infection that had been eliminated with antibiotics to suddenly and inexplicably recur (which, for example, we frequently see with urinary tract infections).
•Once present, CWD bacteria will often enter cells and cause chronic inflammation because the immune system will attack cells with the CWD bacteria.
•Many different unexplained autoimmune disorders (e.g., sarcoidosis) have characteristic CWD bacteria present that can be repeatedly identified from their inflamed tissue (the textbook cites an exhaustive amount of data substantiating this).
•While standard antibiotics are ineffective in treating CWD infections, non-standard ones (e.g., erythromycin or minocycline) often are, but the sensitivity to those antibiotics is highly variable depending on the causative organism.
In practice, we find 10-15% of chronic illnesses (including blood clots and cancers) have a pleomorphic etiology, but rather than try to eliminate those organisms with antibiotics (which always have side effects), we instead give signaling products derived from healthy bacteria that cause the pathologic bacteria to transform into a non-harmful form, which in those applicable cases, frequently yields remarkable results (e.g., this approach is very useful for lupus and many cancers). Likewise, I believe this model explains a longstanding belief within natural medicine that giving antibiotics for an acute infection often transforms it into a chronic illness down the road.
Note: ultraviolet blood irradiation is also quite effective at eliminating these organisms and the diseases they cause. For example, a case report discussed a cohort of 5 family members who had a variety of chronic diseases (e.g., Crohn's disease, asthma, complex regional pain syndrome, hypothyroidism, type 1 diabetes mellitus, and lymphangiomatosis) and found that 4 had a MAP (mycobacterium paratuberculosis) infection. Two patients received antibiotics and UVBI, and then experienced a resolution of their autoimmune symptoms.
As it so happens, many of the most commonly used rheumatologic drugs also function as antibiotics (e.g., see this study, this study, and this study). For example, the most commonly used drug in rheumatology (methotrexate) works by blocking the enzyme that converts folate into the active form which is needed for DNA synthesis, and likewise, two commonly used antibiotics (sulfamethoxazole and trimethoprim—typically sold in the combination bactrim) work by blocking the folate converting enzymes in bacterial cells. In turn, when bactrim is given in conjunction with methotrexate, the combination is often much more toxic to patients than either is alone.
In the case of methotrexate, my suspicion there might be another mechanism at work for the drug began early in my training when I learned that it worked by blocking folic acid production but that “the side effects of methotrexate can be prevented by giving supplemental folic acid” (which essentially defeats the stated point of the drug) and once I learned about the pleomorphic model of autoimmunity, I hence suspected it had antimicrobial effects on those organisms. As the previously mentioned studies show, it does, but it is typically considered to be a poor antibiotic because it has poor bacterial permeability (difficulty entering them). However, unlike normal bacteria, cell-wall deficient bacteria lack a cell well and hence are much more permeable.
Likewise, over the years, many have observed using non-standard antibiotics (particularly minocycline) can provide dramatic improvement for autoimmune conditions like rheumatoid arthritis or ALS. Still, since none of them ever worked consistently, they never became standard of care. That said, many forgotten trials exist, such as this Lancet publication showing minocycline frequently helped early-stage scleroderma.
Note: on Sept. 29, 1998, the National Enquirer had an article titled: "Deadly Disease That Turns People To Stone Cured By Simple Antibiotic." I have been trying to find a copy of it (as Mattman referenced it in her Scleroderma chapter, but the title seems to describe fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva).
In the case of both interstitial cystitis and scleroderma, many suspected they might have a bacteria component, but since they could not be isolated with conventional methods, the cause of these illnesses remains “unknown.” However:
•A study of bladder biopsies from interstitial cystitis patients (using methods that can detect CWD organisms) was able to identify a gram-negative organism (not found in controls) they described as “the forms contain nucleic acids and resemble cell wall-deficient bacteria in gross morphology; however, their swirled myelin-like ultrastructure is unusual and suggests a heretofore unclassified microbe.” Later, another study was able to also identify these organisms in the blood of interstitial cystitis patients and determined that it was highly resistant to antimicrobials (e.g., it could replicate in 5% phenol and was not inhibited by chloromycetin or streptomycin).
_Note: numerous studies have shown interstitial cystitis makes someone 2-5 times as likely to develop bladder cancer, a cancer which is often treated with the (live) tuberculosis vaccine. As tuberculosis is a mycoplasma, I have often wondered if this therapy works by stimulating the immune system to eliminate a related CWD in the bladder.
_•In the case of scleroderma, one researcher has consistently found acid-fast pleomorphic organism in the tissues of Scleroderma patients.1,2,3,4,5,6,7 Likewise, Mattman was able to consistently culture a pleomorphic organism from the blood of those patients.
In short, I suspect that beyond DMSO being anti-inflammatory, a key reason why it helps so many autoimmune conditions is because it effectively inhibits the growth of pleomorphic bacteria. Unfortunately, in some conditions (e.g., scleroderma), this also requires it to be consumed for life as rather than eliminate the bacteria it only inhibits their growth.
Note: I also suspect one of the reasons the COVID-19 vaccines cause a variety of autoimmune conditions is because the immune suppression they create allows already existing CWD infections to grow out of control. Likewise, a case can be made the childhood vaccines trigger this process either through immune suppression or by the adjuvants they contain triggering bacteria to change to their CWD forms.
Presently, I feel more comfortable suggesting this model for IC than scleroderma, as we have found two specific therapies aimed at correcting the pleomorphic balance of the bladder are very helpful for IC, whereas scleroderma patients are so much rarer, there hasn’t been the opportunity to adequately explore this hypothesis there. Likewise, one of the only other things that really helps IC is avoiding the dietary triggers for it, and within the terrain theory model, a large focus is always given to eating foods that encourage a healthy morphology of the bacteria present within the body.
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DMSO Protocols
One of the things that’s very challenging about using DMSO is that there is a significant amount of variation in what each individual will best respond to. Because of this, in the first and second parts of this series, I attempted to provide a very detailed explanation that could try to account for each possibility. From the feedback I have gotten, I’ve realized that it is also necessary to make a more straightforward set of instructions for using DMSO that is more accessible.
In the final part of this article, I will share that guidance along with everything else you need to know about DMSO (e.g., where to get it) and more specific approaches for some of the conditions discussed in this article along with the topics I am planning to cover in the rest of this series.
When using DMSO, the major consideration is how strong of a dose you want to use. This is because if you use too high a dose, you risk the chance of having a bad reaction, which will make you not want to use DMSO anymore, whereas if you use too low of a dose, the effect will be much less than desired. In turn, I’ve had many people here who:
•Applied 100% DMSO topically and had trouble believing anyone couldn’t tolerate that.
•Applied 70% DMSO topically, had a bit of irritation but thought it was manageable.
•Applies 30% topically and felt it was too strong.
Because of this, you essentially have two options:
•Be patient and start with a low dose you build up.
•Start a strong dose and agree not to hold it against me or DMSO if you don’t tolerate it.
In the previous articles, I advocated for the former. Still, many understandably started with a high dose, a few of whom then shared they’d had a skin reaction that made them hesitant to continue using DMSO.
Similarly, when using DMSO, there are two common routes of application, orally and topically. Orally, it is much stronger, but likewise, the GI tract is more sensitive to higher concentrations of DMSO. For this reason, I typically suggest starting with topical DMSO before doing oral DMSO. Likewise, there is a very small risk (1 in 1-2000) of an allergic reaction, so it’s generally advised to begin by patch testing DMSO on the skin before taking it orally.
So, What is Patch Testing?
Patch testing is a method used to determine how the application reacts to a product. It's a smart way to test a small area first before applying the product to larger areas, which helps to identify any adverse reactions.How to Patch Test:
•Select a Small Area: Choose a discreet spot.
•Apply a Tiny Amount: Use a small quantity of the product.
•Wait and Observe: Leave it on for 24 hours unless you notice irritation sooner.
•Proceed if All’s Good: If there’s no reaction, feel confident to use the product as intended!*If in contact with the skin: Some experience itching and tingling sensations, which are normal. If there’s any redness or swelling, wash the area immediately and discontinue use.
That said for general DMSO use (without going into all the nuances and additional details), I advise the following:
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Start with 30-50% DMSO and see how you tolerate it.
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If you have no issue, raise it to 70%.
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Only raise it past 70% if you are certain you are one of those people who is fine with 100% or you are using it for a specific application that can justify a higher concentration (e.g., a collagen contracture, a scar, an internal adhesion or an acute stroke).
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Until you are comfortable with topical applications, don’t do oral applications, and only if you think you need them.
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For oral dosing, start with a teaspoon of 70% or 100% DMSO mixed into a glass of water (you may also want juice or milk to eliminate DMSO’s taste).
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If you have issues with that, lower the dose to half a teaspoon.
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Otherwise, stay at a teaspoon for at least three days, and then if you think you need a stronger effect, go to 2 teaspoons.
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More than 3 teaspoons in a glass of water is excessive, and at that point, you are better off dividing the dose throughout the day.
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With both topical and oral DMSO, people generally find that as time goes on, their tolerance to it improves.
Note: more detailed instructions on oral (and IV) DMSO use can be found here, while more detailed instructions on topical uses can be found here.
Regarding the concentrations used, I generally advise buying 70% DMSO because people rarely react to it (e.g., the DMSO felt it was the concentration that had the best balance between safety and efficacy). It doesn’t require any significant calculations to dose appropriately (e.g., you can apply it topically as it is, or mix it with equal parts of purified water to get it to roughly 35%). However, you can also do all of that with 100% DMSO (e.g., dilute it to roughly 50% rather than 35% by mixing it with equal parts of water or to roughly 33% by mixing it with two parts of water).
Additionally, the one tricky thing about dosing DMSO is that it weighs slightly more than water (1ml of DMSO is 1.1004 grams). Since there is a fairly wide range of tolerability to DMSO, I’ve bypassed that issue here by treating it as having the same density as water and suggesting a slightly lower oral dose.
Note: when DMSO is taken by mouth, the total concentration should always be kept to 20% or less, and ideally, it should be taken slowly after eating a meal.
When applying DMSO topically, there are two options. The first is to use a liquid that you directly apply (e.g., I like to use natural hair brushes to dab it on, but sometimes when needed I just dip my finger in it and then rub it onto the target area). The second is to use a gel which is rubbed into the skin.
When applying DMSO to the body, it is important to clean the area it will be applied to beforehand, and to ensure DMSO dries before putting anything in contact with it. This is because DMSO will pulling things on the surface of the skin into the body, and if a toxic chemical is on the skin, it hence will be dragged into the body. This is very rare, but there are known instances of this happening.
I personally prefer the liquids because it’s easier to control the total dose with them, more gets into the body, and liquid DMSO tends to be less irritating. That said, gels hold the advantage of continually releasing DMSO into the body over a prolonged period and are much easier to apply. Because of this, whichever one you use is largely a question of personal preference.
In most cases, if an area bothers you, you are better off applying DMSO to that area (provided there is no open wound), but if the issue feels systemic, you may also need to take oral DMSO.
Note: for many of the conditions described here (e.g., interstitial cystitis) even though DMSO was primarily given through catheters that emptied it into the bladder, many clinicians have found it works just as effectively when taken orally (and did not subject the patient who were already so irritated they could not tolerate a catheter going in).
There are a lot of options when purchasing DMSO. Of them, I believe these are the three best brands (which I’ve included links to purchase them):
•Jacob Lab (e.g., this gel or this liquid)—which is 99.98% pure.
•Nature’s Gift (e.g., this gel or this liquid)—which is 99.9% pure.
•The DMSO Store (e.g., this gel or this liquid)—which is 99.995% pure.
_Note: when buying liquid DMSO, it should always be sold in a glass container. Additionally, unless you feel confident you can dilute them correctly, get the 70% ones.
_Briefly, my thoughts on the brands are as follows:
•I primarily used Nature’s Gift for years, so I am very familiar with it.
•The DMSO Store version recently appeared and is likely the purest one (and like Nature’s Gift is easily available on Amazon). However, unlike Nature’s Gift, the 70% liquid form is not sold on Amazon so you need to make sure you dilute it correctly.
•If you are concerned about purity and authenticity, the Jacob’s lab DMSO is the best product (and the one Stanley Jacob recommended). Unfortunately, it is the most expensive and since it’s not offered on Amazon, and takes the longest to ship.
I am ultimately not sure which brand is best (from my standpoint all three work fine), and I am hoping to get some feedback from readers here on the subtle differences they notice between them.
Specific Conditions:
Generally speaking, the same DMSO protocols which have been discussed throughout this series can also be used for the conditions described throughout the article (e.g., if you are already on a steroid, you may need to have your doctor periodically assess if the current dose you are on needs to be lowered). Likewise, if the condition is systemic, oral consumption is typically done alongside applying DMSO directly over the symptomatic areas.
However, there are some specific nuances to be aware of.
Asthma—can be treated with topical or oral applications. When administered topically, it is normally over the chest, nose and forehead (remember that the face has less tolerance to higher concentrations of DMSO) and in some cases (especially over the chest) mixed with another substance that has anti-asthmatic properties (e.g., small amounts of high purity eucalyptus essential oil). Additionally, if breathing difficulties are occurring at the time of application, a significant improvement in the inability to breathe should occur once DMSO is given.
Duptyren’s contractures and Peyronie’s disease—most of the pertinent information was already mentioned (e.g., the early you start the better outcome you will have). The main thing to keep in mind with these conditions (which should be treated with topical applications of DMSO) is that you will need higher concentrations (e.g., Duptyren’s contractures seems to respond best to at least 90%), so it’s important to figure out what dose you best tolerate and then gradually raise it. Likewise, they often take a long time to fully respond (e.g., months) so you have to be patient with it.
Note: in most cases, as time continues, your tolerance to topical DMSO will increase. However, if DMSO is repeatedly applied to an area, it can lead to drying and scaling of it.
Inflammatory Bowel Diseases—start with a topical application over the irritated area, and then if you have a positive response to that you can either raise the topical dose or begin using oral DMSO. If you use oral DMSO, start slowly (e.g., half a teaspoon and then gradually raise it), with recommended doses typically starting at around 0.05g/kg (and then gradually being raised).
Note: typically in inflammatory bowel diseases, there are other issues as well (e.g., a food sensitivity or intolerance to Roundup sprayed crops) that need to be addressed as well and should not be neglected if DMSO alone seems to be managing the condition.
Interstitial Cystitis—typically, 50% DMSO will be directly administered intravesically into the bladder 1-2 times a week via a catheter either at home by the patient or by the doctor’s office, with the bladder being filled with DMSO. Then it is held there for roughly 15 minutes before being let out. With this application, some patients can’t tolerate 50% DMSO (and hence need lower) and in some cases will be switched to an oral protocol (e.g., 1 teaspoon of DMSO in cranberry juice once or twice a day) that works almost as well (e.g., the relief can be immediate). Likewise some doctors will begin a patient with an intravesical application but then switch them to oral (so it can be done at home) while others will do both (with the oral applications maintaining the benefits in between intravesical applications). If doing the catheter protocol, if at all possible, use a DMSO resistant plastic (detailed near the end of this article).
Note: of the dietary recommendations for interstitial cystitis, we find avoiding coffee and caffeine to be the most helpful.
ITP—the only author I have found who has discussed using DMSO for this condition combined it with chlorine dioxide (MMS), giving DMSO 2-3 times a day and combining it with 2 drops of each MMS ingredient (which was then gradually raised) and then continuing the treatment for a prolonged period. This was done under the theory there was an infectious organism that needed to be eliminated, and I believe the lower does was started with to avoid excessive hemolysis at the start (the weakest and oldest blood cells the spleen will soon break down often will break apart once any oxidative therapy is initiated).
Note: I have not yet discussed chlorine dioxide here because it is a complex topic and many others have already written about it.
Multiple Sclerosis—This often requires both topical applications to the affected areas and oral use (or ideally IV). I have suspected that applying DMSO to the carotids and jugular veins would be very helpful here, but we do not have sufficient clinical experience to affirm or disprove that hypothesis.
Myasthenia Gravis—DMSO is typically taken orally but also applied topically over the weakened muscles.
Conclusion
My primary goal in writing this publication (and why I put so much work into it) is because I’ve really wanted to bring public attention to both the Forgotten Sides of Medicine that would help so many people and the immense logical inconsistencies that exist within the practice of medicine (e.g., DMSO is viewed as incredibly dangerous and hence not acceptable to use for any chronic condition whereas NSAIDs, which are far more dangerous are not, or vaccines always being marketed on the basis of them creating herd immunity and ending a pandemic—even though that almost never ends up being what happens).
As such (especially given that for decades I’d wished the world knew about the DMSO story), I have been incredibly grateful that this series has gained so much traction and that it’s now inspired a lot of people to begin using DMSO (which I sincerely hope can be a wave that keeps building). To give that the best chance of happening, I had to carefully plan out the order in which each aspect of the DMSO story was introduced. In turn, many aspects still have not been covered, such as:
•How DMSO can be used for a variety of head ailments (e.g., eyes, ears, nose, and throat).
•How DMSO can be used for challenging diseases of the skin and the internal organs.
•How DMSO can treat conditions of the reproductive and urinary tract.
•How DMSO transforms the treatment of cancer and infectious diseases.
•The chronology of what the FDA did to DMSO and why those lessons from the past are so pertinent to today.
In the following weeks, those articles will be released, and I sincerely thank each of you for your support of this publication and giving me the voice to do this as it’s something I always wanted—but never imagined would actually be possible.
When I originally made this Substack, I found myself in a very frustrating position—I had something I felt was essential for the world to know (that we were repeating the disastrous smallpox vaccination campaign, its cruel mandates, and the widespread counterprotests against them by the working class). Still, I had no way to get the message out. I tried to find a way to do so for a while, and eventually, Steve Kirsch generously gave me a platform to do so.
Because of this, I have a considerable degree of empathy with people who find themselves in a similar position to mine. Thus one of my goals in building the subscriber base here has been to make that platform available to those in a similar situation to me, and I periodically publish compelling things readers share with me I believe are accurate (e.g., this citizen’s survey of blood clots amongst the vaccinated).
Recently a longtime reader contacted me to share his story. Based on my previous correspondences with him over the last year, I believe he has accurately represented himself here. I also want to note that his story shares many parallels to the treatment of other doctors attempting to do the right thing throughout COVID-19 (e.g., Paul Marik’s experience).
One of the reasons we lack doctors everyone wants to see is because those who try to do the right thing get pushed out of the system. Because there is so much corporate control of medicine, even doctors who want to do the right thing know they have no recourse if the hospital turns against them. Those doctors thus have to choose between toeing the line and doing their best within those circumstances or leaving the system entirely.
Their leaving thus leaves even fewer physicians that patients would want to see available within the corporate medical system. For many things like emergent hospital care, the patients cannot address the issue by simply opting out of the system. These problems worsened during COVID-19, particularly in the blue states, which has created the unfortunate situation where patients often have to travel out of state for the care they need, which is immensely unfair, especially to those who aren’t somewhat wealthy.
Dr. Miller’s Story
My Covid 19 Cancellation Story April 9, 2023
I am a physician who stood against the false narratives swirling around COVID and for a time, it seemed like I lost.
Before COVID became a public reality, I was working as a successful Trauma Surgeon and Surgical ICU Physician in the hospital that had the first diagnosed COVID case in America. I was working as one of the more senior surgeons of a team of 12 surgeons. The hospital and medical community had already been struggling prior to COVID with various departures from reality with narratives including ‘racism everywhere’ and ‘diversity as long as it supports deviancy,’ but it wasn’t appearing to dramatically affect patient care.
[Dr. Miller’s surgical specialty currently requires 6-7 years of grueling training after completing medical school and thus pays a high salary. Because of the investment required to obtain it, most doctors are reluctant to ever part with it].
In 2018-2019, I stumbled onto a fraud scheme perpetrated by some of the administrative doctors in our hospital that did cause patient harm, so I reported our hospital administration for fraud. I similarly observed and discovered other connected issues that caused patient harm, by various other providers, that I tried to bring to light in our hospital. I was “rewarded” with 12 complaints filed against me over a 2-week period, in retaliation. These complaints accused me of breaches of almost every aspect of professional behavior and ethics. It followed one of the administrators sending out an email asking her colleagues to ‘get rid of Dr. Miller.’ None of these allegations stood (they were all false to begin with), and I continued to do my job to the best of my abilities in this hostile situation, but it became increasingly difficult. Eventually, every single complaint was dismissed as unsubstantiated.
Then, through February and March of 2020, our hospital had a large number of COVID patients including a real upsurge of many sick patients in early March. A couple weeks later, it hit the news, but only AFTER the virus had passed its inflection point in our hospital and AFTER our healthcare system was not in any threat of having inadequate resources. Things then went completely mad with hype and fear- again, this was AFTER the real infectious surge was past.
Suddenly, our hospital outcomes and quality data became hidden and opaque to us. Prior to this, most all data was openly shared and discussed in quality assurance meetings. The hospital forced upon us a narrative that was pure lunacy and contrary to all available observations and previously available data. A chilling example is the following: I was working a shift in the ICU in late April 2020 and had basically nothing to do because greater than half our beds were empty. We were “low censusing” any nurses willing to go home because there were so few sick patients. I was having a cup of coffee, chatting with the staff and another ICU physician, who was in leadership, when the daily newspaper was delivered. Prior to the paper being delivered, we were all relaxed, jocular, and noting how little work we all had. The other ICU physician picked up the local paper where the main headline said, ‘Local ICU Overwhelmed.’ The article was referencing our ICU, as we were the only hospital in the county. He looked at me, started sweating, panicked, and said, “What are we going to do? We may not be able to handle this!” I replied with, “Pour another cup of coffee and laugh at the morons writing the paper.” He became visibly distressed and left to call the hospital administration about the situation, who confirmed they were complicit with the newspaper article. This colleague was one of the medical directors of our ICU. Our hospital and ICU were not overfull at the peak number of infections in March 2020. In fact, the ICU was never overfull, even after the horrible protocols that hurt so many patients were established. I knew we were in serious trouble as a medical community when clinical leaders started believing the words in a newspaper and hospital administrators more than their own eyes and experience.
[Mattias Desmet’s mass formation hypothesis helps explains how people can delude themselves into a reality in stark contrast to the objective evidence in front of them].
Then, I watched as every policy, practice, and quality metric that makes a trauma and surgical program have good patient outcomes be undermined or abandoned by my colleagues and hospital administration. I filed countless complaints to our quality department for disgusting breaches of care that were now becoming commonplace. I could not turn my back on my oaths taken to advocate for patients. Between mid-2020-2021, following a leak of information from the opaque administration, I learned that our unanticipated morbidity and mortality numbers had more than doubled for indexed trauma patients. It was horribly demoralizing to watch.
[This is an excellent example of a society in decline].
After the vaccine was rolled out in late 2020, it became a functional mandate in the broader community, and then definitively mandated by the late summer of 2021. The medical community in the county I was working in (Snohomish, WA) started refusing to care for unvaccinated patients, except in the hospital setting. I couldn’t believe that patients were banned from accessing basic primary care at first, but then I spoke to a man at my church who was denied both refills of his diabetic medications and treatment for a sinus infection by his primary care provider, all because of his COVID vaccination status. This was so inconceivable that I still didn’t believe it! Even when patients did make it to the hospital, I learned that the physicians and staff in the emergency room were directed to provide a lower tier of medicine to this group of patients. It was less than acceptable, and worse, less dignified, than the care given to any other patients pre and post COVID. I had to verify with physician leaders that they approved of this inhumanity. I found out that all the major healthcare systems in the county had agreed to this action, and drove the creation of the policies that demanded physicians act in direct opposition to their oaths. After discovering this, I departed from the medical community in spirit.
[My observation throughout history has been that when a malignant collective ideology takes hold, only 5-10% will be willing to go against it].
Working with my pastor, we turned our church into a free clinic to care for those ostracized from society. I obtained independent malpractice insurance, and we started seeing patients. People were desperate. We didn’t advertise, but there were so many people seeking basic healthcare that we struggled to see everyone. I did my best to see people in their time of need, but it was hard. I was still working in my full-time hospital position. I just didn’t have enough hours in the day. Most of the people I cared for were seen at the church - they were met with maskless smiles, prayer, support, and free medical care. Sometimes, people would be waiting in my driveway for me when I arrived home in the early morning after a night shift or late at night after I finished a day shift. What became obvious as the most important thing about our clinic, is that our patients needed to be treated as valuable people created in God’s image.
Prior to this experience, I was a seasoned/hardened subspecialist with the best reputation one could hope for in the hospitals I worked. When other doctors, health executives, nurses, and local politicians or their families had surgical problems, I was often the one asked to deliver their care even if I wasn’t scheduled to be working. After our health care system abandoned the oaths we took as physicians, I had an identity crisis and pivoted to putting more efforts into the free clinic, caring for the dispossessed patients.
[Throughout my career, I have tried to volunteer in free clinics because I frequently find they are the only place you can focus on helping patients rather than dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s the corporate medical system requires everyone to do].
Eventually, my work at the free clinic treating unvaccinated patients became known, and the hospital administration learned of it. Subsequently, the real pressure against me started. The hospital responded by opening an investigation of me on synthesized charges of ‘micro-aggression.’ There ended up being 2 separate and independent investigations (one by the hospital, one by my physician group leadership who were working in tandem with the hospital) into my conduct. My colleagues, who months earlier asked for my help and guidance about both professional and personal matters, would no longer return my calls, text messages, emails, or speak to me in public, for fear of being labeled as affiliated with me while in my state of political disfavor. The investigations themselves and the repercussions to my reputation were the punishment. I was treated as guilty, even when proven innocent, by the hospital administration and my colleagues. The investigations eventually exonerated me, my behavior, and my healthcare delivery, but left open the possibility for immediate suspension/termination if I committed a ‘micro-aggression’ in the future. Obviously, this was a no-win scenario for me since micro-aggressions are subjective, undefinable, unprovable, and therefore indefensible. I refused to continue working without an independent mediator, so the hospital gladly paid out my contract instead of mediation and restoration.
[One of the things that surprised me about working in hospitals was seeing things I’d previously associated with high school drama transpire inside the facility—something many of my colleagues have also observed].
Separately during this time, I was reported to the State Medical Board by an outpatient pharmacist for prescribing a 2-week course of Fluvoxamine (an anti-depressant) prescription to help a patient recovering after COVID. This prescription had been banned by the Washington State Medical Association as a treatment for COVID or its repercussions. Incidentally, the patient had a positive response and near complete recovery from her illness, but the pharmacist and WSMA didn’t seem to care about that data point but were apparently offended that I violated their protocol.
By March/April of 2022, multiple other clinics in the county began to accept care for most patients, regardless of vaccination status, and so we wound down the free clinic at my church, transitioning people’s care to physicians in established practices who would now agree to deliver appropriate care. As I had been reported to the state (although no formal charges were brought) and I was being pushed out of hospital medicine for practicing ethical medicine, I knew it was time to leave Washington State. The message to me was clear: if I stayed, I would have formal investigations that would prohibit me from obtaining a medical license in another state. My livelihood would be stripped away. So, we sold our homes and boats, liquidated our assets, and moved to South Florida in May 2022. I was, and am, bitter at the establishment of medicine that committed these crimes, so I planned to retire at age 50 with the move and have nothing further to do with the establishment.
[Dr. Miller made the correct decision. Had he not left, he likely would have been permanently barred from practicing medicine in the future. This illustrates a major issue with the current medical board system].
However, after the hurricane came through Florida in the fall of 2022, I started doing volunteer work for hurricane victims. This included some medical relief work. I realized there is still good that can be done in medicine, that people need healthcare providers, and that by nature, I am a healer.
So, in February of 2023, I returned to practicing medicine and started working as a Primary Care Physician at a holistic clinic where no patient is turned away. I discovered that I enjoy being a Family Physician, too. I lost my prestigious career and my social position, but I did not lose my ethics or integrity. I did not violate my oaths of practice. So, ultimately, I have won. And I’m happy.
Conclusion
I applaud Dr. Miller for being willing to share his story publicly. Many physicians over the years have told me that the medical profession's mistake was surrendering too much of each doctor's power to the corporate medical machine. Over the last few years, we have witnessed a direct consequence of this unchecked power grab.
In the future, I believe three concrete steps need to be taken to address this issue:
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The first is that patients living in blue states must create the political will to have their state governments stop pushing these ridiculous actions. Doing so will likely require directly informing the public that most of the laws and policies being enacted are being done to support corporate interests rather than patients—as directly attacking specific violations of medical freedom has been largely unsuccessful thus far due to it being blended into the red vs. blue partisan dichotomy (which is very difficult to shift in either direction) rather than being portrayed as corruption affecting the entire electorate.
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The second is that patients need to financially support services and physicians they believe in and, as much as possible, opt out of ones that don't. We are seeing a miniature version of that with Substack, as the legacy media is rapidly losing viewership (since most of what they publish is garbage). Simultaneously journalists are making more on Substack than they did at their old jobs—both of which are putting pressure on the legacy media to stop publishing garbage and making many journalists want to jump ship to Substack.
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The third is the doctors need to be much more aggressive in taking their power back (they need to band together—potentially with the correct type of union). The corporate medical system cannot function without them, and there is a constant shortage of physicians in the United States, so that position needs to be leveraged to force the corporate medical system to behave rather than perpetuate the current corporate status quo
Most sane people believe that the burden of proving safety should lie on the party conducting a questionable action, rather than their victim. For example, if a criminal shot someone, the prosecution would not be required to prove that the victim’s sudden death after the gunshot wound was not just a spontaneous coincidence, a result of extreme stress from the situation, or due to a pre-existing medical condition.
Unfortunately, the pharmaceutical industry has been able to establish a special type of privilege within the legal system which has made it very difficult to demonstrate that vaccines (along with many other pharmaceuticals) can ever be at fault for anything. Because of this, we recently had a flood of experimental vaccines mandated upon the population, which were never tested for safety (despite many serious concerns with their design), whose (likely fraudulent) clinical trial data was never made accessible to the public.
We then had, as far as I know, the most aggressive propaganda campaign in history, and I watched the majority of my colleagues lose the ability to recognize any problems related to the vaccines. Instead, they developed an almost surreal religious devotion to the coming salvation of the vaccines becoming available.
Once the vaccines entered the market, a variety of red flags began going off indicating that these vaccines were killing people, and rather than address these concerns, the government—in concert with the media—chose to deny any of this was occurring. Instead they mandated the vaccines upon the entire population. I was understandably worried that the vaccines would cause problems and tried to do my part to head this off in 2020, but I did not expect anything on the scale of what we have encountered since then.
I personally became involved in all of this because soon after the vaccines entered the market, I began to have many friends and patients reach out to ask me if the vaccine could kill as someone they knew had had a tragic sudden death after vaccination. Once the magnitude of the problem dawned on me, I realized that even though my available options were limited, I could at least do my best to document each case sent my way so that someone would bear witness to what had happened. Otherwise, the dead had no voice. Beyond knowing I had a duty to compile this list however, I was not sure what to do with it. Later after someone kindly helped launch this Substack, I decided to post it, it ended up being seen by a lot of people…and that is how I ended up writing here.
Because of how long it took to verify each case, I realized that I had to end it a year in (at which point I knew of 45 individuals who had either critical or fatal injuries of a similar nature in close proximity to vaccination). Since that time, I still continue to hear reports I periodically document and discuss.
For example, a good friend is a nurse in a cardiac unit and has told me many of the patients she sees now with heart failure are much younger than they were a few years ago. I previously advised her against getting the vaccine due to her history of rheumatic fever (a condition where the immune system attacks and damages part of the heart). This was because I had noticed both COVID-19 and especially its vaccine seemed to cause inflammatory flares at previous sites of injuries or inflammation (Lyme is also known for doing this). The vaccine also has a remarkably high rate of exacerbating pre-existing autoimmune conditions—such as the 24.2% rate found in a recent Israeli survey which is comparable to what a few colleagues have observed, and I suspect exacerbation of preexisting inflammation within the circulatory system, like what this study of 566 patients found, is a key mechanism behind vaccine deaths.
A month ago, the nurse informed me that she had decided to vaccinate and had subsequently developed a heart condition. Additionally, she shared that the same had also happened to her mother following vaccination and that her sibling's partner is suffering longterm complication from a large stroke that immediately followed receiving a booster.
Looking back on it, the thing I found the most disappointing about my own documentation project was that once it went viral, it should have triggered the drug regulators evaluating the vaccines to take preventative action. Instead, due to the meticulously planned campaign of mass censorship that we all found ourselves in, more red flags than I can count were ignored by the “very rigorous” vaccination surveillance systems that were allegedly ensuring there were no safety issues with these vaccines.
Because of the immense power behind the medical-industrial complex, those debating this program have been stuck fighting an uphill battle. However, despite the immense degree of corruption, withholding of critical data, and censorship, these vaccines are dangerous enough that more and more evidence is nonetheless emerging of their danger, and the public is beginning to recognize it (e.g., consider how resistant the public has been to get COVID boosters). The previous article here discusses polling that shows this appears to be happening:
We Now Have A Clear Estimate Of The Rate Of Vaccine Injuries
Throughout my entire life, I’ve always found that trying to argue against Big Business is like fighting with one or both hands tied behind your back because large industries can always co-opt and buy out every authoritative source on the subject, and then censor any inconvenient facts that still persist. This is an immensely challenging situation.
Immediately after it was published, I was informed by a reader that possibly the most important dataset over the last two years was released today. For those interested, much of the context for today’s article can be found in the article above.
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German Data
One of the depressing realizations one gains from studying the evidence-based literature is discovering how many issues exist within it and how difficult it is to know which data sources can be trusted. One of my favorite authors, Dr. Malcom Kendrick, devoted a book to addressing this subject and shared a pertinent anecdote for today’s events:
“In truth, the figures on vaccine damage are exceedingly difficult to analyse, because causality is very difficult to prove on a case by case basis. However, when it comes to negative findings I always like to go to Germany. It has been demonstrated many times that the Germans are the most likely to report negative findings accurately. Yes I know, terrible racial stereotyping, but a fact is a fact. What do the Germans have to say on the matter?
“Between 1978 and 1993 approx. 13,500 cases of undesired effects resulting from medications for vaccinations was reported to the Paul Ehrlich-Institute [PEI]…the majority was reported by the pharmaceutical industry. In 40% [5,400] of these cases the complications were severe, 10% [1,350] pertained to fatalities on account of effects.”
Additionally, as I learned from Kendrick, since early 2001, the federal infection protection law has mandated that specific severe vaccine injuries be immediately reported directly to the PEI (Germany’s equivalent of the FDA for vaccines and biologics). The German’s list of reportable injuries is much broader than what I have seen acknowledged by many other countries (e.g., those which are possible to receive compensation for within the United States) and includes the previously discussed complications of DPT along with many of the reactions typically associated with the COVID-19 vaccines. However, while that historical trend exists, Germany has not been one of the best countries for reporting COVID vaccine injuries (which I suspect is due to the political direction their government has moved in).
(The above graph illustrates why many of my German friends are not happy with their government)
Because of their tradition of reporting adverse reactions to vaccination, Germans (or at least some of them) have been more resistant to toeing the party line on concealing the dangers of the COVID-19 vaccines than citizens of many other countries (my friends there are enraged by the egregious concealment of critical safety data by the German government). In turn, some of the most critical vaccine data available comes from the German people as many of them have retained their intellectual integrity throughout the pandemic.
For instance, although autopsies should always be conducted on those who died suspiciously after vaccination, due to the global climate of intimidation against conducting any type of research that challenges the COVID vaccine program, it is rarely done. Instead, almost every autopsy has been performed by a few brave pathologists in Germany, and I have tried to detail the pathologist’s work throughout my postings (e.g., see here).
Some of the most important contributions of these autopsies include:
- Demonstrating that there is highly unusual tissue inflammation in those who died after vaccination. Pathologists had not observed this phenomena before the COVID-19 vaccines, and stated the inflammation they observed would likely be fatal.
- Demonstrating that the COVID spike protein could also be found in the tissues of those who died.
- Demonstrating that another key part of the SARS-CoV-2 virus was not present, meaning that the only possible source of the spike protein was the vaccine.
The most definitive study on this subject was recently completed. It examined 35 individuals who died within 20 days of vaccination, and after a lengthy examination excluded 10 who had a potential cause of death other than vaccination. Of the remaining 25, most had causes of death that frequently been linked to vaccination, and of those, 5 were found to have myocarditis potentially linked to the vaccine, and in 3 cases the vaccine was determined to be the definitive cause of their myocarditis and death. These results are very important for convicting the vaccines if it can also be proven that a large number of unexpected deaths are occurring following vaccination.
The Religion of Data
Every group needs to have some type of ideology to unite behind. Presently, one of the fixations within the Western world is on more and more data being the solution to everything. In turn, there are many concerns with this approach (e.g., it dehumanizes people, its “necessity” is used to justify violating citizen’s right to privacy while collecting it and it is being used to build an infrastructure that controls every aspect of our lives).
Although data is often claimed to be our salvation, and I will admit sometimes is quite helpful, in many other cases, it fails abysmally to address our problems. A major reason for this failure is that no one wants to critically analyze data this is gathered if that data suggests we should stop supporting an entrenched financial interest.
I am most aware of this in healthcare, as I know of numerous systems which were designed to analyze electronic medical records and either identify which pharmaceutical worked best for a condition, or if a pharmaceutical (or vaccine) was unsafe. Not surprisingly, all of these systems were never adopted, and the endless data we collect in healthcare (e.g., all the diagnostic coding data which medical insurance providers provide as a condition of reimbursement to healthcare providers) is rarely utilized to improve the public good. However, while prevailing biases frequently produces flawed analyses of data, data itself does not lie and has immense potential to expose dangerous health care practices if people are willing to look at it.
The largest insurance provider in Germany, BKK, provides coverage to approximately 10.9 million Germans. A board member, Andreas Schöfbeck, observed some very concerning signs in their data, and unlike everyone else, had the courage to disclose it in a letter to the German government (e.g. he addressed the PEI), after which, he was dismissed from his position. The BKK dataset (discussed by Jessica Rose) was the one which showed 2.05% of vaccine recipients subsequently sought medical care with a healthcare provider (others estimated it demonstrated 3.5% were struggling with persistent vaccine side effects).
This concerning safety signal prompted one German Political Party, the AFD (a controversial right wing party that has gained appeal through opposing the mandates) to file the German equivalent of FOIA for the rest of the insurance data (note: a few friends in Germany who are lifelong liberals joined AFD told me they believe “conservative” is a more appropriate label for AFD). Recently AFD obtained AOK Sachsen-Anhalt’s data, which once analyzed, demonstrated that many of the conditions we associate with COVID-19 injuries noticeably increased when the vaccination campaign initiated. According to this interview and Google translate, the conditions which rose five-fold or more were:
AFD’s FOIA Request
AFD also submitted a FOIA request to KBV, the association which represents all physicians who receive insurance in Germany and thus the largest insurance dataset available. The official response to their FOIA request reads as follows (this was my attempted translation):
”Dear Mr. Sichert,
With an e-mail dated October 27th, 2022 you have submitted an application to the KBV after the Freedom of Information Act (IFG) on access to data of the diagnostic codes by law health-insured patients.
You have asked for the following data packages to be sent by email:
Package 1: Filtering of all insured persons who will have an ICD coding in 2021 had vaccine side effects. You have applied for the codes T88.1, T88.0, U12.9 and Y59.9 apply.
Package 2: You request the transmission of a list of the frequency of all ICD codes of the insured persons from package 1 for the period 2016 to 2021, if proportionately available also for 2022, by quarter. The data query should after your request with V and G.
Package 3: You request the transmission of a listing of the frequency of all ICD codes of all insured persons - without the number of insured persons from package 1 - for the period from 2016 to 2021, if proportionately available also for 2022 quarters. The data query should be done with V and G.
The KBV corresponds to your application and includes a tabular overview as an attachment with the desired information about the frequency of at.
The abbreviations used in the table have the following meaning:
nw= number of patients with “vaccination side effects” (defined according to requested Filtering 1 in 2021)
onws= patient numbers "without vaccination side effects" (defined according to requested Filtering 2 in 2021)Quarters of the reporting period are set as YYYYQ (e.g. 20214=Q4 2021).
The small font size in the printout is again unavoidable, since we want to make it easier to compare wanted to show all quarters of the two comparison groups on one sheet (the pdf document). However, like last time, it can be enlarged.
Today, the AFD hosted a press conference to unveil the data of those 72 million patients (the 90% of Germans with statutory health insurance) AFD had obtained from KBV. This data summarizes the number of times all ICD-10 (an international standard) diagnostic codes were used by German healthcare providers for these patients (outside of hospitals) from the first quarter of 2016 to the first quarter of 2022.
Tom Lausen is a data activist who had previously revealed the PEI and the RKI (the German equivalent of the CDC) were concealing concerning vaccine safety data and was allowed to analyze both BKK and AOK’s data. For this presentation, Lausen was able to provide a preliminary summary of the KBV data a few days after it was released:
A rough translation of this presentation can be found here (additionally YouTube now will translate the subtitles). If this video is deleted it can also be found here.
A few of the points emphasized in this presentation include:
- The [PEI](http://Paul Ehrlich Institute), the RKI and the German government have failed in their duty by federal law to evaluate COVID-19 vaccine injuries. Many of my friends and readers likewise believe they have done an atrocious job by attempting to conceal the vaccine injuries, and these agencies are frequently chastised by the German people for their conduct. Many of the arguments against the validity of this data must be viewed in the context of the fact it would be very easy to the government agencies to access and analyze this data, but despite many requests to over the last two years, they have all adamantly refused to, which is why AFD had to force them to act with its FOIA.
- It is estimated that 90% of the suspicious deaths that occur after vaccination are not reported to the PEI, and approximately 90% of those reported come from the patient themselves or their relative (which again demonstrates that German healthcare providers are failing in their duty to report vaccine injuries).
- The PEI has nonetheless received over 3,000 reports of suspicious deaths following vaccination, but has refused to perform any autopsies on those deaths. The excuse the PEI has used for their inaction is not having the explicit authority to order the autopsies (which is a spurious excuse). Fortunately as noted above, other groups without any official authority to order autopsies have nonetheless taken the initiative to perform them.
For this press conference, a presentation was put together detailing Lausen’s preliminary findings and the correspondences with the regulatory agencies, all of which can be found here. To the best of my ability, I translated and slightly modified the key portions of the presentation so that they could be accessible to English speakers, but I am certain more will be translated in the upcoming days.
The KBV Data
All of the KBV data can be reviewed with a simple search tool here, although it does not seem to work for certain ICD-10 codes. Due to the importance of this data, for data preservation purposes, I am also providing a copy of the raw data the AFD received:
Germany Total Icd 10 Code Submissions 2016 2022 1.87MB ∙ PDF File
This PDF file was supplied in a manner that makes the data quite difficult to analyze. Fortunately, one of my readers was able to move the above file into an easily sortable spreadsheet and thereby address some of the challenges with the PDF:
German Data Sortable Sheet 3.06MB ∙ XLSX File
Finally, the above sheet was sorted by that reader into a smart spreadsheet which allows you to easily observe which codes had the greatest increase in 2021-2022 (e.g. to sort them or create graphs). For those of you who are data inclined, you will likely want to create this sheet yourself, but for everyone else this is an excellent reference to start with). They were also able to use a script to put about one third of the names for the ICD-10 codes, but since there are fifteen thousand of them, it wasn’t practical for us to manually add in the rest and you will frequently need to directly look up the codes themselves (if a group wants to add the other codes in, I will be happy to repost that).
When Lausen presented the data, for each time period (e.g., 2016 quarter 1), he chose to add two different values together (code_20161 and nocode_20161). As best as I can tell from reviewing the FOIA request and the provided data, these categories represent those who also received a vaccine injury code and those who did not (as a result the majority of Germans belong to the “nocode” category).
I believe Lausen’s rationale for presenting the data in this manner was that a large number of vaccine injuries will go unreported and many vaccine injured patients are thus within the “nocode” category. Conversely, the total number of medical conditions observed in the country is not dependent upon accurate recognition of vaccine injuries.
Separating the patients by (the somewhat inaccurately classified) vaccine injury status is nonetheless a helpful means for evaluating vaccine injuries (I saw a variety of interesting trends in my preliminary examination). However, for the reasons outlined in this article, for the initial spreadsheet presented below, those result are combined.
Additionally, some of the extreme outliers exist because new ICD-10 codes are added each year and thus did not exist prior to 2021/2022. Finally, some of the codes you would expect to have large changes may not show in this dataset if they are codes typically used in a hospital setting as this dataset does not include hospital code submissions.
Kbv Data Sorted Into Accessible Excel Sheet - 9.46MB ∙ XLSX File
In the coming days, I know many will use this data to verify our work identifying which codes in 2021-2022 had the greatest increase (you can also do that piece by piece with the already available tool), and then cross reference those to the increases reported in VAERS or other datasets. There is an immense amount to be ascertained here, and I believe it represents the credible evidence we have been looking for since the start of the pandemic to have an objective metric for quantifying the impact of vaccine injury. However, it is also critical we determine which of the observed trends are not due to artifacts within the data.
Lausen’s Presentation of the KBV Data
This is probably the most important graph of Lausen’s presentation. We have all heard stories of individuals dying suddenly after vaccination (I’ve even read a report of an individual who appeared to be in good health making a thump in another room and being found dead shortly after by their spouse).
This issue was recently brought to the public’s attention with Died Suddenly, a documentary that effectively brought attention to this issue, but also had factual errors which were counterproductive for persuading the public that this issue is real. However, while some of the proof that Died Suddenly provided to assert the existence of the sudden death phenomenon could not stand up to outside scrutiny, the same cannot be said of the KBV data.
Additionally, one way that individuals have analyzed the unusual changes in health following the vaccination campaigns has been to assess how far they fall outside of the expected range of variation (this was also done for the final spreadsheet). I did a quick calculation for the above graph and found that 2021’s increase from 2016-2020 was 37.7σ, while 2022’s was 41.0σ. This is quite a big deal (the rarity of an event happening by chance increases exponentially as the σ increases). For context, a 7σ event has a 1/390,632,286,180 chance of spontaneously occurring (it is thought to occur once in a billion years), a 10σ event happens spontaneously once every 5.249e+020 years, and a 25σ event happens by chance every 1.309e+135 years (I was not able to find a reference on the probabilities for the even higher σ events observed here).
Given these numbers, it is very difficult to argue that these events were not caused by something. In this regard, we are also quite fortunate that while the vaccines were rushed to the market over a period of time far too short to establish safety, that process still took a year. Because of this lag, it is possible to refute the reflexively cited counterargument that these changes were due to COVID-19 or the lockdowns, as these only occurred in 2020 (the only possible exception I can think of is that Delta emerged near the end of 2020, but the spike started well before Delta became prevalent in Europe later in 2021).
This is a similar graph to the previous one, but include sudden cardiac death, which as many of you know also “unexpectedly” increased. Many authoritative sources have argued Lausen made a mistake to correlate vaccine injuries with the spike in sudden death because very few vaccines were given at the start of 2021 and thus if a correlation was there, it should have been not emerged until the second quarter.
For context, this was the rate of COVID vaccination in Germany:
As you can see, many vaccines were given in the first quarter of 2021.
COVID-19 is not the only vaccination regularly received. For example in Germany in 2019, it was estimated that 39% of those 65 and older received an influenza vaccination. However, unlike previous vaccines, the introduction of the COVID-19 vaccine caused far more people to require medical care for a vaccine side effect.
Given that Germany has a longstanding practice of evaluating vaccine injuries, this graph makes a very important point. An actual increase in vaccine injuries is occurring and it is not a result of a bias leading to over-reporting; it is a result of the vaccines being dangerous and patients needing medical care for the injuries.
Additionally, an outside team which looked at this data concluded approximately 5% of vaccine recipients subsequently required medical care, which is in line with the 7.7% discovered in V-Safe’s data and required a court order to be released as the CDC understandably did not wish to disclose this information. Note: I believe this discrepancy could be partially explained by the undercounting of vaccine codes highlighted in this article.
The general correlation between these two datasets is important. V-safe monitored 10 million vaccine recipients for a few specific things and was arguably the best surveillance system in place for tracking the side effects of these vaccines as it had a large but defined sample who were provided an easy way to report the chosen side effects. Since one of its key metrics matches the KBV data, this argues that at least some of the KBV data is valid.
Note: I am not sure if this specific dataset is referring to the total number of patients who sought care or the total number of times codes were submitted for vaccine injuries (which would mean a smaller number in total were injured).
Given that there are thousands of ICD codes that I could search the database for (many other increases, such as those of certain cancers, were highlighted in Lausen’s presentation), I had to put some thought into which of those many increases would be the best to show for this article (there were a lot of compelling candidates).
Previously, I proposed a model for the unusual fibrous clots observed in Died Suddenly that revolved around spike proteins causing protein misfolding. In support of this model, I highlighted an observed increase of an extremely rare protein misfolding disease which continues to be reported in VAERS.
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease typically develop over years and occurs in approximately one in a million people annually, making its occurrence immediately after vaccination rare to the point that suggests causation (and as Jessica Rose noted, new reports are continuing to arrive in VAERS). The increase I proposed was a key point of contention for those who did not agree with my misfolded clot hypothesis, so I was eager to see if a current dataset could evaluate what was occurring.
This increase is also quite large, and for all practical purposes impossible to have occurred by chance (although I will mention the authors who published the original case series linking COVID vaccination to 26 cases of CJD also determined that Delta appeared to have an increased capacity to trigger protein misfolding but I do not believe that can explain the above trend).
Since this article was published, one reader has now attempted to present a longer analysis of this data which shows multiple interesting trends (e.g., many of the side effects commonly attributed to COVID vaccination appeared to have increased) along with raising additional questions about this data. It is my hope others will also do so!
Finally, the presentation on the KBV data proposes a fatality rate for the COVID vaccines. This chart was compiled by Lausen from the officially reported adverse events to the vaccines and likely are significantly undercounting the vaccine fatality rate.
Is This Data Valid?
Following the AFD’s press conference, the leading medical research institute in Germany, ZI, acted as a third party to present a rebuttal of how AFD interpreted KBV’s data. I did not agree with their argument (that there results were an artifact of AFD also requesting for everyone who specifically died in 2021), but did note that their response acknowledged the authenticity of this data.
The primary argument presented by ZI was that since the FOIA request selected for all patients who were vaccine injured in 2021-2022, the rise in deaths observed in 2021-2022 was simply due to the fact anyone who was vaccinated in 2021-2022 could not have died prior to 2021-2022 and thus the increase in deaths observed in 2021-2022 compared to what occurred prior to this time was due to the cohort effect.
On the surface this seems like a credible way to dismiss anyone who would make such an elementary mistake and believe in this data. However, the German authorities have a long track record of attempting to cover up evidence of COVID vaccine harm (in addition to the points discussed above, the German government has been perpetually delaying releasing the death statistics for 2021), so these arguments require a critical evaluation. In turn, there is a few major issue with it:
First, the “nocode” group should not suffer from the cohort effect and it was this group that comprised the majority of the increase in sudden deaths (review the wording of the FOIA request shown above). If the “code” group were to be removed (which potentially suffers from the cohort effect), an almost identical trend would still be present. Lausen presented his data by merging the code and nocode groups together which invalidated this counterargument, and I cannot see how a “cohort effect” is present in the combined data unless KBV failed to fulfill the FIOA in the manner that was requested (Lausen also subsequently provided an interview addressing the government criticisms of his analysis).
An outside analyst also looked at this data and demonstrated that other fatal conditions (which should be vulnerable to same the cohort effect ZI is asserting) did not have the same 2021 spike:
Second, the large σ found for many, (but by no means all) non-fatal conditions in the dataset indicates that something besides artifacts relating to time of death is causing the changes observed. I acknowledge that it is very possible some of the discrepancies present are due to not yet identified artifacts within the data, but at this point in time I have not been able to identify them. I believe that since KBV was focused on debunking the rise in sudden death codes, they did not focus on the rise in other codes for conditions associated with COVID vaccine injuries that were also observed. However, while this was not their focus, this point must nonetheless be considered since it does negate their counterargument.
Additionally, The death argument ZI made was also inconsistent with the death codes in question nonetheless being reported prior to 2021, which they attributed to “coding errors or unaddressed billing fraud.” To some extent this is hand-waving that many others have contested (and something any type of auditing algorithm should have caught years before), but I do not believe it is as important as the first two points.
Conversely, the strongest argument ZI put forward to establish that a cohort effect was occurring for the reported deaths was this spreadsheet. I have not yet been able to discern how the data in it was derived as it does not match the other things I looked at, so I cannot comment on if this is correct (an independent analyst arrived at the same conclusion I did). This spreadsheet is the one source of data that could refute AFD’s argument so I would greatly appreciate any additional thoughts on this one). However, I must also note that if this data is actually correct, it still does not negate the non-fatal complications of vaccination being observed.
A German rebuttal of ZI’s arguments was posted here. AFD also discussed the above rebuttal in a thread here stating:
"Hello all. The death-numbers that we have published are being hotly debated right now. Now the Central Institute for the KBV has joined in has said that the data we presented were quite easy to explain: 'The data is only for people who have accessed a medical service in 2021 and only such people had been billed and therefore would be in the data and everything in the years before are statistical runaways. There are also different causes of death that were significantly higher in the years before such as I46.9 (heart attack without successful reanimation). ' All together 104 000 people have been coded as deaths in the years 2016-2020 of whom the Central Institute of the KBV now says that they were billed medical services in 2021. Now we have a question: If this is really true, we demand an explanation from the Central Institute of the KBV how 104 000 persons that have died in the years 2016-2020 have been billed medical services in 2021.” [Translated courtesy of a reader]
The following was also written in the tweet: “Allegedly, the figures from the KBV are only for patients with health insurance, for whom services were billed in 2021. However, the causes of death were coded for 104,000 patients in previous years. Do we have a data scandal or a billing scandal?”
This table also refutes ZI’s argument that only those who were able to see a doctor and thus were alive in 2021 comprised the cohort of the insurance data.
Many of the German commentators I saw online were also skeptical of the official rebuttals to this data. I was recently sent a detailed summary of the events after the press conference which demonstrated that the rationale for debunking the data changed as time went forward. As best as I can tell, no clear reason was presented for why Lausen’s analysis was flawed given. Instead it was insinuated either that Lausen incorrectly filtered the data (my team and others however arrived at the same results Lausen did) or that there was a data transmission error from the KBV (which is possible but would have had to have been deliberate or inconceivable incompetence).
KBV also issued an astonishing statement refuting AFD’s presentation:
The KBV board clarifies: Based on the billing data transmitted by the KBV to the AfD or. ICD-10 codes cannot be used to establish causal relationships between COVID-19 vaccinations and deaths. From the KBV's point of view, the increase in deaths shown in quarters I-IV 2021 and quarter I 2022 is largely pandemic-related mortality. This once again illustrates the importance of COVID 19 vaccination as an effective measure to prevent serious forms of progress up to deaths. Without the vaccination, mortality would probably have been much higher.
This statement also cited the previously referenced ZI letter and another one which noted:
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The codes in this database do not include codes entered on death certificates and thus cannot be assigned as the cause of death [however all of these codes cannot be entered unless the patient died; also as the statement above shows KBV is admitting an increase in deaths did occur].
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The codes in this database cannot be correlated with vaccination status because many people received the COVID vaccines in settings that did not result in codes being submitted and coding for COVID vaccination has not yet been included in the dataset due to special regulations [I agree with this point, but it fails to refute this dataset since Lausen chose to combine the code and nocode groups; instead, it simply argues that vaccine injuries are underreported in this dataset].
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This database was not created for the purpose of conducting medical research and therefore no conclusion can be drawn from it [I don’t believe this is a valid argument; a lot can be inferred from it and it is the best available database we have, so until the government chooses to make a better database available, it is “the evidence.” Additionally, this is a very similar argument to what is said for VAERS, but unlike VAERS there is not an over or underreporting issue present with this dataset].
I do not believe any of the above points refute the sudden increases in submitted billing codes (hypothesized to correlate with vaccine injuries) that occurred a year after the pandemic started at the exact same time the vaccination campaign began. However, I also believe some type of not yet identified artifact could account for at least some of what was observed and I have spent the last week revising this article to account for the additional information I come across. If anyone can provider a stronger refutation of the data presented here (preferably, at the pinned comment), I would greatly appreciate it. We need to help each other stay honest and I will gladly retract this article if a critical mistake was made.
Note: An independent analyst who reviewed the entire dataset found that it showed many other signs of being plausible.
Conclusion
Given the extremely concerning implications of the German data, it is not surprising that governments around the world and healthcare systems or insurance providers have been reluctant to release their own data. It is my sincere hope that this release will open the flood gates to additional disclosures and I am in complete agreement with the conclusion of this presentation:
I wish we had an American political party stating the same. There are signs of hope however; today Ron DeSantis did something incredible and requested a grand jury against Pfizer and Moderna, an essential step a few leaders in our movement have been working to lay the groundwork for over the last two years. I am also hopeful that this grand jury will compel the state of Florida to release similar data that can be used to assess the safety of these vaccines.
I strongly encourage those of you who who are able to begin looking through the KBV dataset and identifying important trends that can be correlated to other observations we have made over the last two years. I believe there are many excellent articles that could be written on them. I sincerely thank all of you for your continued support!
My primary goal is to draw attention to this data so numerous independent parties can objectively analyze it and independently verify if the trends it shows correlate to “controversial” increases observed in other datasets like VAERS. This data is extremely important as it is the only access we have ever been given to observe the changes in illness that follow the COVID vaccination campaigns. I also suspect the most important use of this data **will be to establish causality for specific vaccine injuries.
**This matters because typically when someone suffers a pharmaceutical injury, it is not acknowledged by the the government and the courts because “there is no evidence the product is associated with that injury,” and as you might expect, the pharmaceutical industry work tirelessly to make sure the evidence that could implicate their product never emerges.
At this point I’ve lost track of how many sad instances I’ve seen where this happened to a medically injured patient (in some cases to the point the gaslighted victim gives up and ends their lives), so I greatly support having an independent means to assess causality for vaccine injuries. Those injured by the COVID-19 vaccines are profoundly suffering and they really need help (on the bright side however, recently Senator Johnson and shortly after Governor DeSantis gave a voice to these victims).
Postscript: It appears a similar rise in unexplained deaths is occurring in Canada.
In this article, I will discuss the observations of unethical and criminal activity that have been repeatedly made by whistleblowers in the pharmaceutical industry. The focus will be on insider disclosures of the toxic corporate culture at Pfizer and the company’s habitual tendency to conduct illegal activity in order to maximize pharmaceutical sales. In many cases, this misconduct has lead to disastrous consequences (e.g., for participants in its experimental trials or for the public at large their drugs were marketed to), and in each case, Pfizer has done everything it can to conceal its illegal activity.
In the first part of this series, I discussed the profound challenges a whistleblower faces when they break the code of silence held by the pharmaceutical industry. Nonetheless, a few people have been willing to make that sacrifice, and there is so much to learn from each of them. If you have not yet read it, I would highly recommend reading it first.
The Forgotten Side of Medicine -- What Can We Learn From the Pfizer Whistleblowers?
Because that code of silence has been in place for decades, the public is relatively unaware of what goes on within the industry. When insiders provide a window into that dark world, it is both shocking and difficult to believe. I had been working on this series for a while and felt that this was the time to release it because it helps create the context for both what Jordan Walker confided to Project Veritas about Pfizer and his surreal breakdown once he realized what he had done.
In this series, I chose to focus on Peter Rost, a pharmaceutical executive who, through a very odd set of circumstances, became a Pfizer Vice President (Pfizer typically never lets outsiders assume that role). Once appointed, he found himself in the very odd position of having to dig up as much dirt on Pfizer as possible to avoid getting fired. Rost witnessed the Pfizer company cruelly abusing his Pharmacia coworkers and to a lesser extent Pfizer’s own employees (detailed in part 1); therefore, he was not opposed to unearthing information that incriminated Pfizer. Best of all, because Rost had been stripped of his work responsibilities, he had plenty of time to investigate his employer.
Rost’s Vendetta
Rost’s talent was recognized by his sales-focused industry, and many of his superiors held him in high regard. Unfortunately for Pfizer, as detailed in part 1, Rost was not comfortable being complicit in criminal activity, so when he encountered it, he would choose to take action against it (thereby putting himself in conflict with the ethos of his industry).
In a previous job, Rost had reported Wyeth (another large pharmaceutical company) for tax evasion, and as fate would have it, that lawsuit became publicized shortly after Rost had managed to put himself in a position where Pfizer could not fire him. Nonetheless, Pfizer did all that they could against Rost, including providing much of the incriminating information they had collected on him to Wyeth.
Due to the previous lawsuit against Wyeth, Rost was able to obtain a copy of all documentation on him that Pfizer and Pharmacia had sent to his previous employer to Wyeth (which began occurring once they were made aware of his lawsuit against Wyeth). From these documents, Rost learned that Pfizer and Pharmacia had hired private investigators to dig up as much dirt as possible on him to prove that he was a security risk, and then they had forwarded these documents to Wyeth:
I had never seen anything like this before and I was truly shocked and appalled. I had gone from company high performer to security threat in a matter of days. This was something I couldn’t have imagined in my wildest dreams. Pharmacia was a company that I had trusted—the fact that I had found illegal marketing and sales methods in my department didn’t mean that I stopped trusting the entire corporation. But now, I felt as if I had been in a beautiful candlelit room, only to have a lightning flash suddenly reveal cracks, mold, and cob- webs. I just couldn't believe what I saw, and even worse, they had sent all this to Wyeth. All the loyalty I had felt to the company, all the respect I had had for executives in the organization vanished. And I was left with the ugly truth: I couldn’t trust anyone. To even try to talk to them and reason with them was futile.
But it got worse. As I flipped through the pages, I found more notes that Pharmacia’s lawyer had written after I had spoken with him. The most sensitive parts were blocked out by a fat black marker, but what remained was astonishing in itself. According to his conclusions, I had no choices; I was out of a job with no likelihood of employment in the industry; I had every incentive to fight Pfizer, and he also claimed that I already hated them. This was news to me: I hardly knew Pfizer, but I certainly was reevaluating what I thought of Pharmacia after reading this. Then came the whopper—the notes implied that I might put a gun to my head so my family could get my life insurance.
All of a sudden I realized what a mistake I had made, trying to get help from a Pharmacia lawyer. I recalled that during our conversation he had suggested for me to contact the Employee Assistance Program. Perhaps this attitude shouldn’t have been surprising; Pharmacia’s lawyer clearly thought that anyone who tried to resolve potential criminal acts within the company and keep his job was a mental case [_Rost also highlighted that a common tactic utilized by the Soviet Union against political dissidents was to diagnose them as being psychotic and then forcefully confine them to asylums_].
Fortunately, Pfizer failed to realize the mess they were in, because they had never dealt with someone who knew how to fight back:
In the next round of documents Pharmacia delivered to Wyeth a few weeks later, I saw Ronald’s reaction first-hand. His first mail to Pharmacia’s chief legal officer asked, “What the heck is this all about?”? Pharmacia responded that I seemed to believe that by not offering me a job, Pfizer was unlawfully retaliating against me. Then Pharmacia’s general counsel wrote, “I haven't done the research, but the theory seems dubious.”
This was very interesting. Pharmacia’s most senior legal officer admitted that he hadn't checked the legal implications of the actions they had taken against me. They clearly didn’t think I was al that important. While this is always a sobering realization, it also showed me how unprepared they were for dealing with an employee who actually knew some of his rights.
In short, a wonderful confluence of circumstances arose, which positioned Rost to do something no one else to my knowledge has ever done.
Digging for Dirt
Since he needed to ensure his job security, Rost decided that the best use of his time at work was to dig up as much dirt on Pfizer as possible:
I went on an info hunt, and it didn’t take long until I found my next surprise. Back in 2001, thirty Nigerian families had sued Pfizer in federal court, saying the company conducted an unethical clinical trial of an antibiotic [as the sole treatment for meningitis] on their children. The suit referred to a letter from the hospital saying the study had been approved by the ethics committee, and the suit claimed that Pfizer had backdated the letter.
Moreover, a Pfizer infectious disease specialist [discussed later in the article] had repeatedly told Pfizer management that the company was violating international law and medical ethics standards. He was subsequently dismissed and later settled with the company, according to other newspaper reports. Clearly, the fact that Pfizer was accused of backdating one letter and that I might have received another one was significant. And so was the fact that they had fired one alleged whistleblower already.
One of the many red flags raised here is Pfizer’s tendency to repeat the same criminal activity (Rost uncovered this series of events shortly after receiving a legal letter which he was almost certain was backdated).
Pfizer’s Employee Survey
Note: The quotations in this section and the next one comprise what is arguably the most important parts of the article.
Given that I didn’t have much to do anymore I had ample time to seek out Pfizer's weaknesses. As I searched the corporate intranet, I found exactly what I needed. Pfizer had done an exhaustive employee survey in 2001, and it was clear from the first page that CEO Hank McKinnell was proud about the fact that 88 percent of Pfizer’s employees had responded. There was lots of wonderful information about what Pfizer employees thought of the company; the highest ranked statement was, “I like working for Pfizer.” A whopping 89 percent of the employees agreed with this sentence.
The second most favorable result was generated by the statement, “I am proud to work for Pfizer,” a full 88 percent agreed with this. Only a contrarian might wonder why 12 percent weren't proud to work at Pfizer, or what those employees might have known about the company. At the time this survey was taken, 12 percent was equivalent to 6,000 employees.
But those weren't the numbers I was interested in. There was a different table in the survey that showed the lowest-ranked statements, and here things started to get interesting. The two most unfavorable ratings were given to the statements, “The right people get promoted,” and “People are promoted for the right reasons.” Only 36 percent and 42 percent agreed with these statements.
Soon I also discovered some data that didn’t rank at the bottom, but still was a major red flag to anyone that cares about corporate ethics. Some 30 percent of Pfizer’s employees, or about 15,000 persons at the time, didn’t agree with the statement, “Senior management demonstrates honest, ethical behavior.” And 34 percent didn’t agree with, “I have confidence and trust in senior management.” But the real surprise was that 49 percent didn’t agree with the statement, “Management is willing to give up short-term gain to do the right thing.” What was going on in Pfizer’s executive suite?
Note: Pfizer subsequently tried to bury these embarrassing results. The 2004 survey removed the embarrassing questions and the 2001 survey was wiped from the server after Rost discovered it. As this article will show, Pfizer has a tendency to make inconvenient documents disappear.
Unprofessional Boundaries
It wasn't hard to make the connection with the rumors I had heard before the acquisition. Pfizer had a stellar public reputation, but what Pharmacia employees had been told by their Pfizer counter- parts was something very different. This was a company managed by a group of people who had grown up together, partied together, and some of them had also allegedly spent time together between the sheets. What we heard was amazing—almost unbelievable.
I set out to find the truth. First I spoke to someone I knew well, an HR manager who had left Pfizer quite recently. He had spent many years working at Pfizer and believed the rumors were true—a group within Pfizer’s management had been in and out of bed with each other for a number of years. In one instance a senior person allegedly dated a direct report while he was married. Soon after, that direct report turned and dated a guy reporting to her. And then this guy dated several women in his department.
The problem with this alleged situation was that it could create tensions if someone thought someone else received a favorable treatment because of sexual favors. Real or imagined, this is a situation that can’t be tolerated by any management, since senior executives need to lead by example and can’t be effective if they aren't respected, which, clearly, certain Pfizer executives were not.
I actually knew someone who had worked with the woman in one of these alleged relationships. We met over lunch and I asked him to confirm if the stories were true. He claimed that not only were the stories true, he had personally observed the woman and her subordinate touch and make loving gestures. He also said that their behavior had been embarrassing to other people who were in the same room as these two.
He explained how they'd had to make special arrangements when the female executive was dating her boss, whenever his wife appeared at corporate functions.
I realized that if any of this were true, it could cause a public meltdown of Pfizer’s management team, much like the recent scandal at Boeing that had forced the CEO’s resignation. I also sensed that if Pfizer knew that I knew, they might just handle me more carefully.
After Rost alerted Pfizer to these issues, he succeeded in further raising their alarm, and their legal team immediately moved to investigate them. In the process, he learned even more about Pfizer’s leadership structure:
Before the meeting ended I repeatedly asked them to hire an independent law firm that could shield the identities of the people who had given me this information. In response, they made it clear that was not “how they operated.” They also discussed, and half laughed, about the impossibility of approaching the managers that were allegedly involved in these affairs. It was clear to me that they didn’t think they could confront members of senior management. I wondered if they would have been so cautious if this had been, for example, a district manager having an affair with a sales rep or someone else further down in the power structure.
More Fraud
In Rost’s continued quest to investigate wrongdoings, he found evidence that executives from Pharmacia’s Japan division had been cooking the books to inflate their sales numbers by reassigning sales from the next year to the previous one, in order to inflate their sales numbers to obtain a bonus. They also paid off wholesalers to go along with them. As he continued to look further into it, he also found evidence that this practice was also occurring in Pharmacia’s European markets.
This deceptive method is known as channel stuffing (“selling” more to the distribution channels than they can sell) and it inevitably unravels itself, since that increase keeps on needing to pull from more and more revenue in subsequent years to sustain itself.
Since channel stuffing constitutes investor fraud (as it provides incorrect data used to determine stock prices), the government will frequently prosecute it. Channel stuffing caused Enron’s downfall (the CEO was criminally sentenced but died shortly before his sentencing). In 2004, another pharmaceutical company, Bristol-Myers Squibb, was fined 150 million dollars for doing this. Similarly, another lawsuit involving channel stuffing eventually resulted in a 750 million dollar fine for ArthroCare, a surgical medical device manufacturer (along with prison sentences for its CEO and CFO).
I believe this prioritization of legal prosecution has developed because the wealthy write our laws, and the government is more incentivized to protect the interests of the rich (as opposed to those of the general public who are harmed by bad drugs). Similarly, my friends in the financial industry have seen that the most truthful information you can ever get from a pharmaceutical company is in its financial reports to investors.
Given the penalties for channel stuffing, this report also was of great concern to Pfizer, and gave Rost even more leverage over them. This was especially the case once Pfizer failed to appropriately address the issues, which in return gave Rost the grounds to open a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission( SEC) investigation.
Pfizer’s Purgatory
Because Pfizer could not fire Rost, they tried to make things uncomfortable for him. He soon was reduced to having one employee (a secretary), isolated from everyone while at work, and left with nothing to do except show up at his office. They also repeatedly moved his office, until he pointed out that this constituted illegal harassment of a whistleblower. Since Rost was not allowed to do any work for Pfizer, he used that free time to research Pfizer’s internal workings, motivated also by their unconscionable abuse of their employees.
As Rost began bringing more improper and even illegal activity to Pfizer’s attention, he also noted this his emails would disappear, and incriminating documents he’d located would disappear. Eventually, Pfizer cut his access to his email without stating who had done it. Similarly, his communications (email and phone) were constantly monitored (despite this being against company policy), and Pfizer’s operators were instructed to prevent anyone from reaching him over the phone (although a sympathetic employee in the PR department sometimes would put them through).
To evaluate exactly how Pfizer was treating him behind his back, Rost would periodically utilize contacts in the industry to probe their behavior:
I spoke to the recruiter later in the day and I asked her where she had called and what the operator had said. The recruiter told me she had called Pfizer in New York, they had asked what her name was and the reason she wanted to talk to me, as well as some other questions.
“This happens al the time,” she said.
“Does this happen with al the pharmaceutical companies?” I asked.
“No, only with Pfizer. No one else does this.”
I asked her why she thought Pfizer did this, and she responded that based on the questions she had received she thought they recorded the information.
Rost Goes Public
The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) is considered to be one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world, and is also a frequent repository for fraudulent studies used to push some of the best selling pharmaceutical products onto the market (e.g., the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine or the COVID vaccine). In 2004, four years after her retirement (and a year into Rost’s purgatory), the chief editor of the NEJM, Marcia Angell M.D., published an excellent exposé of the issues within the drug industry, and the medical journals' complicity in this enterprise.
One of the quotes Dr. Angell is best known for is:
“It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of the New England Journal of Medicine.”
_Note: More quotes from Dr. Angell can be found here._
On a whim, Rost decided to pen a review on Amazon, strongly endorsing Dr. Angell’s book, and within it openly declared that he was a Pfizer executive (it’s worth reading). This quickly got the attention of a journalist from USA Today who quoted Rost’s review in an article on the subject:
"It's really hard to find new drugs, and it's getting harder and harder," Rost, representing himself, not Pfizer, said in an interview. "There is a lot of low-hanging fruit out there that has been picked off. It is very, very difficult to really find a breakthrough." Instead, Rost says, drugmakers focus on tweaking existing drugs to make money, not to advance science.
_Note: As discussed in the previous article, in recent decades the inability to produce breakthrough drugs has been a major challenge for the industry (most of the new drugs are redundant unneeded “Me-too” drugs). I believe this dearth was a key motivation for why the mRNA technology was pushed through, as there is an almost limitless number of proprietary drugs that could be made with it._
Drug Reimportation
For decades, America has been known for having the worst ratio between healthcare expenditures and healthcare quality in the world (i.e., many places that spend far less than us have much better healthcare outcomes for their populace). Most tragically, this ratio only continues to worsen as we move forward in time (presently about 20% of all spending in the United States goes to healthcare).
Because there is so much money involved, I would argue that the systemic corruption within our healthcare system is almost inevitable. There is the tendency towards monopolization to protect its industry from competition In turn, the debacle we’ve witnessed throughout COVID-19 represented the inevitable progression of this industry’s greed.
It should, thus, come as no surprise that the drug industry charges as much for medications as it believes it can get away with. The cost of the same drugs varies widely from country to country, and as you might guess, the worst price-gouging occurs within the United States. Many people who struggle to afford their medications in the U.S. have noticed that these medications are much cheaper on the other side of the U.S. border (e.g., a Canadian pharmacy).
This observation has given rise to the practice of “drug reimportation” where drugs made in the United States that were exported for sale are bought in the international market and then imported back to the United States, and sold for a much lower price than they typically cost domestically. If you believe in capitalism and the free-market, drug reimportation should be allowed to correct market imbalances created by price gouging. However, if your business goal is to maintain a monopoly (and pay off the government to enforce it), drug reimportation is a huge problem, as it cuts into a lot of the profits made by ripping off the American public.
At this point, I have watched decades of failed attempts to reform the out-of-control costs in the healthcare system. In each case, because the legislators responsible for writing those laws (in one way or another) are bought out, no one was willing to tackle the real sources of price gouging in our healthcare marketplace, and each of those attempts failed. I would argue that this is why healthcare spending continues to rise in the United States.
As luck would have it for Rost, at the time he penned his review, the hot political issue was allowing drug reimportation (which the pharmaceutical was trying to torpedo by arguing that it somehow threatened consumer safety). Since Rost was a pharmaceutical executive willing to speak out against these practices (something virtually unheard of due to the consequences of doing so), and he knew a lot about the subject (e.g., Europe had had no issues with drug reimportation), he rapidly attracted the attention of the press and politicians who were trying to advance this issue.
I have to admit that my lawyer was not happy about al this. His job was to protect my legal case, which he told me was excellent. The fact that I was speaking up made me vulnerable and could have ruined the whole case. He was surely right that I took a big risk, but I felt that it was more important that I got the message out. And after a few months, Jon even said that I was doing a pretty good job. “Who knows,” he admitted. “You might actually achieve some change.”
Before long, Rost was called before congress to testify on the reimported drug issue. This was a nightmare for Pfizer (as their business depended upon inflated American drug prices), and in their panic, Pfizer managed to make things even worse for themselves through their crude attempts to discredit Rost and prevent him from communicating with the public. Before long, Rost’s message was heard throughout America.
But journalists and news anchors were still very surprised that I didn’t get fired [Rost could not publicly disclose his whistleblower status at the time]. It was as if everyone had forgotten that we live in a democracy with freedom of speech and other basic rights.
The biggest surprise, however, wasn't the flood of e-mails, or that many employees were upset about what I had said. The biggest surprise was that so many actually agreed with my comments. In fact, about 40 percent of the e-mails I received were supportive. I imagine it took a lot more guts to write a positive e-mail than to send a critical message and copy a superior. In truth, I wished my supporters hadn’t written, since I assumed that Pfizer was reading my e-mail.
Even a retiree wrote and agreed with me, “I applaud your efforts to encourage a more constructive approach to pharmaceutical importation. As a recent retiree from Pfizer, I am worried that by being short- sighted, Pfizer is doing something that is not its own best interest.”
_Note: Alex Berenson who wrote for the New York Times when Rost went public played a critical role in bringing Rost’s story to America. I suspect one of the reasons Berenson later became a critic of the COVID-19 response was because his career began in a bygone era when liberal journalists could still criticize the pharmaceutical industry and Bernson made a point to do just that during his time at the NYT._
Ultimately, Rost became too hot for anyone at Pfizer to handle, eventually leading to a situation where:
I never heard from either one of them [his assigned supervisors] again. To the best of my knowledge, I became the only Pfizer employee without a boss.
Pfizer nonetheless continued to harass Rost (e.g., they sent lawyers to monitor him at presentations he gave), while Rost continued to find creative ways to cause headaches for Pfizer (many are detailed within his book). One of the most impressive results he achieved was a group of doctors (unhappy with how Pfizer was treating Rost) independently deciding to ban Pfizer sales reps from their practices.
Pfizer is a very sales-oriented company and these events shook them up. Their worst nightmare would be a national boycott of their products.
What Happened with Drug Reimportation?
Although Rost was able to make the issue of drug reimportation a nationwide issue, it ultimately failed to be legalized because the “safety concerns could not be addressed.” While this result was expected, there were three interesting things I took away from all of it.
The first was how the issue was squashed (this should sound familiar to all of you):
By the end of December 2004, the Department of Health and Human Services came out with their report on drug importation. The report admitted that it would be possible to safely import drugs on a large scale, but claimed that establishing such a system wouldn't be cost effective.' The report also concluded that such a system would harm pharmaceutical companies’ research and development efforts.
The report was required by the new Medicare law, and had been developed by a thirteen-member panel led by U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona. Not surprisingly, the panel consisted of many rep- resentatives from several government agencies that oppose prescrip- tion drug reimportation.
They [and later Pfizer] used a study by the London School of Economics, which claimed that national health systems within the EU realized minimal savings from parallel- traded products. There was just one thing both the HHS report and the Pfizer letter forgot to mention. This “study” had been funded by the drug industry.
The second was the FDA’s promises to develop a “safe” way to import and reimport pharmaceuticals which two decades later still has not happened.
The final one was that some congressmen who had supported Rost at the time were still in the government twenty years later (e.g., Bernie Sanders), at which point, they chose to switch sides and stand behind Pfizer and their COVID-19 vaccine. Somewhat analogously, although many of my friends love Bernie Sanders, I have always been suspicious of him, because I know of cases where parents of vaccine-injured children tried to raise this issue with him and he shut them down instead of listening (Sanders has built a reputation as an advocate for disenfranchised groups that no one else will listen to).
Other Whistleblowers
John Virapen
The only other whistleblower I know of who was a pharmaceutical executive was John Virapen, so I will include him even though he was not involved with Pfizer. Virapen began life as a colonial subject of the British Empire (which translated to a childhood of abuse, discrimination, and poverty), in British Guyana, and eventually became a pharmaceutical sales rep. He excelled at what he was doing and eventually became an Eli Lilly executive in Sweden, who played the pivotal role in getting Prozac approved globally. Like Rost, he was backstabbed by the industry. Specifically, Eli Lilly fired Virapen after he won the approval, something he believed was due to Eli Lilly, like Pfizer being an old boys’ network that did not want an outsider of color like him in the management (Rost’s story likewise shows a similar old boys’ network existing at Pfizer).
Virapen experienced a great deal of guilt for what he was complicit in, and like Rost after he was fired, found himself in circumstances where he could speak out against the industry. In his memoir, he shared the routine criminal activity he engaged in (e.g., he had to make bribes to get Prozac approved in Sweden). He resorted to blackmail, such as photographing physicians with Eli-Lilly-provided prostitutes, to pressure them to conform to Eli Lilly’s sales requirements.
Note: a more detailed version of Virapen’s story can be found here. If Youtube pulls the above video, it can also be found here.
Dr. Juan Walterspiel
Although to my knowledge, no other executive has come forward, the pharmaceutical industry has many other whistleblowers including former Pfizer employees. For example, in the previously mentioned illegal Pfizer experiment in Nigeria, 11 of the 200 children with meningitis who were studied died [most of whom should not have with proper care], and later the highly toxic antibiotic they tested was subsequently pulled from the market.
One of the doctors at Pfizer’s research center tried to warn them about the trial but was ignored and eventually fired despite being a whistleblower (all of the events and the whistleblower lawsuit are summarized here and here). In addition to the trial being conducted in a reprehensible way (and was thought to have inspired the Constant Gardener), evidence also emerged that Pfizer bribed the Nigerian government to conduct the trial, and falsified documentation to appease the regulatory authorities.
John Kopchinski
Pfizer is also notorious for being greedy enough with their sales practices to be repeatedly fined for their criminal conduct (sadly this is not a complete list of Pfizer’s criminal settlements):
The 2.3 billion dollar settlement was for Bextra. Bextra was Pfizer’s version of Vioxx, and, like Vioxx, was aggressively promoted for off-label uses, and eventually was pulled from the market for causing too many fatal heart attacks and strokes (Bextra was pulled in 2005, Vioxx in 2004).
The whistleblower who helped initiate the lawsuit, John Kopchinski, was a sales rep who was recruited by Pfizer’s CEO during his early 1990s acquisition of veterans. In early 2003, Kopchinski raised concerns over Bextra, and instead of being listened to, was summarily dismissed from the company and left jobless. A few excerpts from his story mirror the experiences of many other Pfizer whistleblowers:
“Particularly in pharma, it’s no secret that it’s an industry that can blackball former employees,” Kelton [Kopchinski’s attorney] said, “so the reward is important both to encourage people to step forward and to recognize that their contributions are huge.”
[Less than a year after being hired by Pfizer], Kopchinski was selling the epilepsy drug Neurontin when a previous whistleblower’s suit was unveiled against [Pfizer] over similar illegal promotion tactics that led to stiff penalties and a form of corporate probation [Pfizer has been repeatedly forced to sign a corporate integrity agreements with the U.S. government].
At the time, [Kopchinski] was told by managers that the Neurontin suit would be in the news and any physicians who asked questions should be told it was just complaints from a disgruntled former employee, Kopchinski said. Ironically, after filing the Bextra suit, “I was the disgruntled former employee,” he said. [
In both the Bextra case (detailed here) and the Neurontin case (detailed here), Pfizer followed a fairly similar pattern. They aggressively pushed their sales reps to prescribe as many drugs as possible (and provided bonuses for doing so), and they used an elaborate scheme of bribes to incentivize doctors to prescribe these drugs. Most of the uses Pfizer made up for the drugs had nothing to do with the drug’s intended use, and in many cases, these reckless uses were quite dangerous to patients.
Note: Another drug in the same class as Bextra, Celebrex, was also aggressively promoted by Pfizer (and sold by reps like James Reidy). Instead of being pulled from the market, it received a black box warning from the FDA. Later in 2016, Pfizer was forced to pay 406 million dollars to shareholders because of the losses they incurred from Pfizer concealing the harms of Bextra and Celebrex.
Jamie Reidy
Most of the pharmaceutical employees who worked on the retail end of the business have come forward with similar stories of their sales culture. The below video, although not from Pfizer, gives one of my favorite windows into this world (I hope you liked the ending I added to it):
This circa 2000 clip shows how Pharma sales reps are trained behind the scenes. Like Pfizer, GSK aggressively and illegally promotes drugs (like this one) and has received billions in fines. I can't even imagine how much wilder the industry has become since this was filmed.
Jamie Reidy was one of the many veterans picked up in Pfizer’s recruitment drive for ex-military in the early 1990s, and his story mirrored what other former Pfizer representatives have told me—they were an ideal demographic because Pfizer wanted a pool of candidates who would follow corporate’s sales scripts and not deviate from them. Reidy eventually published his experiences within a comical memoir released while Rost was making waves in the national press (Rost likewise helped Reidy on the national PR front). Reidy’s self-deprecating memoir was later adapted into a popular romantic comedy, Love and Other Drugs, so his story is one of the better-known peeks inside Pfizer (it also resulted in him immediately being fired by the new pharmaceutical company employing him).
Since Pfizer established their dominance in the market through the success of their sales division, I was quite interested to hear Reidy’s perspective on the the nuts and bolts of the operation.
Pfizer being Pfizer, however, it didn’t have to resort to trolling college campuses; Pfizer could pick and choose its sales force from candidates who got their start at other companies.
Pfizer’s approach was built around utilizing algorithms their marketing research team had developed, which identified the most effective scripts for each stage of the sales process (from opening the encounter through closing the deal). Pfizer essentially practiced evidence-based sales and had the results to validate their model. Many of these scripts are quite interesting to read through. Each illustrates how each pharmaceutical company would twist the data to support their drug, and how much of a doctor’s education and comprehension of the drugs they prescribed resulted from what the sales reps primed them to focus on (note: so much of human behavior is explained by what people have been primed to focus on).
Pfizer’s model thus required inspiring zealotry and standardization in its salesforce (as Rost detailed in the first half of this series, Pfizer reps were well known for this tactic):
From Day One, people told us how great we were. “Pat yourselves on the back,” our first speaker said, “because you are the cream of the crop.” I had already noticed that our class did not lack confidence, and the knowing grins on people’s faces confirmed my perception.
“Any drug rep from any company will tell you that he left initial training thinking that his drugs were the best in the industry, such was the power of pharmaceutical brainwashing [I wonder if this also applies to Jordan Walker’s department]. Pfizer reps departed training with a “Pass me the Kool-Aid” conviction that not “only were our drugs the best in the industry, but also that our company was the best in the world. Doctors and competing reps alike routinely commented on a “Pfizer attitude,” a tangible vibe suggesting we were intrinsically better than any other salespeople. Interestingly, army trainees emerge from boot camp with a similar sense of indestructibility, an unshakable belief that there could not be a more prepared soldier on earth. The key to creating this self-confidence [bravado] in both arenas was the same: an endless repetition of messages and tasks [Note: Pfizer would also frequently tell reps in service about how wonderful Pfizer was].”
“The brainwashing was not limited to our view of ourselves, however. Rather, the Pfizer training staff instilled within us indelibly negative impressions of our competitors, creating a hatred for people we had yet to compete against, let alone meet”
“They lied. They cheated. Their women dressed slutty. They bought physicians’ love with extravagant dinners and golf at Pebble Beach, instead of earning it through ethical practices. (I later learned that every company told its reps that they did things the “right way,” while the other companies cheated.) ”
Although Pfizer had been repeatedly fined for criminal sales activity, I didn’t see anything within Reidy’s memoir that was clearly illegal. Much to the disdain of the sales reps, although headquarters was always pushing the reps to sell more, headquarters was also shutting down any plan reps implemented which was potentially illegal (bribes to prescribe or promoting a drug for uses it was not approved for—known as off-label marketing).
The only cases I found in his book where the sales reps employed external incentives to influence a physician to prescribe their drug was through utilizing their sex appeal (and sometimes seducing either the physician or their staff). However, unlike monetary bribes, this is nearly impossible to outlaw so it has never been made illegal.
At the time Viagra came out, because no reasonable treatments for erectile dysfunction existed, everyone was clamoring for it (to the point that Viagra samples were regularly stolen). Not surprisingly, it was soon sought out by individuals beyond those it had been approved for (old men with poor circulation impeding erections). As a result, some off-label marketing to women and younger men for increased sexual performance did eventually occur (even though Pfizer at the start told its reps not to do this, because the accelerated approval of the then-novel drug put them in a precarious position with the FDA).
In summary, I do not believe Reidy provided any concrete proof of illegal activity within Pfizer, so he is not technically a whistleblower. However, he did provide an invaluable window into the corporate culture of Pfizer which also helps put their behavior into context.
Note: Ever since its approval, a variety of side effects (including heart attacks, strokes, blindness, hearing loss, or melanoma) have been attributed to Viagra. As Reidy detailed, many of these were known from the start by Pfizer. Many lawsuits have been thus filed for these injuries. Unfortunately, the legal system rarely supports these types of lawsuits, so Pfizer (along with subsequent manufacturers of similar drugs) have been able to dodge most of them and settle the rest.
Allen Jones
I mention this story last because it is potentially the most important one in this series (and resulted in him being named whistleblower of the year in 2012). Jones initially worked at Pennsylvania’s Office of the Inspector General (PA’s OIG) for 5 years (1986-1991), retired to be closer to his family, and then returned 11 years later in 2002, once his situation changed.
When he returned, he was assigned to investigate PA’s chief pharmacist, who Jones found was managing an unregistered bank account into which Johnson and Johnson (J&J) was essentially depositing illegal bribes. Additionally, some of that money was then transferred to the Director of Texas’s Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation. In return for these funds, state officials traveled across the country to promote switching large numbers of patients to J&J’s new antipsychotic medication (which cost ten times as much as other similar drugs, and frequently created significant side effects).
Jones reported the case to his boss, and was told to drop the case as it was “too political” to touch. Since Jones did not comply, he was taken off the case. Then in 2003, he found out that J&J’s bribery lobbying was successful and everyone in PA would soon be switched to J&J’s drugs, regardless of their medical needs or background. Given that many of the people subject to this edict cannot oppose it (e.g., prisoners with mental illnesses or the many children who are pushed into the state mental health system), there were significant ethical issues with allowing it to proceed, which led to Jones deciding to risk his livelihood to stop it.
Note: I know a few people in foster care who were forcefully medicated with psychiatric drugs and had terrible experiences from them. To appreciate the full human cost of this greedy industry’s initiative to push their dangerous anti-psychotics on children, please read this article.
Jones filed a first amendment suit to protect himself, reported what was happening to the New York Times, and then was fired. Jones then filed suit against PA and set off a series of lawsuits (some of which were pursued by state Attorney Generals) and J&J ultimately had to pay billions of dollars in fines for their conduct. PA’s state Pharmacist was also convicted, but I feel his ultimate punishment was relatively minor. His conviction, however, is important to the current story because he was convicted of taking bribes from J&J and Pfizer.
Like Pfizer and J&J, AstraZeneca has also been fined billions for off-label-marketing, bribing physicians to prescribe their drugs, and was involved in the initiative to bribe state officials to push these medications on mental health patients. This bribery was not exclusive to the United States either; these three companies are currently being tried in court for bribing terrorists within the Iraqi government to coerce their Ministry of Health into using their products, and a few years ago, AstraZeneca was fined for bribing state health care providers in Russia and China to push their products.I hold the opinion that once the corruption of this industry is understood (which will probably always exist because of how much money there is to be made in medicine), the best path forward is to prohibit mandating of their products. If a product is safe and effective, it will sell itself and does not need to be forced on people.Unfortunately, the systemic fraud within this industry regularly brings bad pharmaceuticals to market that are neither safe nor effective.
As the examples with the state psychiatric programs show, this is a longstanding issue. It is my hope that bringing the public’s attention to the unjustifiable COVID-19 vaccine mandates can help bring about critical changes for medical autonomy that are needed throughout medicine.
Note: Since Moderna is a much newer company, an equivalent track record does not exist for them. I also believe this accounts for why they had a much less elaborate system in place to gaslight the participants in their clinical trials compared to the other COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers.
Conclusion
Pfizer eventually got fed up with Rost humiliating them on national television. He was fired and entered a protracted legal battle with Pfizer that eventually concluded in 2013 with an undisclosed settlement. At the time this happened, Pfizer made a point to widely publicize his termination in the national media. In Rost’s own words:
There is no question in my mind that Pfizer's [illegal] termination of whistleblowers [highlighted through this article] sends chilling signals to honest employees within the company. The media campaign they unleashed when they fired me served the same purpose. Pfizer’s outrage was apparent.
I hope that this article has made the case that Pfizer has a culture of corruption and a sociopathic leadership that has absolutely no problem with harming people or breaking the law to drive up sales. Assuming you accept that premise, I would argue that that means Pfizer was probably the worst party that could have been given a blank check by the government for the purpose of forcing an extremely dangerous experimental vaccine gene therapy onto the American people. Just think—if Pfizer already was that bad with government oversight--how bad do you think they would be once the government actively conspired to conceal their criminal activity and the harms of their product?
Similarly, if we consider the plight of many of the recent whistleblowers like Brook, the degree to which the government has chosen to ignore their claims is truly incredible. Similarly, nine months ago I covered an investigation by one of the less corrupt agencies of the government into HHS’s COVID-19 response, where they essentially concluded corruption trumped sound scientific policy (because employees in each department confided this in private interviews).
One of the most interesting things I discovered in it was just how hostile the U.S. Health and Human Services department (HHS,e.g., the CDC, NIH, and FDA) was to whistleblowers. None of the typically required safeguards existed to support employees blowing the whistle, and when queried, officials in each department could not cite a specific reason for why they had never gotten around to creating those safeguards.
Additionally, most of the employees felt that their leadership was already aware of the issues (and to some extent complicit in them), and they feared retaliation if they complained. Not surprisingly, between 2010-2021, there were zero cases where misconduct was officially reported by an employee of the HHS, and when asked, officials in each department interpreted this as a sign that no problems requiring reporting existed.
Sadly, corruption is not unique to the pharmaceutical industry, and many of the experiences shared by the brave whistleblowers in this series are mirrored by those outside of the medical industry. As you might expect, Pfizer and many of the other pharmaceutical companies involved in the COVID-19 vaccines (along with many defense contractors and other members of the medical industrial complex), have lobbied aggressively to restrict the ability of whistleblowers to uncover and correct their misdeeds. For example, consider what they did at the end of 2021, a year after their vaccines had entered the market.
As I look at how things have transpired decade by decade, it never ceases to amaze me how much more corrupt our government (and media) have become in a relatively short period of time. At the same time though, I believe Team Humanity still wins, because the internet has made it impossible to prevent the general public from becoming aware of these misdeeds.
As I end this series, I would like to share one of Rost’s concluding remarks which, like many other things he has shared, is just as true now as it was twenty years ago:
I didn’t always think this way. I didn’t want to become a whistleblower. I didn’t want to write this book. But in the end, I had to; I just couldn’t let the crooks win. The fact that you have just read this book means—to me—that I have won my fight against an overpowering opponent.
I for one, decades later, am profoundly grateful for the odd quirks of fate that led Rost to speak out against Pfizer.
I hope this article has provided some valuable context to fully appreciate Jordan Walker’s previous remarks to Project Veritas and his new ones today:
What goes on inside Pfizer and the pharmaceutical industry is surreal, and I hope the window opened for you by these whistleblowers will allow you to draw your own conclusions about Pfizer’s culture and what really goes on behind the scenes. I admit I avoided discussing much of what jumped out to me from their testimonies (and those of whistleblowers from other pharmaceutical companies) since this series was already pushing the limit of how much people will read.
I thank each of you for the time you took to read this article and those who shared the series with the audience that needed to hear it.
Postscript: I meant to include this but completely forgot to. One of my colleagues occasionally saw a patient who was a vaccine sales rep for Pfizer that would actively boast about how often their entire family was vaccinated. In the middle of the vaccine roll-out, that patient showed up asking for a medical exemption from their vaccine.
Note: This article is primarily a human story. The most important parts of this article are the videos (if you only have time to watch one, watch Maddie’s, below) that were compiled and edited for this article. The written details are just to provide the necessary context for the significance of their testimonies.
In the first part of this series, I discussed how the gross malfeasance observed by many in the COVID-19 vaccine trials did not come out of nowhere. Rather, it is yet one more occurrence in a chronic pattern of egregious conduct by the pharmaceutical industry, which has progressively worsened because there has not been the political will to address the growing corruption within the biomedical establishment.
There, I focused upon the events within the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine trials (and the subsequent red flags which emerged after they entered the market), because many at the time had difficulty believing something like that could even happen and it was possible to sweep the issue under the rug, since the vaccines were only targeted on one segment of the population—women. Now, not only has the exact same thing happened (to a very eerie degree) with the COVID vaccines across the globe, but what is happening now is even worse than what happened less than a decade ago.
The best metaphor I have come up with to describe what I’ve observed in the pharmaceutical clinical trial process is that enrolling in one is akin to entering an abusive relationship. The abuser will initially flatter you and promise you one thing after another in return for your consent to enter their web of deception. Then, once they have you, they will break each promise they made, gradually treating you worse and worse, and gaslight ing you into believing that those issues are not really happening. Finally, once they no longer need you, they will discard you and leave you to pick up the pieces (which is often almost impossible if you have a life-changing medical injury).
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In the previous article , I introduced the concept of two different types of scientific fraud:
- Soft fraud is when the data is presented misleadingly to propose a conclusion that's not supported by the data, or some of the data is intentionally omitted (e.g., you do not publish an incriminating study or you find a way to reclassify an adverse event so it does not show up in the final clinical trial report).
- Hard fraud is when the data itself is just fabricated.
While many are comfortable with committing "soft” fraud, very few will commit “hard” fraud (although this cannot necessarily be said of India or China ). Instead, most of the fraud we encounter is soft fraud (e.g., this characterizes many of the studies used to try to debunk hydroxychloroquine in the treatment of COVID-19). This, in turn, makes it possible for outside investigators (e.g., this community) to read between the lines, identify what actually happened, and determine what the results of a given study should have been, had it not been twisted to provide the results desired by its sponsor.
Conversely, I believe that the general reluctance to commit hard fraud exists because it crosses a line that even the fairly corrupt academic and legal systems still stand behind. However, we frequently see things that come quite close to that line, such as dishonest researchers altering a trial midway through so it arrives at the needed results. Fauci, for example, did this repeatedly with remdesivir to get it onto the market, and similarly, the COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers like Pfizer ended their previously promised long-term placebo groups once they got their emergency-use authorizations (which should have required that long-term follow-up), so the long-term side effects of these vaccines could never be assessed.
Note: Although you can conceal most things by manipulating clinical trials, the one thing that is very difficult to hide is the total number of deaths (as they cannot be reclassified to something else). When Pfizer prematurely ended their trial at 6 months, more people had died in the vaccine group than the placebo group (and I suspect that this would have further worsened with time). The report disclosing this inconvenient fact (which destroyed the entire rationale for vaccine mandates) was released over a year ago .
Much of modern (industry-sponsored) science is designed to conceal things that would create problems for those sponsoring the science. Similarly, an ethos has been installed within our culture to doubt our own observations, and instead defer to the evidence-based scientific consensus, as the former, but not the latter is allegedly highly susceptible to biases that invalidate its conclusions. I disagree with this, and would argue that important things can often only be discerned by perceptive anecdotal observations.
Many organized religions throughout history have sought to control their populations by monopolizing the truth, and modern science is no different, monopolizing the evidence so that only a costly industry narrative can constitute "truth.” All of this is why we repeatedly see situations where someone has an undeniable medical injury, and afterwards, every professional they talk to tells them the injury could not have possibly been linked to the medication because there is “ no evidence ” it could have happened (also known as medical gaslighting ).
With the COVID-19 vaccines, we have seen alarming evidence of their harm across the board. For example, so many people are being harmed that VAERS has received more serious adverse events from the COVID vaccines than all other vaccines in history-- 28% of Americans know someone whom they believe the vaccines killedThe life insurance industry shows an unprecedented spike in deaths amongst working-age Americans following workplace-mandated vaccines being forced upon them. However, all of these safety signals are being ignored and dismissed as erroneous products of cognitive biases because they don’t meet the elusive bar for “evidence.”
Our current society has been conditioned to worship “evidence-based” science, and believes that it should be the sole arbiter of truth. One of the core tenets of evidence-based medicine is that the best available evidence should be used to inform clinical decisions. This is now widely interpreted to mean that large randomized controlled trials (RCTs) or clinical guidelines produced by committees of ( often corrupt ) experts are the “best” forms of evidence, and thus are the only things allowed to inform clinical decisions.
One of my largest disagreements with this dogma occurs when a situation arises where observations suggest something inconvenient to commercial interests, but the question at hand has not been formally assessed by large RCTs. The observations are summarily dismissed because “there is no evidence” for them. In these cases, I believe that the more limited data point (e.g., a series of similar clinical cases) constitutes the best available evidence, and should be treated as such until more comprehensive evidence is arrived at through a clinical study.
Much of my success as a clinician has arisen from utilizing more “limited” forms of evidence to inform my clinical decisions rather than waiting for an RCT (which may take years to be done) to settle the question—unfortunately many doctors become paralyzed and cannot act unless they have something like that to back them up. In contrast, if you read medical journals from earlier eras, physicians regularly made remarkable discoveries utilizing inductive reasoning, which is why I frequently study those ancient documents.
Overall, I believe there are three major issues with relying excessively upon RCTs:
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The first, summarized in this essay by Harvey Risch, is that the value of (perfect) RCTs is heavily over-emphasized. In my eyes, most individuals who fixate on RCTs view an investigation being randomized and controlled as a necessary box to check off, rather than (like Risch) actually understanding what it entails from a statistical perspective.
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Secondly, if the magnitude of an effect is small (e.g., this drug might reduce your risk of a heart attack years down the road by 5%), it takes an elaborate and costly trial to detect that faint effect, and it is very likely that you will have a greater chance of being harmed by a side effect than benefiting from the drug. Conversely, if the effect is large (e.g., shooting someone with a gun typically kills them), you don’t need an elaborate trial to detect the effect; a very small one will suffice to identify it. I subscribe to the belief that many useful medical interventions have a large enough magnitude of effect that it is not necessary to do complex testing to tease out their benefits.
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The third point is that large RCTs are extremely expensive to conduct (meaning that only industry and occasionally vested interests within the government can fund them, which is why many therapies I stand behind have never been able to achieve this gold standard in research performed for them). The rarely considered cost of doing an RCT frequently invalidates the entire RCT model, because study after study has shown that the financial interests of a study’s sponsor heavily influence its conclusion, and that influence is much greater than any benefit that can be obtained through randomization or controlling for the placebo effect.
Because of the “sponsor bias”, large studies need to have a way to arrive at a sponsor’s desired conclusion without committing hard scientific fraud. Over the years, a relatively consistent toolbox has evolved for committing soft scientific fraud, and those familiar with it were able to immediately recognize it being applied throughout the COVID-19 clinical trials
The COVID-19 Vaccine Trials
The essential purpose of the COVID-19 vaccine trials was to do the following:
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Be completed in a much shorter time frame than normal so that the vaccines could make it to the market before the pandemic ended on its own (which is essentially what has happened in Africa where vaccines were never used ).
Note: The FDA also understood the urgency to open this long-term marketplace and waived a variety of oversights that would normally be required using the present “emergency” as the justification for doing so.
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Come up with something that could be used to justify that the vaccines were “effective” so that the medical profession would wholeheartedly support and promote them.
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Conceal any adverse reactions from the vaccines that would make the medical profession reluctant to recommend the vaccines, and, more importantly, ensure doctors would deny any harms they observed in patients during the rollout could be linked to the vaccine (as doctors acknowledging widespread injuries would destroy the public’s willingness to continue vaccinating).
Long before the vaccines entered the market, I started to see the signs that an elaborate publicity campaign was being put together to frame the vaccines as the miraculous “ solution ” to the horrific pandemic situation we were experiencing (which was largely self-inflicted). Once the vaccines became available, that publicity campaign kicked into high gear and became the most aggressive propaganda campaign we had ever witnessed in our lifetimes. I tried to cover some of the most insane examples here:
Not surprisingly, this scheme also led to the vaccine manufacturers having the audacity to use titles like “ Safety and Efficacy of the BNT162b2 [Pfizer] mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine ” for the publications of their trials . Simultaneously, we were hit with the same soundbite over and over “ well we had hoped the vaccines would be effective, but we never imagined they would be this effective .” My colleagues ate that up, and it became nearly impossible to provide any piece of evidence with which to challenge this modern-day miracle.
Problems With Pfizer’s Trials
_Note: I mostly critique Pfizer. This is not because Pfizer is the only bad actor. It’s because I’ve spent the majority of my time reviewing their work (I can’t read everything), and because Pfizer received full approval for their vaccine, it was possible to view many of their regulatory submissions through FOIAs (and their equivalents)_
When I read through the Pfizer trial , a few red flags jumped out at me:
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The vaccines were never tested for preventing transmission, and based on their design and my knowledge of precisely how previous vaccines failed to prevent transmission , I did not believe you could take it on faith that the vaccine's efficacy in reducing symptoms translated to the benefit all my colleagues ultimately cared about (reducing the transmission of COVID-19).
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The actual benefits provided by the vaccine were very small. You had to vaccinate 119 people to prevent one minor case of COVID-19 (e.g., a sore throat + a positive test), 2711 people to prevent one “severe” case of COVID-19, and since no deaths were prevented in the trial, well over 21,720 people needed to be vaccinated (21,720 is the total number who were vaccinated in the trial) to prevent a single death from COVID-19.
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Most of the suspected adverse reactions to these vaccines did not appear to have been amongst the adverse events that were monitored (they were also unlikely to appear in the brief timespan of symptoms being monitored within this trial).
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The adverse events that were reported were much higher than what has typically been reported in trials for other vaccines [e.g., 59% experienced fatigue after Pfizer's vaccine, whereas around 10-15% experience fatigue after an influenza vaccine].
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The actual benefit that the vaccines provided was much less than these adverse events that were acknowledged within the trial report. Arkmedic did an excellent breakdown of it here .
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The noteworthy adverse events about which I remembered reading in the online support groups I had joined in 2020 for vaccine trial participants were not accounted for in any of the trial reports I read (Pfizer included). I had joined these online groups because I was suspicious of the vaccines and felt that doing this would be the only way to find out what the pharmaceutical companies had actually done.
From looking at all of this, my immediate thought was “if this was the best they could do using every possible trick at their disposal to rearrange their data to paint a positive picture of the vaccines, just how bad was the actual trial data ?”
Unfortunately, my physician colleagues (who frequently lectured us on how to skeptically dissect scientific publications) were so enraptured by the “the vaccine is even more safe and effective than we imagined” meme, that all these points fell on deaf ears. Fortunately, some did notice these issues, and Peter Doshi published a series of editorials (summarized here ) in the British Medical Journal (BMJ - considered to be one of the top 5 medical journals in the world ) that explained why the design of the vaccine trials and the evidence for Pfizer’s vaccines was very poor, and could not justify an FDA approval. Sadly, his experience with his colleagues mirrored my own, and his points were almost entirely ignored by the medical profession.
One of Doshi’s many observations was that there were signs in the data that the trial was not blinded, and the entire benefit of the vaccine may have been due to a failure to test vaccinated individuals for COVID-19 (thus creating the illusion that vaccinated individuals were less likely to have laboratory-confirmed COVID-19).
Subsequently, a whistleblower, Brook Jackson , who helped run one of Pfizer’s clinical trials, came forward and testified to the following:
- The COVID-19 vaccine trial she participated in was run in a much more haphazard way than any others she had worked on throughout her career.
•The trial was not blinded, and protocols that should have been followed to ensure blinding were flagrantly violated.
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Vaccinated individuals with COVID-19 were not being tested for COVID-19.
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Adverse reactions in vaccinated individuals were not adequately recorded.
Due to a concern that this conduct would violate the FDA’s requirements for clinical trial sites, Brook alerted her superiors about what was happening so that these issues could be addressed. After her pleas repeatedly fell on deaf ears, she eventually notified the FDA directly. Although the FDA did not investigate her concerns, they appeared to have informed her employer, as Brook was terminated the same day.
Note: As detailed by Doshi , there has been a longstanding issue with the FDA providing insufficient oversight for clinical trial sites, and as a separate investigation into vaccine oversight revealed, it was suspected that their laxity in oversight would dramatically worsen during Operation Warp Speed, which was the partnership between the Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Defense(DOD) aimed at helping to accelerate the development of a COVID-19 vaccine.
After these events transpired, Brook submitted her story to the BMJ who corroborated her allegations through documents she provided, and through other employees at the trial site. I would strongly recommend reading the BMJ’s investigation to understand exactly what happened there. Since her termination, Brook filed a whistleblower lawsuit against Pfizer which is presently in the federal courts.
Later, when I reviewed the events with Brook, one of the most interesting things I learned is that most of the data which is collected at clinical trial sites never even makes it to the FDA. Instead the FDA only receive a very small sample of it that is trusted to be representative of everything that occurs. I suspect this is one of the many reasons why the FDA could truthfully claim they had no knowledge any of this happened, although as this article shows they are clearly also culpable since they did not choose to pursue getting the reports for adverse events (like Maddie’s) they knew were happening.
In summary, as you can see from the above information, there was a real risk that soft fraud would occur during the clinical trials. However, unlike the many cases in which this has happened in the past, for the COVID-19 vaccine, we also had the unique opportunity to have numerous whistleblowers come forward and corroborate that this happened for the COVID-19 vaccines.
[
A Midwestern Doctor @MidwesternDoc
Whistleblowers are critical for righting the wrongs in government and healthcare. They always pay a steep price, but still would choose to do it again. Gøtzsche's presentation provides the best explanation I have ever seen on what drives the heroes we need now more than ever.
](https://twitter.com/MidwesternDoc/status/1609225914885476353)
The COVID-19 Vaccine Trial Strategy
Pfizer and Moderna knew quite early on (although exactly how early is a matter of speculation) that there were serious risks involved in using the mRNA spike protein platform for vaccination (this was also most likely the case for AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson with their spike protein vaccine). This left them in a bit of a bind; how could the vaccines they were committed to making for Operation Warp Speed be “safe” enough to win the vaccine race and get the market share they wanted?
As far as I can tell from reading the preclinical documents (e.g., this one ), this was initially accomplished by opting out of much of the safety testing on non-human subjects, which would normally be required before proceeding to human studies (e.g., Pfizer was allowed by regulators to exempt itself from testing for autoimmunity or cancer risks). I took this as a tacit admission that it was known that there were serious issues here (given that there were major concerns with these issues and they have since become some of the most common serious complications of the vaccines). In turn, they concluded that their best option was to never formally test for them so they could plausibly deny knowing that the issue existed (this is a common industry tactic) and claim that there was no evidence that the issue exists.
Once the human trials began, the goal shifted to doing everything possible to minimize the number of inevitable adverse events which occurred. This was essentially accomplished by:
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Making it very difficult for trial subjects to report any complications from the vaccines except for a very narrow subset of symptoms that were not a major publicity issue for the vaccine manufacturers. This characterizes both the limited V-safe data (which was still incriminating enough that a lawsuit was needed to get it from the CDC) and the even more limited list of adverse reactions found within the main section of Pfizer’s clinical trial report [fever, headache, fatigue, chills, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle pain, joint pain, or use of a fever medication along with pain, redness, or swelling at the vaccination site]. Furthermore, all of these symptoms were only monitored for 7 days post- vaccination (many vaccine injuries do not occur within this brief window, which was a well known fact prior to the COVID-19 vaccines).
_Note: the more severe injuries in Pfizer’s study were reported in an extremely vague manner ( see page 9 ), which made it impossible to determine anything._
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Aggressively reclassifying each serious complication as unrelated to the vaccines (typically by claiming it was in fact due to a pre-existing psychiatric condition or COVID-19).
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Avoiding any type of long-term followup on patients which could provide incriminating safety data, regardless of prior commitments to do so.
Because of this strategy, the vaccine manufacturers could not acknowledge any complications that research participants experienced as being related to the vaccines. Instead, all they could do was gaslight the patients into believing that the injury was unrelated to the vaccine, and have healthcare providers collude to create the narrative that the injury was not related to vaccination.
One of the cruel complications of this approach was that it required reneging on the promises that were given to the trial subjects at the start of the research study—any medical complications they received would be covered (because providing any type of help would require acknowledging that there were potential complications from the vaccine). The one, possibly unanticipated, downside of choosing not to help with medical expenses accrued in the trial is that it could solicit the outrage necessary for trial participants to speak out publicly about what happened to them, and for the public to listen…which to some extent has now happened.
All of these potential issues were why the BMJ has repeatedly called for the raw data for the COVID-19 vaccine trials to be released. It is almost certain that the scant clinical trial data we have been provided by the pharmaceutical companies is highly misleading, and that lack of information makes it completely unethical to mandate the vaccines on the population. This is especially true because the lack of data acknowledging the injuries makes it impossible for those who are injured to receive any type of medical care or support (hence, why many providers are now labeling vaccine injuries as long-covid, because it represents the best shot they have of getting help).
The COVID-19 Vaccine Trial Participants
When you review these cases, it does appear that they were all coordinated as a very similar playbook was used on each participant. However, I believe this was more of an emergent phenomenon because very similar things to the approaches used here have occurred in the past. Much of what follows is déjà vu from Merck’s HPV vaccine trials, and to a lesser extent these examples also match what friends of mine experienced with complications from other pharmaceuticals that were already FDA approved (as doctors are often very resistant to believing drugs they prescribed could cause harm).
For example, many of the adverse events shown below were reclassified as being a complication of pre-existing psychiatric conditions, and this has been the default strategy for gaslighting patients throughout the history of medicine . I believe the new emphasis on reclassifying injuries as COVID-19 resulted from a climate of hysteria, where anything could be labeled as COVID-19 and there is enough of an overlap between spike protein injuries from COVID-19 to the vaccine itself, that it could be rationalized that many vaccine injuries were actually due to the virus.
Maddie’s story
To expand the market for the COVID-19 vaccines, a case needed to be made that they were safe and effective for children (who had for all practical purposes a 0% chance of dying from COVID-19). For this reason, we saw a variety of predatory advertisements such as this one from Pfizer:
An individual who was severely injured in the above trial has dedicated her life to making her story known around the world:
Much of the time that went into this article came from editing Maddie de Garay’s story on the Highwire into a shorter version (as I recognize that while the entire presentation is extremely compelling, far fewer people will watch a full episode—as you’d guess it was extremely challenging to decide which parts to cut out of it).
Because of how important I felt this story was for the world to see, I emailed it to Pierre Kory for him to share it (he has a lot more followers), and I would request that you both watch this and consider sharing it as well, because it has a really powerful message:
[
Pierre Kory, MD MPA @PierreKory
Pfizer's trial only vaccinated 1,131 children so a single serious injury would have made the vaccine too dangerous. Maddie's story shows just how far medicine will go to betray and gaslight patients who threaten its narrative. We may never know who else was swept under the rug.
](https://twitter.com/PierreKory/status/1613319015178330113)
Most of what is in this video should speak for itself. A few additional things I’d add though:
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Maddie’s attitude is remarkable. I am genuinely amazed that she is not more bitter about her situation, especially given how healthy and active she was before her injury (it is incredibly difficult for people who have serious injuries to come to terms with what has happened to them, and accept that they can no longer do what they had previously been able to do). Instead, she is almost entirely focused on preventing others from also experiencing her nightmare.
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One of the issues highlighted in the Real Anthony Fauci is that Fauci has developed a network of principal investigators (PIs) to conduct questionable research trials for his drugs.
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There is absolutely no question that Maddie’s PI, Dr. Frenck, knew what her injury was the moment it started (as it had previously been reported in many adults), knew what it meant for Pfizer if the injury was acknowledged by the trial (given how few people were in the trial), and that he had enough influence to shape the medical process which Maddie received so that it would not be something that had to go in the clinical trial report. His choice to initiate this coverup resulted in necessary care (which could have prevented her paralysis) being delayed until it was too late, and he is directly responsible for what happened to Maddie.
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The allergist that Maddie worked with who diagnosed her with a faux condition, Functional Neurological Disorder (FND) to conceal the adverse event, according to Open Payments (a required database for pharmaceutical payments to physicians), from 2015-2021, had received $652,650.65 for associated research funding (with the amount increasing year by year).
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FND is an extremely disingenuous disease that is frequently used to gaslight patients who have received severe neurological injuries. I wrote much more about it here , including how neurologists lack the insight to recognize what they are doing when they authoritatively throw this diagnosis around.
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The experience Maddie had at the hospital was awful, and to some extent surreal, but for length considerations, I cut it from the presentation. Amongst other things, Maddie became much worse after she was at the hospital (e.g., she lost her ability to walk), and believes it was due to her MRI. I periodically encounter people with complex issues who get much worse from MRIs (especially the COVID-19 vaccine injuries). I’ve seen a few explanations for this, and of those, the most likely (but not only) explanation is it being due to the MRI’s contrast agent. Gadolinium is quite toxic for some, but this toxicity is rarely considered in medicine.
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Maddie was very fortunate to have a parent who was a nurse. Similar situations are even worse for those who have no direct experience in health care.
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They also provided the information at the end of the episode for Maddie’s lifefunder .
Brianne’s story
[
A Midwestern Doctor @MidwesternDoc
Exactly what happened in the clinical trials is critical to uncover as they are the basis for the lie the vaccines are safe and all other evidence is "anecdotal." Dressen (and others she's found) were erased and left to fend for themselves once their reactions raised red flags.](https://twitter.com/MidwesternDoc/status/1613370463958212608)
Many of the key points that needed to be made are contained within the above clip (I put two different presentations together). The key points I had to edit out to shorten it were:
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Brianne was actively communicating with the National Institute of Health (NIH) as part of a study for treating COVID-19 neurological injuries, which were repeatedly delayed by the NIH for political reasons (but was eventually published). In that study, they eventually settled on using intravenous immunoglobulin to treat the injury (which interestingly, also sometimes helps HPV vaccine injuries, but is also an expensive treatment requiring a large donor pool, and thus has limits to its scalability ). I wrote more about Brianne’s experience with the NIH and their study here .
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Brianne founded an organization dedicated to helping COVID-19 vaccine injury victims. According to their organization (this was in response to Maddie’s story):
In the longer version of the above presentation, she mentions she and three other individuals injured in the clinical trials (each detailed in this article) all had their injuries classified as something innocuous to conceal them (e.g., Maddie’s injury was functional abdominal pain, Olivia’s T-cell lymphoma was lymphadenopathy). If I find out who the other 3 participants were, I will update the article to include them.
Note: The reason I now post tweets with videos throughout these articles is because Substack only allows videos from a few platforms to be embedded in articles (this matters because most people understandably won’t click through to outside videos). Of those platforms, Twitter is the only one that does not censor or delete controversial videos (I thought Vimeo worked as well, but a month and a half ago Vimeo deleted my entire channel).
Olivia’s story
Olivia’s story is the video at the top of this article (presented in that way due to its length) and in the Rumble video below:
Although her story is very similar to the others, there are a few important takeaway points from Olivia’s story which may not be immediately apparent.
First, for a variety of reasons detailed here, it’s often difficult for doctors to recognize subtle medical injuries unless they have been specifically trained to look for them . Instead, doctors tend to rationalize all of them as being due to psychiatric issues . What is unique about Olivia’s situation is that because everything that happened to her was so unusual, and most importantly, could be directly observed visually (so you could not deny it was happening), outside doctors were actually willing to acknowledge her injuries. Despite that, this is how Moderna’s PI treated her (clipped from the above video):
[
A Midwestern Doctor @MidwesternDoc
If you are injured in a vaccine clinical trial, they will deny your injury, not help you as promised, and not report it. This story is remarkable because Olivia had such strong evidence linking her injury to Moderna, outside doctors agreed, but even then, this is what happened](https://twitter.com/MidwesternDoc/status/1612625075022491648)
Nonetheless, despite it being unambiguous that her injury was due to the vaccine, Moderna did not pay for her medical care as promised, and did not report her injury. Additionally, the clinical trial site director said she would only be able to acknowledge that the cancer Olivia had was linked to the vaccine if “ more research emerged in the future linking it ” even though this happened at the trial that was supposed to determine if this could happen ( note: this example illustrates a common deficit in critical thinking that exists throughout my profession ).
Although her shoulder injury is alarming (and like Maddie, the physical therapy Olivia was forced to go through to “address” it should never have been conducted), the cancer she has is much worse. Based on her history, there is a very strong case that it was linked to her vaccination, and had this been presented in Moderna’s trial report, would have had huge implications for the many patients now developing cancers who are told they cannot possibly be related to the vaccine, and thus these victims are denied the support they need.
Unnamed Moderna Trial Participant’s Story
A while back, I was requested to review 865 vaccine injuries that were submitted in a survey to assess the plausibility thatthe deaths described were due to the vaccine. One of the reports caught my eye since it represented a critical incident that was not reported within Moderna’s trial report (see page 40 ), so I reached out to the doctor (who will remain unnamed) who submitted the report and had good reason to be knowledgeable of this patient’s history.
According to the doctor, the gentleman who passed away was part of the clinical trial at Research Atlanta that was paid for by Moderna. He developed atrial fibrillation after the vaccine, and approximately 3 months after vaccination, he was hospitalized (but never vented or sent to the ICU) at Grady Memorial Hospital (which is very close to the CDC).
At the hospital, he received a CT scan, which revealed blood clots in his lungs. At the time, no one was aware that the vaccine could cause blood clots (both Moderna and the CDC had insisted that the vaccine was safe, and had not revealed it was associated with blood clots). The blood clots were then assessed to have been due to metastatic cancer, as there was no other explanation for them, despite the fact that a full cancer workup was conducted which could not detect any signs of cancer in the patient. The doctor I corresponded with (who I deemed competent to assess this question) is certain that the patient did not have metastatic cancer.
The patient was then assessed to be terminally ill, discharged to hospice, and then died in hospice care (which may have been partly due to respiratory difficulties resulting from the opioids he was given for hospice). As you might expect, the clinical trial contacts were notified of what happened to this patient, but they ignored the report.
Augusto’s Story
Augusto was another clinical trial participant who was abused by Pfizer. Fortunately, he was a lawyer and did everything he could to hold them accountable.
The only direct summary I have found of Augusto’s experience can be found within this (shortened) interview (an article was also written documenting his experience here ):
Although Augusto had the same experience as everyone else (e.g., they tried to say his issues were due to psychological problems and his adverse event never ended up in Pfizer’s final clinical trial report), there were also some remarkable aspects of his case:
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His hospitalization was initially documented by a senior specialist as an adverse reaction to a coronavirus vaccine (although as the previous examples have shown, this did not ultimately change the course of things).
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In addition to the team erroneously reporting the hospitalization which Augusto had directly told them about, the PI who was supervising his case fabricated a medical record to claim Augusto had an anxiety disorder. His injury (a pericardial effusion suggestive of pericarditis) was attributed to COVID-19 (even though Augusto had a negative test) and anxiety (even though anxiety cannot to my knowledge cause a pericardial effusion).
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The PI who was supervising his clinical trial site was also the lead author of Pfizer’s New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) study . Augusto’s experience and the documentation he had to support the lead author's misconduct is most likely the strongest argument for NEJM retracting Pfizer’s pivotal vaccine study ( note: in addition to the erroneous COVID-19 studies mentioned here, the NEJM also previously published Merck’s highly questionable HPV vaccine study ).
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Augusto obtained the record of another participant who died from a heart attack at the same hospital to which he was admitted, but was not registered in the final Pfizer clinical trial report.
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Augusto formally complained to the Department of Justice about this clinical trial conduct, but the government decided to avoid addressing it, despite their conduct being unlawful.
Pfizer vs. Moderna
Although many things could be said about these cases (which I suspect also holds true for the other ones I am not yet familiar with), one of the things that stands out to me from these reports is the differences in how Pfizer and Moderna conducted their trials.
In Pfizer’s case, they had a robust apparatus in place to have a team of physicians immediately neutralize any claims that the vaccine could be harmful. However, in Moderna’s case, they just told the doctors involved that the events could not be related to the vaccine and most doctors took those claims at face value (as they did not want to believe the vaccine could be harmful). Moderna, in effect, succeeded through inaction (by not documenting injuries or paying compensation for medical care they were obligated to).
I suspect this difference in strategies was due to Moderna being a fledging pharmaceutical company without an apparatus like the one Pfizer had developed over decades. Fortunately for Moderna, their laid-back approach ended up working out just as well since the FDA just rubber-stamped both of their vaccines.
Regardless of the approach that was followed though, I hope this examination into their mutual research misconduct helps to explain how these “impossible to predict” side effects that were never detected in the “robust” clinical trials could have suddenly emerged once the vaccines entered the market.
Conclusion:
Typically, it is nearly impossible to identify clinical trial participants and attempt to re-create what happened within a clinical trial. Due to the diligent work of leaders in this area like Del Bigtree , Aaron Siri , and a few clinical trial participants being brave enough to speak out publicly, we have been able to establish that serious adverse events occurred in all of the spike protein-producing vaccine trials.
More importantly, it should be apparent by now that the FDA has deliberately ignored this misconduct and tried to sweep the known adverse events under the rug. Based on all of this, I can state with near certainty there are other significant adverse reactions that did not make it to the final clinical trial reports.
Note: The fact that news stories like the above (the HPV vaccine trial malfeasance was the focus of the previous article ) received mainstream coverage (e.g., ABC news ) a mere decade ago goes to show just how rapidly the censorship of the media has increased in recent years. It also highlights how consequential failing to report the adverse events from a clinical trial can be for everyone injured after the fact .
Although exactly what degree of underreporting research fraud has occurred will probably never be known unless a legal investigation interviews each participant, as the examples in this article demonstrate, what is already known demonstrates that the vaccines are both ineffective and too dangerous to have on the market. On a more human level, what was done to these trial participants was appalling and needs to be prosecuted, and in the future may even happen if it becomes necessary to restore the public’s willingness to participate in the clinical trials which our medical system depends upon.
A major challenge of politics is catering a message to different political tribes, as each one will support certain messages and vehemently reject others. Most of the work we have done on the vaccine issue has been targeted to further convince those who already have doubts about the vaccines or sway those in the middle (which now represents a large portion of America ). Very little work however has been directed to those who are already committed to the vaccines (since it is largely a lost cause to try to change their minds).
For a variety of reasons detailed in a recent article , I believe the message that has the best shot at reaching those already committed to the vaccines (and motivating congress and the courts to do something) is to prove that fraud was committed by the manufacturers. This is why I attempted to present some of the best evidence we have currently for that assertion here (that Pfizer did not report what is actually in their vaccines). An even more important part of proving that case is showing exactly what actually happened in the clinical trials.
My sincere hope is that this article will inspire others who participated in the trials to come forward, and it is something that can be cited when people (especially doctors) try to argue that the clinical trials proved that the vaccines were “ safe .” I also faintly hope that awareness of this issue can inspire congressional hearings (which did happen previously with the disastrous anthrax vaccines that were forced on the military ). Although I doubt it would ever happen, I believe that the best solution to all the issues outlined in this article is to give trial participants the legal right to sue pharmaceutical companies for compensation if the severe adverse reactions they experience are not included in the final trial report.
Because of the videos, this article was an enormous amount of work to put together. I sincerely believe these stories need to be heard, so if you take the time to listen to them and share the ones that speak to you with others, many would sincerely appreciate that.
Lastly, on a lighter note, one of the practices I occasionally do to calibrate my medical intuition is to guess which fortune cookie best fits each member of a group I am with and then see how accurate the pairings were once they are opened. Sometimes I also go a step further and guess what specific subject the future fortune will address. The one I got today tested as being directed at the readers of this article:
”A dose of adversity is often as needful as a dose of medicine.”