By Toby Rogers at Brownstone dot org.
For the last several decades, the official autism narrative was that 'autism is genetic, a GIFT, and anyone who says otherwise is a NUTTER who must be banned from polite society.' The mainstream media pounded this message into the public consciousness every chance they got, and this narrative was enforced through censorship and blacklisting of anyone who proposed other theories of the case.
Then this past weekend, a curious thing happened. On Saturday (October 18, 2025), the New York Times published "A Furious Debate Over Autism's Causes Leaves Parents Grasping for Answers."

The story follows two families dealing with autism, interspersed with quotes from various mainstream autism "experts." It conforms to the standard paint-by-numbers script - 'autism a mystery; it couldn't possibly be caused by vaccines, Tylenol, or food dyes; Robert Kennedy Jr. is terrible;' etc. And then, out of nowhere, the NY Times reporters (Gina Kolata and Azeen Ghorayshi) demolished the official genetic narrative:
But genetic mutations still only explain about 30 percent of cases, typically those with the most severe forms of the disorder.
So, not 100%, not half, not even a third of autism cases are genetic. That's a MASSIVE paradigm shift. Next:
Dr. Audrey Brumback, a pediatric neurologist at the University of Texas at Austin, said she offers genetic testing to most of the patients she diagnoses with autism even though, as she cautions the parents, a relevant genetic mutation will be found in only one out of four cases.
One out of four is 25%, so they're already backing away from the 30% claim. And THEN:
A landmark publication in 2007 showed that children with autism were much more likely to have so-called de novo mutations, spontaneous mutations that were not present in their mother's or father's genome.
Oh, so these children are NOT inheriting these genes from their parents (heritability is always what's been implied by the multibillion-dollar search for the mythical 'genes for autism'). Instead, these are de novo genetic mutations that are only found in the child with autism.
Do you know what else causes de novo genetic mutations? TOXICANTS.
That narrows the possibilities down considerably. Autism is not genetic - that's not me talking now, that's the NY Times. The most likely toxic exposures are from vaccines, SSRIs, Tylenol, pesticides/herbicides/fungicides, fire retardants, chemicals in plastics, EMF/RFR, and pollutants in our air, water, soil, and food - all the toxicants that I reviewed in my 2019 doctoral thesis.
So I figured out and published the definitive systematic review of the autism causation literature six years ago. My reward was to be hunted, censored, and economically blacklisted. The Washington Post, Guardian, BMJ, Springer/Nature, USA Today, Reuters, AP, Vice, and Politico have all published hit pieces on me. They never engage with my actual work, they never present contrary data, and all are engaged in racketeering on behalf of the pharmaceutical industry. I stood my ground and fought back by telling the truth and citing the relevant data. Now the paper of record has abandoned the genetic narrative, which opens the door for a thorough examination of the role of toxicants in autism causation.
We are winning this debate. The official narrative is crumbling before our eyes.
I doubt the NY Times reporters even realize what they've done. When a paradigm shifts, it's not even necessarily a conscious choice; people just feel the overwhelming gravitational pull of the new narrative.
The people at the Simons Foundation, even though they are quoted favorably in the article, will be none too happy with this development. They won't be able to win the Nobel Prize in Medicine once everyone realizes that autism is not genetic. Presumably, their staff are on the phone right now calling for the retraction of all of the evidence that reveals the multibillion-dollar autism genetics research grift.
And the...

By Maryanne Demasi at Brownstone dot org.

Yesterday, I took part in a panel discussion in Washington, D.C., on the weaponisation of science - specifically, how conflicts of interest, industry influence, and scientific deception have reshaped modern medicine.
It was an important conversation about how the scientific process has been hollowed out by financial incentives, regulatory capture, and institutional cowardice.
For me, this is not an abstract debate. I've spent much of my career investigating how science becomes distorted - not by a few rogue actors, but through an entire system built on commercial dependence.
Once you start pulling the threads of how evidence is produced, who funds it, who controls the data, and who polices the outcomes, you quickly realise that the corruption of science is structural and systemic.
The Statin Wars: A Case Study in Deception
I first saw this clearly while investigating cholesterol-lowering drugs. My 2013 Catalyst documentary questioned whether statins were being overprescribed, and it unleashed a media firestorm.
The episode was pulled after industry outrage, and I was publicly attacked. None of the critics engaged with the evidence - they simply sought to silence it.
In 2018, I published a narrative review, "Statin wars: have we been misled by the evidence?"

The piece revealed that the raw data underpinning statin trials were held exclusively by the Oxford-based Cholesterol Treatment Trialists (CTT) Collaboration and had never been released.
The CTT group had signed confidentiality agreements with pharmaceutical sponsors, blocking independent access to the raw data and preventing verification.
Yet those same meta-analyses have shaped prescribing guidelines around the world - produced by a group that sits under Oxford's Clinical Trial Service Unit, which receives millions in funding from statin manufacturers.
In my public talks, I've described the statin story as a case study in bias and censorship. The trials used well-worn techniques to amplify benefits and minimise harms.
For example, they use 'run-in' periods before the trial to weed out people who couldn't tolerate the drug, thereby artificially lowering the adverse events detected during the trial.
Often the outcomes were reported in relative, not absolute, terms - effectively exaggerating benefits that were, in reality, minuscule to the individual patient.
The vast majority of statin trials are funded by the manufacturers, and almost all show benefit - except for one publicly funded study that showed the opposite.
So, who funds the trial matters. The system is captured, plain and simple.
Regulatory Capture and the Illusion of Oversight
The same dynamics pervade drug regulation. In a 2022 BMJ investigation, I showed how drug regulators rely heavily on funding from the very industries they oversee.
In Australia, the Therapeutic Goods Administration derives 96% of its operating budget from industry fees.
In the US, the same conflict exists through the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA), which allows the FDA to collect billions from drug companies.
Those "user fees" now fund roughly two-thirds of the agency's drug-review budget - a structural conflict of interest described by one scholar as "institutional corruption."
And it's true.
Industry money drives the demand for faster approvals through "expedited pathways," which often means weaker evidence, shorter trials, and looser post-marketing obligations.
Regulators defend this as "innovation," yet the drugs approved under these pathways are far more likely to later receive black-box warnings or be withdrawn from the market due to safety issues.
The result is a system that rewards speed and sales over safety and substance.
The illusion of effective drugs has become even clearer thanks to a landmark investigation this year by Jeanne Lenzer and Shannon Brownlee.
They reviewed more than 400 FDA drug approvals between 2013 and 2022, and found that 73% of the drugs failed to meet fo...

By Eyal Shahar at Brownstone dot org.
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Preamble
The natural home for this work is a biomedical journal. There is zero chance, however, that a paper would be accepted by any conventional journal. Why? Because the results are earthshaking, as stated in the title.
This post is technical, but the preamble is not. For the non-academic reader, the preamble will serve two purposes: 1) to share an interesting story about the evolution of this work; 2) to give a simple summary of what I found.
So, stay with me at least through this section.
Although I have over 200 scientific publications, only a few were truly innovative in the sense of a creative idea that led to an interesting discovery. Most were uninspiring, "normal" science. I often wondered how those rare cases were born, and in retrospect, it was never prolonged thinking. Rather, it was an unexplained spark, a moment when an idea came into my mind out of the blue, or some loose ends got connected. This work had something of both.
I never trusted the results of the Pfizer trial. That 95% effectiveness against a respiratory virus was too good to be true - unprecedented in the context of a viral respiratory infection. I could not tell, however, what might have gone wrong.
Working on a recent post, I concluded that the culprit must have been the ascertainment of cases. For whatever reason, many cases have been missed in the vaccine arm, and therefore, the original results cannot be trusted. Is there any other way to estimate the true effectiveness against symptomatic infection from the trial's data? "Probably not" is the expected answer.
Coincidentally, I discovered another document on the Pfizer trial, titled "Final Full Clinical Study Report." In that lengthy document, Pfizer included estimates of the effectiveness against asymptomatic infection, which were based on a blood test in all participants (anti-N antibodies).
Is there a way to estimate the effectiveness against symptomatic infection from the effectiveness against asymptomatic infection?
That was the spark: posing a question that linked two loose ends. Answering it was not too difficult. Simple computational work.
Every analysis is based on some premises or assumptions. Here, I needed two:
First, I assumed that the vaccine does not prevent an infection. It may only prevent symptoms when infected. This premise is widely accepted now, and I was able to demonstrate it indirectly in the trial's data.
My second assumption had to do with the split of infections between asymptomatic and symptomatic. There are data on the topic, including data I was able to extract from the trial.
The rest of the work was no more than a simple equation I borrowed from an old paper and a few rows on an Excel file, which I will show at the end.
I promised a spoiler:
Of over half a dozen different computations, one resulted in zero effectiveness, one in 50%, and all others - up to 25%. We should follow the majority: it was no more than 25%. And that's before waning…
Sources of Data
To combine data on asymptomatic infections and symptomatic infections, I needed to find a relevant time window in which both types of data were available. It was between dose 2 (administered 21 days after dose 1) and one month later, a period for which the reported effectiveness was between 90.5% and 94.8%.
There were two sources for the data: the famous paper in the New England Journal of Medicine and the Pfizer document I mentioned in the preamble, which was presumably submitted to the FDA. Below you will find screenshots of the data I used. Red rectangles were added.


Preliminary Analysis
The starting table is simple: the number of cases of symptomatic infection and asymptomatic infection in the two arms of the trial within one month after the second dose.

The numbers in the right column were transcribed from table 36 above. The number 4 is based on the graph, and the number 90 was estimated from the table below the graph: 21 cases in 7 days ...

By Michael Walters at Brownstone dot org.
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Fundamentally, it had a flawed design. Its architects meant to appeal to the public, promising what the old system could not fully deliver - guaranteed access to affordable health cover and coverage for pre-existing conditions (PECs). But they were wrong about being able to keep your doctor or your old policy if you wanted.
Previously individual policies had to exclude PEC coverage to be financially viable. Yet employer group policies often covered it after a waiting period, but the extra costs were spread over their fellow workers - a real burden on medium- and small-sized companies. Under ObamaCare, the very high PEC costs are still spread too narrowly - on each of the very few insurers who have agreed to stay as exchange insurers.
Need a Very Broad Base to Bear PEC Risk
In the most successful European healthcare systems, e.g., Germany and Switzerland, the federal government handles the PEC risk, via national pools and government subsidies, sparing the burden on individual insurers. Those costs are spread through the national tax base, not borne by an individual insurer who is prohibited from rejecting insureds with a high-cost PEC.
Not Designed to Last
Skeptics believe that ObamaCare designers knew of this potential death spiral of increasing costs among fewer and fewer insurers, ultimately causing it to fail. To appeal to the public, they made expensive PECs free for exchange insurers. Also, other costly sweeteners were made free: lifetime unlimited benefits and coverage for children until age 26.
This meant that the few insurers left in the exchange would continuously have to raise rates substantially, as lower-risk and younger people would opt out. Higher-risk insureds would stay and force still higher premiums to avoid insurer collapse. That spiral of continually more adverse selection would mean the demise of the system. The exchange insurers could simply pull out. The federal law establishing ObamaCare did not have the authority to impose mandatory insurer participation, like state laws can on assigned risk participation.
The likely strategy of ObamaCare's architects was for it to be a stopgap measure before converting it to "single-payer" socialized medicine. Major group insurers initially supported ObamaCare passage because, after conversion to single payer, those insurers would become third-party administrators (TPAs). When servicing the future single-payer market, TPAs would be paid a guaranteed fee (e.g., 3 or 4%), with no chance of a loss, to process premiums and pay claims on behalf of the federal government. This strategy ignores failed past experiments with TPAs, where no stake in the outcome, just tended to drive up overall claim costs.
Another clue that ObamaCare was not designed to last was that it never addressed the competitive disadvantage of individual policies having no tax deduction. In contrast, employer-based coverage enjoyed the longstanding tax exemption for group insurance. This was installed in World War II to get around wage and price controls, but was not rescinded, partially because the public liked the tax deduction.
In his landmark 2001 essay, "How to Cure Healthcare," Nobel Economics Laureate Milton Friedman decried this feature because it drives up overall costs due to defensive medicine, when the individual is insulated from the price/value decision. "Who cares about that extra unneeded procedure? You are not paying for it."
Doctors are incentivized to order extra, paid-for tests, as "defensive medicine," to mitigate a litigious US tort environment. Some estimates are that this drives up overall costs by 10% to 15%.
Also, because the public liked the tax deduction, to compete better, the individual policy option may have to give some tax relief.
ObamaCare Not Very Effective in Getting to Universal Healthcare - Many Still Uninsured
ObamaCare proponents originally cited a goal to target the 49 million uninsured Americans i...

By Brownstone Institute at Brownstone dot org.
According to newly released emails, the United States Intelligence Community, led by the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, held regular meetings with Dr. Ralph Baric, one of America's leading coronavirus experts, since at least 2015.
Senator Rand Paul's office has worked for years to obtain the documents.
Baric has been accused of engineering the Covid-19 virus in his lab at the University of North Carolina, but he has never had to testify about his role in the pandemic despite his well-documented collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The newly released emails reveal that the CIA hoped to discuss "Coronavirus evolution and possible natural human adaptation with Baric" and that Baric held quarterly meetings with members of the Intelligence Community.
These emails are just the latest additions to the suspicious amalgamation of facts implicating the US Intelligence Community's role in the origins of the pandemic, as discussed in The Covid Response at Five Years.
A very brief overview of the timeline suggests that the CIA and the Intelligence Community are implicated in the creation of the virus, a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and censorship to evade any public scrutiny for their role in the pandemic.
2015: The Intelligence Community held quarterly meetings with Dr. Ralph Baric and discussed "possible human adaptation" to coronavirus evolution.
2019-2020: The CIA had a spy working at the Wuhan Institute of Virology doing "both offensive and defensive work" with pathogens, according to Seymour Hersh. That asset reports in early 2020 that there was a laboratory accident that resulted in the infection of a researcher.
March 18, 2020: The Department of Homeland Security replaced Health and Human Services as the lead Federal Agency responding to Covid, as explained in depth in Debbie Lerman's The Deep State Goes Viral.
Spring 2020: The CIA offered bribes to scientists to bury their findings refuting the "proximal origin" theory advanced by Dr. Anthony Fauci, according to a whistleblower. The House Oversight Committee explains: "According to the whistleblower, at the end of its review, six of the seven members of the Team believed the intelligence and science were sufficient to make a low confidence assessment that COVID-19 originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China." Then, however, the "six members were given a significant monetary incentive to change their position."
2020: Dr. Fauci began holding secret meetings at CIA headquarters "without a record of entry" in order to "influence its Covid-19 origins investigation," according to a whistleblower. "He knew what was going on…He was covering his ass and he was trying to do it with the Intel community," the whistleblower told Congress."
2021: Scientists in the Department of Defense compiled significant evidence suggesting Covid emerged from a lab leak, but President Biden's Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines, banned them from presenting their evidence or participating in a discussion on the origins of the virus.
2021: CISA, an agency within the Department of Homeland Security, implemented a program known as "switchboarding," where officials dictated to Big Tech platforms what content is permissible or prohibited speech.
2022: The Department of Homeland Security announced it will establish a "Disinformation Governance Board." The Ministry of Truth is only discontinued when the absurdity of its chief censor, Nina Jankowicz, receives sufficient blowback from the public.
What exactly was the play here? A populist impulse has been alive in the American electorate since the end of the Cold War. A growing popular demand on the left and right has been for a government that serves the people and not some globalist, bureaucratized, and militarized scheme that only benefits the ruling class.
In 2015, Donald Trump, a consummate outsider to the ruling elites, was ascending in poli...

By Meryl Nass at Brownstone dot org.
My next post will be a slide deck on the meat industry that I put together months ago but had not used until now.

(Washington, D.C., October 22, 2025) - Today, US Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Small Business Administrator Kelly Loeffler announced a suite of actions to strengthen the American beef industry, reinforcing and prioritizing the American rancher's critical role in the national security of the United States. Since 2017, the United States has lost over 17% of family farms (I think it is 8-9% of all farms - Nass), more than 100,000 operations over the last decade (160,000 farms from 2017-2024 according to USDA figures - Nass). The national herd is at a 75-year low while consumer demand for beef has grown 9% over the past decade.
Because increasing the size of the domestic herd takes time, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) is investing now to make these markets less volatile for ranchers over the long term and more affordable for consumers. (Investing in what? - Nass). "America's food supply chain is a national security priority for the Trump administration. We are committed to ensuring the American people have an affordable source of protein and that America's ranchers have a strong economic environment where they can continue to operate for generations to come," said Secretary Brooke Rollins.
"At USDA we are protecting our beef industry and incentivizing new ranchers to take up the noble vocation of ranching. Today, USDA will immediately expedite deregulatory reforms, boost processing capacity, including getting more locally raised beef into schools, and working across the government to fix longstanding common-sense barriers for ranchers like outdated grazing restrictions." "At Interior, the Department is slashing red tape and restoring grazing access on public lands to support the livelihoods of hardworking Americans in the ranching industry," said Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum….
Below, we hear how bad it is for farmers:

What to do? Here is the easiest and quickest solution:
Expand local meat processing. There is a meat slaughter and processing bottleneck in the US, which has been present for 10 years. Only meat slaughtered in a USDA-inspected plant can be sold across state lines. But there are not enough facilities and not enough inspectors.
USDA has put hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into expanding huge meat processing facilities or building new ones, while its regulations have led to the shutdown of more than a thousand small processing plants. Only one of the new facilities taxpayers helped pay for is east of the Mississippi, where most Americans live. So the processing bottleneck for most Americans will not be solved despite these considerable investments.
By relaxing USDA regulations and allowing the states to use their own inspectors to inspect "custom" meat processing facilities (which are currently not allowed to sell meat but only process it for personal use), this bottleneck could be eased quickly. This was done in Maine during the first year of the pandemic to alleviate meat shortages.

This is essentially what is called for in Thomas Massie's PRIME Act HR4700.

Republished from the author's Substack

By Charles Eisenstein at Brownstone dot org.
I've been rereading John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. This passage from Chapter 5 is shockingly relevant to the farm crisis today. It describes the early stages of the consolidation and corporatization of farms that continue to accelerate. Even more relevantly, it illuminates the systemic nature of that process, which defies any attempt to locate blame. Here, agents of institutional landowners are coming to notify tenant farmers that they must leave their land.
Some of the owner men were kind because they hated what they had to do, and some of them were angry because they hated to be cruel, and some of them were cold because they had long ago found that one could not be an owner unless one were cold. And all of them were caught in something larger than themselves. Some of them hated the mathematics that drove them, and some were afraid, and some worshiped the mathematics because it provided a refuge from thought and from feeling. If a bank or a finance company owned the land, the owner man said, The Bank - or the Company - needs - wants - insists - must have - as though the Bank or the Company were a monster, with thought and feeling, which had ensnared them.
These last would take no responsibility for the banks or the companies because they were men and slaves, while the banks were machines and masters all at the same time. Some of the owner men were a little proud to be slaves to such cold and powerful masters. The owner men sat in the cars and explained. You know the land is poor. You've scrabbled at it long enough, God knows.
Next comes a man driving a tractor, demolishing the homes and gardens of farmers who had farmed the land for generations. Steinbeck understood that no human being - not the man driving the tractor, nor the bank that hired him, nor the bank's local president, nor its board of directors back East, nor its shareholders and bondholders, were to blame for that loss. Or, perhaps, all were to blame. But really, it is the reflex of blame itself that he casts into doubt.
Blame allures the victims of a system with its promise of an easy solution. It substitutes a problem that we know how to fix for one that we do not. Here is an exchange between a tenant farmer and the tractor driver, who has warned the tenant that his house is in the way of the tractor:
"I built it with my hands. Straightened old nails to put the sheathing on. Rafters are wired to the stringers with baling wire. It's mine. I built it. You bump it down - I'll be in the window with a rifle. You even come too close and I'll pot you like a rabbit."
"It's not me. There's nothing I can do. I'll lose my job if I don't do it. And look - suppose you kill me? They'll just hang you, but long before you're hung there'll be another guy on the tractor, and he'll bump the house down. You're not killing the right guy."
"That's so," the tenant said. "Who gave you orders? I'll go after him. He's the one to kill."
"You're wrong. He got his orders from the bank. The bank told him, 'Clear those people out or it's your job.'"
"Well, there's a president of the bank. There's a board of directors. I'll fill up the magazine of the rifle and go into the bank."
The driver said, "Fellow was telling me the bank gets orders from the East. The orders were, 'Make the land show profit or we'll close you up.'"
"But where does it stop? Who can we shoot? I don't aim to starve to death before I kill the man that's starving me."
"I don't know. Maybe there's nobody to shoot. Maybe the thing isn't men at all. Maybe like you said, the property's doing it. Anyway I told you my orders."
Maybe there is nobody to shoot. Then what? OK, within this monster made of men (and these days, women too), among those manning the machine, some are more cruel, more rapacious, more ruthless than others. But they did not design the system. It's more like the system designed them.
I just got off a call with some activists in the regenerative agriculture...

By Jeffrey A. Tucker at Brownstone dot org.
Brownstone Institute was a proud exhibitor at the huge Children's Health Defense conference, Austin, Texas, November 7-9, 2025. The event was filled with exuberance and trust among the more than 1,000 attendees, all of whom were thrilled to be with real friends at a time in which trust in nearly everything else is in free fall. At last, we were with people on the right side of history.
Within this social context, two 30-something men with British accents were making the rounds to decry fake meat and proclaim the superiority of real meat. This is a position with which probably everyone there agreed. They also looked the part: well-dressed and clean-shaven. Of course we want our activists to look this way.
The main actor told people his name is Aldrich Willows, an entirely fictional name, though no one seemed to have checked. He explained that he runs the Alliance for Sustainable Protein. The site is down as of this writing but it was created in March 2025. If anyone doubted their authenticity, pulling up their website on the phone was the first riposte, which is what they did with me.
The goal was to get people on film with the camera they had set up outside the security zone. Just before going on camera, they present the victim with a study that they say proves that fake meat causes autism. They have you stand in front of a ridiculous graphic with a patty of real vs fake meat, then they turn on the camera, first eliciting permissions to use what is filmed.
Next they push the unsuspecting person to endorse their study. If you are wary, as I was, the cameraman acting like the producer says, "It would be best for you to clearly state that fake meat causes autism while holding the study." It's an intimidating moment because the people being interviewed hate fake meat, suspect that the cause of autism is environmental, and feel a bit of sympathy for these guys.
If the victim does not comply, they keep pushing, clearly trying to get people on camera to say something ridiculous. The study in question is entirely fake, with no author, and generated entirely by artificial intelligence. But they are moving so fast that it is hard to follow what is going on. The study is presumably embargoed, though it has been variously circulating here and there for weeks.
Just for gags, I generated another study using Grok that shows a causal link between eating waffles and going bald. Anyone can do this in about 5 seconds.
Finishing with my interview, after a long day of interviews, I quickly forgot about the entire strange episode. I figured that it was some naive activists who were drawing unconfirmed connections between two bad things. But in my mind, my attitude was whatever: such events draw all types.
It was not until the next morning when it dawned on me what they were doing. They were scammers who had targeted the health freedom movement. They were piecing together a film for a documentary that would claim that all of us are naive and rallying around fake science to advance our political agenda.
Very clever.
The next morning I confronted them and told them that their plot had been revealed. I explained that they should be kicked out and their film confiscated. Alarmed, they grabbed their camera and left everything else, including their lights and bags of material, and ran to the elevators.
Someone captured this image of the two being confronted.

Further research reveals that the main person is not Aldrich Willows but rather Luke or Louis Wilson. Lucio Eastman of Brownstone discovered this while perusing the code to their website, which is now down.

Wilson works for the Centre for Climate Reporting. This is their website. He is a major climate activist who does undercover reporting, affiliated with the Net-Zero movement that the WEF has promoted. The funding trail leads to the usual suspects in the NGO space with major funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, Ikea, Bloomberg, and others.
Here is...

By Maryanne Demasi at Brownstone dot org.
I recently purchased Aaron Siri's new book Vaccines, Amen. As I flipped through the pages, I noticed a section devoted to his now-famous deposition of Dr Stanley Plotkin, the "godfather" of vaccines.
I'd seen viral clips circulating on social media, but I had never taken the time to read the full transcript - until now.
Siri's interrogation was methodical and unflinching…a masterclass in extracting uncomfortable truths.
A Legal Showdown
In January 2018, Dr Stanley Plotkin, a towering figure in immunology and co-developer of the rubella vaccine, was deposed under oath in Pennsylvania by attorney Aaron Siri.
The case stemmed from a custody dispute in Michigan, where divorced parents disagreed over whether their daughter should be vaccinated. Plotkin had agreed to testify in support of vaccination on behalf of the father.
What followed over the next nine hours, captured in a 400-page transcript, was extraordinary.
Plotkin's testimony revealed ethical blind spots, scientific hubris, and a troubling indifference to vaccine safety data.
He mocked religious objectors, defended experiments on mentally disabled children, and dismissed glaring weaknesses in vaccine surveillance systems.
A System Built on Conflicts
From the outset, Plotkin admitted to a web of industry entanglements.
He confirmed receiving payments from Merck, Sanofi, GSK, Pfizer, and several biotech firms. These were not occasional consultancies but long-standing financial relationships with the very manufacturers of the vaccines he promoted.
Plotkin appeared taken aback when Siri questioned his financial windfall from royalties on products like RotaTeq, and expressed surprise at the "tone" of the deposition.
Siri pressed on: "You didn't anticipate that your financial dealings with those companies would be relevant?"
Plotkin replied: "I guess, no, I did not perceive that that was relevant to my opinion as to whether a child should receive vaccines."
The man entrusted with shaping national vaccine policy had a direct financial stake in its expansion, yet he brushed it aside as irrelevant.
Contempt for Religious Dissent
Siri questioned Plotkin on his past statements, including one in which he described vaccine critics as "religious zealots who believe that the will of God includes death and disease."
Siri asked whether he stood by that statement. Plotkin replied emphatically, "I absolutely do."
Plotkin was not interested in ethical pluralism or accommodating divergent moral frameworks. For him, public health was a war, and religious objectors were the enemy.
He also admitted to using human foetal cells in vaccine production - specifically WI-38, a cell line derived from an aborted foetus at three months' gestation.
Siri asked if Plotkin had authored papers involving dozens of abortions for tissue collection. Plotkin shrugged: "I don't remember the exact number…but quite a few."
Plotkin regarded this as a scientific necessity, though for many people - including Catholics and Orthodox Jews - it remains a profound moral concern.
Rather than acknowledging such sensitivities, Plotkin dismissed them outright, rejecting the idea that faith-based values should influence public health policy.
That kind of absolutism, where scientific aims override moral boundaries, has since drawn criticism from ethicists and public health leaders alike.
As NIH director Jay Bhattacharya later observed during his 2025 Senate confirmation hearing, such absolutism erodes trust.
"In public health, we need to make sure the products of science are ethically acceptable to everybody," he said. "Having alternatives that are not ethically conflicted with foetal cell lines is not just an ethical issue - it's a public health issue."
Safety Assumed, Not Proven
When the discussion turned to safety, Siri asked, "Are you aware of any study that compares vaccinated children to completely unvaccinated children?"
Plotkin replied that he was "not aware of well-controlled s...

By Lori Weintz at Brownstone dot org.
purse seine - a large wall of netting deployed around an entire area or school of fish. The seine has floats along the top line with a lead line threaded through rings along the bottom. Once a school of fish is located, a skiff encircles the school with the net. The lead line is then pulled in, "pursing" the net closed on the bottom, preventing fish from escaping by swimming downward.
Due to the relatively short lifespan of human beings, it can be difficult to put our own life experiences in perspective with history. This is why we have the saying, "Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it." Combine a lack of historical knowledge with the fact that human nature doesn't change much, and you have a recipe for human-caused misery, repeated over and over.
In Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Cask of Amontillado," we see an example of human nature gone awry, with lethal results. From the first, the reader is privy to Montresor's disgust toward Fortunato and his desire to exact revenge for a perceived insult. As the story progresses, it should be evident to Fortunato that Montresor has ill intent, but Fortunato cannot imagine the evil, so he continues into the depths of the catacomb, willingly walking toward his own demise while being plied with wine and called "friend."
Even as Montresor is about to place the last stone that will seal Fortunato's death in chains behind the brick wall, Fortunato calls it a good joke that they will laugh about later. Montresor agrees, drops his torch into the opening, places the final brick, and piles old bones of his ancestors in front, where half a century later "no mortal has disturbed them."
There are analyses interpreting Poe's story, and its intended message, but surely one lesson is to pay attention when all the signs indicate that you are in a bad situation, even as others try to convince you of their solicitude and concern for your well-being. This is the dire situation of humanity today, in the form of the digital prison that is being formed right before our eyes under the guise of convenience, efficiency, and safety.
Casting the Net
While most of us go about our lives working, playing, taking care of ourselves and our families, and interacting with others who are equally engaged in similar life activities, the tech and surveillance industries are barreling forward with plans to change everything. The partnerships forming and strengthening among corporate, tech, academia, and government are explained and celebrated with all the right language and ribbon-cutting ceremonies.
For example, Prime Minister Keir Starmer framed his recent announcement that digital ID will soon be mandatory in order to work in the United Kingdom as a policy that will appeal to all "decent, pragmatic, fair minded people." Starmer intoned that mandatory digital ID would address the illegal migrant problem, and help the UK to "tackle poverty, conflict, climate change…" Besides, wheedled Starmer, now you won't have to search through a drawer for your latest utility bill to show proof of residence; you can just show your digital ID. So convenient.
That citizens feel no need for digital ID, and don't want it, is not of concern to the tech billionaires and their corporate, academic, and government partners, only insomuch as they have to deal with the populace's viewpoints. That is, in democratic societies, they have to at least try to appeal to the public. In tyrannies, the purveyors of advanced technology only have to convince tyrants that it will help them better surveil and control their people. Money is exchanged and tyranny is strengthened.
Those Who Have Already Been Caught in the Purse Seine
Currently in North Korea, Dictator Kim Jong Un uses the death penalty for citizens caught watching and sharing foreign films. Kang Gyuri, who escaped in 2023, told the BBC that three of her friends were executed after being caught with South Korean content. Aided by advances i...

By Mattias Desmet at Brownstone dot org.
At the beginning of September, I settled for a couple of weeks in the Himalayas in northern India. I was there to give a few contributions at a conference on local economies. "Where exactly in the desert sand of this life is the line drawn that separates fiction from non-fiction?" - that thought occupies me as the Airbus 320 prepares to land at the airport of Leh. I'm not quite sure why I begin this text with that thought. What I actually want to write about is the human urge for order - and its connection to totalitarianism.
The plane weaves its way between mountain peaks that disappear into the clouds on either side. The ochre-grey rock of the Himalayan giants sometimes seems to come alarmingly close to the dipping and swaying tips of the wings. It feels more like stunt flying than commercial aviation. Just before the plane drops onto one of the highest public airstrips in the world, we're informed that, should we feel the need to vomit from lack of oxygen right after landing, we can make use of the plastic bag in the seat pocket in front of us.
Leh airport stands at 3,500 meters, in what can best be compared to a majestic lunar landscape - a cold desert above the tree line. The building itself is nothing but a series of barracks, where tourists gasp for air in the thin atmosphere and hope they won't fall prey to altitude sickness. A rickety conveyor belt bravely rattles its loads of suitcases inside. I drag off my large green suitcase, skip the long queue in front of the three sparse toilet doors, step out onto the asphalt square at the main exit, and after some searching, find a taxi to take me to the Slow Garden Guesthouse.
The first images of the Himalayas pass like a film across a taxi's window smeared with grease marks and dust, accompanied by a soundtrack of incessant honking. The view shudders to the rhythm of a road full of potholes, flanked on either side by unfinished sidewalks, heaps of stones, and leftover construction debris.Behind them rises a strip of houses and shops built from grey-brown cement blocks. Their fronts are often completely open, with segmented gates that are pulled down at night. Why all this honking from the taxi driver? I observe his weathered face beside me. There is no sign of irritation or frustration.
We approach the center of the city. A mass of pedestrians moves through the streets like a sluggish bloodstream - along the sidewalks and right through the middle of the road. Cows, donkeys, and dogs trudge resignedly along in this procession of everyday life. The crowd moves organically, parting for the honking taxi like a murky Red Sea before an ordinary Moses.
What do the animals eat in this desert of cement and asphalt? Cardboard and plastic, I am told time and again. A single blade of grass is a feast. After a few days in Leh, I begin to recognize certain animals as I wander the streets - the leather-colored dog with the black muzzle, the cow with a white patch on her chest that lies down each noon beside a car at a construction site, the five donkeys that seek out a terrace where they can huddle together for the night. I greet them and sometimes try to touch them with my fingertips. Together we wander, lost in thought, along this path of life - unknowing, moving toward a destination we dream of but cannot conceive.
They tell me that the cows are fed a little in winter, because they give milk. The bulls, dogs, and donkeys must fend for themselves. They often die in the winter ice, somewhere beneath a canopy or against a garden wall, while the mountain peaks that rise above the city stand as silent and unyielding witnesses to the end of their inglorious existence.
During the past four days, it has rained as much as it usually does in several years. The mud bricks used for building here cannot withstand it. Left and right, walls have partially collapsed; roads are impassable because of fallen bridges. Here and there I see gaping holes in walls, ...

By Maryanne Demasi at Brownstone dot org.
It began with a lie.
In 2001, the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP) published a paper declaring that the antidepressant paroxetine (Paxil) was "generally well tolerated and effective" for adolescent depression.
That conclusion was false.
The manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), knew from its own data that the drug failed to outperform placebo and carried a serious risk of suicidal behaviour.
Instead of telling the truth, GSK hired a public-relations firm to ghostwrite the paper, enlisted academic co-authors who never saw the raw data, and used the publication to promote Paxil to doctors treating children.
It became known as Study 329 - one of the most infamous cases of scientific fraud in modern psychiatry.
For years, the fraud stood unchallenged. Regulators issued warnings but never forced a correction. The journal refused to retract. The paper remained in circulation - cited hundreds of times, shaping prescribing habits, and legitimising a lie that cost young lives.
Now, more than 20 years later, one lawyer is taking on the medical establishment to hold the journal and its publisher accountable.
His lawsuit alleges they knowingly sold and profited from a false and deceptive scientific article - one that continues to mislead the public and endanger adolescent mental health.
Could Study 329 finally be retracted from the scientific record?
How GSK Rewrote Failure as Success
By the late 1990s, GSK had completed clinical trials testing Paxil in adolescents. The first, known as Study 329, failed to show any meaningful benefit.
In one internal email, company executives admitted the results were "commercially unacceptable" and that disclosure of the poor efficacy data would "undermine the profile of paroxetine."
Rather than accept the failure, GSK set out to disguise it as success. The company hired a PR firm to draft a manuscript that cherry-picked favourable outcomes and buried unfavourable data.
None of the drug's primary endpoints were met, but by selectively analysing secondary measures, the authors claimed Paxil was "effective and well tolerated."
The paper listed 22 authors - two were GSK employees, and most had never reviewed the raw data or disclosed their financial ties to the company.
Once the article appeared in print, GSK's sales force distributed it to thousands of doctors as "proof" that Paxil worked in teens.
Within three years, the company made more than a billion dollars from what it called the "adolescent market."
Fraud and Fatalities
The deception didn't stay hidden.
Regulators in the UK, Europe, and the US soon uncovered the safety concerns and warned that Paxil increased suicidal thoughts and offered no therapeutic benefit for young people.
In 2003, the FDA concluded: "There is currently no evidence that Paxil is effective in children and adolescents with major depressive disorder."
Nearly a decade later, in 2012, GSK pleaded guilty and paid a $3 billion settlement to resolve criminal and civil charges brought by the US Department of Justice (DOJ).
The DOJ explicitly cited Study 329 as evidence of fraud in promoting Paxil for adolescents, marking one of the largest healthcare fraud settlements at the time.
But here's the kicker.
JAACAP refused to retract the article - protecting its reputation, and its profits, while the fraudulent science stayed in print.
A Lawyer Takes on the Publishers
In September 2025, attorney George W. Murgatroyd III filed a complaint in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia under the 'DC Consumer Protection Procedures Act.'
The filing seeks to "redress the knowing publication, distribution, and continued sale of a false and deceptive medical article that has misled physicians, consumers, and institutions for over two decades and continues to endanger adolescent mental health and safety as well as public trust in scientific integrity."
The 2001 article - Efficacy of Paroxetine in the Treatment o...

By Thomas Harrington at Brownstone dot org.
The human capacity to sculpt the terrain that surrounds us is enormous but not without limits. While a farmer or a gardener may replace or modify the geographical and botanical features on a given piece of land, it is only quite rarely, and with the help of an enormous expenditure of very scarce resources, that he can, say, turn a sizable hill or mountain into a lake or a plain.
The work of tilling the land and making of culture are, in English and in numerous other languages, are linked on the etymological level, with both being derived from the Latin verb colere whose varied meanings include "to cultivate," "to care for," "to tend to," "to honor," "to revere," "to worship," or "to embellish."
And while it would be absurd to suggest that an implied element of one derivation of a given verb in some way conditions the semantic content of another, I can't help but wonder whether the limitations implicit in the act of cultivating the land as described above might nonetheless help us better understand those that relate to the making of culture.
In other words, could it be that there are "hard" cognitive structures and/or yearnings within us that might delimit the extent to which we can actually generate the wholesale ruptures with the past ways of being and thinking?
For example, it is quite common for historians to speak of the 19 century as the Age of Nationalism, which is to say, the time when the nation-state established itself as the normative form of social organization in Europe and much of the rest of the world.
And most of them, being secular people themselves, have sought to explain this "rise of the nation" in secular ways, which is to say in terms of grand political theories, sweeping economic transformations, the writings of intellectuals, and the actions of powerful politicians and generals.
However, a smaller number of scholars, observing the great and often bloody passions which the nation-state has evoked among the masses, and that its rise largely coincided with the first great decline in religious practice in most Western countries, have suggested that it might be more accurate to portray the nation as merely a new, secularly-inflected receptacle for timeless yearnings - such as a desire for social unity and an engagement with the transcendent - that were previously "serviced" by organized religion.
A small number from this latter group, such as Ninian Smart and David Kertzer, have gone on to analyze the myriad cultural practices deployed in the name of nationalism in light of traditional Western ritual, sacramental, and liturgical processes. Their work makes for fascinating reading.
Smart, for example, outlines several of the ways in which national movements partake of patterns common to religions. The first is to "establish the mark" which separates the believers from the non-believers. The second is to engage in performative rituals that celebrate the mark in the name of a set of spiritually "charged" materials (e.g. ancestors, war heroes, great scholars, or simply the "sacred" earth that provides sustenance to the community), rituals designed to lift the citizen from the humdrum of his everyday existence and into a relationship with forces that transcend his standard, lifespan-delimited, sense of space and time.
He also noted how the solemn celebration of the spilling of citizen blood in defense of the "marked" national terrain is customarily portrayed in this context as a sacramental act that greatly heightens the sacred "charge" within the collective while also cleansing it of some of its less desirable attributes or habits.
The end goal of these rituals, he argues, is to evoke a sense of psychic subordination in the common citizen, a lowering of the self that Smart compares to the way we - or at least those of us born before 1990 or so - were acculturated to abandon our customary modes of comportment when entering a church or another space identified as being...

By Roger Bate at Brownstone dot org.
When delegates gather in Geneva on November 17 for the 11th Conference of the Parties (COP11) to the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), few will ask the obvious question: who pays for the room where it happens?
The FCTC is the world's only binding treaty on tobacco control. It now shapes national law far beyond its original remit, guiding taxation, packaging, advertising, and - indirectly - the regulation of new nicotine products. Yet the decisions that ripple out from Geneva are made within an ecosystem financed not by member-state dues but by a tight web of foundations, governments, and advocacy groups whose interests align with one another - and with parts of the pharmaceutical industry.
The Philanthropic Powerhouses
Since 2007, Bloomberg Philanthropies has poured more than $1.6 billion into global tobacco control. Through its Bloomberg Initiative to Reduce Tobacco Use, it funds Vital Strategies, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids (CTFK), The Union, and the University of Bath's Tobacco Control Research Group. These organizations run the STOP consortium, a mainstay of FCTC side events and briefings.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation plays a complementary role, notably bankrolling the Knowledge Hub on Tobacco Taxation at the University of Cape Town, co-funded by Cancer Research UK. And donor governments - particularly the UK, Norway, Australia, and the European Commission - finance the FCTC 2030 program, which underwrites participation by poorer countries.
Between them, these actors pay for the travel grants, research networks, and technical papers that shape what becomes official orthodoxy. Their combined effect is to make global tobacco policy a donor-driven enterprise rather than a genuinely multilateral one.
The Quiet Pharmaceutical Presence
Article 5.3 of the FCTC excludes tobacco-industry involvement, but it says nothing about pharmaceutical companies. That leaves the door ajar for firms whose products - nicotine-replacement therapies, prescription cessation drugs - benefit directly from restrictive tobacco and vaping policy.
The connection is not theoretical. Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline, makers of Chantix and Nicorette, sponsored major WHO-endorsed conferences such as the 2006 and 2009 World Conferences on Tobacco or Health. Professional societies tied to the WHO, including the European Respiratory Society, routinely accept pharmaceutical sponsorship for congresses and fellowships while collaborating on cessation guidelines. The International Pharmaceutical Federation, an observer accredited to the FCTC, promotes pharmacist-led cessation within COP sessions.
Meanwhile, commercial NRT brands sustain visibility through sports and "quit-smoking" campaigns that echo WHO messaging. Each new guideline or subsidy for cessation pharmacotherapy expands its potential market. It is a tidy symmetry: what the FCTC defines as a public-health obligation also functions as product promotion for the companies supplying the sanctioned cure.
The Absent (and Excluded) Industry
By contrast, tobacco and vaping manufacturers are nowhere near the COP's official agenda. The Secretariat's donor lists include no industry money; Article 5.3 is interpreted to mean zero contact. When firms seek a hearing, they do so outside the tent - through events like the Global Tobacco and Nicotine Forum or the "counter-conferences" that coincided with COP10 in Panama. Delegates are advised to stay away.
Whatever one's view of the industry, this asymmetry matters. It ensures that only one side of the nicotine-policy spectrum has institutional access, and that side is heavily financed by donors and industries whose interests are presented as moral rather than commercial.
The Bootleggers, the Baptists - and Their Modern Merger
The economist Bruce Yandle first coined the phrase "Bootleggers and Baptists" in 1983 to describe how moral campaigners and profit-seekers can support the same...

By Bert Olivier at Brownstone dot org.
It is becoming ever more obvious that many people fear rapidly developing Artificial Intelligence (AI), for various reasons, such as its supposed superiority, compared to humans, as far as processing and manipulating information is concerned, as well as its adaptability and efficiency in the workplace, which many fear would lead to the replacement of most human beings in the employment market. Amazon recently announced that it was replacing 14,000 individuals with AI robots, for example. Alex Valdes writes:
The layoffs are reportedly the largest in Amazon history, and come just months after CEO Andy Jassy outlined his vision for how the company would rapidly ramp up its development of generative AI and AI agents. The cuts are the latest in a wave of layoffs this year as tech giants including Microsoft, Accenture, Salesforce and India's TCS have reduced their workforces by thousands in what has become a frenzied push to invest in AI.
Lest this is too disturbing to tolerate, contrast this with the reassuring statement, from an AI developer, to boot, that AI agents could not replace human beings. Brian Shilhavy points out that:
Andrej Karpathy, one of the founding members of OpenAI, on Friday threw cold water on the idea that artificial general intelligence is around the corner. He also cast doubt on various assumptions about AI made by the industry's biggest boosters, such as Anthropic's Dario Amodei and OpenAI's Sam Altman.
The highly regarded Karpathy called reinforcement learning - arguably the most important area of research right now - 'terrible,' said AI-powered coding agents aren't as exciting as many people think, and said AI cannot reason about anything it hasn't already been trained on.
His comments, from a podcast interview with Dwarkesh Patel, struck a chord with some of the AI researchers we talk to, including those who have also worked at OpenAI and Anthropic. They also echoed comments we heard from researchers at the International Conference on Machine Learning earlier this year.
A lot of Karpathy's criticisms of his own field seem to boil down to a single point: As much as we like to anthropomorphize large language models, they're not comparable to humans or even animals in the way they learn.
For instance, zebras are up and walking around just a few minutes after they're born, suggesting that they're born with some level of innate intelligence, while LLMs have to go through immense trial and error to learn any new skill, Karpathy points out.
This is already comforting, but lest the fear of AI persist, it can be dispelled further by elaborating on the differences between AI and human beings, which, if understood adequately, would drive home the realisation that such anxieties are mostly redundant (although others are not, as I shall argue below). The most obvious difference in question is the fact that AI (for example, ChatGPT) is dependent on being equipped with a vast database on which it draws to come up with answers to questions, which it formulates predictively through pattern recognition. Then, as pointed out above, even the most sophisticated AI has to be 'trained' to yield the information one seeks.
Moreover, unlike humans, it lacks 'direct' access to experiential reality in perceptual, spatiotemporal terms - something which I have experienced frequently when confronted by people who draw on ChatGPT to question certain arguments. For example, when I gave a talk recently on how Freud and Hannah Arendt's work - on civilisation and totalitarianism, respectively - enables one to grasp the character of the globalist onslaught against extant society, with a view to establishing a central, AI-controlled world government, someone in the audience produced a printout of ChatGPT's response to the question, whether these two thinkers could indeed deliver the goods, as it were.
Predictably, it summarised the relevant work of these two thinkers quite adequately, but was stumped...

By Peter C. Gøtzsche at Brownstone dot org.
When people under psychiatric care commit suicide or homicide, or are killed or seriously harmed, because of medical malpractice, it is extremely rare that it has any consequences for the doctors. Psychiatry seems to be the only area in society where the law is being systematically violated all over the world. Even Ombudsman and Supreme Court decisions are being ignored.
In 2003, using scientific arguments, lawyer Jim Gottstein convinced the Supreme Court in Alaska to decide that the government cannot drug patients against their will without first proving by clear and convincing evidence that it is in their best interests and that there is no less intrusive alternative available.2 Unfortunately, this victory for human rights has not created a precedent in Alaska, where the authorities continue to force people into being treated with antipsychotics. Just like everywhere else, including in Norway.
I have collaborated with Norwegian former Supreme Court Attorney Ketil Lund on these issues, and we explained in a law journal why forced medication cannot be justified. The efficacy of antipsychotics is poor, and the risk of serious harms is so great that forced medication seems to do far more harm than good. Two years later, the Ombudsman concluded in a concrete case, with reference to the Psychiatry Act, that it violated the law to use forced treatment with an antipsychotic.
I studied consecutive cases where patients had appealed forced treatment orders, which had never been done before. It was difficult to get access to the records, but it was worthwhile as it turned out that the legal protection of patients was a sham.
We found that the law had been violated in every single case. The 30 patients were forced to take antipsychotics, even though less dangerous alternatives could have been used, e.g., benzodiazepines.6 The psychiatrists had no respect for the patients' experiences and views. In all 21 cases where there was information about the effect of previous pills, the psychiatrists claimed a good effect, whereas none of the patients shared this view.
The harms of prior medication played no role in the psychiatrist's decision-making, not even when they were serious. We suspected or found akathisia or tardive dyskinesia in seven patients, and five expressed fears of dying because of the forced treatment.
The power imbalance was extreme. We doubted the psychiatrists' diagnoses of delusions in nine cases, and there is an element of Catch-22 when a psychiatrist and a patient disagree. According to the psychiatrist, it shows the patient has a lack of insight into the disease, which is a symptom of mental illness.
The abuse involved psychiatrists using diagnoses or derogatory terms for things they didn't like or didn't understand; the patients felt misunderstood and overlooked; and the harm done was immense.
The patients or their diseases were blamed for virtually everything untoward that happened. The psychiatrists were not interested in traumas, neither previous ones nor those caused by themselves or their staff. Withdrawal reactions after stopping drugs were not taken seriously - we didn't even see this term being used although many patients suffered from them.
When Jim Gottstein and I wanted to do a similar study of 30 consecutive petitions from Anchorage, we were met with so many obstacles that it took over four years of litigation before Jim was granted access to redacted records. US psychiatrist Gail Tasch and I found that the legal procedures were a sham where the patients were defenceless.
In violation of previous Supreme Court rulings, the patients' experiences, fears, and wishes were ignored in 26 cases, even when the patients were afraid that the pills might kill them or when they had experienced serious harms such as tardive dyskinesia. Several psychiatrists obtained court orders for administering drugs and dosages that were dangerous. The ethical and legal imperatives of offe...

By Charlotte Kuperwasser at Brownstone dot org.
I'm going to touch on a highly controversial subject, one that has become the third rail among cancer biologists and the broader medical community: the possible link between Covid-19 vaccination and cancer. Because my laboratory's mission is centered on cancer prevention, I cannot in good conscience ignore the elephant in the room.
As my colleague, internationally renowned cancer biologist Dr. Wafik El-Deiry, and I articulated in the September ACIP meeting on Covid vaccines, nearly 50 publications have reported a temporal association between Covid-19 mRNA vaccination and the onset of cancer. Epidemiological studies (one from Italy and one from South Korea) have also described increased cancer incidence among Covid-vaccinated individuals compared to unvaccinated groups (albeit with caveats). These reports are mounting and it's time we acknowledge that something meaningful may be occurring rather than dismissing them outright; this latter response seems to be the dominant reaction in academia, the media, and by our regulatory agencies.
My goal here is to unpack the science and outline plausible biological mechanisms between the association of Covid mRNA vaccination and cancer that warrant further and urgent investigation. The purpose is not to make claims either way but to frame the issue that must be addressed in hopes that open scientific discussion and more importantly, research funding can be directed towards this urgent and growing area of concern. The current climate has made it impossible for scientists to study this without fear of personal or professional repercussions.
What We Know and Don't Know
At present, there are no published studies demonstrating a direct causal mechanism by which the mRNA vaccines induce cancer. However, that does not mean such a causal connection doesn't exist. In fact, there are at least three biologically plausible mechanisms that, in my view, merit rigorous study and evaluation given their known links to causing cancer. I've written about these mechanisms before in other contexts, but here I'll explain how they may apply to the Covid-19 mRNA vaccines.
Mechanism 1: Cellular Transformation Due to Spike Protein Biology
The transformation of a normal cell into a cancer cell involves the disruption of multiple safeguards controlling cell growth, survival, and DNA repair. The Covid mRNA vaccines work by instructing the body's cells to produce the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein for prolonged periods of time (anywhere from days to weeks, to months, and even years). This foreign spike protein then elicits an immune response.
Laboratory studies have reported that the spike protein, whether it is produced by infection or by vaccination, has biological activities. It interacts with cellular pathways that regulate the cell cycle, tumor suppressor functions, and DNA damage repair pathways and machinery. Therefore, in theory, such interactions of spike protein with these pathways could contribute to cellular transformation - although the same could be said for infection with Covid-19 itself. The difference, however, lies in the duration of spike protein produced after vaccination compared to natural infection. This also raises an important question about whether multiple Covid infections are biologically equivalent to the artificial spike protein produced by the vaccine.
Since the spike protein that is produced by the mRNA can persist for as little as a few days, to weeks, months, and even years after vaccination, it is important to acknowledge whether cancer incidence correlates with spike protein expression (or persistence) in the body, but also whether it is present in tumors. A recent case study showed evidence that spike protein can be found expressed in metastatic breast cancer. Thus, in thinking about the relationship between Covid vaccination and cancer, chronic exposure to an agent with biological activity that disrupts cell cycle and DNA damage respons...

By Eyal Shahar at Brownstone dot org.
Everyone is familiar with the results of the Pfizer Covid vaccine trial, published back in December 2020. The endpoint was "confirmed Covid," defined as at least one symptom coupled with a positive PCR test.
Not very many know, however, that the famous trial had another key endpoint - asymptomatic infection. It appears in a long document titled "Final Full Clinical Study Report."

Between one-third and one-half of SARS-CoV-2 infections were asymptomatic, and asymptomatic transmission was believed to have played a key role in the pandemic (it didn't). That was the official explanation for imposing lockdowns (though not necessarily the true one). And that's why asymptomatic infection was deemed an important endpoint in the trial.
The results are found in several places in the Pfizer document. One representative table is shown below. We find similar results in other tables.

The number of people was almost identical in the two arms, but the time at risk was only about half for placebo recipients because most of them eventually received the vaccine (crossover after unblinding). Since the number of asymptomatic infections was similar (644 versus 625), the rate ratio is about 0.5, which means 50% effectiveness. Exact computation below:

Not as good as 90% to 95% effectiveness against symptomatic infection - if you believe in miracles - but still, the risk was cut by half.
Was it?
We'll find out shortly.
A footnote explains who was included in the analysis:
Negative N-binding antibody result at visit 1
Negative PCR at visits 1 and 2
Negative PCR at any other time, when measured for suspected symptoms
A case was identified by detecting N-binding antibodies sometime after the second injection.
The N-binding antibody blood test is not as widely known as the PCR test. This test identifies antibodies that target the nucleocapsid (N) protein. They are markers of past infection.
For reasons that are not completely understood, vaccination is associated with a lower anti-N-antibody response to a subsequent infection, and the test misses many more infections in the vaccinated than in the unvaccinated. In technical terms, the sensitivity of the test is lower in the former. This observation was reported by three groups.
Allen et al. found that anti-N antibodies were detected in only 26% of cases of post-vaccination infection (6/23), which was confirmed by PCR and anti-S (spike) antibodies. The frequency was 82% in all documented previous infections (663/812). Evidently, the test underperformed in the vaccinated, and the correction factor is 3.1 (82/26). It was the Pfizer vaccine.
Follman et al. examined the same issue in recipients of the Moderna vaccine. Among participants with PCR-confirmed Covid during the blinded phase of the trial, seroconversion to anti-N antibodies was found in 40% of vaccine recipients (21/52) versus 93% of placebo recipients (605/648). Again, the test underperformed in the vaccinated, and the correction factor is 2.3 (93/40).
Dhakal et al. corroborated the findings in a series of graphs, showing persistently lower anti-N antibody response over time in post-vaccination infection. They did not provide similar percentages.
A valid comparison of the two arms of the Pfizer trial requires correcting the number of asymptomatic infections in the vaccine arm to account for underdetection by the test. It was a lot more than 644 cases. Based on the studies I cited, we should multiply that count by 2 to 3.
If we double the number (a correction factor of 2), the true effectiveness was about zero. If we multiply by 2.5, we are entering the range of negative effectiveness.

The Pfizer vaccine was useless or worse against asymptomatic infection.
My search of PubMed did not find any articles on the mRNA vaccine and asymptomatic infection in the Pfizer trial. I wonder why. Were they reluctant to publicize 50% effectiveness, or were they worried that a post like mine might show up as a letter to th...

By Roger Bate at Brownstone dot org.
When politicians talk tough on trade, they usually promise to protect American jobs. But sometimes those gestures do the opposite. The Trump administration's proposed 100 percent tariff on large cigars imported from Nicaragua is a case in point. According to my latest research, the tariff would shrink US GDP by $1.26 billion, reduce total output by $2.06 billion, eliminate nearly 18,000 jobs, and cost state and local governments $95 million in tax revenue.
There is no domestic industry to protect. The United States produces almost no large cigars, which are rolled by hand from long tobacco leaves and sold through tobacconists, cigar lounges, and small brick-and-mortar shops. Roughly 60 percent of all 430 million cigars imported each year come from Nicaragua. Doubling landed import costs would devastate the 3,500 retailers and 50,000 workers whose livelihoods depend on that trade.
Worse, this tariff reverses one of the administration's genuine policy successes - its early effort to limit the Food and Drug Administration's overreach into small-batch cigars and other low-risk nicotine products. It also repeats the same arbitrary logic behind the FDA's recent warning letter to NOAT - a Swedish company selling mild, recyclable nicotine pouches already cleared for sale in Europe. In both cases, symbolic toughness trumps scientific and economic sense.
From NOAT to Nicaragua: A Pattern of Policy Whiplash
Over the past year, US regulators have exhibited a kind of policy whiplash - swinging between deregulation and sudden restriction with no coherent principle in sight.
In September 2025, the Office of the United States Trade Representative proposed raising tariffs on all Nicaraguan goods to 100 percent under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. The administration's stated goal was to "respond to unfair practices." Yet there is no evidence of unfairness in the cigar industry. The measure instead weaponizes trade law for political theater - inflicting collateral damage on American small businesses.
Both the NOAT decision and this tariff decision share three traits:
They target imported goods with no domestic substitute, guaranteeing higher costs for US consumers.
They stretch statutory intent, turning laws written for health or trade enforcement into blunt political instruments.
They contradict stated priorities - of deregulation, small-business support, and partnership with democratic nations in the Western Hemisphere.
The result is a credibility gap. When the same government that defends small retailers against FDA overreach then hits them with a massive import tax, rhetoric and reality collide.
The Economics of a Dead-Weight Tax
The losses are staggering:

The largest hit falls on retail and wholesale trade, accounting for $905 million in lost output and more than 11,000 jobs. Downstream sectors - transport, logistics, finance, and hospitality - also lose business.
Because there is no US manufacturer to benefit, this tariff functions purely as a dead-weight consumption tax. Prices rise, demand falls, and total welfare declines. Economist Eric Zitzewitz has shown that tariffs on small consumer markets almost always destroy more value than they create. That logic applies perfectly here.
The administration's own record underscores the contradiction. In 2020, a White House inter-agency workshop led by the FDA's Center for Tobacco Products recognized that large cigars are a low-risk, artisanal product warranting lighter regulation. The proposed tariff discards that evidence in favor of empty symbolism.
Geopolitical Blowback
Economic folly is bad enough, but the strategic damage may be worse. Nicaragua's cigar sector has been one of the country's few pro-US industries, employing tens of thousands in cities like Estelí and linking the country's fortunes to transparent trade under the CAFTA-DR agreement.
Punitive tariffs would almost certainly push Managua toward closer alignment with China and Russia,...

By Brownstone Institute at Brownstone dot org.

This year, Brownstone Institute awarded its prize for outstanding achievement to three exceptional individuals who have been brilliant servants of society and truth in times of great upheaval.
Thomas S. Harrington
Thomas S. Harrington, a distinguished scholar of Hispanic culture and history, has dedicated his career to unraveling the intricate threads of identity, nationalism, and political upheaval in the Iberian Peninsula. Born and raised in the United States, Harrington's fascination with Spain's diverse cultural landscape drew him across the Atlantic early in his academic journey. He immersed himself in the vibrant worlds of Madrid, Lisbon, and Santiago de Compostela, honing his expertise through lived experience as much as formal study. This hands-on approach culminated in three prestigious Fulbright Senior Research Scholar awards - one in Barcelona, Spain, another in Montevideo, Uruguay, and one in Sardinia, Italy - where he delved deeply into Catalonian language, history, and the simmering currents of nationalism that have long defined the region's soul.
For over two decades, Harrington served as Professor of Hispanic Studies in the Department of Language and Culture Studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. There, he captivated students with courses on 20th- and 21st-century Spanish cultural history, literature, and film, encouraging them to question dominant narratives and explore the alchemy of collective identity. His scholarly output reflects this passion: his acclaimed book Public Intellectuals and Nation Building in the Iberian Peninsula, 1900-1925: The Alchemy of Identity (Bucknell University Press) examines how thinkers and writers forged modern national consciousness amid the ruins of empire.
Harrington's intellectual reach extends further. A prolific public intellectual, he lends his incisive voice to outlets like Common Dreams, dissecting US foreign policy, media distortions, and the cultural fault lines of global affairs with a clarity born of his transatlantic perspective.
Harrington's engagement with contemporary crises reached a crescendo during the Covid-19 pandemic, a period that exposed what he saw as a profound betrayal by the "credentialed class" - those experts entrusted with safeguarding society. In his 2023 book The Treason of the Experts: Covid and the Credentialed Class (Brownstone Institute), Harrington chronicles this era with a blend of scholarly rigor and personal indignation.
Drawing on Eisenhower's prescient warnings about the military-industrial complex, he argues that a new elite - scientists, policymakers, and media gatekeepers - abdicated their duty, prioritizing power and conformity over evidence and humanity. The work, at turns reflective and fiery, is not just a critique but a call to reclaim rational discourse in an age of manufactured fear. Through it all, Harrington remains a bridge-builder: a Catalan expert who critiques American hubris, a historian who warns of tomorrow's shadows, and a teacher who believes that true expertise lies in questioning authority, not blindly serving it. Today, as debates over trust in institutions rage on, Harrington continues to write, teach, and provoke as Senior Fellow of Brownstone Institute.
Bret Weinstein
Bret Weinstein, the evolutionary biologist turned unyielding truth-seeker and Brownstone Fellow, embodies the rare fusion of scholarly rigor and defiant curiosity that propels him to challenge the sacred cows of modern science and society. Born on February 21, 1969, in Los Angeles to a family of intellectual wanderers - his father a mathematician, his mother an artist - Weinstein grew up in Southern California, earned a bachelor's in biology before venturing to the University of Michigan for a PhD in evolutionary biology. There, under the tutelage of luminaries like Richard Alexander, he honed a framework that views evolution not as a blind march but as a delicate dance of design t...