Lancet goes woke

cross posted to my other blog.

 Lancet has a series of articles saying we need to reset medicine because humans are equal to animals.

I am putting the articles here in a series to fisk their lack of scientific rigor, and also so that I don't have to keep going to their website to read them but can fisk the article at my leisure

LINK Main article

One Health: a call for ecological equity

The notion that the wellbeing of an individual is directly connected to the wellbeing of the land has a long history in Indigenous societies.

Define Ïndigenous societies. Indigenous societies are not a monolith. Give an example with pros and cons. And don't overlook the fact that many of them have left these pristine environments to live and intermarry with others. And don't overlook that many of them use slash and burn techniques or overgraze the land. And don't overlook that their lifestyle is only "sustainable" due to high maternal child mortality, and don't forget the kidnapping of wives and infanticide in those Amazon tribes so beloved by Pope Francis.

Nowadays, the term One Health has become an important concept in global health.

The One Health High-Level Expert panel defines One Health as “an integrated, unifying approach that aims to sustainably balance and optimise the health of people, animals, and ecosystems. It recognises the health of humans, domestic and wild animals, plants, and the wider environment (including ecosystems) are closely linked and inter-dependent.”

True, but this is also rhetoric of the ecology minded, and again the devil is in the details of exactly what they mean to implement to do this. 

On Jan 19, we published a new four-part Series online on One Health and global health security, which analyses current understanding of potential public health emergencies and explores how effective adoption of One Health could improve global health security. Although the Series focuses on pandemic preparedness,

so  basic public health. And how they are the saviors who will impose their plans to "ïmprove global health security"

One Health goes way beyond emerging infections and novel pathogens; it is the foundation for understanding and addressing the most existential threats to societies including antimicrobial resistance, food and nutrition insecurity, and climate change.

again, rhetoric. And lumps microbial resistance with food insecurity and climate change as threats to society.  

Modern attitudes to human health take a purely anthropocentric view—that the human being is the centre of medical attention and concern.

why yes. Because we are humans who are endowed by the Creator with certain rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And because medicine from ancient times has been about treating the sick. You want to do environmental stuff, fine. But it is not medicine. (emphasis mine).

 

One Health places us in an interconnected and interdependent relationship with non-human animals and the environment. The consequences of this thinking entail a subtle but quite revolutionary shift of perspective: all life is equal, and of equal concern.

Ah so here we see the rhetorical trick: we need to take care of the earth (following their guidelines) to stay well, but hey, human lives are not more important than wild animals. (we in the Philippines saw this type of thinking when an alligator killed a school girl and the locals trapped him. The westerners lamented the action of the locals who didn't respect the animals dignity. As for the school girl, hey, she was only a poor Filipina girl so who cares. A similar attitude can be found in Nat Geo specials about tiger or crocadiles killing people in India: more concern about the animals than the poor villagers). 

This understanding is fundamental to addressing pressing health issues at the human–animal–environment interface.

For example, providing a growing global population with healthy diets from sustainable food systems is an urgent unmet need. It requires a complete change to our relationship with animals.

Actually, despite the propaganda, starvation deaths have gone down.

Indeed, anyone involved in farming could see it is green policies that are going to cause famine: until the recent man made fertilizer and fuel shortage, blamed on Covid and Putin but actually due to green policies that stopped fracking of natural gas in the US, and of course pushing the Ukraine war instead of trying to make peace there. And of course, the greens opposed the original green revolution (that requires fertilizer to grow these crops) and who are now opposing GM crops that would enable less use of pesticides and could also increase protein in the crops to enhance nutrition.

The EAT-Lancet Commission takes an equitable approach by recommending people move away from an animal-based diet to a plant-based one, which not only benefits human health, but also animal health and wellbeing.

Translation: You will eat bugs and like it. A top down tyranny not only telling you what to eat, but insisting you be happy with this man made crisis. And why do I suspect bird flu killing the chicken industry and African swine flu killing pigs and Foot and Mouth disease killing ruminants are examples of failure of these health minded people stopping these epidemics, because they want to implement low protein vegetarianism on the world. Kwashiorkor anyone? 

The COVID-19 pandemic provides an important example of the need for a One Health approach.

Analyses of the successes and failures in managing the pandemic have prioritised health systems and the provision of vaccines and antivirals.

Fair enough. 

But understanding the causes of the pandemic demands a broader ecological perspective. This lesson has not been fully learned and so we remain susceptible to future lethal emerging infectious diseases.

The Series recommends the involvement of more environmental health organisations to better integrate environmental, wildlife, and farming issues to help address challenges relating to disease spillover.

WTF? 

Covid was not a disease spill over from an animal. It was virus manipulated by man (actually a woman scientist) doing gain of function research. And through carelessness, it leaked out of the lab,

To make things worse, not only did the Chinese government and WHO try to deny there was an epidemic, and later saying yes there is an epidemic but it's not infectious, and then yes there was an epidemic but hey it came from a bat in a wet market (just ignore the lab doing gain of function experiments on the covid 2 virus). Indeed, Lancet was part of this coverup: Despite Lancet's attempt to silence the whistle blowers by allowing the head of Ecohealth to insist that covid was a disease spillover from bats, and if you even hinted that maybe the lab was the origin, you would be silenced.

Now we come to the really chilling part of their Humans are not more important than animals point of view.

One implication of a One Health approach is the need to reduce human pressure on the environment—an important medical intervention in itself.

Translation: we need population control of all those poor people who want to grow food and whose farms diminish the area of wild animals who look so nice in Nat Geo TV shows, and a pristine habitat that looks so nice on our instagram posting  when we visit as eco tourists.

So Mrs Bill Gates is using money to push contraception on Africans and the West of using the WHO to push contraception on and abortion as a human right.

Next topic pleas:

Take antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Driven by antimicrobial use and misuse in human, animal, and environmental sectors, and the spread of resistant bacteria and resistance genes within and between these sectors, AMR inflicts a huge global toll. An estimated 1·2 million people died in 2019 from antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections with another 4·95 million deaths associated with bacterial AMR globally. Only by applying a One Health approach can action to address AMR be achieved.

yes, a problem, and excess use of antibiotics in the animal industry is a topic  that is discussed by farmers. But it is the modern factory farm methods of raising chickens, pigs, cattle, and fish that lets poor people to have access to cheap protein. People on traditional low protein diets tend to die a lot from infectious diseases, especially Tuberculosis.

Lancet might estimate that 1.2 million people die of antibiotic resistant diseases, but please don't ignore that 250 thousand of these deaths are because of counterfeit drugs or vaccines that are commonly sold in their world countries: And this is a problem of corruption and crime that could be stopped.

One huge concern is the risk of worsening inequalities as On

e Health networks are largely situated and resourced in high-income countries. The current One Health architecture of institutions, processes, regulatory frameworks, and legal instruments has led to a fragmented, multilateral health security landscape.

As the second paper in The Series points out, a more egalitarian approach is needed, one that is not paternalistic or colonial in telling low-income and middle-income countries what they should do. 

For example, demanding that wet markets be closed to halt an emerging zoonosis might be technically correct, but if it does not account for those who make their livelihoods from such markets, One Health will only worsen the lives of those it claims to care about. Decolonisation requires listening to what countries say and what their needs are.

well, the need of the Philippines is basic infracstucture and jobs. 

As the global economic crisis continues (The World Bank forecasts a sharp downturn in growth and soaring debt that will hit developing countries the hardest), One Health needs to be implemented sensitively.

yes, the wrong headed plans of the elite to handle the Covid crisis and stop the use of fossil fuels etc. are all economic decisions made by those in charge of the world.  But apparantly that won't stop you.

The reality is that One Health will be delivered in countries, not by concordats between multilateral organisations, but by taking a fundamentally different approach to the natural world, one in which we are as concerned about the welfare of non-human animals and the environment as we are about humans.

Italics mine.

there is it again: animals and environment more important than human beings. And they expect us not to notice. 

In its truest sense, One Health is a call for ecological, not merely health, equity.

Again, ecological equity. What does this mean in the real world?

Three guesses. 

medical corruption

covid vaccine cardiomyopathy

Much of this is cross posted from my main blog.

 the nuances in this talk suggest that early in the epidemic, the original Covid killed people, but the vaccines were mainly given to high risk folks, so it probably saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

But now that covid has evolved into a disease that is similar to influenza, which mainly kills people who are old or frail, there is a big dehate if the side effects of the vaccine are worse than the disease, especially for the low risk young people, and especially the policy that insists that young people receive repeated booster shots, when data that is now being released shows that the complication rate, although low, is higher after second etc. boosters.

If there is an immune problem here, repeated booster shots would increase the risk of developing the problem.

Much of this is denied, but a study over a year ago in Taiwan showed a one percent problem of cardiac problems and worse after the secojnd dose. This study was done after the Moderna mRNA vaccine.

italics mine.

So why wait a year to allow this study to be published?

the BMJ did a study last year, but showed a very low incidence of myocarditis aftere a single shot, and said it was more common after Moderna than with the Pfizer vaccine. So this should have been a "headsup" to possible problems.

The reason the news is reporting so many sudden cardiac deaths might be becaause the rate seems to be higher after numerous doses, if the Taiwan study is correct.

Dr. C previously reported a study of autopsies from Germany that showed evidence of myocarditis.

Sigh.

the success of the various vaccine against the original covid strain probably saved hundreds of thousands of people.

A short shut down of meetings was probably a good thing (we do this for a month or two in bad flu outbreaks). Early in the epidemic, it was needed.

 But prolonged economic and school shutdowns was probably not needed, after the vaccines were given to the elders and high risk patients, which would have been three months after the vaccines were released.

But the irony is that riots and demonstrations were allowed, and some public health authorities said they were okay, because presumably the original covid supported BLM and the virus promised not to infect these people.

This is absurd, of course. And like the failure of the CDC to shut down the raves and parties that spread monkey pox, it shows how PC politics has infiltrated the US medical establishment.

The problems of side effects should have be given a headsup much earlier.

For example, I got the AZ British vaccine, which was found to cause blood clots, especially in the young. I even did a blog post about the risk, which was higher in the young than in we elders. So some countries banned this vaccine except for elders, where the risk of clots was lower and the risk of death was higher.

But it now turns out that there is a push to give repeated boosters of the mRNA vaccine, to the young, who don't need them since the Omicron strain is rarely fatal.

In the meanwhile, China is being confronted with a new version that is even less fatal and more infectious than the omicron. And the Sinovax, which didn't work very well against the original covid, doesn't work at all against this strain. So of course China 

as for the Philippines: Despite a push, they are having to throw out lots of expensive vaccine doses because people are just not willing to get boosters.

this, like the scandal of the Dengue vaccine, is going to make people distrust medical authorities, and like what we saw in the Phiippines, it will lead to deaths from preventable diseases prevented by vaccines that have been around for 20, 30 or even 100 years.

Sigh.

Haiti: Cholera again

From the CDC:

On October 2, 2022, two cases of Vibrio cholerae O1 infection were confirmed in the greater Port-au-Prince area. As of January 3, 2023, >20,000 suspected cholera cases had been reported throughout the country. What are the implications for public health practice? Multiple factors, including social unrest, have affected public health infrastructure and facilitated cholera resurgence. Although cases have declined, a multipronged approach, including sufficient and timely case management, strengthened surveillance, emergency water treatment, and targeted oral cholera vaccination campaigns are urgently needed.

the infrastructure has never quite recovered from the 2010 earthquake, and there has been political instability and anarchy from gang violence

And more recently a 2021 earthquake that destroyed much of what was rebuilt. From UNICEF:

Early in the morning of 14 August 2021, a 7.2 magnitude earthquake rocked Haiti, causing hospitals, schools and homes to collapse, claiming hundreds of lives, and leaving communities in crisis. By mid-September, around 650,000 people, including about 260,000 children, were estimated to be in need of humanitarian assistance.

Two reports on the background of the epidemic:  

From PBS Newshour:

from WION, an Indian news site.

 The prevention of Cholera is fairly straightforward: when we were in Africa, we were instructed about what to do if it hit our area (luckily it did not):  doctors or healthworkers should place patients in local schools etc that had running water since clinics had few beds, And with IVs and WHO Rehydration fluid, the death rate is much lower than in  the past. Stress on washing hands and boiling water, and giving cholera vaccine was done.

One reason our area might not have had the problem: We had village health workers in many small villages to encourage these things, and we had a well digging project funded by Oxfam to provide cleaner water (that still had to be boiled, but was less contaminated than using river water, and with more water available nearby, washing hands etc. was easier to do).

But if you want health care workers to work in these areas, you need to guarantee them physical safety. 

So what is going on in Haiti?

So who was rebuilding the infrastructure? Why aren't locals, especially those with an education, taking jobs helping to rebuild their country?

Answer: Lots of chaos political instablity earthquakes and hurricanes don't help.

To make things worse, many who could rebuild the country, i.e. those with energy and education will flee the country to make a life elsewhere: 

from the MiamiHerald July 2022:

The university-educated Philippeson, who is fluent in five languages, is part of a generation of Haitians who have migrated to Brazil, Chile and other South American nations following their country’s devastating 2010 earthquake. After years of living in South America, they decided to make their way north in a treacherous 7,000-mile trek through the road-less jungles of Central America to Mexico in the hopes of living in the U.S...

A recent national survey by the country’s Citizen Observatory for Institutionalization of Democracy found that 82% of Haiti’s nearly 12 million people would migrate if they had the chance.

The deep disenchantment with the country and democracy has been shaped by the volatile nation’s downward spiral over the past six years..

So send in the marines? The US and UN has done this in the past, and it didn't work. 

And often those trying to help become scapegoats for the problems.

For example: Some blamed the failure of rebuilding the infrastucture after the 2010 earthquake many years ago on the Clinton fund scandal, including many in the US Hatian community, but that aid has to be put into the context of the problem of foreign aid in general. 

BBC report on the Clinton fund problems gives insight into the problems of foreign aid in general.

 

A US Government Accountability Office report discovered no hint of wrongdoing, but concluded the IHRC's decisions were "not necessarily aligned with Haitian priorities". Mr Clinton's own office at the UN found 9% of the foreign aid cash went to the Haitian government and 0.6% to local organisations.

The bulk of it went to UN agencies, international aid groups, private contractors and donor countries' own civilian and military agencies. ...

part of the problem: Do you let efficient, trained, and honest outsiders handle the aid, or encourage and help locals do it, knowing that they are often untrained and alas too often corrupt and so much of the money will be stolen by them or by local gangs?

Jake Johnston, an analyst with the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a nonpartisan group that has studied the quake reconstruction, told the BBC "it's hard to say it's been anything other than a failure".

But he believes the State Department and IHRC simply replicated the mistakes of the whole foreign aid industry by chasing short-term gains instead of building longer-term capacity on the ground.

"They relied too much on outside actors," Mr Johnston says, "and supplanted the role of the Haitian government and domestic producers."

 Sigh.

and now the UKGuardian reports famine is coming.

cross posted to my main blog.

guess what? Psychodelics have side effects

 I have watched cynically how various psychodelics have been pushed as miracle drugs for depression etc. in the lay press, and alas even in some so called medical journals.

Those pushing them come from well funded institutes that start with the idea that they work, and then they experiment with patients who often are desparate (where placebo effect would be high) or who already have used similar drugs and are eager to do so again and cure themselves (again high placebo effect).

I wonder who is pushing these institutes and funding their studies?

I am cynical, because a lot of these drugs led to mental illness when they were used in the 1960s, 

and even the use of them in ceremonies by Native Americans was usually in a ceremony, where only the patient took the drug, complete with community and religious aspects: 

the Native American church took it regularly, but one wonders if this was done traditionally as a regular practice, instead of a single ceremony. 

The dosage also is something not discussed. Mother Drexel once took peyote in a ceremony to understand those she worked with, and she claims the experience was similar to the deep prayer after communion. She did not hallucinate, but many taking it said they did hallucinate.

And is there brain damage? LSD leaves a hole in the brain on PET scans, meaning permenant damage. Any studies here? I don't know because I haven't done the research and of course I distrust the research because the experments were done to prove they work, not from a neutral point of view.

These drugs, if used correctly, could be letting one go into one's deep psyche. Similar to self hypnosis, meditation and other ways to get peace via rituals.

(one could say the same thing about vision quests, with fasting and prayer to get a vision. Not something one does all the time).

But even with TM types of meditation, the dirty little secret about these things is that a certain number of people freak out or get psychotic breaks: 

Well, anyway, the goofiness of Prince Harry might be because he took these drugs, says an article in the UKMail.

where an expert admits there can be problems.Even with a great therapist and a perfect situation, Dr Johnson said a person using these drugs is still vulnerable to having their view warped.

He said he has heard of cases where patients were effectively brainwashed using psychedelic therapy. 

But the expert added that for many people, '[They] can come to terms withpersonal issues with others... [and] feel that they have gained closure.'

Dr Johnson has seen many positive cases in clinical trials, though. Sometimes, a person will finally understand a loved one, and even break estrangement to reconnect.

the psychiatric equivalent of Russian Roulette

and one wonders if taking placebo with a sympathetic psychiatrist would work just as well.