• Before COVID, mRNA had failed for decades and both companies developing it were in financial trouble. However, an emergency framework built years in advance made it possible to rush their vaccines to market. Now there is a major push to replace much of the vaccine schedule with lucrative mRNA vaccines, despite the platform being immensely problematic and still poorly understood.

• The mRNA platform’s acceptance rests on the claim that its trials proved it “safe and effective,” yet the same tactics routinely used to rig clinical trials were used throughout them, from the misleading “95% effective” figure to injured participants having their injuries recoded as unrelated conditions.

• Using trial data released by court order, a team of independent researchers and whistleblowers spent years auditing Pfizer’s trial. Within the limited records procured, extensive irregularities were documented throughout the trials including 1,203 participants vanishing from the records, 1,209 adverse events re-filed as COVID symptoms, undisclosed deaths in the vaccine group, unequal COVID testing between the groups, and the public receiving a more dangerous formulation of the vaccine which was never tested prior to being released.

• Newly released documents from Argentina’s FDA show the trial’s largest site had twenty violations, including 52 participants given nearly double the planned dose, which finally resolves one of the trial’s longstanding mysteries.

• Fortunately, the tide has turned. Federal health officials are now acknowledging vaccine injuries, investigators have gained the power to obtain the evidence long kept hidden, and public opinion has shifted to the point that it is finally possible to openly discuss what was done.

In a recent article, I highlighted the “law of displacement” which encapsulates my belief that a harmful lucrative technology, regardless of the evidence against it, will almost only be removed from the market once either a more profitable alternative emerges, or a less harmful but equally profitable one does (as in all other cases, the profit the technology makes outweighs the cost of silencing critics of its toxicity). In some cases, this works in a positive manner and finally expels bad things from the market (e.g., lead in gasoline), but in other cases, it results in something worse entering the market.

Presently, there are increasing signs of a major push to replace the existing vaccine schedule with mRNA vaccines, and on one side, this has been accompanied by increasing mainstream discussion of the serious issues with vaccination (along with efforts by authors like me to highlight how many of these problems are due to the foundational issues with how most vaccines are produced)—which, on one level is an extremely positive shift.
Note: this is somewhat similar to how the statin community went to great lengths to dismiss the existence of their (extremely common) side effects, but then suddenly pivoted to stating a large number of patients are “statin intolerant” once a need arose to sell far more expensive next-generation cholesterol lowering drugs (detailed here).

However, while I have serious concerns about traditional vaccines, the more I study the mRNA technology, the more I feel it is significantly more problematic than the existing platforms (e.g., in a recent article I highlighted how these vaccines have an intrinsic problem with the toxicity of the lipid nanoparticles used to deliver them, shedding to those who were not vaccinated, persisting within the body, suppressing the immune system, getting into the nucleus where DNA is, and causing cancer—all of which becomes even worse when it mass produces a highly toxic antigen like the spike protein).

Furthermore, while each of those is a major issue, I believe the largest problem with the mRNA technology is simply the fact so much of it remains unknown, but rather than slow down to try and understand the actual physiologic consequences of the widespread genetic pollution this technology is creating (something humanity has never had to deal with before), because so much money stands to be made off something which can “print out new medical technologies like a computer code,” a decision has been made by mRNA’s investors to go full speed ahead and find a way to sweep any issues that later emerge under the rug (a situation somewhat analogous to the current situation with AI—where many of the top researchers have admitted in private they don’t actually understand how it is working).
Note: in places like Europe, the precautionary principle—“where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation”—is widely practiced, while in the United States, it receives much less of an emphasis as economic progress (which the precautionary principle slows) is prioritized.

For that reason, I feel it is important to briefly review the timeline of the mRNA vaccines:

1. For decades, mRNA could not find a dose that was both safe and effective.¹ Most recently, Moderna had raised billions by selling investors the vision of life as software that could be rewritten into health, yet it could not make even its easiest target (a single missing liver enzyme) work, which left vaccines as the only viable use, since one or two doses never gave the toxicity time to accumulate.^1,2 By the time COVID arrived, both existing mRNA companies were in trouble. Moderna’s December 2018 IPO, then the largest in biotech history, fell 19% on its first day,^1,2 and the company closed 2019 with no product, a $1.5 billion accumulated deficit, and a share price below its offering.^1,2 BioNTech had never taken a product past phase 2 and had to shrink its October 2019 IPO to find enough buyers,^1,2 a month after the Gates Foundation bought in at a higher price.^1,2 Both needed what a former Moderna employee had called a “miraculous, Hail Mary sort of save.”¹

2. A 2004 law created the FDA’s Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) authority, allowing unapproved drugs, vaccines, and devices (or unapproved uses of approved ones) to be deployed once an emergency is declared¹ (first used in 2005 to authorize the anthrax vaccine).¹ In 2016 at Davos, the Gates Foundation and the World Bank proposed running large-scale pandemic simulations modeled on the Department of Defense’s war games,¹ which then happened in October 2019 as Event 201, a simulated coronavirus pandemic (which I now think happened after COVID already had begun to spread).¹ When COVID officially arrived months later, each organization stepped into the role it had rehearsed: CEPI (Gates’s industry coalition) directed vaccine funding, the Gates Foundation handled financing and distribution, the World Bank mobilized resources, and the WHO coordinated messaging.¹ Much of this built upon work in July 2017 where CEPI presented the WHO with its plan for the next pandemic: rapidly financing liability-free “emergency” vaccines and bringing them to market under a “no loss” guarantee that reimbursed developers for their direct and indirect costs.¹

3. The moment COVID emerged, significant focus was given to developing mRNA vaccines (e.g., the NIH gave Moderna their own research they’d invested years into), as beyond the existing incentives, mRNA technology was seen as the ideal “solution” for a pandemic because the vaccines could be produced in a very short time. In tandem, Operation Warp Speed enacted the Gates-led plan for rapid emergency vaccine development, effective treatments (which would eliminate the need for EUA vaccines) were stonewalled and the population was isolated, preventing America from developing herd immunity to COVID before the vaccines came out.
Note: a key part of the push for bringing the COVID vaccines to market came from the fact Trump had been boxed into needing them to reopen the country so he could win the 2020 election (so everything possible was done to accelerate their development and approval—which included cutting many corners), which ultimately resulted in them backstabbing him at the last moment by delaying the vaccine until after the election.^1,2

4. Accelerated clinical trials were conducted, which concluded the vaccines were very safe and “95% effective.” On the basis of these trials, an EUA was granted, which came with the condition the vaccines would be rigorously evaluated for safety once they hit the market^1,2 (e.g. V-safe was specifically made as a more robust way to monitor vaccine safety since there were limitations to what VAERS data could show). In tandem with this, what was arguably the most aggressive propaganda campaign in history was enacted to vaccinate as many people as possible.

5. The moment the vaccines hit the market, due to their toxicity, a wide range of side effects emerged—all of which were dismissed because they were “anecdotal” and not shown in the robust clinical trials. Following this, nearly every database started showing massive red flags existed with the vaccines, but in each case, the data was either hidden, doctored or ignored. For example, through extensive litigation, ICAN received the V-safe data, which showed serious safety issues existed within it (that the curated publication in a top medical journal had deliberately hidden), and free text data (which took further litigation to obtain) that showed large numbers of COVID vaccine recipients who deeply trusted the system had severe, progressive (and often fatal) injuries—many of whom gradually realized they had been exploited and abandoned once no one from the CDC ever got back to them.
Note: the React19 and the Brownstone Institute recently compiled these injuries into a report that can be read through, and Jeffrey Tucker, believing it’s critical for people to see the human stories and suffering behind this (rather than just zoning out to the data) has been gradually reading through all of them^1,2,3,4,5—many of which I’ve now listened to.

6. Because the pandemic proved the COVID vaccines were so incredibly safe and effective, the mRNA platform is being treated as a modern day medical miracle that does not require further testing to demonstrate the safety of the platform itself, making it possible to quickly bring large numbers of other mRNA technologies to market (despite the second human mRNA vaccine—influenza—also having serious safety signals that were even shown in its clinical trials¹).

If you take a step back, much of this ultimately resulted from the (rushed) COVID vaccine clinical trials determining the vaccines were “safe and effective,” and this then becoming an anchor so many refused to deviate from regardless of the evidence to the contrary.

Clinical Trial Fraud

In many areas, regulation is needed to prevent industry abuses, but since the private “donations” are necessary to get elected (and profit after you leave the government), regulation frequently switches from something that protects the public to something which gives industry a monopoly over a market (along with restricting the rights and freedoms of the public).

In the case of the FDA, a dire need existed for it to have the power to block unsafe drugs from coming to market, but in the post-thalidomide law which granted the agency that power, it was also given the right to block drugs unless a “well-controlled” trial demonstrated efficacy—which the FDA then interpreted to mean large randomized controlled trials, which created a massive biomedical industry that has hit the point it is effectively “too big to fail” and hence is so well defended by the system, it is arguably impossible for the government to ever be the party that reforms it (e.g., in this article I showed how over the decades the FDA’s mission switched from protecting America’s health to protecting industry).

Since large RCTs cost tens of millions of dollars, three major problems are created:

•In many cases, the “proven” benefits RCTs can detect are so small, they are clinically meaningless for patients. This I believe accounts for why so, so many patients (especially elderly ones) are on numerous drugs that are harming them despite it being unclear to the patient if any benefit is being obtained from the medications they are taking (and likewise why this publication has been so successful—as unlike conventional treatments—the simple natural options I share like DMSO make real impacts readers immediately notice that conventional treatments never gave them).

•The trials cost so much to conduct most therapies cannot get approved as there is no way to monetize them and recoup those costs—which has effectively transformed medicine into a “pay-to-play” system . This absurdity is highlighted by a 2014 Cochrane review (reviews widely regarded as the benchmark for synthesizing and evaluating medical evidence) which found that smaller unblinded observational trials (which independent investigators can afford to do) typically yielded the same results as large RCTs. This in essence it why tens of thousands of studies (I’ve laboriously compiled) conducted around the world show that both DMSO and ozone treat a wide range of clinical conditions (along with having a mechanistic basis for doing so), and thousands of readers here have directly corroborated those results—yet virtually every medical reference states there is “no evidence” either of those therapies provides benefit (excluding DMSO’s narrow indication for interstitial cystitis).

•Since clinical trials (along with all the investment that preceded them) cost so much to conduct, there is always an incentive to ensure a positive result. Over the decades, this has produced a well-established playbook for rigging trials,¹ which broadly consists of:

•Rigging the design: using a “placebo” that itself causes harm, excluding the patients most likely to be injured, or measuring surrogate markers (e.g., antibody levels) rather than actual health outcomes.

•Manipulating the data mid-stream: stopping a trial early when the results happen to look favorable, or ending follow-up before harms have time to emerge.

•Gaming the analysis: presenting benefits as relative risks and harms as absolute ones, changing what the trial measures after the data comes in (as something will always show a positive trend due to random variation).

•Controlling what gets published: recoding severe injuries under benign diagnoses, burying unfavorable results, and withholding the patient-level data that would allow anyone to check.

• Spinning the presentation: writing abstracts and conclusions that contradict the data within the study (since the abstract is all most people read).

Note: these tactics persist because regulators tolerate them. Industry user fees now account for nearly half of the FDA’s budget,¹ nine of its last ten commissioners went on to work for or sit on the board of a pharmaceutical company,¹ and much of its senior staff follows the same path. For example, as director of the FDA’s biologics division (which oversees vaccines), Peter Marks pushed the COVID shots so aggressively that the FDA’s top vaccine scientists left in protest, internally blocked the agency from recognizing critical vaccine safety signals, and continually stonewalled vaccine-injured patients (claiming to care about them while mocking them at industry conferences). He recently left the FDA to become an executive at Eli Lilly with a seven-to-eight figure salary.^1,2,3

Since no comprehensive summary existed of the common ways trials are repeatedly rigged, I compiled all of it here:

Senator Ron Johnson, in turn, summed up why the information in that article is so critical for us to understand in a recent Senate Hearing:

I published that article when I did because the same tactics the industry has used for decades were also used to rig the COVID-19 vaccine trials, so understanding the general playbook makes it much easier to see exactly what was done with them. If anything, I would argue the government’s desire to bring the vaccines to market as quickly as possible incentivized the pharmaceutical companies to be even more brazen than usual (as there was no regulatory consequence for doing so).

For example:

• Pfizer’s “95% effective” figure was a relative risk reduction, which in absolute terms meant 119 people had to be vaccinated to prevent one non-severe case of COVID.¹

• The “95% effective” figure came from an interim analysis after 170 cases, and once it secured the EUA, placebo recipients were offered the vaccine (as continuing the trial was deemed “unethical”), ensuring long-term blinded safety data would never exist. The published safety data covered roughly two months after the second dose, from a trial designed to follow participants for two years.¹

• When a reduction in severe COVID later became the primary justification for the vaccine, that endpoint’s window had been quietly moved from after the second dose to seven days after the first, pulling five more severe placebo cases into the analysis (a change buried in the appendix).¹

• An FDA review acknowledged 477 trial participants with COVID symptoms were never swabbed for COVID.¹

• Severe injuries were recoded as benign conditions, such as 12-year-old Maddie de Garay’s permanent disabling injury becoming “functional abdominal pain”¹ and, in Moderna’s trial, Olivia Tesenair’s cutaneous T-cell lymphoma becoming “lymphadenopathy”¹—injuries which, had they been acknowledged, would have completely changed how the medical community assessed the vaccines’ risks.
Maddie’s account of what was done to her in the trial (which I previously edited down to its most important parts) is the clearest illustration I know of how this happens:

Note: Maddie continues to suffer significantly and like other trial participants has not received any support for her injuries. Additionally, participants for the non-mRNA COVID vaccine (e.g., Brianne Dressen with Astrazenca) had similar atrocious experiences (which is part of why we recently put together a summary of what has actually worked for treating these challenging spike protein injuries).

Yet, even after clinical investigators and trial participants came forward as whistleblowers to report that the trials were not properly blinded and had serious irregularities that vastly overstated the vaccines’ safety and efficacy, the FDA (in part because of Peter Marks) did nothing, and almost everyone continued to believe the widely trumpeted claim that the vaccines were almost miraculously safe and effective (and would end the pandemic).

Fortunately, two good things came out of this.

The first was that the claims made about the (mandated) vaccines were so at odds with the wave of injuries and the vaccines’ failure to prevent COVID that many people who had previously trusted the medical profession unquestioningly began to see through its facade. In just four years, trust in doctors and hospitals fell from 71.5% to 40.1%¹ (the significance of which is hard to overstate).

The second was that a large number of independent researchers and whistleblowers were motivated to scrutinize these trials, and through years of work, gave us a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see in granular detail the fraud that routinely occurs in clinical research. Beyond the whistleblowers who testified about the misconduct they witnessed, and members of the evidence-based medicine community (e.g., Peter Doshi of the BMJ) who repeatedly brought it to the public’s attention, one team produced a detailed audit of the irregularities in Pfizer’s trial.

Since the teams’ work has remained relatively unknown (and one of its authors, Christine Cotton, recently passed away after a debilitating chronic illness the medical system was unable to address), I want to use this platform to bring it the attention it deserves and provide the context needed to understand it. What follows is a verbatim reproduction of the May 2024 audit (which can be read in its original form here). Because it was written to support legal action, I have not altered it in any way, and my commentary (e.g., additional relevant information since this was published) appears in bold so it is clearly distinguished from their original work.

Note: every claim in the audit is sourced, and the footnote numbers link to the references at the end of the original document.

Pfizer/BioNTech C4591001 Trial - Audit Report - v1 (2024-05-31)

Reanalysis of the data and anomalies inventoried

Abstract

This review aims to address significant anomalies and discrepancies that have surfaced from the examination of the data from the Pfizer/BioNTech C4591001 trial, which could have profound implications for public trust and regulatory standards, should they not be adequately and transparently investigated.

Whistleblower Testimonies

Brook Jackson, a former regional director at Ventavia Research Group, reported systemic issues including lack of proper informed consent, enrollment of ineligible participants, data fabrication, and regulatory non-compliance. Despite notifying the FDA, these concerns were not adequately addressed, and critical sites were not inspected, raising questions about regulatory oversight.

Case of Augusto Roux

Dr. Augusto Roux, a trial participant in Argentina, experienced severe adverse effects after receiving the vaccine, including pericarditis, which was initially misclassified as a potential COVID-19 case at the request of the sponsor. His reports of adverse effects were inadequately documented, and attempts were made to reclassify his symptoms. Roux’s case highlights serious violations of GCPs [good clinical practices] and criminal investigations are ongoing in Argentina regarding the events he witnessed.

Discrepancies in Randomization Figures

Analysis of two investigator files, produced on November 26, 2020, and March 29, 2021, revealed unexplained discrepancies in the number of randomized subjects. For instance, site 1231/4444 in Argentina showed a decrease from 5776 to 5615 subjects, amounting to 161 subjects “lost to randomization,” which cannot be accounted for by subject movement between sites or recruitment of subjects under 16 years. Overall, 1203 subjects were “lost to randomization” across 108 of 153 sites, indicating a significant anomaly [and is a way unwanted results are hidden].

Missing Subject Identifiers

Anomalies in subject identifiers were found, with 301 missing IDs disproportionately affecting certain sites, notably in Argentina. Examination of this problem suggests non-random data handling issues, which could indicate deliberate subjects data deletion [which again can hide unwanted results].

Delayed Reporting of Deaths

Michels et al. and further correspondence by Jeyanthi Kunadhasan with the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA—Australia’s equivalent of the FDA) stresses the importance of delayed reporting of deaths in the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) figures. The Polack et al. study in the New England Journal of Medicine reported six deaths, while Pfizer’s internal records already showed eight, with two deaths in the BNT162b2 arm not disclosed. These delays and non-disclosures, particularly of deaths due to cardiac events, raise serious concerns about transparency and potential breaches of GCPs.

Anomalies Related to Protocol Deviations

Protocol deviations recorded without blind review, contrary to standard clinical trial practices, showed significant disproportions in treatment groups. Notable deviations included the improper administration of protocol-specified procedures, urine pregnancy tests not performed and the receipt of other non-study coronavirus vaccines, suggesting unblinding of the participants themselves, and improper treatment by site staff.

Unreported Adverse Events

Instances of under-reported adverse events were identified, such as a case where “chest tightness” was not logged in the adverse events log but was only noted in the case report forms (CRF) due to a subsequent serious adverse event (SAE). Another example involved misclassification of a serious case of pericarditis as COVID-19 illness, highlighting violations of Good Clinical Practices (GCPs).

Adverse Effects Re-qualification

Augusto Roux’s testimony reveals systemic exploitation of protocol weaknesses, leading to widespread re-qualification of adverse effects as COVID-19 symptoms. Analysis of AESPID data indicates that at least 1209 adverse effects across 767 subjects were re-qualified to impact efficacy, safety, and immunogenicity results. This re-qualification process appears to be a deliberate manipulation to suppress adverse events in the safety analysis, as evidenced by the high proportion of communicated CRFs to the FDA among the affected subjects.

Further Evidence of Data Manipulation

Additional anomalies were identified in the recording of adverse effects. Manual reviews of CRFs revealed discrepancies such as unrecorded adverse events and events reclassified or deleted. This includes significant under-reporting and potential alteration of CRFs, violating GCPs and potentially infringing on US and international regulations.

Process 2 mis-representation and concerns

In the development of its COVID-19 vaccine, Pfizer/BioNTech utilized two distinct manufacturing methods: “Process 1” for most of the clinical trials and “Process 2” for commercial production, which was tested on only 252 recipients. Process 1 involved PCR amplification for DNA template production, while Process 2 used linearized plasmid DNA cultured in E. coli, among other modifications to scale up production. Regulatory documents from the FDA, EMA, PMDA, and TGA confirm these differences and their respective uses in clinical and commercial supplies.

Note: I discussed the host of serious issues associated with the plasmid contamination further here.

The planned comparative study between the two processes aimed to assess safety and immunogenicity in participants aged 16-55 but was ultimately not conducted [which is sadly another common industry tactic]. Analysis of adverse event reports suggests significant differences between the processes, notably higher rates of adverse effects, including lymphadenopathy and menorrhagia, in recipients of Process 2. Several findings indicate that the manufacturing changes between Process 1 and Process 2 have impacted the vaccine’s safety profile.

Introduction

The unprecedented speed of COVID-19 vaccine development and emergency use authorization (EUA) involved expedited review processes. A rigorous post-hoc analysis is essential to ensure all data was collected, analyzed, and reported according to the highest scientific standards. This is crucial for effective post-market surveillance, as accurate trial data is fundamental to identifying long-term effects or rare adverse events that may not have been apparent during the initial trials. Flawed foundational data could hinder post-market monitoring, potentially jeopardizing patient safety. Ethical standards in clinical research demand transparency and accuracy in data reporting. The current flaws and lack of transparency in the C4591001 trial data violate ethical principles such as informed consent, and potentially go against the duty to do no harm if the risk/benefit has been misrepresented.

The FDA conducted its review from November 20, 2020, to December 11, 2020, resulting in a surprisingly brief 57-page memorandum¹. The seriousness of this review has been called into question². Despite promises of transparency, evidence of multiple analyst reviews, such as emails exchanged between data analysts who would have critically evaluated the submission, as claimed by Peter Marks, remains unavailable [although Senator Johnson’s Senate investigative team recently was able to conduct a lengthy interview with him]. As we have been seeking answers to essential questions on data integrity for over a year, the present authors are well-positioned to know the diligence with which the latter’s department addresses these concerns. Other regulatory bodies, such as France’s “Agence Nationale de Sécurité des Médicaments et des produits de Santé” (ANSM) and Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration, have thus far failed to adequately address concerns raised as well.

In light of the direct testimonies outlining severe infringements to Good Clinical Practices (GCPs) and the supporting data illustrating how extensive were the malpractices within this trial, there is an urgent need for a comprehensive and transparent audit of the participating sites and of the Clinical Research Organizations (CROs) responsible for data management. It is the authors’ hope that the public will utilize this reproducible evidence to bring the matter to the attention of policymakers, and to the legal field shall the regulators stay inactive.

The facts presented in this report are substantiated by public documents, obtained through Freedom of Information Requests (FOI) and legal proceedings. Notably, a significant proportion of these documents comes from a Texas court order³, in a proceeding engaged by Public Health & Medical Professionals for Transparency (PHMPT⁴), which enabled the publication of data submitted by sponsors to the FDA for the Biological Licence Application (BLA).

Authors

The following report is the synthesis of the work, and the product of a collaborative effort, between the following authors:

• Josh Guetzkow, PhD, Senior lecturer at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Twitter, Substack).

• Jeyanthi Kunadhasan MD (UKM), MMed (AnaesUM), FANZCA MMED (Monash) (Twitter, Substack)

• Brook Jackson, Clinical Research Director for the Clinical Research Organisation (CRO) Ventavia during the trial, Whistle-blower (Twitter, Website)

• Christine Cotton, Bio-Statistician, ex-CEO of a CRO for 22 years (Twitter, Website)

• Arkmedic (anonymous), Whistle-blower, PhD & MD (Substack)
  Note: I am a follower or Arkmedic’s work and think it is excellent

• Augusto Roux, PhD, Lawyer, University of Buenos Aires, trial participant, Whistle-blower (Twitter)

• A Concerned Amyloidosis (anonymous), Clinical Researcher (Twitter, Substack)

• OpenVAET (anonymous), Forensic & Data Analyst (Twitter, Substack)

The elements we advance can be verified independently and used freely. Shall a signed affidavit be required for legal proceedings, please contact us via the comments .

Method

The references to all the documents used are provided, as well as the R⁵ code required to reproduce every figures & charts advanced.

We downloaded (R⁶), extracted, and categorized (R⁷) the data currently available via PHMPT⁸. When sources are required, they are provided in footnotes.

Overview of the trial & demographics

1. The clinical trial had for two main objectives to establish:

• the safety of the product, by presenting a positive risk/benefit ratio profile (otherwise said “saving more people than it may injure”)

• the efficacy of the product to prevent symptomatic COVID-19 disease confirmed by a PCR test, in accordance with the FDA requirements.

These steps had to be completed in order to obtain the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA). Pfizer & BioNTech were the first of the competing pharmaceutical groups to announce - by a press release on November 9, 2020 - that these objectives had been achieved.

The EUA was applied to on November 20, 2020⁹, after the data had been analyzed with a data collection stop date (cut-off) on November 14, 2020. The goal was then to obtain the BLA - a goal achieved on August 23, 2021¹⁰ - following an application for which the data had a cut-off on March 13, 2021.

2. A total of 48,091 unique subject identifiers are registered in the clinical trial database, and were screened by 153 sites between April 29, 2020 and January 12, 2021 (R¹¹).

3. Within the study, each of the trial sites was given a 4-digit numerical identifier, starting from 1001. One of the sites, the Dr-Mayor Cirujano Military Central Hospital in Argentina, was split into two identifiers, 1231 & 4444 (a virtual reference¹²). The names and addresses of the sites, as well as the identity of the principal investigator for each site, are provided in one of the documents submitted to the FDA¹³.
   This Argentine site (the trial’s largest, with over 5,700 participants randomized) was recently the subject of documents released by ANMAT (Argentina’s equivalent of the FDA),¹ which showed its inspectors found twenty problems there. These included 52 participants who were given nearly double the planned dose (roughly 58 rather than 30 micrograms), a participant the system recorded as receiving placebo who had actually received the vaccine, delayed or incomplete records of serious adverse events, and consent and eligibility failures (e.g., women being deemed eligible before their pregnancy test results were on file).^1,2 Remarkably, ANMAT allowed the site to resume enrolling volunteers while its inspection was still underway, and ultimately issued an “Official Action Indication” to both Pfizer and the site’s principal investigator, Fernando Polack (the lead author of the NEJM paper reporting the trial’s results), who at the time was also president of iTrials SA, the company the hospital’s agreement named as the trial’s administrator and a beneficiary of its payments.^1,2 These documents also resolve one of the trial’s longstanding mysteries. Die Welt reported that 53 participants at this site were removed from the trial on a single day (August 31, 2020),¹ and David Healy found that 52 participants there had been unblinded that day after something unexplained happened on August 23.¹ The ANMAT file shows what it was: on August 23, a dilution error gave 52 participants an estimated 58 micrograms rather than 30, and Pfizer’s letter to Polack directed that they be unblinded on August 31.¹
   

4. Subjects were recruited over a period of 10 weeks for phase 1 and 22 weeks for phase 2-3. The following diagram illustrates the recruitment carried out each week (R¹⁴).

5. The geographical coordinates of the sites were manually integrated into a JSON file¹⁵ including latitudes and longitudes. A summary of the recruitment carried out for each country was generated (R¹⁶), as well as the map below by site (R¹⁷).

A trial presented as “Placebo-controlled, blinded observer, which established safety and efficacy

6. The clinical trial was presented to the public as a “Phase 1/2/3, placebo-controlled, randomized, blinded, dose-ranging study to evaluate the safety, tolerability, immunogenicity and potential efficacy of SARS-CoV-2 RNA vaccine candidates against COVID-19 disease in healthy individuals”¹⁸.

7. Various measurements (specific neutralizing antibodies (N-Binding), PCR tests (PCR), immunoglobulin G specific to the S1 subunit of the epi and to the receptor binding domain (RBD), etc.) were carried out on subjects in phases 1 and 2-3 to determine whether they had contracted COVID, and how they reacted to the product.

8. Efficacy was measured on the product’s ability to prevent confirmed cases of COVID-19 and was based on two primary endpoints. The primary efficacy objective was to prevent symptomatic laboratory-confirmed cases of COVID-19 at least 7 days after the second dose, in participants with no serological or virological evidence of prior SARS-CoV-2 infection, before and during the vaccination schedule. The secondary objective was to evaluate the efficacy of the vaccine against severe cases of COVID-19.

9. Safety objectives included assessment of local reactions, systemic events and use of antipyretics/pain medication [e.g., Tylenol] from Day 1 to Day 7 after each dose in a subset of participants. In addition, the trial aimed to monitor unsolicited, non-serious adverse events from the first dose until one month after the second dose in all participants, serious adverse events from the first dose until six months after the second dose in all participants, and deaths and related serious adverse events from the first dose until the end of the study in all participants¹⁹.

Inconsistent dates for Phase 1

10. According to two studies^{20 21} reporting phase 1 results, the phase 1 was initiated on May 4, 2020, and the recruitment (screening) would continue until June 22, 2020.

11. These dates are incorrect, and the screening took place between April 29, 2020 and June 29, 2020 (R²²).

Phase 1 - Products tested and demographic considerations

12. 332 subjects were screened for phase 1. 83 failed to satisfy the screening conditions, and 54 weren’t assigned to a treatment group. Phase 1 was testing dosage and primary safety concerns, on cohorts of 15 subjects (12 being administered the treatment and 3 being administered Placebo). The treatments originally planned to be tested were:

• BNT162a1 (RNA-LNP vaccine utilizing uRNA and encoding the RBD): 3 μg, 10 μg, 30 μg

• BNT162b1 (BNT162 RNA-LNP vaccine utilizing modRNA and encoding the RBD): 10 μg, 30 μg, 100 μg

• BNT162b2 (BNT162 RNA-LNP vaccine utilizing modRNA and encoding the P2 S): 10 μg, 30 μg, 100 μg

• BNT162c2 (BNT162 RNA-LNP vaccine utilizing saRNA and encoding the RBD): 3 μg,10 μg, 30 μg

13. The other subjects were to receive their second dose 22 days after dose 1 - in fact a window of 19 to 23 days²³ after dose 1. This window would, at EUA time and without adequate protocol amendment - being simply mentioned in the Statistical Analysis Plan (SAP), evolve to 19 to 42 days²⁴.

14. Phase 1 took place at 4 sites. Sites 1001, 1002, 1003 and 1007, located in the United States, were the only ones involved (R²⁵) - represented in the map below (R²⁶).

15. The number of products tested was lower than initially planned:

• 24 subjects received BNT162b1 (10 mcg)

• 12 subjects received BNT162b1 (20 mcg)

• 24 subjects received BNT162b1 (30 mcg)

• 24 subjects received BNT162b2 (10 mcg)

• 24 subjects received BNT162b2 (20 mcg)

• 24 subjects received BNT162b2 (30 mcg)

• 12 subjects received a dose of BNT162b1 (100 mcg), followed by a dose of BNT162b1 (10 mcg)

• 39 subjects received placebo

BNT162a1 and BNT162c2 were not tested. Changes in the number of subjects scheduled for phase 1 occurred repeatedly²⁷, while Phase 1 was ongoing:

• from 840, on April 17, 2020, to 420, on June 11, 2020

• from 420 to 630, on July 1st, 2020

• from 630 to 195, on July 24, 2020

Pathway of subjects in Phase 1

16. The informed consent form²⁸ details the subjects’ journey through the phase 1 study, which involved a total of 10 planned visits.

    • At the first visit, the subject underwent an extensive set of tests, including measurements of their antibody levels to ensure they had not contracted COVID-19 prior to participating in the study. The subject’s medical history was also reviewed, and they were confirmed to be fit to take part. After this screening process, the subject was then randomized and given either a dose of the placebo or the active product.

    • The following day, at the second visit, the subject’s status was confirmed, and fewer tests were carried out. Notably, this was the only visit where the subject was not tested for antibodies.

    • The subsequent visits occurred at regular intervals. The third visit took place one week after the first dose, while the fourth visit coincided with the administration of the second dose, which was given 19 to 23 days after the first dose. The fifth and sixth visits followed at one week and two weeks after the second dose, respectively. The seventh visit occurred one month after the second dose, and the eighth visit was scheduled six months later. The ninth visit was planned for one year after the second dose, and the tenth and final visit was set to take place two years after the second dose.

17. BNT162b2 100 μg subjects were assigned to a dedicated ‘dosing schedule’, with a second dose of 10 μg administered 85-105 days after dose 1. Nowhere in the publicly available versions of the protocol is it documented why the 100 μg were subjected to such special treatment, when this should have been explicit.

18. The visits for which antibody measurements have been retained, at the cut-off date of March 13, 2021, for phase 1 subjects are visits 1 to 8 (R²⁹).

Anomalies in Phase 1 antibodies measurements

19. Some of the antibody measurements made by subjects during Phase 1 are presented in the previously cited study by Edward Walsh et al, “Safety and Immunogenicity of Two RNA-Based Covid-19 Vaccine Candidates”³⁰.
    Note: antibody levels are a key metric regulators use to assess vaccine effectiveness.

20. The ADVA file, which contains the results of these tests, shows 115 discrepancies³¹ between measurements taken on the same subject, during the same visit, on the same day and during the same test. In the event of a conflict, the higher value was most often maintained [again inflating results]. Although the Analysis data reviewer guide (ADRG³²) mentions this anomaly, it does not provide a reason for it. There are two mNeongreen virus neutralization assays in a document listing analytical methods³³, which differ insofar that one has a limit of quantification (lower and upper bounds for minimum-maximum titer measurable). The documents referred to, VR-MQR-10214³⁴ and VR-MVR-10083³⁵, are the “Qualification” and “Method Validation of the SARS-CoV-2 mNeonGreen Virus Microneutralization Assay”, with submission dates of August 18, 2020 and February 9, 2021 respectively. While it seems, the difference after retesting are due to “validated” neutralization assay parameters, the experts we consulted were unable to explain how samples taken from the same subject on the same day could produce such significant differences in measurements - which raises the possibility that the tests with ‘disappointing’ results had been ‘redone’, by replacing the samples from defective subjects with samples with known high antibody levels. Admitting the method change would be valid, it would in any case raise questions on the validity of previous measurements.

21. As an example, the chart below illustrates the differences in measurements for the “SARS-CoV-2 serum neutralizing titer 50 (titer) - Virus Neutralization Assay” when comparing the average of the first measures made versus the average of the measures sustained.

Pathway of subjects in Phase 2-3

22. The informed consent form details the subjects’ journey through the phase 2-3 study³⁶, which involved a total of 6 planned visits.

    • At the first visit, the subject underwent a long list of tests, although fewer than those required for the phase 1 subjects. This included measurements of the subject’s antibody levels to ensure they had not contracted COVID-19 prior to participating in the study. The subject’s medical history was reviewed, and they were confirmed to be fit to take part. The subject was then randomized and given either a dose of the placebo or the active product sustained following phase 1, the BNT162b2 30 mcg.

    • The second visit was for the administration of the second dose. Notably, this was the only visit where antibody measurements were not made, which could have provided confirmation of infections that may have occurred in the days following the first dose while being asymptomatic or evading PCR detection, due, for example, to the subject not reporting symptoms, or not being tested while reporting symptoms [again potentially inflating efficacy].

    • The third visit took place one month after the second dose, while the fourth visit was scheduled for 6 months after the second dose. The fifth visit followed one year after the second dose, and the sixth and final visit was planned for 2 years after the second dose.

Discrepancies in reported randomization figures

23. Two “investigator files” were produced by the sponsors to report on the sites’ investigators and the total number of subjects screened and randomized at each site. A first document was produced on November 26, 2020 ³⁷- and a second document was produced on March 29, 2021³⁸. The first document mentions a query date of November 19, 2020, while the second mentions a query date on March 19, 2021. While the total number of subjects screened per site does not show a greater shift than the number of subjects who changed site, the total number of subjects randomized falls significantly (R³⁹), without explanation. Subjects cannot be “de-randomized” in a clinical trial [once someone is assigned to the vaccine or placebo group, they remain counted even if they drop out, so this number should never go down—suggesting participants with unwanted data "disappeared"].

24. For example, illustrated below, site 1231/4444 in Argentina went from 5776 randomized subjects on November 26, 2020 to 5615 (-161) on March 29, 2021.

25. The total number of sites where subjects dropped out was 1203 subjects “lost to randomization”, over 108 of the 153 sites. This is a major anomaly which cannot be explained either by the movement of subjects between sites, or by the recruitment of subjects under 16 years of age which would have been included in one report and not the other. To illustrate this anomaly, site 1018 lost 30 subjects, while no subjects went in or out, and that no adolescents under 16 had been recruited on November 19, 2020, the date of the first file’s query - or at any time later. The excerpt below illustrates all the sites which went backward in randomization figures⁴⁰.

Phase 2-3 - Randomization figures officially released

26. The ADRG⁴¹ documents 6 subjects who registered on more than one site, generating 12 subject identifiers, and who are subjects to specific exclusions (10561101, 11331382, 11101123, 11331405, 11491117, 12691090, 12691070, 11351357, 11341006, 10891112, 11231105, 10711213).

27. The BLA application memorandum⁴² and the corresponding Thomas et al. NEJM study, “Safety and Efficacy of the BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine through 6 Months”⁴³, both report a total of 44,165 randomized subjects as of March 13, 2021. This population has been reproduced (R⁴⁴) and its conformity with the announced demographic characteristics has been verified⁴⁵.

Anomalies related to the Blind in deviations

28. Patients whose behavior deviated from that envisaged by the protocol, or who were the subject of an error by the team in charge, had their protocol deviations recorded, which were then reviewed by a dedicated team, in order to determine whether this deviation was serious enough to justify their exclusion from a given ‘population’ (group dedicated to the analysis of a trial objective - e.g. efficacy).

29. The study protocol⁴⁶, approved by the regulatory authorities, introduced a major departure from standard clinical trial practice: the on-site staff responsible for examining deviations from the protocol, to determine the eventual exclusion of participants, were not subject to blind review [meaning the staff deciding whom to exclude could see who had received the vaccine, giving them the latitude to exclude participants with unfavorable results].

30. Analysis of the deviations generated by the randomized phase 3 population (R⁴⁷) highlights significant disproportions in the treatment groups. The following table summarizes all the deviations observed in more than 100 subjects in the study and presenting statistically significant imbalances, when compared to the remaining of the randomized population (22 085 BNT162b2 & 22 080 Placebo), using a chi-square test [meaning these differences between the vaccine and placebo groups are far too large to have occurred by chance].

31. Some very significant disproportions in the deviations - such as “Receipt of any other non-study coronavirus vaccine at any time prior to or during the study” - show that many subjects were aware that they had received a Placebo - and had enrolled in a competitor’s study (probably Moderna) in parallel, or had received another product after Emergency use authorization. On the other hand, certain disproportions indicate that the teams at certain sites did not treat patients in the way expected in a blinded observational trial, where both groups should be treated equally by the clinical team:

    1. Assessment of acute reaction for protocol specified time-frame after study intervention administration not performed at the vaccination visits

    2. Nasal swab not collected by site staff prior to vaccination

    3. Nasal swab not collected for the visit where it is required

    4. Procedure/Test not performed per protocol

    5. Urine pregnancy test not performed
       Note: in a properly blinded trial, staff don't know who received the vaccine, so routine procedures like these should be missed at roughly equal rates in both groups. That they weren't (each was missed more often in the placebo group) indicates staff at these sites knew who had received what. Once that is known, the groups can be treated differently in ways that distort the results (e.g., as shown later in the audit, symptomatic vaccine recipients were less likely to be tested for COVID, making those infections "disappear").

32. It is worth noting, regarding the deviations “Receipt of any other non-study coronavirus vaccine” - that a large portion of them happened after December 2020, while other vaccines became available.

33. The 10 sites concerned by 20 or more of these deviations and showing significant imbalance when tested with a Fisher exact test have been isolated and synthesized in the following table.

34. Contrarily to the “subjects related” deviations envisaged on point 32, examining the “staff-related” deviations detailed on point 31 are in majority occurring prior to the official unblinding of the subjects.

COVID visits and symptoms anomalies

35. When subjects experienced COVID symptoms from a list predetermined by the FDA, they had to go to the trial site to have samples taken - or, failing that, to test themselves at home with tests supplied and send the sample to the trial site, within four days⁴⁸ before or after the onset of symptoms. The “official” COVID symptoms were the following 13 symptoms⁴⁹:

    • Chills

    • Diarrhea

    • Fever

    • New loss of taste or smell

    • New or increased cough

    • New or increased muscle pain

    • New or increased shortness of breath

    • Sore throat

    • Vomiting

    In addition to these symptoms, there were “non official” symptoms:

    • Fatigue

    • Headaches

    • Nasal congestion

    • Runny nose (rhinorrhea)

36. The “Covid-19 Signs and Symptoms” .XPT file (ADSYMPT⁵⁰) however lists a total of 15 symptoms - the ones not scheduled to the protocol being marked by a (*):

    • Chills

    • Diarrhea

    • Fatigue

    • Fever

    • Headache

    • Nausea (*)

    • New loss of taste or smell

    • New or increased cough

    • New or increased muscle pain

    • New or increased nasal congestion

    • New or increased shortness of breath

    • New or increased sore throat

    • New or increased wheezing (*)

    • Rhinorrhea

    • Vomiting
      Note: since the symptoms recorded in the dataset don't match those listed in the protocol, it's unclear what standard was actually used to decide who needed a COVID test (or whether testing was done in a manner that inflated efficacy).

37. Sites also had the ability to enter “other” symptoms, which then did not make it into the database. An example is subject 10161289⁵¹, male of age 17, BMI 22.4, who received dose 1 of BNT162b2 30 mcg on September 18, 2020, and dose 2 on October 7, 2020. He had a COVID illness entry on October 7 and 11, with assessment on October 9 and symptoms: fever, cough, muscle pain, sore throat, rhinorrhea. Page 270 of the Case report forms (CRF) however shows “chest tightness” as an “other” symptom. It is not reported in the Adverse Events (AE) log, and only visible because the young man had a serious adverse event (SAE) later, on October 31, 2020 : a motor vehicle accident where he suffered facial fractures and a concussion, which led to his CRF file being released. This is a violation of GCPs - among others the EMA Guideline for good clinical practice⁵².

Note: one repeatedly reported side effects of the COVID vaccines was catching COVID or having a subclinical COVID infection become acute (due to the immune suppression they create), thereby making it easy to hide many immediate post vaccine reactions by attributing them to “COVID.”

38. Another example of GCPs infringement by the sites is subject 12315632⁵³, another BNT162b2 30 mcg recipient. His COVID illness entry spans from October 17, 2020 to December 7, 2020, and includes two hospitalizations. While his condition is initially described by the site as pneumonia, the subject suffered a SAE (pericarditis) which was only reported at the sponsor’s request.

    The site initially reported “pneumonia” as adverse event, and later deleted it and put it into a COVID illness visit. Had Pfizer not insisted on an AE entry of the pericarditis in the CRF, it would have remained unreported in the trial data, only existing in Pfizer’s fax-based safety database.

Non-respect for the Blind and for Good Clinical Practices, testimony by Brook Jackson

39. A whistleblower, Brook Jackson, who served as the regional director at Ventavia Research Group (Ventavia), a site management organization responsible for enrolling participants in the trial, provided the British Medical Journal (BMJ) with internal company documents, photos, audio recordings, emails, and other evidence raising significant concerns regarding data integrity and the safety of trial participants⁵⁴ [and like many whistleblowers, sacrificed her career to do the right thing].

40. Among the systemic trial conduct issues documented across the trial sites, she reported the following:

    1. Lack of Proper Informed Consent: During the internal quality assurance review of hundreds of individual participant records, informed consent was not obtained from each participant prior to being injected with the investigational product. In addition, it was recorded that many of these forms had obvious mismatches in signatures indicating forgery of patient signatures.

    2. Enrollment of Ineligible Clinical Trial Participants: Clinical trial participants who did not meet Pfizer’s protocol-defined inclusion criteria, or who met exclusion criteria, were enrolled in the trial. This included pregnant women, Ventavia employees, family members and friends.

    3. Data Fabrication and Data Falsification: Documents indicated that data points were fabricated and falsified. Examples include:

       • Altering patient records and backdating documents.

       • Forging doctor signatures.

       • Fabrication and falsification of missing or inconsistent data, including medical history, concomitant medication use, physical exams, vital signs, blood collection and specimen processing times, urine pregnancy testing, and other essential trial data.

    4. Regulatory Non-Compliance/Other Protocol Violations

       • Failure to maintain the “blind” as required.

       • Protocol required study visits, including potential COVID-19 illness visits not done or completed outside of the specified timeframe.

       • Failure to monitor participants’ use of the electronic diary application used to record local reaction, systemic events, and use of any antipyretic medication usage following injection.

       • Failure to elicit, collect, and report adverse events and serious adverse events, including the follow-up of the event or its sequelae resolved.

       • Investigational product dosing and administration errors.

       • Failure to maintain proper temperature control of the investigational product.

       • Mislabeling and mix-up of participant laboratory specimens.

       • Use of unqualified and untrained research staff, including blinded vaccinators and laboratory personnel.

       • Principal Investigator oversight failures.

       • Inadequate emergency response protocol in the event of an acute allergic reaction.

       • Failure to assess acute reactions post vaccination.

       • Failure to report serious adverse events, protocol, and regulatory violations to Pfizer or the external Institutional Review Board.

       • Failure to report and follow-up on investigational product exposure during pregnancy, breastfeeding, and occupational exposure.

       • Other ethical violations, including violation of HIPAA and providing unapproved compensation to avoid participant complaints to the FDA, or news media outlets.

         Note: many of the above hid or reduced reported vaccine side effects.

41. After repeatedly notifying Ventavia of these concerns without any action being taken to protect the rights, safety, welfare, and private health information of the trial participants she filed a complaint with the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), the department within the FDA [run by Peter Marks] that regulates biological products for human use under applicable federal laws, including the Public Health Service Act and the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. Within hours of notifying CBER, she was terminated by Ventavia.
    Note: I have often wondered if immediately neutralizing this critical whistleblower was Peter Marks’s decision.

42. The FDA’s Bioresearch Monitoring (BIMO) is a program involving on-site inspections, data audits, and remote regulatory assessments. It is designed to oversee all aspects of conducting and reporting FDA-regulated research. The BIMO program aims to ensure the quality and integrity of data submitted to the FDA for new product approvals and marketing applications while also protecting the rights and welfare of human subjects involved in research⁵⁵. Despite receiving a complaint reporting significant violations, the FDA’s BIMO program failed to inspect these critical locations. Instead, inspections were conducted at six other clinical investigator sites participating in the study. According to the FDA’s review memo, those inspections did not reveal problems impacting the data submitted in support of the original EUA.

Testimony by Augusto Roux - Non-recording and re-qualification of adverse effects

43. One of the participants in the clinical trial in Argentina, Dr Augusto Roux, a lawyer, is also among the authors of the present report. He reported, during the trial, several major breaches of GCPs and patient safety. The events were covered, in details, by Dr. David Healy, a University Professor in Canada & Physician, via his website⁵⁶ - then in a peer-reviewed paper, “The coverage of medical injuries in company trial informed consent forms”⁵⁷.

44. Augusto Roux volunteered for the trial, where he was given the subject number 12312982, and received his first dose on August 21, 2020. He received his second dose on September 9, 2020, at 6 pm. After his second dose, he felt very unwell an hour and a half later, collapsed once home, and was two days later diagnosed at the Alemán Hospital with pericarditis, which was judged causal to the vaccine he had received by several medical experts : aside for Dr. David Healy, Dr Gemma Torrell, a family medicine specialist from Barcelona, and Professor Joan-Ramon Laporte, one of the leading Spanish experts in pharmacovigilance.

45. Augusto Roux contacted the FDA, EMA & other regulators - which refrained from considering his case with the seriousness it required. He initiated a criminal investigation in Argentina, against Fernando Polack and others, for falsification of public documents, abandonment of person.

46. The expertise provided by his physician is attached to the present report⁵⁸. These three experts have, among other major infringements to GCPs, reported that :

    1. His side effects were not reported correctly - and some were subsequently reclassified as a potential COVID, at the request of the sponsor, BioNTech.

    2. His pericarditis, for example, was simply not reported (R⁵⁹).

    3. Clinical trial records communicated to his physicians were containing a mixture of samples collected from several patients, weren’t chronologically ordered, and other infringements to good practices.

    4. The records communicated to the physicians seemed scrambled, and incomplete.

    5. There are evidences from the records that Dr Fernando Polack, without expertise in that area, attempted to have Augusto Roux classified as suffering from mental illness, and to conceal the relation between the injury and the vaccine.
       Note: in addition to being the director of the Argentina trial site, Polack was also the lead author of Pfizer’s widely seen December 2020 “95% effective” paper.¹

    6. Phone recordings suggest that deaths, which would have occurred during the trial, would have been concealed.

Additional indicators for deletion of subjects in base, 301 missing subjects identifiers

47. When a subject was registered, the ICON software (“Firecrest”, an interface synchronized by a central Oracle database) assigned it a unique and, above all, incremental identifier (”subject id” - scalar “SUBJID” in the .XPT files):

47. 1. The first four digits denote the trial site identifier and are always the same for all subjects at the same site. (In some cases, subjects changed trial sites during the course of the study, so the full unique subject identifier provided information on both the ‘current’ and ‘original’ site).

    2. The last four digits designated the order of registration, starting with 1001. The next subject registered at a given test site was then numbered 1002, then 1003, and so on.

    3. The study identifier is circled in blue (always C4591001), the current site identifier is circled in green (here, 1016). The initial registration site is circled in yellow. The incremental subject identifier for this given site is circled in red.

48. An analysis (R⁶⁰) of these numbers - which are normally perfectly sequential - shows that 301 subjects are missing from the reports submitted. This anomaly disproportionately affects Argentina, where the only site represents 111 of these 301 missing subjects.

49. 17 of these subjects - one of the most significant difference on a single site and a single day - were recruited on the same day as Augusto Roux, August 21, 2020 [at the site supervised by Pfizer’s lead author].

50. If the missing subject IDs were due to random error, we would anticipate a uniform distribution of missing IDs across all sites. However, our analysis reveals a non-random pattern, with a disproportionate concentration of missing IDs at a limited number of sites. Furthermore, we would expect to observe isolated missing ID numbers, but instead, we frequently encounter clusters of consecutive missing IDs, with gaps ranging from 2 to 9 or more consecutive ID numbers. The following breakdown summarizes the frequency of gaps of varying sizes.

51. Further, if these missing subject identifiers were due to some computer error (no matter how improbable it is given that we’re very far from volumes which would affect an Oracle database cache), we would expect them to be occurring on the most loaded days. We can represent the daily screening registered on the site 1231, and the subjects who may have disappeared on the recruitment dates we deduced, to illustrate the fact that August 21, 2020 wasn’t the most loaded day of the subjects enrollment on this site [again indicating these patient deletions were not “due to chance”].

Inconsistencies in interim efficacy analyses - announcement dates & non compatible subject

52. The SAP [statistical analysis plan, the rules for analyzing the trial's data that are set before the results are known]⁶¹ - scheduled an efficacy analysis at 164 cases for application to the EUA, and intermediate efficacy analyses at 62 and 92 cases - at which stage efficacy could be announced if achieved.

53. The 170 “official” efficacy cases, presented as those obtained at the stop date of 14 November 2020, are listed in one of the .PDF files provided⁶². The cases don’t include their central PCR date (when Pfizer had knowledge & confirmation of the case). Extracting these cases (R⁶³) allows for their reanalysis (R⁶⁴).

54. It also shows that Pfizer already had the necessary 63 cases on October 22, 2020, and 94 cases on October 30. Nevertheless, they waited until November 9, 2020 to announce the results of the interim efficacy analysis via a press release. It’s unclear why they delayed announcing the product’s claimed efficacy so long. Perhaps does it has a relation with the fact that getting a vaccine was a central issue in the US election on November 3, 2020 - and the desire expressed by Albert Bourla⁶⁵, Pfizer’s CEO, not to further politicize the discussion.

Note: in the extensive discussions of how Pfizer delayed their vaccine to sabotage Trump’s re-election, I have almost never seen this critical point raised.

Deviations among the EUA efficacy cases

55. As highlighted by Dr Jeyanthi Kunadhasan, in an article for the Australian’s The Spectator⁶⁶, reporting on her work with the DailyClout’s team 3, several important protocol deviations have impacted the subjects included in the EUA official cases:

    1. Of the 170 participants, five (4 BNT & 1 Placebo) failed to receive their second dose within the protocol-defined window of 19 to 23 days. As mentioned point 13, the 19-42 day window was only mentioned in the EUA documentation (R⁶⁷).

    2. One participant (Placebo) did not receive the correct dose of the product.

    3. Another participant (Placebo) received a blood product within 60 days, constituting a major protocol deviation.

    4. One participants (44441224, Placebo⁶⁸) withdrawn from the trial prior to the EUA issuance date but was still included in the 170.

Antibodies measurements & anomalies to the Blind

56. Anti-N antibodies were examined via tests that respond to a molecule within the SARS-CoV-2 virus known as the nucleocapsid (N). Anti-N antibodies are of particular interest, because the only known method for a subject to produce them is through contracting COVID-19 [unlike the vaccine, which only produces antibodies against the spike protein, so testing for anti-N antibodies reveals who was infected regardless of whether they were ever PCR tested]. The N-antibodies were measured during the trial via a mNeonGreen SARS-CoV-2 “Nucleoprotein-Binding Antibodies Assay”⁶⁹. As the name suggests, this test targets the Nucleoprotein, which is a component of the nucleocapsid⁷⁰. It’s worth noting that N-antibodies aren’t a perfect detection method, with 5.5% of the subjects testing negative at 100 days according to observational studies⁷¹.

    Note: this limitation is much greater in vaccinated individuals, as in Moderna’s trial, only 40% of vaccine recipients with a PCR-confirmed infection went on to develop anti-N antibodies, compared to 93% of placebo recipients.¹ The same pattern was observed with Pfizer’s vaccine, analyzing participants who were anti-N and PCR negative at or before dose 1, received both doses, had no evidence of infection before dose 2, subsequently tested PCR positive at a central laboratory at least 14 days after dose 2, and had at least one N-binding antibody test result available from a sample collected at least four days after the positive PCR test. Among these participants, 55.6% of BNT162b2 recipients tested positive for anti-N antibodies, compared with 87.1% of placebo recipients. These findings suggest that antibody testing alone would also have missed many infections in the vaccine group, meaning that the true number of undetected infections in that group was likely higher than the figures shown below.

57. Placebo subjects were significantly more likely not to attend the Visit 3 or not to have their antibodies tested upon visit 3 [the visit one month after the second dose], as shown by the antibodies testing via N-binding (R⁷²).

58. 21 of the 1178 missing visit 3 BNTs have a positive central PCR (1.78%), and 105 of the 1392 Placebo subjects missing have a positive PCR (7.5%) (Visit 3 was performed between 46 and 138 days post visit 1). Detection of COVID appear to have been a factor in subjects not having this scheduled visit 3. But it doesn’t suffice to explain the offset - as even if we exclude these positive PCRs, it remains a significant difference.

59. 21 191 BNT & 21 191 Placebo subjects therefore started with negative PCR & N-Binding Results at visit 1, and received their first dose. 19 928 BNT & 19 511 Placebo were negative on visit 3 N-Binding Antibodies testing, and 85 BNT subjects were positive, against 288 Placebo. 53 BNT cases were detected via Central PCR, along with 201 Placebo cases. It leaves us with 32 undetected cases among BNT subjects (37.6% of the 85 cases), compared to 87 undetected cases in the placebo group (30.2%) - illustrating how flawed was the PCR detection and how regrettable it is not to have measured antibodies at visit 2 [the visit when the second dose was given, as testing then would have revealed infections that occurred between the two doses]. Subjects in the BNT groups were 7.4% more likely to avoid PCR detection, while having positive COVID specific antibodies at the 1 month post dose 2 visit [again potentially inflating efficacy].

60. In the Comments (CO.xpt) file, there are 9113 comments associated with COVID convalescent visit blood draws [blood taken after a suspected COVID illness so antibody testing could confirm whether it was COVID] (identified by RDOMAIN=IS and VISIT=COVID_n), and 8869 covid convalescent visits are in the Subject visits (SV.xpt) file (identified by VISIT=COVID_n). However, there are only 91 results associated with COVID convalescent visits in the IS.xpt (Immunogenicity) database (identified by VISIT=COVID_n1). The protocol allows for visits to overlap; if one of the visits was a convalescent visit, the samples were to be entered there. The convalescent serology remained unreported, and while the explanation for missing Visit 3 may reside in Placebo subjects who had lost interest in the trial, this represents a protocol flaw which allowed data not to be reported.

    Note: put simply, since only an actual COVID infection (not the vaccine) produces anti-N antibodies, testing for them reveals who actually caught COVID regardless of whether they were given a PCR test. When this was done, infections in the vaccine group were more likely to have been missed by the trial’s PCR testing, while the antibody tests which could have independently confirmed infections were either never done at a key visit or never reported.

The adverse effects to COVID visit re-qualification was widespread

61. Augusto Roux’s testimony, points 43 to 46, is evidence that the weakness in the protocol - consisting in confusing COVID symptoms & Adverse effects from the product, along with the capacity to qualify one or the other to affect efficacy, safety and immunogenicity results - was exploited.
    Note: since adverse events and COVID symptoms were tracked separately, re-labeling a vaccine recipient’s adverse event as a COVID symptom removed it from the vaccine’s safety data. Additionally, once the vaccines hit the market, equating vaccine side effects to COVID or “long COVID” became one of the most common methods used to sweep those injuries under the rug.

62. Aside for a single row on two subjects (10681017 & 10681036), all the Adverse Events (AEs) entries have 1 to N entries related to a subject by a unique incremental “AESPID” entry⁷³ [a sequential ID assigned to each adverse event, so gaps reveal deletions], documented in the CSDRG⁷⁴ [Clinical Study Data Reviewer’s Guide] as the “Sponsor’s ID set for the specific AEs”. The sponsors document 5 exceptions had been raised on March 13, 2021, as duplicate ids were entered by sites in this document.

63. By analyzing the data structure to detect gaps in these AESPID by subjects, we can detect adverse events that were deleted and suppressed from the safety analysis: a minimum of 1209 adverse effect have been re-qualified (R)⁷⁵, over 767 subjects. Adverse events at the end of the log evade detection.

64. For a limited number of subjects (1028 subjects total - 982 in individual files), the CRF [case report forms] have been communicated to the FDA along with the BLA application. 97 of these individual CRFs are those of subjects among these 767 subjects (12.65%). This very significant rate of CRFs available, while only 2% are available for the 44K+ population, might be explained by the FDA having questions about part of these subjects specifically - or simply their compliance with the conditions established to the CRFs to be provided, detailed in the meetings correspondence⁷⁶.

Note: for a trial of such immense global significance, every CRF should have been available for the FDA (and, with identifying details removed, anyone else) to review.

65. The subject’s audit trail allows us to identify which adverse effects were suppressed after being registered as the events were “re-qualified” to COVID visits. The case by case review of all the CRFs anomalies will be the subject of a later analysis - but the followings are an illustration of the severity of the phenomenon and are stressing the need for an in depth audit of the individual CRFs. Subject 12181001⁷⁷, a 32 years old female, reported Diarrhea on November 4, 2020. On March 29, 2021 (16 days after the BLA application cut-off and 3 days prior the CRFs cut-off), this adverse effect is re-qualified to a “COVID visit” retroactively created under instruction from the sponsors [thereby hiding the adverse event].

66. Subject 10871286⁷⁸, a 71 years old female, reported on October 20, 2020 a wide range of adverse effects - judged “non serious” by the PI (page 648-649). These events were re-qualified as COVID symptoms on March 29, 2021.

A later comparison of the EUA and BLA datasets found 358 adverse event records present at EUA were gone from the BLA submission under their original identifiers (affecting 153 vaccine recipients versus 103 placebo recipients), while others were altered, such as one participant’s heart palpitations being moved from one day to fifteen days after the second dose and another’s congestive heart failure being downgraded from serious to non-serious.¹ Likewise, a review of the case report forms found symptoms were removed from the adverse event log and filed as a potential COVID illness, and when that COVID visit was later deleted, the adverse events were never restored, so they vanished from the safety data entirely.¹

Further evidence of data manipulations on safety data recordings

67. Another important anomaly in the recording of the adverse effects resides in the presence of a significant number of “pain at injection sites” between phase designating the second dose of Placebo and the first dose of BNT162b2, for the Placebo who had been unblinded, and offered to receive the mRNA product [i.e., placebo recipients were recorded as having injection-site pain during a period when they had not received any injection, indicating the timing of their records was unreliable]. These events, designated in the ADAE file as occurring during the phase “After unblinding and before Vaccination 3”. As represented in the table below, some subjects wouldn’t even have received a second dose (R⁷⁹) - and although 31 (60.8%) had this after-effect registered on the same day than their 3rd dose, it’s symptomatic of delays in registration of the third dose administration.

68. A manual review of the CRFs files highlighted that rather often, sites did not record any, or only some of the AEs that occurred in the CRFs [again significantly inflating vaccine safety]. To detail but a few examples:

• 10551139⁸⁰ - the CRF lists injection site soreness and chills, while the Adverse Events table (ADAE) additionally lists another event of chills, nausea, right axillary adenopathy and injection site pain (R⁸¹).

• 11401282⁸² - the CRF lists exercise induced asthma, while ADAE additionally lists bilateral pulmonary embolism, deep vein thrombosis, and right upper quadrant abdominal pain, along with a deleted AESPID #2. As there is only AESPID #1 in the CRF, this means Pfizer added an adverse event and deleted it before adding the other three events, which are not in the CRF.

• 12411347⁸³ - the CRF lists headache, injection site pain, lymphadenopathy and a second event of headache, while ADAE contains three additional events of fever, headache and fatigue.

The CRF’s AE log does not report any AEs for 35 subjects⁸⁴, and at least 73 CRFs are missing AEs that are present in the database⁸⁵, making a minimum of 108 subjects affected by this anomaly in a sample of only 1028, which leads us to question if the reporting was solely made at the sponsors’ discretion - and further, if the CRF files could have been altered. It constitutes at least a major violation of GCPs, and if it is confirmed that this isn’t human error but that CRFs have been altered, an infringement to several US⁸⁶ & International regulations⁸⁷.

Additionally, a reanalysis of the CRF files identified 402 reactions lasting more than seven days, including 139 lasting more than fourteen days, and documented examples for which corresponding adverse-event entries were absent.¹ Similarly, one participant’s grade 4 heart attack appears in the database but not in their case report form, and at least eight participants have conflicting treatment-arm information between their case report forms and the datasets (although the treatment assignments in the datasets themselves did not change between submissions).^1,2

COVID symptoms reported by the subjects

69. It seems necessary, to reach an objective representation of the capacity of the BNT162b2 to prevent COVID-like symptoms, to consider that if a subject reported a fever, no matter if Pfizer decided to classify it as “Adverse effects” or “COVID symptoms” - the fact remains that the subject reported a fever. We mapped the AEs and COVID symptoms into a single file⁸⁸ that represented COVID-like symptoms, in order to represent the following unique new events reported by subjects during the “blinded” observation phase. We considered - as per protocol - reports of the same symptoms, per the same subjects, within 4 days⁸⁹ - as a single symptom on the date of first occurrence (R⁹⁰), no matter if the report of the condition affecting the subject was made via the reactogenicity dataset (FACE), the adverse events (ADAE) or the COVID symptoms (ADSYMPT). This means that if a subject reported a Fever and Cough on March 18, and another Fever on March 19, he would count only once, on March 18.

Note: the benefit the original COVID vaccine was sold on in Pfizer's "95% effective" paper¹ was a reduction in symptomatic, PCR-confirmed COVID-19, yet as the chart above (and the data in Pfizer’s NEJM paper¹) shows, vaccine recipients reported more of those same symptoms overall than those who received the placebo. Peter Doshi raised a similar point in the BMJ shortly after authorization, as the FDA's own review listed 3,410 "suspected" COVID cases (symptomatic but not PCR-confirmed) split almost evenly between the groups (1,594 vs. 1,816), compared to the 170 confirmed cases (8 vs. 162) the 95% figure rested on. If many of these were real cases missed by PCR, the vaccine's efficacy would fall to roughly 19%.¹

The unblinding wasn’t randomized

70. The Placebo recipients unblinding began as soon as the EUA was obtained, on December 14, 2020 (the FDA giving its authorization to it 3 days after the EUA on December 11, 2020). The subjects were unblinded non-randomly, prioritizing the elder subjects - and effectively terminating the Randomized Clinical Trial, which became an open-label study, with a very small and highly selective placebo group [making it effectively impossible to definitively assess if any long-term complications actually came from the vaccine]. The following chart represents the evolution of the cumulative unblinding rates for the 44 040 phase 2-3 subjects who had received their first dose prior December 14, 2020 (R⁹¹).

Forensic Analysis of the deaths during the trial

71. A peer reviewed paper⁹², “Forensic analysis of the 38 subject deaths in the 6-Month Interim Report of the Pfizer/BioNTech BNT162b2 mRNA Vaccine Clinical Trial” by Michels et al., found that Subject # 10841470, a 65-year-old obese Hispanic male with pulmonary fibrosis and hypertension was part of the placebo arm of a Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine trial. He received doses 1 and 2 of the placebo on September 30 and October 21, 2020. However, on December 23, 2020, he received a dose of the Moderna mRNA vaccine, which was a protocol deviation. He later developed COVID-19 symptoms, was hospitalized, and eventually died on January 11, 2021, due to multi-system organ failure. The case was misreported as a placebo death with COVID-19 as the secondary cause of death, when in fact, the subject should have been discontinued from the trial due to receiving a non-study COVID-19 vaccine [providing a pivotal death in the placebo group to counterbalance and hence downplay the deaths in the vaccine group].

72. The paper also notes,“a 3.7-fold increase in cardiac events in subjects who received the BNT162b2 vaccine versus the placebo. Of the 15 subjects who were Sudden Adult Deaths (SAD) or Found Dead (FD), 12 died of a cardiac event, 9 of whom were vaccinated.”

Delayed deaths recording at EUA time

73. Michels et al. highlights another major finding, further developed by Jeyanthi Kunadhasan in her letters exchanges with the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA). These exchanges, sent and made public on behalf of the Australian Medical Professional Society (AMPS), are consisting in a first letter dated March 21, 2024⁹³, the reply of the TGA’s Health Products Regulation Group’s Professor dated March 27, 2024⁹⁴, and an expanded argument dated May 17, 2024⁹⁵ currently unanswered. They are attached to the current report. They provide another illustration of the diligence of the regulators for the matter of investigating critical irregularities - as the TGA interlocutor obviously fails to understand points clarified from the first letter.

74. A major anomaly lies in the delayed reporting of two deaths in the EUA figures communicated to the regulators, and to the world via the December NEJM study of Polack et al⁹⁶. The Polack paper disclosed six deaths — two in the BNT162b2 arm and four in the placebo arm. Both the journal article and the EUA approval documentation showed the six deaths during the period of July 27, 2020, till November 14, 2020. The article shows that Pfizer-BioNTech had records showing eight deaths among the 11 deaths which had occurred at EUA time. The authors show that Pfizer had clear knowledge of four in the BNT162b2 arm and four in the placebo arm, and that Pfizer should have disclosed these to the FDA. The two undisclosed deaths indicated a cardiac event signal in the clinical trial’s BNT162b2 recipients. Subject 11141050 died on October 19th, 2020, well before the data cut-off date of November 14th, 2020 [meaning Pfizer had data indicating the vaccine had serious heart issues before they released it]. Documentation shows that the subject’s emergency contact notified the clinical site of the death on the date of death, as per protocol requirements. The protocol also required the clinical site to notify Pfizer, via its vaccine SAE form, within 24 hours of receiving a death notification. However, the clinical staff waited 37 days to enter this patient’s death into Pfizer’s records. Because of that delay, Pfizer did not submit this death as part of its EUA data, raising questions about the reasons for the delay and potential breaches of Good Clinical Practice.

75. Per the autopsy, the patient died from ‘sudden cardiac death,’ with her known risk factors of hypertension and obesity putting her at high risk of cardiac-acute myocardial infarct. The clinical site staff entered the specific diagnosis of ‘sudden cardiac death’ into her notes on December 9th, 2020, the day before the Vaccine and Related Biologicals Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) meeting on December 10th, 2020, which suggests that this hidden death also had autopsy results available at the critical juncture of consideration of vaccine emergency use authorization.

76. To be eligible for inclusion in this clinical trial, participants had to be deemed healthy based on medical history, physical examination (if required), and the clinical judgement of the investigator. The protocol allowed healthy participants with pre-existing stable disease – defined as disease not requiring significant change in therapy or hospitalization for worsening disease during the six weeks before enrolment – to participate in the clinical trial. The blood pressure reading is absent of her publicly available case notes. Consequently, we can only assume the patient’s high blood pressure, from which she had suffered since January 1st, 2010, was well controlled when she was admitted to the trial. The patient weighed 74.1kg at a height of 165cm. Hence, her BMI of 27.2 placed her in the overweight category, not the obese one sustained, as referenced on point 74.

77. Subject 11201050 died on November 7th, 2020. Her husband reported her death to the clinical site on November 7th, 2020. Seventy-two days after receiving Dose 2 of the vaccine, she died in her sleep. No hospital visit or autopsy occurred. A coroner pronounced her death and listed the cause of death on her death certificate as cardiac arrest.

78. As no autopsy results were available, [as is often the case] it remains unclear how the sponsors or the regulators concluded that this death could not be attributed to the treatment. Pfizer documented receiving notification of her death on November 7th, 2020, well before the data cutoff date of November 14th, 2020. The reasons for not disclosing this death from the vaccinated arm at the December 10th, 2020, VRBPAC meeting or in the Polack New England Journal of Medicine publication need clarification.

Confirming Michels et al. evaluation of massively under-reported deaths

79. Michels et al.’s notes that “the number of subject deaths was 17% of the expected number, based on age-adjusted US mortality. One possible explanation could lie in the 395 subjects that were“Lost to Follow-up”. Another explanation in these low deaths could lie in the offset of 1203 subjects in the investigators files highlighted on points 23 to 25 - and/or the 301 records missing (at least) highlighted on points 47 to 51.

80. No BNT162b2 recipient died outside of the United States (US) according to the reported figures. Deaths in the US are 19 subjects post BNT162b2, 12 subjects post Placebo, and 2 subjects first recipients of Placebo who had then received at least one dose of BNT162b2, for a total of 33 deaths in the US. 5 Placebos subjects died outside of the US.

81. We extracted the mortality data by state, year, month & 5 years age group brackets, for 2020 & 2021, from the CDC Wonder Underlying Causes of Death platform⁹⁷ - and generated an export⁹⁸, along with another export⁹⁹ of the population¹⁰⁰ yearly July 1st census data by states. This allowed us to proceed to a comparison of the mortality reported by the US trial sites ( and the mortality which could have been expected from a cohort of this age. Some healthy user bias would potentially have an impact - but the fact to observe a death from “dementia” allows to question the standards applied to the recruitment during the trial. This can’t account, in any case, for how significantly lower the mortality observed is than what would have been expected on a population of 33689 randomized individuals (R¹⁰¹) - with only 18% of the expected mortality being reported.

Process 1 & Process 2 - Differences overview

Note: the next three sections, 82-94 are more tedious to read through, and primarily exist to establish how process 1 and process 2 lots were differentiated. The next part, 95-102, highlights that the vaccine most of the world got (Process 2), was tested only on 252 subjects prior to EUA, and the planned clinical comparison was not conducted, despite Pfizer promising to do so. The final part of this block, 103-112 shows that Pfizer’s own data indicated Process 2 was significantly more toxic. As mentioned earlier in this article, there are serious issues with Process 2 (which will likely be the default way for manufacturing mRNA vaccines) are discussed further here.

82. In the development of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate, BNT162b2 (commercially known as Comirnaty), Pfizer/BioNTech used two distinct manufacturing methods, which they referred to as “Process 1” and “Process 2.”

83. The research protocol¹⁰² for the clinical trial states: “The initial BNT162b2 was manufactured using ‘Process 1’; however, ‘Process 2’ was developed to support an increased scale of manufacture.” Additional evidence can be found in other regulatory documents from the US FDA, the Japanese Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Agency (PMDA), the TGA and the European Medicines Agency (EMA). To take one example, the EMA Product Assessment Report (PAR) for Comirnaty dated February 19, 2021, states: “Two active substance processes have been used during the development history; Process 1 (clinical trial material) and Process 2 (commercial process)”¹⁰³.

84. In addition to the statement from the EMA PAR cited on point 83, which indicates that Process 1 was used for clinical trial doses while Process 2 was used for commercial doses, a corroborating statement comes from Japan’s PMDA in their “Report on Special Approval for Emergency” dated February 8, 2021: “The active substance used for nonclinical and clinical studies are manufactured by Process 1, and the active substance in the proposed commercial formulation by Process 2”¹⁰⁴.

85. Amendment 7 to the protocol dated Oct. 6¹⁰⁵ states: “Added an additional exploratory objective to describe safety and immunogenicity in participants 16 to 55 years of age vaccinated with study intervention produced by manufacturing ‘Process 1’ or ‘Process 2’”. This amendment is elaborated in section 6.1.1: “The scale of the BNT162b2 manufacturing has been increased to support future supply. BNT162b2 generated using the manufacturing process supporting an increased supply (‘Process 2’) will be administered to approximately 250 participants 16 to 55 years of age, per lot, in the study. The safety and immunogenicity of prophylactic BNT162b2 in individuals 16 to 55 years of age vaccinated with material generated using the existing manufacturing process ‘Process 1,’ and with material from lots generated using the manufacturing process supporting increased supply, ‘Process 2,’ will be described”¹⁰⁶.

86. The clinical trial protocol cited in point 85 summarizes three key differences between Process 1 and 2: “the process changes relate to the method of production for the DNA template that RNA drug substance is transcribed from, and the RNA drug substance purification method. The BNT162b2 drug product is then produced using a scaled-up LNP manufacturing process”¹⁰⁷.

87. The differences between processes 1 and 2 are not trivial. A document obtained from the TGA¹⁰⁸ details some of the key changes performed between “Process 1” and “Process 2”, although many details have been redacted. In Process 1, the DNA template for mRNA transcription was produced via PCR-amplification; Process 2 uses linearized plasmid DNA cultured in E. coli bacteria. Linearized Plasmid DNA involves the use of plasmid DNA, which is a small, circular, double-stranded DNA molecule typically found in bacteria. Additional (partially redacted) details described changes to the in-vitro transcription reaction volume, the batch scale, and the purification procedure (Magnetic Beads in Process 1; Proteinase K treatment to digest proteins and release associated nucleic acids followed by Tangential Flow Filtration in Process 2).

Identifying Process 2 lots

88. In some of the regulatory documents, Process 1 is sometimes referred to as a ‘classical’ process and the resulting product are referred to as the ‘clinical supply.’ Process 2 is sometimes referred to as the ‘upscale’ process and the resulting products are referred to as ‘emergency’ or ‘commercial’ supply. This is evident in a document made public by the TGA. It is FOI 3659 document 4, titled “BNT162b2 (PF-07302048) Comparability Report for PPQ Drug Product Lots”¹⁰⁹, which lists the lots distributed, their use and their corresponding production processes.

89. The comparability report distinguishes clinical, emergency and commercial supply lots as follows: “The drug product manufacturing process has evolved from clinical supply to emergency supply and finally to commercial supply, undergoing transfer to different manufacturing sites and process scale-up. Clinical supply was initially produced at Polymun, Austria (“classical” process). In order to improve the mass throughput of the LNP process and increase the batch size, the process was scaled up at Polymun (“upscale” process) followed by transport of the bulk drug product (fully formulated LNPs prior to sterile filtration) to Pfizer Puurs, Belgium for fill/finish operations (for the manufacture of “emergency supply” and commercial supply). This process has also been set-up at mibe (Dermapharm), Germany for manufacture of emergency supply material. Within this scope, the fill/finish operations at Puurs were initially conducted on the S2F2 line (for clinical supply) with transition to the WSL5 line for larger batch volumes (emergency use supply, and subsequently for commercial supply). For routine commercial production, the LNP production process has been fully transferred to Pfizer, Puurs, Belgium with fill/finish operations on filling lines WSL5, FC2 and VC2 and to Pfizer, Kalamazoo, US with fill/finish operations on filling lines L8 and L18 (for the manufacture of “commercial supply”)”¹¹⁰.

90. We can identify which lots are Process 1 or Process 2 from the same document based on the lots listed in Table 1 on page 4 and in notes b and e to Table 3 on page 11. Additional information on the process used to manufacture lots is from a document released under FOI by the FDA¹¹¹. This document is titled “125742_S2_M3_32p5_batch_analyses.pdf.” - Table 3.2.P.5.4-1 “Summary of BNT162b2 Drug Product Lots” on page 4 of the document contains the relevant information. Both of these documents will be referred to below.

Establishing Which Process 2 Lots Were Used in Clinical Trial C4591001

91. A document released by the FDA details which lots had been shipped to which clinical research site at approximately 6 months into the trial. It is dated March 17, 2021 and titled “125742_S1_M5_5351_c4591001-interim-mth6-patient-batches.pdf”¹¹². The following unique lots numbers are listed in that document: BCV10320-A, BCV10420-A, BCV20420-A, BCV40420-A, BCV40620-A, BCV40620-B, BCV40620-C, BCV40620-D, BCV40720-A, BCV40720-B, BCV40720-C, ED3938, EE3813, EE8493Z, and EJ0553Z. It is not clear what the ‘Z’ at the end of lots EE8493 and EJ0553 refer to. In other documents these lots are listed without a Z suffix. It may have been used to designate that those lots used in the trial were from Process 2.

92. Based on the tables from TGA and FDA documents that were referred to in points 88 and 90 above, all lots starting with ‘BCV’ are Process 1 lots. Lot ED3983 is listed in Table 3.2.P.5.4-1 of the FDA batch analysis document cited in point 90 as a “clinical” lot and is marked with note a, which is defined on page 13 as “equivalent to BCV40720-P,” which was established as a process 1 lot on point 91. Lot EE3813 is listed as a Process 1 clinical lot in both tables.

93. Two Process 2 lots are identified in the 6-month patient batches document cited on point 91: EE8493 and EJ0553. Lot EE8493 is listed as a Process 2 lot in Table 1 of the TGA’s “Comparability Report for PPQ Drug Product Lots” document cited on point 90 above (see column marked “DS Process and Site of Manufacture.”). Lot EJ0553 is listed in the TGA comparability report in note ‘d’ of Table 3 on page 11. Note ‘d’ in Table 3 is attached to the column “Historical Range: Emergency Supply,” which indicates that EJ0553 is an emergency supply lot, which was another term for Process 2. Note ‘d’ further specifies that the manufacturing location of lot EJ0553 was “Polymun/Puurs WSL5”, which, based on the description from the document quoted on point 88, provides additional evidence that EJ0553 was an emergency supply lot and not a clinical lot, because every lot in Table 1 with the “DP Site of Manufacture” listed as “Polymun/Puurs WSL5” is a Process 2 lot. This is wholly consistent with the description of the evolution of the manufacturing process on page 3 as quoted in point 89 above. Many of the other lots in note ‘d’ are listed in Table 1 on pages 4-5 of the TGA comparability report and are all marked as Process 2, and none of the lots listed in note ‘d’ under Table 3 are listed in Table 1 as a clinical (Process 1) lot. In addition, all clinical lots are listed separately in note ‘b’ of Table 3 on page 11. Lot EJ0553 is listed in the FDA “Batch Analysis” document cited on point 90 as both an emergency supply and clinical lot. Given that lot EE8493 is also listed as both an emergency supply and clinical lot, this indicates that both EE8493 and EJ0553 were used in some capacity in the clinical trial and were also part of the emergency supply.

94. In addition, almost all adverse events reported¹¹³ in the United States Centers for Disease Control’s Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS¹¹⁴) for lots EE8493 and EJ0553 have a date of vaccination after Comirnaty had been authorized for temporary use in the UK. None of the other lots listed as having been supplied to the research sites have adverse event reports in VAERS¹¹⁵. This provides additional evidence that EE8493 and EJ0553 were process 2 formulations, as they were distributed and administered commercially post authorization.

Evidence Lot EE8493 Was Used for Planned Comparison of Processes 1 and 2

95. There are two ways to identify that lot EE8493 was used as part of the planned comparison study between Processes 1 and 2 as described in the clinical trial protocol cited on point 85. The first is by identifying which Process 2 lots were shipped to which clinical trial research sites and count how many treatment subjects were enrolled from the beginning of the comparison study (see points 98-99 below). The second is to show that the randomization numbers of a subset of participants was distinct from all the others (see point 100 below). These independent methods converge on the same result: only 252 subjects given vaccine doses from lot EE8493 were eventually enrolled as part of the planned comparison.

96. In a reply to FOI request 23/510, the United Kingdom’s Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) attested that “the first clinical batch which contained process 2 drug substance was dosed 19th October 2020 in US”¹¹⁶.

97. The document from the FDA cited on point 91 lists which lots had been distributed to which study sites as of March 17, 2021. A similar document¹¹⁷ lists which lots were supplied to each study site as of November 19, 2020. In that document, the only Process 2 lot listed is EE8493 (note: lot EJ0553 is not listed). Therefore, it can be inferred that EE8493 was the only Process 2 lot that had been distributed to the clinical study sites when the comparative study of processes 1 vs. 2 began on October 19, 2020. It was supplied to sites 1133, 1135, 1146 and 1170 according to both the interim and 6-month patient batch documents.

98. Analysis of the subjects who received their first dose on or after October 19, 2020 (R¹¹⁸) shows that at those four sites, there were a total of 252 subjects administered the vaccine and 250 administered the placebo¹¹⁹. All of the 252 subjects in the treatment arm were between the ages of 16 and 55. This is consistent with the description of the planned study in the protocol to administer Process 2 doses “to approximately 250 participants 16 to 55 years of age” as detailed in paragraph 2. (See Appendix A for a list of the 252 subjects recruited to these sites during this time period.) This analysis can be confirmed by visual inspection of the BLA randomization file communicated by the sponsors to the FDA¹²⁰.

99. Lot EJ0553 was shipped to site 1007. The 17 treatment recipients at site 1007 after October 19, 2020 do not have randomization numbers that indicate inclusion in the comparative study of Processes 1 and 2, as detailed in paragraph 100. In addition, there are only 17 treatment subjects who could have potentially received doses from lot EJ0553, not the approximately 250 as planned in the protocol cited in paragraph 2. Therefore, we can conclude that these 17 subjects were not part of the planned study to compare processes 1 and 2. Given that lot EJ0553 was supplied to three other trial sites that did not enroll any new treatment subjects after November 14, 2020, it is likely that doses from this Process 2 lot were supplied to those four sites to administer to placebo subjects who were unblinded and offered to be vaccinated subsequent to the FDA’s issuance of Emergency Use Authorization on December 11, 2020.

100. The dataset and documents used for this analysis provide a second means for identifying the subjects involved in the comparison study - discovered by the same authors who authored Michels et al. (cited on points 71 to 79): the subject randomization number (R¹²¹). Every subject in the trial falls between the numbers 1081 and 274318, except for a small subset of 502 subjects who have a unique range of randomization numbers between 400002 and 401509. Of these, 252 are the same treatment subjects identified on point 98, at the four sites that received Process 2 lots prior to Nov. 19, 2020. The others 250 are Placebo recipients, the same than those at the four sites identified on point 97 (R¹²²). This shows independent corroboration of the conclusion from paragraph 80 that these 252 treatment subjects from sites that received lot EE8493 were the only ones who were intended for the comparison between processes 1 and 2.

101. The comparison of process 1 vs process 2 recruitment has been represented on a weekly chart.

Evidence The Planned Comparison of Processes 1 and 2 Was Never Conducted

102. In its response to FOI request 23/510, cited in paragraph 96 and attached to this report, the MHRA states that the data from the study were expected in February, 2021 (page 2). However, the planned comparison from the protocol was “removed and documented in Protocol amendment 20 in September 2022 due to the extensive usage of vaccines manufactured via ‘Process 2’. Thus, this process comparison was not conducted as part of the formal documentation” (page 5). At least as far as the MHRA is concerned, the comparison study was never conducted.

Evidence the two products aren’t perfectly similar : higher rates of adverse effects among Process 2 recipients

103. We modeled the impact of being a recipient of Process 2 compared to other variables on the number of adverse effects registered by subjects in the USA, 55 or under, using a Poisson regression, and found that it increases the count of adverse events by 264.33%; having a highly significant impact on the adverse effects (6.59 times larger effect than “comorbidity”); although less significant than the impact of the sex or obesity (R¹²³).

104. Comparing exclusively the 95 non-obese male recipients in the USA, Process 2 results in a 211.77% increase, with an impact 4.84 times larger than comorbidity. The evaluation is similar (214.49% increase) using a negative binomial regression.

When Christine Cotton later compared the 252 Process 2 recipients to six separately selected groups of 252 Process 1 recipients (each controlling for comorbidities, sex, or obesity), 61.5% of the Process 2 recipients had at least one adverse event versus 29.4–34.1% of the Process 1 recipients, and 58.7% versus 20.2–27.0% had one deemed product-related.¹ Since the 252 Process 2 recipients all came from four sites, some of this difference could reflect how those sites recorded adverse events, which is exactly why the comparison Pfizer planned (and then cancelled) needed to happen.¹

Evidence of Differences in Lymphadenopathy for Process 1 versus Process 2 Lots and Inaccurate Statements by the MHRA

105. Lymphadenopathy is the medical term for swollen lymph nodes. Differences in the reported rate of lymphadenopathy between the first two vaccine doses in the clinical trial (C4591001) and the rate of lymphadenopathy from the third (booster) dose are indicative of the different adverse event profiles of process 1 versus process 2 vaccine product. The reason is that the first two doses in the clinical trial were overwhelmingly from vaccine doses made with process 1, whereas booster doses given many months later would have been manufactured using the process 2 for commercial supply.

106. The “MHRA’s Public Assessment Report for the Authorisation for Temporary Supply” of Pfizer/BioNTech’s COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine BNT162b2 describes the rate of lymphadenopathy based on the preliminary report from clinical trial C4591001¹²⁴. Although the public assessment report (MHRA’s PAR) was updated for adolescent vaccination in June, 2021, the cover page states that it “summarises the initial assessment at the time of approval in December 2020. The text in the original report remains unchanged.”

107. The lymphadenopathy rates from clinical trial C4591001 are listed on page 42 of the MHRA’s PAR as 0.3% and classed on page 50 as “uncommon,” defined as occurring greater than 0.1% of the time but less than 1%.

108. In the MHRA’s June, 2023, document titled “Information for Healthcare Professionals on COVID-19 Vaccine Pfizer/BioNTech (Regulation 174)”, the lymphadenopathy rate is given in Table 1¹²⁵. It is listed as uncommon. But note (a) at the bottom of the table states: “A higher frequency of lymphadenopathy (5.2% vs 0.4%) was observed in participants receiving a booster dose (third dose) compared to participants receiving 2 doses.” A rate of 5.2% would move the lymphadenopathy from the ‘uncommon’ classification to ‘common.’ It represents a greater than 13-fold increase in the rate of lymphadenopathy¹²⁶.

109. One possible explanation for this increase is that the booster dose provokes a stronger immune reaction, which leads to a higher rate of lymphadenopathy. However, careful and highly accurate imaging studies of lymphadenopathy performed by Israeli researchers at Tel Aviv University’s Medical School using PET-CT scans concluded that “the overall incidence of any-grade VAHL [vaccine-associated hypermetabolic lymphadenopathy] following the third COVID-19 vaccine dose is basically similar to that reported following the first and second COVID-19 vaccine doses. However, VAHL cases following the third dose were found to have shorter duration and low uptake intensity after the first 5 days from vaccination”¹²⁷. This means not only that lymphadenopathy following booster vaccination was not worse than the first two doses, but in some ways it was even less severe.

110. The results of the Israeli research are not consistent with the 13-fold increase in the rate of lymphadenopathy reported by MHRA between the first two doses and the third dose. This Israeli research was not conducted as part of clinical trial C4591001. It was based on individuals who received commercial doses supplied to Israel after the vaccine rollout, meaning doses made using process 2.

111. On this basis, it can be concluded with very high confidence that the increase in the rate of lymphadenopathy reported by the MHRA is due to the switch from process 1 doses used in the clinical trial to process 2 doses used later for booster doses.

112. Although the source of the 5.2% rate of lymphadenopathy is not given, in light of the timing at which booster doses were first administered in the second half of 2021, they would had to have come from booster doses made using process 2. An increased rate of lymphadenopathy in booster doses is also supported by the Pfizer/BioNTech clinical trial C4591031 on the first booster (3^rd dose), which reported a lymphadenopathy rate of 2.7%¹²⁸. This represents an increase of over 6 times from doses 1 and 2 and is also not consistent with the finding from the Israeli research cited above (see fn. 12) showing no difference in lymphadenopathy between the first booster and earlier doses.

The Cut-off Dates weren’t “Data Cut-off”

113. While traditional trials have a date of cut-off which corresponds to the chronological end of the study, here the trial continued both after the EUA and the BLA applications. Practically, while the BLA data submitted documents indicating a cut-off date of March 13, 2021, the CRF kept being edited up to April 1st, 2021, as visual inspection of any CRF file reveals - see for example point 65. This makes reproduction of the BLA application - such as the exact COVID cases communicated, nearly impossible without full access to the audit trail [which Pfizer has not released for most participants]. A vast quantity of the adverse effects “re-qualified to COVID symptoms” are concerned by these “last minute edits”. To provide but a few examples of ambiguities related to the data cutoff, to be found among the 1028 CRF files:

• 12231058¹²⁹ - the adverse events of fatigue and injection site pain occurring on March 2nd & 3th, 2021, were entered on March 23, 2021, and are present in the database (R¹³⁰).

• 12261769¹³¹ - the subject has a COVID visit on March 18, 2021 entered on March 19, 2021 that is not present in the database.

• 12312420¹³² - COVID visit A from March 12 to March 15, 2021, entered March 16, 2021, and COVID visit B, 26.3. - ongoing, entered March 29, 2021, with a positive local swab on page 235, are both not present in the database.

• 12313610¹³³ - the SAE of atrial flutter, which occurred on February 19, 2021., was entered on March 20, 2021, with the site having sent the initial safety database on March 19, 2021, page 181, and is present in the database.

Exploitation of the Medical History Loophole

114. The Study Protocol¹³⁴ specified major loopholes in the recording of the adverse events, practically meaning that preexisting conditions or conditions parts of the medical history of the subject wouldn’t be registered depending on the appreciation, by the principal investigator, of the “related nature” of the condition.

115. This protocol loophole, whose full characterization is a tedious work which isn’t the subject of this current report, has allowed the dissimulation of considerable “worsening of conditions”. For example, subject 10791044¹³⁵ sees a “worsening of osteoarthritis”, resulting in his two knees being replaced, or 11171146’s aortic aneurysm being deleted from the AE log due to the PI’s assessment.¹³⁶

Evidence the two products aren’t perfectly similar: elevated rates of Menorrhagia in post-marketing studies

116. Posterior studies found high rates of Menorrhagia ; for example 12+%¹³⁷ in a study on female students and staff at a university in Saudi Arabia. A meta-analysis¹³⁸, by Al Kadri, found a pooled prevalence of 24.24 % (95 % CI: 12.8–35.6 %).

117. By opposition, only 4 cases of Menorrhagia had been reported as Adverse events during the trial (R¹³⁹) - 2 among the BNT162b2 recipients (0.065% of the 3087 women 16 to 39).

118. Inspecting the Medical History records (R¹⁴⁰), we found 131 BNT (1.77%) recipient female subjects 16 to 59, with a past medical history of Menorrhagia - for all of whom the event status was set to “LAST SUBJECT ENCOUNTER”. The rate increases to 1.93% (143 subjects) if we include other conditions which could be considered by the PI has related to Menorrhagia (Dysfunctional uterine bleeding, Ovarian haemorrhage). This remains very far from the post-study rates, and would lead us to conclude that the very high rates of Menorrhagia in the post-marketing studies [which I covered here] are another consequence of the switch to Process 2.

Anomalous patterns in PCR Testing

119. There were a total of 110 days of the study from July 27, 2020 - first randomization, to the November 14, 2020 data cut-off, last data point included in the submission to the VRBPAC and the Polack paper in the New England Journal of Medicine. During this time period, following their first dose, 448 positive PCR tests were recorded in the Placebo arm, and 163 positive tests in the BNT162b2 arm (R¹⁴¹).

120. Restricting, per protocol, to the tests recorded with symptoms within 4 days, brings the totals to 306 Placebo & 55 BNT162b2. The rate of BNT162b2 discarded by lack of symptoms (-66.3%) against the Placebo discarded (-31.7%) is of course highly statistically significant [and again inflated efficacy].

121. We highlighted on point 69 the impact of the re-qualifications of the COVID symptoms. It is therefore useful to proceed to a similar “symptomatic analysis” considering COVID symptoms logged, no matter the dataset sustained by the clinical trial staff. This angle brings the totals to 70 symptomatic BNT162b2 with positive PCR (+15) against 316 Placebo (+10), and doesn’t explain the imbalance. The accrual of symptomatic PCR tests for each arm is represented in the following chart.

122. We analyzed by country (R¹⁴²), for USA & Argentina, the percentage of subjects reporting symptoms, resulting in a Central PCR test within 4 days, as per protocol. We smoothed the rendering on a rolling average of 3 days. The following chart exposes how, in the USA, each wave of symptoms reported is followed by a significant drop in the testing of both arms. Although it is possible that tests shortages would have occurred during high COVID waves, it is - in absence of adequate documentation - also possible that tests manipulations, such as delaying the recording of symptoms, of other forms of tests mitigation, would have occurred during these periods of drastic testing rate drops. This isn’t, in any case, the testing pattern we could expect in a trial aiming to provide reliable results.

123. The same visible pattern, of drastic drop of the testing rate following the periods of intensive symptoms reporting, is visible - and also happens while symptoms reported are low, in Argentina (R¹⁴³) - posing further questions on the events which impacted the testing of the subjects reporting symptoms.

Anomalies related to the PCR testing on subjects’ COVID visits

124. The randomized subjects in phase 3 triggered a total of 10,219 “symptomatic visits” - each “symptomatic visit” corresponding to a suspected COVID due to symptoms, but which may generate several physical visits by the subject to the site at several days’ intervals (R¹⁴⁴).

125. According to the protocol, samples taken during symptomatic visits were to be tested locally and “centrally”, at the Pfizer Pearl River laboratory, New York, USA. The central laboratory tests were the preferred method for a COVID case to be confirmed¹⁴⁵, although depending on protocol variations, local tests approved by the FDA could be used¹⁴⁶. A total of 9474 central tests and 5489 local tests were recorded at the cut-off date of March 13, 2021.

126. 87.2% of the 4421 symptomatic visits made by subjects in the BNT162b2 group resulted in PCR tests being sent to the central laboratory, compared with 88.3% of the 5798 visits made by subjects in the placebo group. This minor difference was not significant.

127. In contrast, at the same date, only 43.5% of the 4421 symptomatic visits made by subjects in the BNT162b2 group had resulted in local PCR tests, compared with 50.8% of the 5798 visits made by subjects in the placebo group. This difference is highly significant and demonstrates that a significant difference in treatment between the groups, by the teams in charge, occurred at certain sites.

128. It is also important to observe the treatment of subjects for PCR tests on symptomatic visits at the end of the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) in the United States on November 14, 2020. By this date, 5415 symptomatic visits had been recorded. Only 65.1% of BNT162b2 & 65.5% of Placebo patients had had their symptomatic visits result in central testing.

129. Although less statistically significant, the difference in treatment for local tests persists. This difference in treatment, which was evident before the emergency marketing authorization was obtained, has not yet been explained.

130. Analyzing symptomatic visits resulting in central PCR tests within the protocol window (R¹⁴⁷), the number of tests carried out within the time limit drops to 54.2% for BNT162b2 and 56.2% for Placebos. The proportion of local tests carried out within the protocol window also falls, while continuing to show a significant difference in treatment between the groups, with 29.2% of tests done for the BNT162b2 and 33.3% for the Placebos (p-value 8.103e-06).

Between the EUA and BLA submissions, some vaccine recipients’ central laboratory PCR results were changed from negative to positive and some testing records disappeared, altering the inputs that determined who counted as a COVID case.¹ Furthermore, Christine Cotton found that before the November 14, 2020 cutoff, 652 vaccine recipients versus 517 placebo recipients missed a required COVID illness visit, further indicating cases were looked for differently in each arm.¹

Analysis of the local tests by sites shows the infringements to the blind are located in the United States

131. Returning to the perspective envisaged in point 127 (March 13, 2021 by COVID visits - otherwise said as the BLA data was analyzed), we can focus on these anomalies by test site in order to identify abnormal sites (R¹⁴⁸). We performed a Fisher’s exact test on sites with at least 50 symptomatic visits in total in order to identify significantly unbalanced sites - systematically under-testing the BNT162b2 group compared to the Placebo group.

132. To evaluate if less frequent, varied or severe presentations of symptoms could explain the offset, we measured the difference between symptoms reported by subjects and visits, on these sites, using a t-test (t = -4.729, p-value = 2.451e-06). The mean of symptoms reported by subjects on their visits was 2.49 for the BNT against 2.89 for the Placebos, would indicate that the BNT subjects reported significantly less symptoms than the Placebo.

133. However, given the questionable categorization of symptoms from COVID visits to adverse events we highlighted via Augusto Roux’s testimony on point 46 [whose severe reaction, per Roux,¹ was attributed by Polack to COVID despite Roux having a negative test], and the wide scale of the phenomenon shown on points 61 to 66, it is necessary to observe that this effect reverses if we consider the COVID-like symptoms reported across all datasets. The following chart represents the percentage of symptoms reported by subjects, with a 7 days rolling average, in both arms, which resulted in being qualified as a COVID symptom and associated to a COVID visit in the adequate dataset. It illustrates that the proportion of symptoms reported by the BNT ending in being qualified as symptomatic visits remained consistently lower, up to the EUA & unblinding.

Recapitulation of the major anomalies at sites scale

The major anomalies at “site scale” can be categorized between those impacting the blind:

• anomalies to deviations, Point 33

• anomalies in the PCR rates between arms, Point 131

and those involving serious concerns that subjects may have been removed from the records:

• anomalies in the randomization numbers communicated, Point 25

• anomalies in the identification numbers of the subjects, Point 48

The following tables are summarizing the impacted sites ; leaving only 17 sites over the 153 listed to be “spared” by major anomalies.

Conclusion

Because of how much money is behind the mRNA juggernaut, stopping it is immensely challenging—even for reformers in the government who have done all they can to oppose it. Revisiting the original lie that propped up the vaccines is hence extremely valuable—both because it provides a legal basis to challenge the vaccines on the grounds of fraud, and because it gives people who are now open to questioning the vaccine a way to save face, as they can blame their previous mistakes on having been tricked by a fraudulent trial rather than poor discernment on their part.

Much of this ultimately results from the fact we have settled for an absurd standard—we are expected to trust and follow “the science” when crafting public policy, yet at the same time we are forbidden from seeing the actual data underlying it, thereby allowing experts, corporations, and authorities to present renditions of the data we take at face value despite them being at odds with reality (e.g., we were continually prohibited from accessing the safety monitoring data (such as V-safe) that showed how dangerous the vaccines were, and while everything these independent auditors were able to uncover about the COVID vaccine trials is immensely concerning, it is likely only the tip of the iceberg, as much of the key data was never available to them).

Fortunately, things are changing. Consider the following:

•After decades of denying the existence of vaccine injuries, under RFK’s leadership, the HHS recently took major actions to acknowledge and address them, by creating an NIH center for studying and treating them, modernizing VAERS (as the existing system is structured to make reporting very challenging), requiring electronic health records to capture adverse events so they become part of a patient’s medical record, and developing reimbursements for physicians to diagnose, report, and treat vaccine injuries.

•Senator Ron Johnson, through years of persistence, has managed to become chair of the Senate’s premier investigative body (and likely the only party which can obtain Pfizer’s raw data and case report forms). Since then, he has been aggressively using his authority to obtain hard proof of the malfeasance that occurred within the (increasingly corrupt) HHS, along with many other parties which played a role in this debacle (e.g., Pfizer), and for the first time in history, has provided concrete (and widely seen) evidence of what happened—particularly since HHS, under RFK’s direction, has been providing Senator Johnson’s investigative team with the material they require (whereas in the past great efforts would have been made to dodge the subpoenas).
Note: I feel one of the most consequential effects of the midterms will be who gains control of the Senate, as if control flips, by Senate rules, it will no longer be possible for Senator Johnson to conduct many of the critical medical investigations he ran for office to perform.

•Ken Paxton (who is currently in a close race for one of Texas’s U.S. Senate seats and has been one of the leading attorneys general opposing vaccine mandates) has also been one of the few officials willing to directly take on the industry behind them. In 2023, he sued Pfizer for misrepresenting its vaccine’s efficacy, specifically the “95% effective” figure from the trial discussed throughout this article.¹ In January, he launched an investigation into the financial incentives behind childhood vaccine recommendations, issuing over 20 civil investigative demands to entities including UnitedHealthcare and Pfizer to determine whether providers, insurers, or manufacturers unlawfully failed to disclose the wages, bonuses, and employment tied to vaccinating children (a system his office notes has led to children across Texas being expelled from pediatric practices because of their vaccination status).¹ In August, he expanded the investigation to the American Academy of Pediatrics (whose recommendations shape much of pediatric practice), questioning why the only time the AAP has ever broken from the CDC’s vaccine recommendations was when its top donors stood to lose money.¹ Beyond indicating that things are changing (as politicians respond to public sentiment and becoming increasingly willing to touch the vaccine issue), this also highlights the potential for significant shifts in federal policy if the midterms favor advocates for vaccine safety and choice.

Note: just as the New York Times recently published an unhappy piece about RFK’s efforts to have vaccine injuries federally acknowledged, it just published a mortified one about Paxton’s (which numerous colleagues told me I had to read).

•Ed Dowd (who recently joined Substack and has been making excellent content about vaccine injuries and understanding the financial system) was invited by Fox to speak about AI and the economy. To my surprise, the host abruptly pivoted to Ed’s COVID vaccine injury work, let Ed discuss the issue without interrupting him, plugged his Substack, and then concluded by complimenting his work and stating they’d like to have him back—suggesting that a huge cultural shift is now emerging at Fox on this previously taboo topic (perhaps because employees there have been injured by the vaccines).

One of my foundational beliefs is that policy often follows public opinion, and more and more, it seems the groundswell of support we need to overturn the mRNA juggernaut is emerging. As such, I feel one of the most critical things we can do now is to recognize we are now in the majority (as a series of vaccine polls earlier this year showed) and that it is time to shift the public narrative by openly discussing the issues with vaccination and the vast fraud that accompanies it, such as what Pfizer did throughout its clinical trials. It is still mind-blowing to see how fast the societal perspective on vaccination has shifted, and I am profoundly grateful both to be part of this shift and, through your support, to finally be able to help make things better.

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• One of the most fascinating things about our era is how quickly everything changes. Within a few decades, I watched technology enter media and entertainment, dramatically enhance them, and then degrade them once the technology rather than the artist became the focus, leaving so much of what was “optimized” no longer feeling real, as the imperfections that revealed a human presence were engineered away.

• These optimized products function as supernormal stimuli, exaggerated imitations that our instincts prefer to the real thing. As such, they often trap us in hollow dopamine spikes that deplete the nervous system until it can no longer perceive subtler and more nourishing experiences, and erode the capacity for presence they replaced.

• Medicine, for instance, has undergone the same transformation, as the art of perceiving and adapting to each patient has been replaced by protocols built for a statistical average that few people actually match. This is hidden behind a carefully marketed facade that, once you are inside the system, often gives way to something callous and disorganized. Physicians who still practice medicine as an art are stigmatized yet sought out because they succeed where standardized care fails, while those who reduced themselves to protocols have made themselves replaceable by AI.

• Ultimately, this maze of synthetic substitutes keeps many from ever asking the most important question in life: what it is meaningful for them to do with their time here.

Hearing the Person

Recently, I heard two pop songs from the late 1990s-early 2000s on the radio, and what struck me was how much better they were than almost anything you hear now. This surprised me, as back then, I never gave that music a second thought (to me it was simply what the kids of that generation listened to), so I hadn’t noticed this before. I then decided to listen to more hits from that time to see if the pattern I’d noticed in those two songs held up.

Once I saw that it did (at least in the good songs from that period), I realized that I needed to write this article, as that pattern touches upon a broader process that has permeated our society and I believe began in the 1990s as this time was the inflection point for tech engulfing our society.

Note: one of the things that characterizes our society is the dizzying speed at which technology now reshapes it, something I believe began in the 1990s, as while much of this technology emerged in the 1980s, in that decade it felt more like something new and interesting being added to our reality rather than something that reshaped it.

In the case of music, the 1990s and early 2000s were a major transition point, as digital editing spread throughout the 1990s, and Auto-Tune (pitch-correction software released in 1997) reached the top of the charts with Cher’s 1998 “Believe,” the first number one hit to make its use obvious.¹ These new technologies were initially used to enhance the presence of the artist within the music—but in time they stopped serving the artist and began replacing them.

The difference, in turn, that I noticed in these “ancient” pop songs was human presence, which I felt provided a much deeper emotional experience than modern pop music. For example, on those recordings, you could hear the people making them (e.g., a singer’s voice straining on a line, a breath before a phrase, a drummer hitting one beat harder than the others, or a note held a bit longer because the singer felt like it)—none of these were necessary, and from the standpoint of a perfect recording they are errors, but at the same time, they feel much more real than a synthetic production.

Modern production, in contrast, has gotten extremely good at removing that evidence, as every note can now be tuned, every beat locked to a grid, every breath erased, and every vocal assembled from dozens of takes until nothing is left that shows the person who made it. The result is technically flawless, but simultaneously feels empty—suggesting the more perfectly you reproduce a human performance, the less human it tends to feel.

However, production itself is not the problem, as many of the songs that struck me from that time period were heavily produced. Rather, the question I believe matters is not “how much production is there?” but “does the production make the human being more audible, or less?” So in the enduring songs from that era, the technology made the singer sound larger than life while still leaving them unmistakably human, whereas in much of what followed, it gradually replaced them.

What Was Lost in the Digital Transition

In his 2011 book Too Much Magic, Jason Benlevi (who spent over two decades writing the marketing for Silicon Valley product launches) argued that we are fundamentally analog beings who live in a world of infinite gradations, whereas computers are built on yes or no. For a century, recorded media were analogies of reality that only partly fooled us and worked because our imagination filled in the gaps, and while digital promised far greater fidelity through mathematical precision, he argued it also caused fidelity and veracity to separate, as digital media could now portray fiction flawlessly.

This touches upon one of my core beliefs. A lot of the meaning and depth in life exists within the ambiguity between one and two (or yes and no), but in our society’s desire to control and define nature so we can eliminate uncertainty, we erase that space. Similarly, I have long been drawn to ancient spiritual texts, as their ambiguity (e.g., in many older languages, words have multiple meanings or can be constructed in different ways) requires the reader to hold each of those possibilities at once, which in many cases causes them to coalesce into a holographic concept that exceeds what any rigidly defined set of words can convey (and can create an expansion within your mind that transforms your perception). My writing has, in turn, been heavily influenced by this style (although I try to have concrete scientific data serve as the scaffolding this ambiguity can emerge from), and likewise, I’ve long found things that are rigidly defined, where you can predict their entire course in advance, to be sterile and devoid of “life.”

Note: unfortunately, our society frequently does the opposite, taking things that are anything but certain and forcing them into strict dichotomies (e.g., “you’re either with us or against us”) to manufacture a sense of certainty. Psychologists refer to the trait underlying this as an “intolerance of uncertainty,” and a substantial body of research shows it frequently underlies anxiety and other emotional disorders.^1,2 In my eyes, the rigidity we notice is usually just the visible surface, as underneath it, an intolerance of uncertainty feeds a drive for control, which in turn reinforces it until the entire stance hardens into dogmatism.

Benlevi opened his book with a Twilight Zone episode where a criminal dies and wakes up somewhere he wins every bet and gets everything he wants, until he becomes so bored that he complains this is not the heaven he expected, at which point his host reveals he is in the other place. As Benlevi put it, too much magic becomes no magic at all.¹

Mattias Desmet made a related observation in The Psychology of Totalitarianism using Galileo’s pendulum. A real pendulum behaves chaotically and idiosyncratically, whereas a virtual one programmed to follow Galileo’s law exactly would look nearly identical yet be a dead phenomenon lacking the living chaos of the real one. From this, he argued that every rational model of a natural phenomenon leaves an unexplained remainder, and that this remainder is not meaningless noise, but rather the essence of the thing itself—which is why whenever we artificially reproduce something natural (e.g., lab-grown meat), something is lost that is often barely visible yet crucial.

That said, while it felt to me like something was lost when we switched from analog to digital, with music the research shows very little was lost in the digital medium itself. In a 2007 study, hundreds of double-blind trials found listeners could not hear any difference when high-resolution audio was converted to CD quality,¹ and a 2016 meta-analysis of 18 studies found listeners could only slightly tell the two apart (although noticeably more once trained to).¹

However, what was lost was what digital made cheap. Digital “brickwall” limiters let engineers squash recordings so that everything sat near maximum volume, and from 1990 to 2010 (often called the “loudness war”), a standard marker of this compression dropped dramatically.¹ One analysis of the UK charts, for example, found hit singles lost about 20% of their dynamic range between 1985 and 2005 despite recording technology continually improving.¹ Likewise, editing, quantizing, and pitch correction went from costly interventions to default settings.

Note: I did locate one study that looked at something the fidelity tests did not: how listeners felt. Around 2000, a German psychologist (Jürgen Ackermann) had 53 participants listen to the same music through an analog system, a digital system, and an intermediate CD/tube system (in randomized order) while assessing their emotional states.¹ With the analog system, nervousness dropped from a baseline of 1.8 to 1.1, whereas with the digital system it rose to 2.2. Likewise, 47 said the analog system improved their well-being (vs. 31 for digital), and while none said the analog system made them feel worse, 16 said this of the digital one. Most interestingly, one participant (a musician) could not hear any difference between the systems, yet his emotional responses shifted the same way as everyone else’s.

Engineering the Listener

As someone who is sensitive to sound, I constantly notice how much of modern music is designed to pull the nervous system in one direction or another—which while sometimes enjoyable to surrender into, I typically disdain as I am highly averse to external influences manipulating me. With modern music, there are far too many techniques to list, but a few include:

• Compression that keeps everything loud, which grabs attention but fatigues the ear and removes the contrast between quiet and loud that carries emotion.

• Scheduled build-ups and drops, where tension and release are put in because they reliably move the body rather than because the song calls for them.

• Changing how fast a song feels once you have synchronized to its groove (e.g., the drums suddenly hitting half or twice as often), which pushes you up or down without the tempo actually changing.

• Relentless repetition of a hook, which exploits the “mere-exposure effect” (where simply hearing something enough times makes people feel they like it).

• Building songs around streaming metrics. Since a play only counts once someone listens for 30 seconds, intros shrank from 20-25 seconds in the mid-1980s to about five seconds by 2015 as hooks were pushed to the very start.¹

Each of these gimmicks, in turn, targets a reaction in the listener rather than expressing something in the performer that is real.

Why the Human Gets Engineered Out

A genuinely compelling artist is very hard to find, as they have to be discovered, developed, given time, and allowed to make choices that are not commercially obvious, and their particular voice can neither be predicted nor replaced. A production pipeline, in contrast, can be controlled, so once technology became good enough to produce a plausible imitation of human expression, there was much less incentive to find an extraordinary human being in the first place.

Benlevi traced the entertainment economics behind this. Unlike a car (which must be built again for each sale), a film or song is made once and sold forever, so a studio’s real assets become its library and its brands. In turn, the rational strategy became protecting them through sequels, remakes, aging stars reprising familiar roles, and formula, since audiences tend to prefer a known brand over something new regardless of its merit¹ (e.g., the Fast & Furious franchise, which began in 2001, now has an eleventh film in the works, slated for 2028).

This was not always the case. After Easy Rider was made for under a million dollars and earned about twenty times that, studios realized cheap personal films by young directors could pay off enormously, opening a ten-year window where risks could be afforded because a flop was survivable. American Graffiti (which executives had turned down) was made for under a million and returned about 70 times its budget, giving George Lucas the chance to make the science fiction film those same executives had also rejected (Star Wars).¹ At a few hundred million dollars per film, however, no one can afford to gamble on a strange idea (or get investors to support it), so everything converges on the safe formula—not unlike how most pharmaceutical products reuse established franchises rather than developing new transformative therapies.

Lucas’s own trajectory highlights this systemic issue. He famously kept the merchandising rights to Star Wars, creating the template for the franchise machine that later swallowed it, and he made his early films as an outsider who had to rely on actors, puppets, and practical sets, whereas once he had unlimited money and technology, his prequels were widely criticized for falling into the same trap. Benlevi, for instance, felt Yoda was funnier and more lovable as a Frank Oz puppet acting alongside the live cast than as the computer-generated character he later became, and noted that the later films’ actors were often speaking to characters who were not there when the scenes were filmed (which showed).¹

The marketing around The Phantom Menace likewise shows how product began to drive story. PepsiCo’s reported $2 billion Star Wars tie-in deal, signed in the lead-up to the film, remains the largest single cross-promotion in movie history,¹ and the film went on to generate close to $2 billion in merchandise sales, several times its $431 million box office.¹ Its heavily hyped podrace, for instance, was widely praised as a visual spectacle, yet numerous reviewers felt it played more like an advertisement for its tie-in video game, which was released alongside the film and turned that single scene into an entire game.

Disney (which bought Lucasfilm in 2012) then industrialized this, as its sequels brought back the Millennium Falcon, another Death Star, and a lonely young protagonist on a desert planet (the identifiable surface features of what had worked). Marvel shows the same thing even more clearly. One of its earlier films was a fairly grounded thriller that gave its scenes room to breathe, whereas a later and enormously hyped installment by the same directors felt like one small scene after another designed to elicit hype from the audience before cutting to something else, and after watching it for 15 minutes on a plane, I completely lost interest in the entire franchise. Since the same filmmakers made both, the issue was not a loss of talent, but a machine (servicing dozens of franchise characters while delivering a spectacle every few minutes) that no longer let that talent show.

Note: Benlevi made a related point about the old epics, observing that when the crew of Lawrence of Arabia waited for hours in brutal desert heat to capture the right sunrise, the actors could not help but rise to it, and that this kind of adventure cannot take place in front of a workstation.¹

Video games went the same way. Within that community, some of the most positively remembered games come from the early 1990s, as this was when technology had finally crossed the threshold where a sophisticated and immersive gaming experience could be made, and developers had to find the best ways to use the limited resources each platform provided to create a memorable experience for players. However, after this period, the increasing sophistication and capacity of gaming platforms (and the cost of developing increasingly complex games) shifted the focus to creating immensely immersive experiences that could be formulaically replicated rather than the heart of the game (which is what many gamers felt ultimately mattered). Then, as recurring revenue became the increasingly prevalent business model, developers found as many ways as possible to tie gamers’ time up with repetitive tasks to complete—transforming games from a challenge to finish to something which effectively became an extra job to manage (or put differently, older video games valued your time because they didn’t have space to do much else).

Note: one of the best illustrations of the success of this business model was the robust secondary economy that emerged for selling imaginary items collected within games for cash on sites like eBay, which became a large enough industry that there were mainstream reports of inmates at a Chinese labor camp being forced to collect one popular game’s currency at night after a day of hard labor.

Many other examples of the same principle exist, as I have noticed this pattern across almost every medium. When the tools were limited, creators had no choice but to focus on depth and meaning, whereas once technology made it possible to make anything elaborate, the elaborateness became the focus and the depth became an afterthought.

Furthermore, all of these examples highlight that there can be two very different kinds of friction within them: the kind that reveals a person (e.g., strain, imperfection, and risk) and the kind that exists to manage you (e.g., upkeep and daily logins). Modern products, in turn, have consistently gotten rid of the former while adding more and more of the latter.

Real Art and Synthetic Mimicry

In my eyes, real art falls into a few tiers:

• Master artists, who create messages that transcend the limits of their medium and touch on something profound.

• Great artists, such as the singers many people loved for their natural voices.

• Working artists, who produce art as a craft and do it well enough that most people enjoy it.

Below these are two counterfeits. Synthetic art tries to model successful artists and then improve and standardize what it extracted so it can be endlessly reproduced (and it tends to copy great and working artists rather than masters, since what makes a master cannot be extracted). Postmodern art, in contrast, is work whose value is declared by critics, institutions, and price tags rather than felt by its audience (e.g., in 2024, a banana duct-taped to a wall sold at Sotheby’s for $6.2 million).¹

A skilled forger can reproduce every brushstroke of a masterpiece while capturing none of what made it worth copying, and in the same way, industry did not reproduce the essence of what people loved. Instead, it reproduced the measurable surface (e.g., the iconic ship, the big set piece, the familiar faces, or the explosive chorus) since that was all it could identify, and each copy carried less of the original, like a photocopy of a photocopy (and likewise modern remakes of older songs often flatten them both melodically and emotionally). Once the essence was gone, the only thing left to turn up was intensity, which is why these productions keep getting more expensive, louder, and more spectacular while feeling emptier.

The two counterfeits also have something in common, as synthetic art engineers what you feel, while postmodern art dictates what you are supposed to think, and both bypass the thing real art depends on (your own honest response). In real art, someone expresses something and you respond however you respond, whereas manufactured entertainment decides your reaction first and then engineers the cues to produce it (e.g., a swelling score, a slow-motion landing, or a quip right when a moment risks becoming real). This gives you the feeling without the person who would have earned it, which is why it fades as soon as it is over.

Note: people consistently place a far higher value on what they believe is real (e.g., identical paintings were rated as more beautiful and valuable when labeled human-made rather than AI-made),¹ so that belief is frequently manufactured to make more money. In the 1930s and 1940s, for instance, Han van Meegeren made a fortune selling forged Vermeers that leading experts hailed as masterpieces,¹ yet today, critics describe them as not even very good fakes, as once the belief was gone, it became clear what had been missing all along.¹ The synthetic art industry, in turn, relies on this same gap, as it only needs to seem real enough for people to believe it is.

The Supernormal Trap

In the 1930s, Niko Tinbergen (who later won a Nobel Prize) discovered that birds which laid small, pale-blue speckled eggs would rather sit on giant bright-blue plaster dummies covered in black polka dots.¹ He called these “supernormal stimuli,” imitations that exaggerate the cues an instinct responds to and hence pull on us harder than the real thing.

A lot of modern life now consists of supernormal stimuli. Processed food exaggerates the cues of nourishment, pornography exaggerates the cues of intimacy, and engineered entertainment exaggerates the cues of a meaningful experience, each stripped of what made the original nourishing. As I discussed in detail here, these products are designed to trigger the brain’s dopamine-driven “temporary pleasure” circuit rather than its serotonin-driven “sustained happiness” circuit, shifting reality from a smooth flow you feel connected to into a series of jarring, disconnected spikes where happiness is always fleeting. As with any addiction, each spike is then followed by a low, and stronger and stronger spikes are needed to recreate the original effect.

Note: the psychologist Bruce Alexander (best known for his “Rat Park” experiments) has similarly argued that addiction becomes widespread when people are dislocated from the family, community, and traditions that once held them, as addictions become the best substitutes they can find for the wholeness they lost (a point a reader raised in relation to how rapidly technology now reshapes our lives).¹

What industry strips out of its products (presence, friction, and the imperfect person), in turn, is exactly what feeds the deeper neural circuits that give life meaning—which is why so many of them spike us and then leave us empty.

Worse still, this becomes a closed loop. When the nervous system is depleted and fatigued, it loses the ability to appreciate the subtleties of life and can only register strong stimuli.¹ Human presence is subtle, and perceiving it takes sustained attention, so the more people are fed engineered spikes, the less able they become to perceive what was removed, at which point demand for it disappears and industry has even less reason to provide it.

Note: many believe the shorter and shorter segments between cuts on our screens have greatly eroded the attention span needed to perceive deeper meaning in life.¹

Similarly, when I was young, an older woman I greatly admired once told me that “comfort makes you weak,” and the older I get, the more true I find it. Almost every modern product is sold on its promise to remove friction from our lives, yet that friction is what shapes us into capable human beings. Biology reflects this as well, as the right dose of stress (e.g., exercise, heat, cold, a small dose of an oxidative therapy, or a real challenge) is what builds this critical capacity for the body, while its absence leads to atrophy.

Note: rest (which the nervous system needs) and comfort are two very different things. Cyclic rest allows you to recover so you can meet the demands life places upon you, whereas the comfort we are continually sold to experience at every moment instead removes those demands, so the capacity to meet them never develops (e.g., consider the difference between a deep night’s sleep after a hard day of physical work and a day spent scrolling on a couch, or how someone who has always been shielded from stressful situations struggles with emotional adversity they encounter).

Relationships

These dynamics are especially consequential in relationships. Just as the music industry found that rare humans were hard to source and standardized the sourcing, dating apps have done the same to finding a partner, as people become profiles sorted by measurable features (e.g., height, photographs, and a few lines of text), while what actually makes someone worth loving (their presence) cannot be captured in a profile and is filtered out at the first step as everyone instead selects for the superficial (but largely irrelevant) characteristics they’ve been conditioned to focus on.

Likewise, filtered photos, edited messages, and a curated self-presentation are the relationship equivalent of pitch correction, so people meet the edited version of someone and are then let down by the real one.

In many ways, Instagram and dating apps have turned everyone into their own public relations department, as the practice of presenting a lovely facade while keeping the reality out of view (which was once something corporations did) is now how ordinary people present themselves to each other. As a result, people come to long for images that do not exist. One study that compared online daters’ profiles to their measured height, weight, and age, for example, found 81% had misrepresented at least one of them, and participants rated their photographs as the least accurate part of their profiles.^1,2 Desmet argued this is a large part of why digital interactions are so appealing, as uncertainty is the defining feature of our relationships with others, and behind a digital wall, people have a far greater sense of control and can selectively show some things while hiding others—yet they pay for that comfort with a loss of real connection.¹

More importantly, the things that actually determine whether a relationship will work (e.g., someone’s character, how they handle conflict, or whether they show up when things are hard) cannot be shown in a profile at all, so the format selects against exactly what matters most, which is why I believe online dating has become such a trap.

Note: another major issue with online dating is that like all other continual growth industries, they are incentivized to retain their customers (and recurring revenue), so these deliberately addictive platforms have become increasingly structured to prevent people from successfully finding longterm partners (and hence leaving the platforms).

The same test applies here as everywhere else: does the technology make the other person more present to you, or less? A phone call can bring someone far away closer, while texting through dinner makes the person across the table disappear. Most importantly, friction is where intimacy forms, as disagreement, imperfection, and staying through difficult times are what deepen a bond, whereas a relationship optimized for constant excitement and no friction resembles a franchise film (a string of highs with nothing building underneath).

Artificial Intelligence

AI is the purest version of everything described so far. AI-generated writing, for instance, is essentially the average of everyone with no one in particular behind it, and it can produce smooth, correct, plausible prose indefinitely. As with music, the question is whether the tool makes the writer more audible or replaces them.

Note: a common criticism I received when I started this newsletter was that the articles were too long (as the industry standard was much shorter) and needed more editing—which I resisted, as when the editors made things “correct,” it broke the flow and deliberate ambiguity I was trying to create, resulting in something that felt more rigid and sterile to me and didn’t feel “worth” putting my heart into writing. Now that AI has made everything like that, I rarely receive these same complaints, as it has become increasingly clear “perfect” writing leaves much to be desired.

While there are a lot of things I find quite aggravating about AI-generated content (e.g., a major part of why I put so much work into doing the DMSO project the way I did was to make the literature on it widely available so others could write about it and spread the therapy—but instead people just keep making error-filled AI-generated summaries of it that miss the key points because it only takes a few minutes to do), by far my largest fear is what AI will do to human connection.

An AI conversation removes almost all the friction of a relationship, as it is always available, never tired, never in a bad mood, and never needs anything from you. Each of these feels like an improvement, but each takes away something that matters. Desmet, for instance, cited a workplace expert’s observation that in digital interactions our minds are tricked into believing we are together while our bodies know we are not, so what is exhausting about them is being constantly in the presence of the other person’s absence.¹ A real relationship asks you to be responsible for someone else’s needs (which is a large part of what grows you), a friend’s praise means something because they could have withheld it (just as a live note matters because the singer could have missed it), and when you hurt or delight a real person, it changes them, which is how we learn who we are to others. Approval from something designed to approve, in contrast, is the equivalent of a pitch-corrected vocal.

The danger is not just that people will use these optimized interactions, but that they will come to crave them over humans. Like Tinbergen’s plaster eggs, AI companionship exaggerates the cues we instinctively respond to (e.g., attention, agreement, patience, and understanding) without any of the cost, so it wins on instinct, and real relationships (which cannot compete on those cues) get neglected. Early evidence supports this, as in 2025, studies by OpenAI and the MIT Media Lab found that higher daily chatbot use correlated with more loneliness, dependence, and problematic use, along with less socializing (although it is not yet clear if the use drives the loneliness or lonely people are drawn to it).¹

Note: those who sell these substitutes often keep the real thing for themselves. Benlevi, for example, observed that the executives promoting virtual meetings and telepresence still flew around the world in their own jets because being there counts,¹ and many tech executives send their children to schools where screens are banned.¹

The Standardization of Medicine

Medicine has gone through the same transformation. The art of medicine was once the ability to perceive the specific person in front of you (e.g., their constitution, history, and circumstances) and creatively adapt the treatment to them, but over the last few decades, “to improve the standard of care” (or to make it easier to sell medical services at scale) this has steadily been replaced with guidelines, algorithms, and protocols every physician is trained to follow. Since those protocols come from trials that measure the average response across large populations, they work best for a statistical average patient few people actually resemble, and they also require each patient to be sorted into a defined category, which eliminates the ambiguity where the true nature of an illness often lies. In reality, patients differ immensely in their constitutions, sensitivities, and responses to treatment, so a rigid model that treats them as identical is the medical equivalent of snapping every note to the grid. A 2015 commentary in Nature, for example, highlighted that the ten highest-grossing drugs in the United States help between 1 in 25 and 1 in 4 of the people who take them.¹

Note: with every drug, there is a dose threshold where it will cause toxicity, and a dose where it will be effective (with risky drugs like chemotherapy having those two thresholds be very close, while safe ones like DMSO have them very far apart), so a key part of bringing a drug to market is determining the standardized doses to use that will help but not harm the greatest number of patients. The core dilemma mass-marketed medicine faces is that these thresholds change depending upon the person, and as such, drugs are frequently brought to market at doses which are toxic to a “sensitive” subset of the population (which the industry in turn solves by systemically gaslighting these patients by saying their condition isn’t “real”)—all of which became far worse with the mRNA vaccines because their doses were not standardized and their persistence within the body caused them to sometimes become much larger (detailed here).

The same economics that reshaped entertainment drove this. A gifted clinician cannot be standardized, audited, or scaled, whereas a protocol can, and once a protocol becomes the standard of care, rather than being the floor, it becomes the ceiling and deviating from it becomes a liability, even when the deviation is exactly what the patient needed (e.g., the medical system goes after doctors who have the temerity to space out the childhood vaccine schedule to reduce injuries).¹ This accelerated as physicians were moved from independent to corporate practice (e.g., prior to the Affordable Care Act, 60-70% of physicians worked in independent or doctor-owned practices, whereas by 2024, only 35-42% did).^1,2 Likewise, the technology layered on top of this followed the same course as everywhere else, as one study found that for every hour physicians spent face-to-face with patients, they spent nearly two more on electronic health records and other clerical work (plus another one to two hours each night).¹ Here too, the question is whether the protocol or the technology extends the physician’s ability to perceive the patient or overrides it.

Note: a more detailed discussion of determining the appropriate dose for patients is discussed here.

Similarly, a famous ancient Chinese passage describes a cook who carved oxen so skillfully that his knife stayed sharp for nineteen years, because rather than hacking through them, he had learned to feel his way through the natural spaces between the joints, and many of the most talented physicians I have come across feel it describes how their own practice evolved. Much of modern medical technology has gone in the opposite direction. Electrocautery, for instance, allows surgeons to cut without the finesse a scalpel requires (while also leaving dead tissue behind that raises the rate of post-surgical infections), imaging has steadily replaced the physical exam (despite physical touch often being one of the most critical parts of a patient encounter), and robotic surgery, as the trauma surgeon James Miller observed, uncouples the surgeon’s hands from the tissue they are working on, to the point many recent graduates can no longer competently perform open operations (all of which was discussed in more detail here). For example, in one case, none of his hospital’s urologists were comfortable removing a kidney without the robot, and those same surgeons later led the hospital’s safety committees, where they redefined “competence” so it no longer had anything to do with patient outcomes.¹

Note: this is also why I have so far left the majority of what I use in practice out of my writing, as most of it depends not only on a broad diagnostic framework, but also on individualized judgment rather than a protocol that can be safely followed without supervision—so if I discuss them here, the information won’t be actionable for the majority of readers and real risks exist of using it incorrectly (whereas with agents like DMSO, while they still often require patient specific protocols and detailed guidance on use, the margin of both safety and efficacy they have is so much wider, a large number of readers benefit from them while no real issues have occurred).

Conversely, much of what draws me to medicine is its uncertainty, as if I knew exactly what to do in every situation and was simply executing a script, it would be incredibly boring (and drive me insane), yet that is the direction those who wish to micromanage society have continually tried to push it. Notably, when Pierre Kory (who directed an ICU) had a nurse point out that he ordered far fewer tests than any of his partners, he analyzed every intensivist on his service over 18 months and found no correlation between how much each one tested and how their patients fared, whereas he ordered by far the fewest tests yet had the second highest patient survival¹ (mirroring my own experience that the most clinically successful integrative doctors tend to order the smallest number of tests).

As a result of this relentless push for standardization, physicians who still approach medicine as an art are frequently stigmatized by their peers and institutions, yet they also attract a large number of patients, because they so often succeed where algorithmic care has failed (e.g., those who fall outside the mean). For instance, as I recently detailed, many of those who deviated from failing protocols during COVID to save their patients were fired, reported to their licensing boards, or driven out of hospital medicine entirely.^1,2

Note: shortly after I wrote that article, I finally figured out what the massive incentive hospital administrators had to push remdesivir and ban non-covered therapies (e.g., ivermectin), to the point they were willing to go to court to keep doing so (so the article has been updated to include that).

Much of this is concealed by a principle as old as public relations itself: present a lovely facade, have everyone amplify it, and few will notice what is behind it. Edward Bernays (often called the father of public relations) laid out in his 1928 book Propaganda how public opinion could be shaped across almost every area of society, and later named this practice the “engineering of consent.” On the simplest level, this is the attractive package around a product you throw away shortly after buying it, whereas in medicine, it takes the form of a carefully cultivated image of a trustworthy and caring system (e.g., between 1997 and 2016, direct-to-consumer advertising for health services rose by 430%, while spending on the health services themselves rose by 90%).¹ Once you are inside the system, however, that image frequently gives way to something callous and disorganized, where few seem to know what to do (particularly once you are injured by a medication like an SSRI or COVID vaccine).

Note: for as long as I can remember, facades have never really pulled me in the way they seem to for most people, which I think ultimately accounts for many of my unconventional perspectives.

Maintaining that facade also requires the people within it to become uniform. In The Managed Heart, the sociologist Arlie Hochschild documented how flight attendants were trained to produce standardized warmth on demand, to the point many became estranged from their own smiles,¹ and hospitals now do much the same (e.g., one major hospital required all of its non-physician staff to complete training in a scripted communication framework designed to raise its patient satisfaction scores).¹ Institutions, in turn, pitch-correct their people just as studios pitch-correct a vocal, so every interaction comes out pleasant and on-brand, but once you need something the script does not cover, there is often no one left who can step outside of it.

Unfortunately, most people only discover this once they are already in trouble. Economists call products whose quality cannot be judged even after they are used “credence goods,” and medicine is a textbook example, as patients usually cannot evaluate a surgeon’s skill or a hospital’s care and must instead rely on the image they are shown (e.g., a surgeon’s reported blood loss is not a reliable measure of their skill, so the only way to really know is to ask people who have been in the operating room with them).¹ The gross failures we witnessed throughout COVID, in turn, broke this facade, and as a result, between 2020 and 2024, the share of Americans with a lot of trust in doctors and hospitals fell from 71.5% to 40.1%.¹

Ironically, the physicians who reduced themselves to protocols have made themselves replaceable, as anything that can be reduced to an algorithm can be automated. In a 2024 randomized trial, for example, GPT-4 working alone outperformed physicians in diagnostic reasoning on complex cases, regardless of whether those physicians had been given access to it.¹ As in the arts, the work AI is taking first belongs to those who had already turned themselves into the most standardized version of their craft, while what it cannot replicate is the very thing standardization stripped out..

What Is It All For?

Everything discussed here ultimately leads to one question: what is the purpose of being alive, and what is meaningful for me to do with my life? Few people ever really explore it, partly because their nervous systems are overwhelmed and deadened, and partly because they are trapped in an endless maze of distractions, attention-grabbing productions, and the rat race needed to pay for them so they never have time to settle on the deeper question.

In the 1600s, Blaise Pascal wrote that all of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone. People have always avoided facing this question, as it is uncomfortable and requires confronting mortality and the possibility that one’s life is being wasted. What is new is that the avoidance has been industrialized, as distraction has been engineered, optimized, and made endlessly available, and it is profitable in part because someone who stops to ask what they are here for becomes a much worse customer.

Industry also sells substitutes for meaning itself. Progression systems in games (e.g., levels, skill trees, and completion percentages) give the feeling of accomplishment without accomplishing anything, watching others do things gives the feeling of having done something (which Benlevi illustrated with sports fans shouting “we won” from their couches), and engineered emotion gives the sensation of a meaningful experience without the life that would have produced one. As a result, the question of what is worth doing with one’s life does not just go unasked, but instead gets answered by default, with substitutes convincing enough that most never notice it was skipped.

Note: many readers shared that they have begun deliberately seeking out the opposite (e.g., playing music with friends rather than consuming it, live performances, or simply cooking food from a farmers market and spending time outdoors with a friend), and one reader shared that she had recently retired in part to reclaim that fullness of experience.

Benlevi noted that entertainment began around the fire, where the empty darkness of night and the stars above gave our ancestors’ imaginations room to wander, and where they first told stories about why they existed. That kind of emptiness where nothing is demanding your attention, is what this question requires, and it is exactly what has been engineered out of modern life as we become increasing divorced from nature and what is real within it. Since meaning tends to come from what asks something of us (e.g., effort, risk, responsibility, and creating rather than consuming), the things that would bring us closest to answering it are the very things we are most eagerly being spared.

Desmet concluded his book by arguing that the essence of life is found in what always escapes rationalization and mechanization—in what disappears from a conversation when you digitize it, in the difference between a mother’s womb and an artificial plastic one, and in the difference between the warmth of an electric heater and that of a wood stove.

For this reason, I believe the most important step is restoring the health of the nervous system, as a healthy nervous system can once again perceive the subtle and the real, finds the hollow promise of the next spike far less appealing, and can sit quietly long enough for that question to finally arise.

To learn how other readers have benefitted from this publication and the community it has created, their feedback can be viewed here. Additionally, an index of all the articles published in the Forgotten Side of Medicine can be viewed here.

•There is a widespread belief that elevated cholesterol is the “cause” of cardiovascular disease. However, a large body of evidence shows that there is no association between the two and the real data shows lower cholesterol significantly increases one’s risk of death.

•An alternative model (which the medical industry buried) proposes that the blood clots the body uses to heal arterial damage, once healed, create the characteristic atherosclerotic lesions associated with heart disease.

•The evidence for the blood clot model is much stronger than the cholesterol hypothesis and provides many critical insights for treating heart disease.

•The primary approach to treating heart disease is to prescribe cholesterol lowering statin drugs (to the point, nearly a trillion dollars have now been spent on them).

•Unfortunately, the benefits of these highly toxic drugs are minuscule (e.g., at best taking them for years extends your life by a few days) and the harms are vast (statins are one of the most common pharmaceuticals that severely injure patients).

•Multiple 2026 studies have further shown statins do not extend the lives of the healthy individuals they are primarily prescribed to, while a new wave of expensive patented cholesterol drugs is being approved simply for lowering cholesterol—many of which are being marketed to the same “statin intolerant” patients the industry insists are imagining their injuries.

•In this article we will explore the specific injuries caused by statin drugs, the forgotten causes of cardiovascular disease, and our preferred treatments for heart and vascular diseases.

The more I study science, the more I come to see how often fundamental facts end up being changed so that a profitable industry can be created. In the case of heart disease, I very much believe that is the case and in this publication, I’ve tried to expose the erroneous information that predominates our understanding of this subject (e.g., previously I’ve discussed why our model of how the heart pumps blood in the body is incorrect, the forgotten Russian research that shows the heart intelligently controls how blood moves within the body, and how blood pressure management is filled with erroneous premises that exist to perpetually sell medications).

Within cardiology, I believe one of the most damaging falsehoods is that cholesterol causes heart disease and that taking statins (or their newer lucrative equivalents), which lower cholesterol, are the key to preventing heart disease. This is because, in addition to those “facts” being incorrect, statins are also some of the most dangerous and widely used pharmaceutical drugs on the market.

Cholesterol and Heart Disease

Frequently, when an industry harms many people, it will create a scapegoat to get out of trouble. Once this happens, a variety of other sectors that also benefit from that scapegoat existing will jump on the bandwagon. Before long, a false belief that harms society becomes an unquestionable dogma that becomes very difficult to overturn because many corrupt parties have a vested interest in maintaining the lie.

For example, various easily addressable factors (which often exist in the first place because they benefit an industry) are responsible for the chronic diseases we face in society and our vulnerability to infectious diseases (e.g., the obese and diabetics were much more likely to catch COVID-19). However, by saying all diseases result from insufficient vaccination, it gets all those destructive industries off the hook and creates a huge market for selling vaccines and treatments for these illnesses. Thus, since there are so many vested interests behind the vaccine paradigm, it is very difficult to overturn—despite the fact there’s no evidence vaccines ended the era of infectious disease but the existing evidence does show they are responsible for the massive epidemic of chronic disease that is sweeping our country.

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

Note: a case can also be made that the mass adoption of vegetable oils lead to this increase in heart disease. Likewise, some believe the advent of water chlorination was responsible for this increase.

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

However, what many don’t know (as this study is still frequently cited) is that this result was simply a product of the countries Keys chose (e.g., one author illustrated that if Finland, Israel, Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, France, and Sweden had been chosen, the opposite would have been found).

Fortunately, it gradually became recognized that Ancel Keys did not accurately report the data he used to substantiate his arguments. For example, recently an unpublished 56 month randomized study of 9,423 adults living in state mental hospitals or a nursing home (which made it possible to rigidly control their diets) that Keys was the lead investigator of was unearthed. This study (inconveniently) found that replacing half of the animal (saturated) fats they ate with vegetable oil (e.g., corn oil) lowered their cholesterol, and that for every 30 points it dropped, their risk of death increased by 22 percent (which roughly translates to each 1% drop in cholesterol raising the risk of death by 1%)—so as you can imagine, it was never published.

Note: the author who unearthed that study also discovered another (unpublished) study from the 1970s of 458 Australians, which found that replacing some of their saturated fat with vegetable oils increased their risk of dying by 17.6%

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

However, despite a significant amount of data that now shows lowering cholesterol is not associated with a reduction in heart disease (e.g., this study, this study, this study, this review, this review, and this review) the need to lower cholesterol is still a dogma within cardiology. For example, how many of you have heard of this 1986 study which was published in the Lancet which concluded:

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

Note: when people are diabetic (which leads to the liver having to process too much sugar) the liver will convert to fat and then create more cholesterol to transport some of that fat. In these instances, many argue the actual issue is an excess of sugar rather than elevated cholesterol levels it causes.

Likewise, despite us endlessly being told to avoid saturated fats, the evidence does not show this prevents death. For example, a large 2025 systematic review found there was no statistically significant benefit to reducing saturated fats and concluded:

The findings indicate that a reduction in saturated fats cannot be recommended at present to prevent cardiovascular diseases and mortality.

Statin Marketing

One of the consistent patterns I’ve observed within medicine is that once a drug is identified that can “beneficially” change a number, medical practice guidelines will gradually shift to prioritizing treating that number and before long, rationals will be created that require more and more of the population to be subject to that regimen. For example, consider what happened with blood pressure:

Because of this, blood pressure levels were enforced that are much more likely to harm than help the elderly (and likewise to create many debilitating side effects along the way).

In the case of statins, prior to their discovery, it was difficult to reliably lower cholesterol, but once they hit the market, research rapidly emerged stating that cholesterol was more and more dangerous, that lower and lower blood cholesterol levels were needed, and, hence that more and more people needed to be on statins.

As you would expect, similar increases also occurred within the USA. For example, in 2008-2009, 12% of Americans over 40 reported taking a statin, whereas in 2018-2019, that had increased to 35% of Americans.

Given how much these drugs are used, it then raises a simple question—how much benefit do they produce?

As it turns out, this is a remarkably difficult question to answer as the published studies use a variety of confusing metrics to obfuscate their data (which means that the published statin trials almost certainly inflate the benefits of statin therapy), and more importantly, virtually all of the data on statin therapy is kept by a private research collaboration which consistently publishes glowing reviews of statins (and attacks anyone who claims otherwise) but simultaneously refuses to release their data to outside researchers, which has led to those researchers attempting to get this missing data from the drug regulators.
Note: as you might have guessed, that collaboration takes a lot of money from the pharmaceutical industry.

Nonetheless, when independent researchers looked at the published trials (which almost certainly inflated the benefit of statin therapy) they found that taking a statin daily for approximately 5 years resulted in you living, on average, 3-4 days longer. Sadder still, large trials have found this minuscule “benefit” is only seen in men. In short, most of the benefit from statins is from creative ways to rearrange data and causes of death, not any actual benefit.

Most recently, a 2026, meta-analysis of the 10 randomized trials (85,829 participants) which exclusively enrolled people without any prior heart, vascular, or cerebrovascular disease found that cholesterol lowering drugs (primarily statins) did not reduce the risk of dying (3.9% of both groups died) or of dying from heart disease. Remarkably, the authors also pointed out that the reduction in deaths the statin collaboration reported came from pooling healthy individuals with those who already had heart disease.

Note: this is very similar to Pfizer’s COVID vaccine trial which professed to be “95% effective” against COVID-19, but in reality only created a 0.8% reduction in minor symptoms of COVID (e.g., a sore throat) and a 0.037% reduction in severe symptoms of COVID (with “severe” never being defined by Pfizer). This in turn meant that you needed to vaccinate 119 people to prevent a minor (inconsequential) case of COVID-19, and 2711 to prevent a “severe” case of COVID-19.

Furthermore, a clinical trial whistleblower later revealed that these figures were greatly inflated as many individuals in the vaccine group who developed COVID-19 like symptoms were never tested for COVID-19. Likewise, these benefits were fleeting as it was shown the “efficacy” of vaccines rapidly waned (disappearing a few months after vaccination). Worse still at six months of follow-up in both Pfizer's and Moderna's trials, more vaccinated than unvaccinated individuals died, and similarly a peer-reviewed reanalysis of Pfizer and Moderna's trial data showed that one was more likely to suffer a severe adverse event from the vaccine than a hospitalization from COVID-19.

In circumstances like these where an unsafe and ineffective but highly lucrative drug must be sold, the next step is typically to pay everyone off to promote it. For example, to quote Chapter 7 of Doctoring Data:

The National Cholesterol Education Programme (NCEP) has been tasked by the National Institutes of Health to develop guidelines [everyone uses] for treating cholesterol levels. Excluding the chair (who was by law prohibited from having financial conflicts of interest), the other 8 members on average were on the payroll of 6 statin manufacturers.

In 2004, NCEP reviewed 5 large statin trials and recommended: “Aggressive LDL lowering for high-risk patients [primary prevention] with lifestyle changes and statins.”

In 2005 a Canadian division of the Cochrane Collaboration [who were not paid off] reviewed 5 large statin trials (3 were the same as NCEP’s, while the other 2 had also reached a positive conclusion for statin therapy). That assessment instead concluded: “Statins have not been shown to provide an overall health benefit in primary prevention trials.”

Note: the primary reason no cure for COVID-19 was ever found was that the guideline panel for COVID-19 treatments was handpicked by Fauci, comprised of academics taking money from Remdesivir’s manufacturers. Not surprisingly, the panel always voted against recommending any of the non-patentable treatments for COVID-19, regardless of how much evidence there was for them.

Likewise, the American College of Cardiology made a calculator to determine your risk of developing a heart attack or stroke in the next ten years based on your age, blood pressure, cholesterol level, and smoking status. In turn, I’ve lost track of how many doctors I saw proudly punch their patient's numbers into it and then inform them that they were at high risk of a stroke or heart attack and urgently needed to start a statin. Given that almost everyone ended up being “high risk” I was not surprised to learn that in 2016, Kaiser completed an extensive study which determined this calculator overestimated the rate of these events by 600%. Sadly, that has not at all deterred the use of this calculator (e.g., medical students are still tested on it for their board examinations).

Note: one of the most unfair things about statins is that the healthcare system decided they are “essential” for your health, so doctors who don’t push them are financially penalized, and likewise patients who don’t take them are as well (e.g., through life insurance premiums).

So, despite the overwhelming evidence against their use, many physicians believe so deeply in the “profound” benefits of statins that they do things like periodically advocating for statins to be added to the drinking water supply.

In tandem, a cancel culture has been created where anyone who challenges the use of Statins is immediately labeled as a “statin denier” accused of being a mass murderer and effectively canceled. Recently, one of those dissidents, Dr. Aseem Malhotra British cardiologist who has also spoken out against the COVID vaccines went on Joe Rogan where he discussed that dirty industry and the remarkable parallels between how Statins and the COVID vaccines were pushed on the world:

Note: one of the most remarkable facts Aseem shared was that the previously mentioned statin collaboration (which militantly insists less than 1% of statin users experience side effects) also created a test one could utilize to determine if one was genetically at risk for a statin injury—and in their marketing for the test said 29% of all statin users were likely to experience side effects (which they then removed once attention was brought to it).

In addition to doctors being forced to follow these guidelines, patients often are too. Doctors often retaliate against patients who do not take statins (similar to how unvaccinated patients were denied essential medical care during COVID-19). Employers sometimes require cholesterol numbers to meet a certain threshold for employment (although they never did anything on the scale of the COVID-19 vaccine mandates placed on workers around America). Similarly, life insurance policies often penalize those with "unsafe" cholesterol numbers.

Worse still (as the processed food industry intended by creating the war against cholesterol) even if we disagree with this dogma, its difficult to boycott it as the entire food supply has replaced healthy saturated fats (e.g., from animals or coconuts) with unhealthy vegetable oils. Fortunately, after decades of work, we’ve managed to bring enough attention to this subject (especially with RFK’s recent support for returning to saturated fats) that market pressure is at last emerging to make seed oil free foods become more widely available to consumers.

Statin Injuries

My primary issue with the statins is not the fact we waste billions each year on a useless therapy (approximately 25 billion per year in America alone). Rather, it’s the fact that they have a very high rate of injury. For example, the existing studies find between a 5-30% rate of injuries, and Dr. Malhotra, having gone through all the existing evidence estimates that 20% of statin users are injured by them.

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

Statins in turn, are linked to a large number of complications that have been well-characterized (e.g., mechanistically) and described throughout the medical literature.^{1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6}

One group of side effects are those perceived by the patient (which often make them want to stop using the medications). These include:

• A high incidence of muscle pain^{1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7}

• Fatigue^{1, 2} especially with exertion and exercise³

• Muscle inflammation (whose cause remains “unknown”)^{1, 2}

• Autoimmune muscle damage^{1, 2, 3, 4}

• Psychiatric and neurologic issues such as depression, confusion, aggression, and memory loss^{1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9}

• Severe irritability¹

• Sleep Issues²

• Musculoskeletal disorders and injuries^{1, 2}

• Sudden (sensorineural) hearing loss¹

• Gastrointestinal distress¹

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

• Type-2 diabetes,^{1, 2, 3, 4, 5} particularly in women ^{6, 7, 8}

• Cancer^{1, 2, 3, 4}

• Liver dysfunction and failure^{1, 2}

• Cataracts^{1, 2}

• ALS-like conditions and other central motor disorders (e.g., Parkinson’s disease and cerebellar ataxia)^{1, 2, 3, 4, 5}

• Lupus-like syndrome¹

• Susceptibility to herpes zoster (shingles)^{1, 2, 3}

• Interstitial cystitis¹

• Polymyalgia rheumatica¹

• Kidney injury^{1, 2}

• Renal failure¹

All of this, in turn, highlights one of the major issues with our medical system—statins have a high rate of side effects, and since so many people are on them, a lot of people we routinely encounter are being affected by them. However, because of how pervasive those side effects are, we’ve become habituated to them and just see them as “normal.” For instance, Senator Ron Johnson, a reasonably informed and intelligent person (who being a Senator receives top quality medical care) experienced a sudden hearing loss that was investigated but no one could explain.

Recently he shared on Tucker Carlson that after he learned sudden hearing loss (one of the side effects listed above) was a statin side effect and he’d been on one at the time of the hearing loss, he decided to discontinue it, and then noticed his inexplicable dizziness disappeared. In short, Johnson’s experience suggests many others are frequently experiencing unrecognized side effects from routinely prescribed drugs.

In my own case, the moment I first encountered statin patients, I quickly noticed that they would report either numbness in their body, muscle weakness and pain, or impaired cognition, which began after they started the statin and resolved once they stopped using it. Remarkably, we also noticed that whenever they (or we) pointed this out to their doctor, the doctor would become extremely hostile, and then insist that the statin could not be causing the symptom (e.g., “because in all their years of practice, they had never had a patient who was injured by a statin”) and that even if it was harming them, the patient needed to stay on it because otherwise they would get a heart attack and die.

Note: typically, it is the most easy to recognize if something is poisoning the population if you could see the baseline before and after it was introduced (e.g., since the COVID vaccine rollout, patients are much sicker than they were before). Unfortunately, since the historical baseline is never taught in medicine, doctors entering practice always assume the sickness they see around them is “normal” and it’s often not until the ends of their careers that they can see how much sicker and harder to treat patients become throughout the period. As such, while there has been a massive decline in human health over the last 150 years many have corroborated (which I believe began with the introduction of the smallpox vaccine), this decline remains largely unrecognized by the medical system and instead is simply the “new normal.”

In turn, as the years went by, I saw increasingly elaborate excuses being created to protect the statins from an ever-increasing awareness of their dangers. For example, I lost count of how many doctors I knew who cited this 2016 study when patients stated they had been injured:

The nocebo effect, the inverse of the placebo effect, is a well-established phenomenon that is under-appreciated in cardiovascular medicine. It refers to adverse events, usually purely subjective, that result from expectations of harm from a drug, placebo, other therapeutic intervention or a nonmedical situation. These expectations can be driven by many factors including the informed consent form in a clinical trial, warnings about adverse effects communicated by clinicians when prescribing a drug, and information in the media about the dangers of certain treatments.

The nocebo effect is the best explanation for the high rate of muscle and other symptoms attributed to statins in observational studies and clinical practice, but not in randomized controlled trials, where muscle symptoms, and rates of discontinuation due to any adverse event, are generally similar in the statin and placebo groups. Statin-intolerant patients usually tolerate statins under double-blind conditions, indicating that the intolerance has little if any pharmacological basis. Known techniques for minimizing the nocebo effect can be applied to the prevention and management of statin intolerance.

Which, when translated into plain English means that the only reason people believe statins injured them is because they were tricked into imagining the injury, so the best solution is to tell them the symptoms are in their head (a tried and true tactic of the medical industry known as “medical gaslighting”). What I found remarkable about this study was that the doctors who cited it never considered that the nocebo effect could not apply as their patients were not aware things like muscle pain were associated with statins until they experienced them (and then looked up what was happening) or that the discrepancy in the observed rate of adverse events could also be explained by the fact the randomized controlled trials are always funded by the pharmaceutical industry and hence consistently cover up injuries that occur there.

Since then, this argument has been taken to its logical extreme. In February 2026, the same statin collaboration that refuses to release its data published an analysis in the Lancet of 19 of its trials which concluded that 62 of the 66 side effects listed on statin labels (including cognitive impairment, depression, sleep disturbances, and peripheral neuropathy) were not caused by statins, and called on regulators to revise the labels.As before, it declined to share the underlying data with anyone else.¹

What this argument overlooks (as Dr. Malhotra pointed out on Joe Rogan) is how many statin trials were conducted. Before the trial began, participants were put through a “run-in” period on the statin, and only those who stayed compliant and had no serious problems were then enrolled. For example, in the Heart Protection Study (one of the largest statin trials, run by the same Oxford group behind the statin collaboration), 63,603 people were screened, 32,145 entered a run-in period that included several weeks of simvastatin, and 11,609 of them dropped out before the trial ever started,^1,2 after which the trial’s statin was promoted as being “so well tolerated and safe.”¹

Note: the most striking example of this double standard came from the head of the statin collaboration himself. Oxford’s Clinical Trial Service Unit, led by Professor Rory Collins, identified a genetic marker for statin-induced muscle injury, which Oxford then filed patents on and licensed to an American company that sold it as a test to determine if you were likely to be injured by a statin.¹ In Oxford’s press release announcing the test, Collins stated that this myopathy only occurs “in rare cases,” yet the test’s own website told customers that 29% of statin users develop statin-induced muscle problems. Additionally, as Dr. Malhotra shared on Rogan, a Freedom of Information request later found Oxford had received roughly £300,000 from the test (with Collins’s department receiving about £100,000), and once journalists brought attention to all of this, the 29% figure was taken down.

Remarkably, at the same time the industry insists statin injuries are imaginary, it is selling a new generation of expensive patented cholesterol drugs (which are arriving as the existing statins go off-patent) specifically to the “statin intolerant.” For example, Esperion’s bempedoic acid was tested in a 13,970 person trial where every participant had to be statin intolerant (with both the patient and their doctor having to confirm this in writing), while a trial of Novartis’s twice-yearly cholesterol lowering injection (inclisiran) was promoted on the basis of patients on it being 43% less likely to experience muscle-related side effects.

Similarly, the thing that finally made me realize how impressive the marketing for these drugs had been was the recurring battle I would have with relatives. In each case, I would take them off a statin and provide a strong argument with data supporting why they should not be on the drug. At some point later, they would go to their doctor and inform them that their relative (me), who was a doctor, had taken them off the statin.

Their doctor (often a cardiologist), in turn, would tell my relative I was incredibly ignorant, insist they knew the data much better than I did, say I was endangering my relative’s health, and promptly restart the statin, to which my relative dutifully complied. In many cases, I would provide the cardiologist with literature supporting my argument. In each case, they would make an excuse not to read it while simultaneously asserting that they knew all the data and that I, not being a cardiologist, was unqualified to have an opinion on this subject. This made me further appreciate just how challenging a situation patients (without access to the resources my relatives had) were in.

If you take this story and replace “statin” with COVID-19 vaccines, you will see it is essentially what everyone has experienced over the last four years with the vaccines. I suspect this is because, before the COVID-19 vaccines, statins were one of the most profitable medical franchises and, thus amongst the medications most aggressively pushed on patients.

Note: two adverse event reporting systems exist for adverse reactions to pharmaceuticals, MedWatch and FAERS. Like VAERS, they suffer from severe underreporting (it is estimated only 1-10% of adverse events are reported to them). The author in the next section was able to find hundreds to thousands of reports for many of the statin injuries in MedWatch that matched what he had personally observed. However, despite these reports existing, nothing has been done with them, and there is almost no knowledge within the medical community that these adverse events exist.

The Statin Damage Crisis

Throughout this publication, I have tried to make the point that less severe reactions to a toxin are much more common than severe ones. Because of this, if you see a cluster of severe reactions, it indicates that far more, less severe reactions are occurring as well (which is how after learning of a few people in my circle dying suddenly from the COVID vaccines, I was able to correctly predict the scale of the non-fatal injuries that would hit America).

Likewise, if you see a large number of less severe reactions to a pharmaceutical (e.g., the statin-induced muscle and nerve damage), you can predict far more severe injuries are lurking in the background. As the longer list of adverse events I shared above demonstrates, this unfortunately is true for statins. In the next two sections, I will quote one of the best books I have found on this subject:

“Many statin victims say that abruptly, almost in the blink of an eye, they have become old people.”

Duane Graveline MD was started on a statin and soon after developed global amnesia (which is really scary). He decided to stop the statin and recovered.

When I suggested, on the basis of my 23 years as a family doctor, that perhaps my new medicine was the cause of my amnesia, the neurologist replied, almost scoffingly, that "Statins do not do that." He and many other physicians and pharmacists were adamant that this does not occur.”

Eventually, he was persuaded to try the statin again.

The year passed uneventfully and soon it was time for my next astronaut physical. NASA doctors joined the chorus I had come to expect from physicians and pharmacists during the preceding year, that statin drugs did not do this and at their bidding I reluctantly restarted Lipitor at one-half the previous dose. Six weeks later I again descended into the black pit of amnesia, this time for twelve hours and with a retrograde loss of memory back to my high school days.

Later he discovered:

Perhaps stockholder loyalty explains why Pfizer management knew over a decade ago, during the first human use trial of Lipitor, of the cognitive impact to come when Lipitor was released to the public. Of their 2,503 patients tested with Lipitor, seven experienced transient global amnesia attacks and four others experienced other forms of severe memory disturbances, for a total of 11 cases out of 2,503 test patients. This is a ratio of 4.4 cases of severe cognitive loss to result from every 1000 patients that took the drug. Not one word of warning of this was transmitted to the thousands of physicians who soon would be dispensing the drug.

Because of this and other debilitating long-term complications (e.g., previously an extremely fit individual, he developed chronic exhaustion), Graveline became an expert on statin injuries and, in 2014, wrote The Statin Damage Crisis. Many of the points he raised there explain why statins are so dangerous, but unfortunately, are virtually unknown within the medical field.

Statin Mechanisms of Harm

Statins work by inhibiting an easy to target enzyme that is necessary for the production of cholesterol. Unfortunately, blocking that enzyme disrupts a variety of other vital physiologic processes. Let’s review what that enzyme does:

As these compounds are essential for the body, understanding statin toxicity hence requires us to understand what happens when each of these goes missing.

Cholesterol

Cholesterol has a few different essential functions in the body. These include:

•It is the precursor to many different hormones.

•The brain’s synapses (which, amongst other things, form memories) require cholesterol to function. Since cholesterol is too big to enter the brain, glial cells (support cells of the nervous system) synthesize it within the brain. Statins, unfortunately, inhibit glial cell production of cholesterol.

•Cognition, in turn, is highly dependent upon cholesterol. For example, one study found that minor cognitive impairment could be detected in 100% of statin users if sufficiently sensitive testing was done (which again illustrates how minor injuries are more common than severe ones). Likewise, a variety of more severe adverse effects on cognition are also observed such as amnesia, forgetfulness, confusion, disorientation, and increased senility.

Their patient’s rapid descent into dementia after a statin is started is much too often written off by their doctor as senile brain changes or beginning Alzheimer's when the real culprit is their statin drug.

Note: one of the sadder side effects we have frequently observed from the COVID-19 vaccines has been a rapid cognitive decline in the elderly (who cannot often advocate for themselves). When this happens, like statin damage, it is always assumed to be due to “their age” and ignored.

In addition to cognitive impairment, numerous studies have found a significant association between low or lowered cholesterol levels and violence. Likewise, statin dementia is often characterized by aggression.

Finally, one of the most concerning side effects of statins is their tendency to cause ALS (a truly horrible rare disease—curiously also seen in association with the COVID-19 vaccines). This correlation is further supported by many reports of statin ALS improving once the statin is stopped.

Unfortunately, while statin cognitive decline frequently improves when the statin is stopped, in many cases, it instead persists.

CoQ10

CoQ10 is an essential nutrient that both the mitochondria (which power the human body) and the stability of our cell walls depend upon. CoQ10 deficiency caused by statins is generally considered the most common cause of their side effects. This is really sad because those side effects could have been prevented if CoQ10 had been given with the statin. Unfortunately, this is unlikely ever to happen, as doing so would be equivalent to an admission statins could cause harm—in fact Merck patented statin formulations containing CoQ10 (as this would prevent major statin side effects) but ultimately chose not to bring it to market.

Note: the best parallel I know to this is that the primary cause of childhood vaccine toxicity is too many vaccines being given too close together for a child's developing circulatory and nervous systems. Most of the harm can be avoided if vaccines are spaced apart and given later in a child's life—but sadly doctors who promote this approach are routinely targeted (as it is tantamount to an admission vaccines are not 100% safe). Fortunately, while most of the population blindly followed the CDC’s recommended vaccine schedule, we now live in a new era where only 37% of young parents intend to.

Some of the common energy-related side effects of statin CoQ10 deficiency include:

•Mitochondrial damage

•Lack of Energy 

•Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

•Congestive Heart Failure and Fluid Retention

•Shortness of Breath

•Gout

Some of the side effects of statin CoQ10 deficiency weakening cell wall integrity include:

•Hepatitis (interestingly, Graveline noted that the enzyme threshold needed to diagnose statin-induced liver damage was significantly raised after this issue began being commonly reported following statin usage).

•Pancreatitis

•Rhabdomyolysis (rapid breakdown of skeletal muscle tissue)

•Tendon and ligament inflammation and rupture.
Note: this side effect is commonly reported with fluoroquinolone antibiotics, which are known to damage the mitochondria. I suspect it's linked to mitochondrial damage—a subject I discussed further here—as ligamentous laxity often goes hand in hand with vaccine injuries.

Two of the most common consequences of statins CoQ10 depletion are myopathy (muscle pain, tiredness, weakness, and cramps) and peripheral neuropathy (numbness, tingling, or burning sensations, particularly in hands and feet).

Although myopathy is the most commonly reported side effect of statin usage, much of it (e.g., myositis) goes undetected. This is because the symptoms are often not accompanied by blood work showing muscle enzyme elevations and can only be detected by biopsies (which are rarely done relative to blood work). In many cases, this condition is permanent (one expert in statin injury found it was permanent for 68% of her patients, while Graveline found it was for 25% of his). Sadly, in some cases, like statin neuropathies, the myopathies will continue to progress even if the statin is stopped.

One of the sadder things about statins is how aggressively they are pushed on diabetics (under the logic that since diabetics have an increased risk of heart disease, it is critical they take a statin to prevent them from having a heart attack). To highlight the absurdity of this, statins are well known to significantly increase your risk of diabetes (multiple studies have found this), which I suspect is again due to them impairing mitochondrial function. 

Similarly, peripheral neuropathy is a condition diabetics are well known to be at a high risk of. In one study, it was found that the risk of neuropathy (i.e., burning pain with tingling or numbness of the extremities) was increased by 14 to 26 times (depending on the type) for long-term users of statins. Furthermore, other nerve issues, such as neurodegeneration, can be caused by statins.

Combinations of myopathy and neuropathy also occur in statin users, such as progressive pain, weakness, and incoordination throughout the body, alongside trouble rising from a seated position, unsteadiness, and a tendency to fall. Muscles are also observed to develop a distinctive weakened and mushy characteristic and gradually shrink.

Note: in addition to preventing adverse effects from statins, CoQ10 is also one of the more helpful supplements for preventing heart disease.

Dolichol

Very few physicians know of the dolichols, which are a necessary structural component of the cell membrane and play a pivotal role in synthesizing certain proteins (specifically they facilitate N-Glycosylation and O-mannosylation). Graveline in turn argued they were responsible for the synthesis neuropeptides throughout the body, and hence that statins blocking dolichol production would lead to many neuropsychiatric issues.

While I was never able to find research supporting this contention (their role in neuropeptide synthesis), genetic dolichol deficiencies have been linked to neurological changes such as developmental delay, seizures, ataxia, and intellectual disability. Additionally, lower dolichol levels have been linked to Alzheimer’s, brain aging, and the part of the brain where Parkinson’s disease develops has a very high concentration of dolichols (hence potentially making it more susceptible to dolichol deficiences).

Note: Graveline also theorized that statins would increase the production of neurodegenerative Tau proteins and decrease the production of essential selenoproteins, but I was not able to find any evidence to substantiate these arguments.

Nuclear Factor-Kappa B

The small cardiovascular benefit observed from statins may not be because they reduce cholesterol but rather because they have anti-inflammatory properties (inflammation causes heart disease), as they inhibit NF-kB, a vital part of the immune system.
Note: statins also lower the C-reactive protein (another inflammatory protein). Additionally, the extent to which NF-kB is lowered varies depending on the statin (which may account for some of their different effects).

Since this suppresses the immune system, it leads to various potential issues such as reduced protection from infectious disease. For example, many common infectious organisms target NF-kB to assist in infecting their host. However, the more significant issue is that Nf-kB inhibition appears to be linked to cancer.

At five hospitals in Tokyo a group of Japanese researchers studied whether cancer patients had been treated with statins more often than other people. To that end they selected patients with various forms of lymphoid cancers and control individuals of the same age and sex without cancer admitted to other departments at the same hospitals during the same period. A total of 13.3 percent of the cancer patients, but only 7.3 percent of the control individuals were or had been on statin treatment.

In PROSPER [a major statin trial], men and women aged 70-82 were included only. All of them had either vascular disease or had a raised risk of such disease. At follow-up, 4.2 percent had died from a heart attack in the control group, but only 3.3 percent in the treatment group. This small benefit was neutralized by a higher risk of dying from cancer. Indeed, there were 28 fewer deaths from heart disease in the pravastatin group, but 24 more deaths from cancer. If we include non-fatal cancer in the calculation, the cancer difference between the two groups became statistically significant; 199 in the control group and 245 in the pravastatin group. Furthermore the difference between the two groups increased year for year.

In addition to this arguing that some of the benefit of statins “preventing heart attacks” is due to them causing a fatal cancer before you have time to have a natural heart attack, this situation is somewhat analogous to what was seen with the COVID vaccines (which also cause cancer). There, the “benefit” of the COVID vaccines preventing COVID was outweighed by them causing serious conditions such as heart attacks and strokes, but if one only focused on them preventing COVID (which many did), the vaccines could be portrayed as life-saving, even though they overall did the opposite.

This was again seen in the 2026 STAREE trial (the first large trial to test statins in healthy adults over 70). While atorvastatin reduced cardiovascular events (predominantly non-fatal ones), after almost six years of treatment, it did not reduce participants’ combined risk of death, dementia, or persistent disability, and those on the statin had more musculoskeletal, liver, and diabetes-related adverse events. The authors’ explanation for this was that 80% of the deaths in the trial were from non-cardiovascular causes.¹ Additionally, the trial’s statistical analysis plan reveals that midway through the trial, to ensure enough events would occur to maintain its statistical power, the investigators added coronary revascularizations (e.g., stents) to the cardiovascular endpoint the trial was assessing.¹

Likewise, a 2026 French trial randomized 1,180 adults over 75 who were taking a statin for primary prevention to either continue or stop it. After three years, 7.9% of those who continued their statin had died, compared to 7.2% of those who stopped. This is quite important as roughly a third of Americans over 80 are on a statin for primary prevention, often for years and up to the end of their lives.

Note: although statins appear to increase cancer, one of the few benefits I have seen a significant amount of evidence for is their prevention of fatal prostate cancer. My best guess is that this is due to them blocking the production of hormones in the body, and that outweighs the effects of them inhibiting NF-kB.

“Cholesterol” Plaques

One of the tricks to creating a lucrative drug market is to instill a belief throughout the population that everyone can relate to which sells your product. For example, the antidepressant industry spent years convincing the public depression was due to a “chemical imbalance” and because of how successful this campaign was, many sincerely believe it to be true even though it is a complete and utter fabrication.

One of the cleverest campaigns I’ve seen within the medical industry is the widespread belief that heart disease is due to fat clogging the arteries much like they do for a drain pipe.

This marketing slogan in turn is remarkably persuasive as it is easy to understand (to the point that people without a medical background will feel confident repeating it to others), easy to visualize, and highly likely to elicit an immediate sense of disgust.

However, given that there is no link between cholesterol and heart disease, is it necessarily true?

As one of my favorite authors in this field (Malcolm Kendrick) was pondering this question, he looked at another mystery of cardiology—the fact that there is no common thread between the well-known risk factors for heart disease. For example, to calculate the risk of heart disease, England uses a calculator that combines the adjustable risks for heart disease (e.g., age) with the conditions commonly associated with causing heart disease.

Likewise, in a 2017 study, the records of 378,256 English patients were analyzed by an AI system to determine what characteristics put them at the highest risk for a cardiovascular incident in the next 10 years. From that, they found that the ten greatest risk factors (in order) were:

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

Note: a more detailed explanation of the connection between these factors and heart disease can be found within Kendrick’s book (which inspired a significant portion of this article).

Presently, we believe cholesterol somehow gets into a blood vessel and then damages it, leaving an atherosclerotic plaque. Kendrick in turn argued that a competing model (that the medical profession largely buried) provides a much better explanation of the actual causes of heart disease. It is as follows:

1. Blood vessels get damaged.
2. The body repairs those damage with clots.
3. As clots heal, they are pulled inside the blood vessel wall, and a new layer of endothelium (blood vessel lining) grows over them.
4. As this occurs multiple times in the same area, the damage (plaques) under the blood vessel becomes more abnormal.

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

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

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

•When you examine the components of a plaque, they are found to contain the same debris found in blood clots (e.g., see this study and this study).

•There is no established mechanism for how cholesterol from the blood stream can get under the endothelium (even though the existing model depends upon that somehow happening). However, red blood cells (which play a key role in forming clots) contain a large amount of cholesterol (50% of the total amount in the bloodstream), and hence will bring it into the clot as it forms.

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

•The remnants of lipoproteins that are found in plaques are not cholesterol lipoproteins, but rather lipoprotein A, something the body uses to repair damage to the arterial walls. This is supported by the fact elevated blood lipoprotein A levels are associated with increased lipoprotein remnants in plaques and that the specific marker of lipoprotein A is found to concentrate in atherosclerotic plaques. Lipoprotein A in turn is problematic because while it can patch and repair arterial damage, it also makes clots resistant to subsequent degradation, guaranteeing that they will eventually be pulled under the endothelium and transformed into an atherosclerotic plaque (which may in turn explain why elevated lipoprotein A levels are associated with a three-fold increase in the risk of a heart attack or stroke).

Note: another key piece of evidence for the cholesterol hypothesis is that fatty streaks on the lining of healthy blood vessels are thought to serve as the precursors to atherosclerotic plaques. However, when this was extensively researched, that progression was never observed to occur.

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

For example, vaccines are credited with eliminating the infectious diseases that plagued humanity, but it is seldom mentioned that some of the deadliest diseases (e.g., scarlet fever) which had no vaccine also disappeared or that the diseases were already disappearing once the vaccines were introduced (in many cases having almost completely disappeared) and that it is very likely they would have been eliminated regardless of if a vaccine appeared. Conversely, many of the activists at the time felt the primary cause of these diseases was poor public sanitation (as it caused infectious diseases to rapidly spread through the population), so many hard battles were fought to attain it, and many (myself included) believe the vaccination industry essentially stole the credit for what those activists accomplished by getting us public sanitation.

The Causes and Treatments of Heart Disease

Kendrick’s model essentially argues the following:

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

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

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

In turn, I deliberately presented Kendrick’s points in this manner to emphasize that much of his model is in complete agreement with the conventional cardiovascular disease paradigm. However, the key distinctions are that he does not believe cholesterol is the cause of the damage to the blood vessel lining and that he thus believes the other damaging factors (e.g., stress) should receive a greater focus. Likewise, he prioritizes treating the functional impairments of the blood vessels (e.g., reduced nitric oxide synthesis) rather than having a narrow focus on reducing cholesterol.

Note: statins also to some extent have anti-inflammatory effects and increase endothelial nitric oxide. In turn, it is very likely that many of the (small) benefits attributed to statins are a result of these effects rather than their lowering of blood cholesterol.

Furthermore, since his focus is not on cholesterol, that allowed him to identify other factors which may be playing an immense (but largely unappreciated) role in heart disease.

For example, smoking is well recognized to cause heart disease because it damages the blood vessels (e.g., by creating plaques and impairing their ability to make nitric oxide), but much less thought is given to why it does. However, it’s been repeatedly demonstrated that fine particulate matter (which is found in cigarette smoke) directly causes these changes, evidenced by the fact similar damage occurs from breathing in pollution particulates such as those in coal mines, crowded cities (see this study and this study), cooking with a wood burning stove or being exposed to wildfire smoke.

Likewise, lead is quite damaging to the endothelium (e.g., see this study and this study), something many of us were exposed to due to it being added to gasoline, and lead rapidly entering the bloodstream once inhaled. In turn, as lead was phased out between 1975 to 1996 (although its use is still allowed for certain applications such as aircraft, race cars, farm equipment, and boats—where it is occasionally used), a variety of interesting trends exist, such as the fact heart disease exploded in America after we started using it (and this then happening in other European nations). Currently, it is estimated that around 400,000 deaths each year in America are due to lead exposure and in a study of 868 men, it was observed that high levels of lead exposure (assessed by its presence in the bones) increased their risk of dying by over 700 percent.
Note: as lead absorbed earlier in life tends to leach from the bones back into the bloodstream, many have suspected a key cause of aging (e.g., heart disease) is that lead returning without anything being done to address it.

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

Overall, I think Kendrick’s model is accurate, and it is my sincere hope that at some point, the medical profession will begin to seriously consider it (although given how much has been invested into the cholesterol hypothesis, it’s doubtful the industry will ever voluntarily let that market go).

However at the same time, I also believe that this model is incomplete. So, in the final part of the article, I will focus on the additional factors I believe play a key role in heart disease and how they tie into our preferred treatments for heart disease (and other conditions such as COVID vaccine injuries or high blood pressure).

Read more

• Throughout history, ruling elites have relied on a recurring playbook (manufactured crises, public examples, bought-out hierarchies, and economic coercion) to keep populations compliant, and nearly every tactic was used during COVID.

• Federal policies paid hospitals tens of thousands of dollars per COVID admission, boosted reimbursement for ventilated patients, shielded providers from liability, and made remdesivir the standard of care, creating powerful incentives for harmful protocols.

• At a recent Senate hearing, families shared strikingly consistent tragic stories of unvaccinated patients being isolated, told they would die, denied safe repurposed drugs, given remdesivir over their objections, and pushed onto ventilators and into DNRs.

• An attorney who sued hospitals on behalf of 212 families reported that only 3 of the 72 patients who received court-ordered ivermectin died, while every one of the 140 who didn’t get it died—making suing hospitals one of the most effective treatments in history.

• Trauma surgeon James Miller testified that his hospital was never overwhelmed despite the headlines, inflated its COVID numbers, and had infectious disease doctors who seemed to know remdesivir was harmful, and he was driven out of surgery after opening a free clinic for the unvaccinated.

• Because the system steadily removes the doctors who will break a failing protocol to save a patient, trust in physicians and hospitals fell from 71.5% to 40.1% between 2020 and 2024, and it will only return if medicine becomes honest and starts offering things that work.

The ruling elite typically aims to accumulate an immense amount of wealth, which often can only be obtained by extracting it from a large number of people, hence requiring each of those people sacrifices their quality of life to meet the elite’s needs. An excellent meme, in turn, synopsizes the challenge ruling elites seeking this excessive wealth and power have faced throughout history:

Since it is not economically feasible to directly force an entire population into submission (e.g., the estimates I’ve found put 3-5% of the population as the maximum number of soldiers a society can afford to support), a variety of other tactics have been reused throughout history to keep the population compliant. These include:

•Use crises (e.g., war, plague, famine, or financial panic) to justify emergency powers, mute ordinary skepticism, and recast dissent as sabotage. The pattern is ancient: a problem arises, the public demands protection, and the apparatus claiming to provide it expands—all while fear makes the population far easier to divide and control.

•Make public examples of non-compliant individuals so everyone is scared into compliance, or maintain a system for punishing (and monitoring) dissenters that everyone feels is always hanging over their shoulder. This goes hand-in-hand with making the legal and bureaucratic system so complex it can’t be navigated without specialists the system itself trains (raising the cost of challenging it) and that almost everyone is technically in violation of something—which allows the law to be selectively applied so only those who challenge vested interests are arrested or prosecuted.

•Reward compliance, as careers, grants, titles, access, and prestige for those who play along are just as important as the examples made of the defiant (since most people would rather climb the existing hierarchy than tear it down).

•Create a rigid social hierarchy everyone defers to, and then buy out its top (e.g., having a few select “prestigious” medical journals, “impartial” guideline panels, regulatory agencies, or “experts” be deferred to for medical guidance while everything else is ridiculed as “uncredible”—despite each of them typically taking significant pharmaceutical money and only supporting industry narratives).
Note: one major problem in medicine (which is ingrained through numerous compliance mechanisms) is that the majority of doctors are not willing to deviate from standardized protocols and guidelines—even when it is clear they will not produce an acceptable outcome for the patient (instead, in those situations, they will simply insist they did their best and there was “nothing we could do”).

•Structure the system so everyone is forced to work within that hierarchy (e.g., making physician employment, reimbursement, and immunity from lawsuits dependent upon following the “standard of care” and requiring all other healthcare workers to defer their judgement to physicians).
Note: I believe this accounts for the aggressive push to move doctors from independent to corporate practice. For example, Obamacare was structured to facilitate this, as immediately prior to its passage, 60-70% of physicians were in independent or doctor-owned practices,^1,2,3 whereas by 2024, only 35-42% were^1,2 (e.g., a 2024 article was titled “Doctors continue to shift away from private practice, citing insurer payment rates and regulatory issues”).

•Make accumulating money be a guiding principle everyone in the society strives for and then use economic incentives (since they can easily be changed from the top down) to create the desired behavior in the population (e.g., Biden’s federal policies leading to most workers being told they would be fired if they didn’t vaccinate).

•Have every media source parrot the same message needed to maintain the status quo (as this persuades most of the population since people like to follow the crowd). This is often paired with well crafted propaganda that effectively misleads the public.

•Create a devout belief in the state or its leader, which not only makes people compliant but also leads them to attack those who aren’t, thereby making the population police itself.

•Create a robust social framework everyone is expected to fit into that requires compliance at each step while simultaneously training people to be compliant (e.g., go to school to go to college to get a job to get married).

•Atomize the population. Independent bases of loyalty (e.g., extended family, church, guild, or town) are much harder to extract from than isolated individuals, so weakening them leaves people facing the state and the market alone—at which point they are far easier to message, hire, saddle with debt, and shame.

•Whenever something awful and unacceptable will be done, first test and refine it on a marginalized group that cannot advocate for itself, and once it succeeds, use that success to normalize it so it can be done to the general population. This is why I feel it’s critical not to ignore it when this happens to others, as beyond that apathy being immoral, it often sets people up to be subjected to the same thing once it has gained so much momentum it can no longer be easily opposed (best synopsized by the famous Holocaust poem where the speaker did not speak up for each successive group targeted because he did not belong to it, which concludes with “Then they came for me, And there was no one left To speak out for me”).

Note: pages could be written about how this applies across the medical field (e.g., prior to COVID, one of my longstanding frustrations was helping people who’d been severely injured by a pharmaceutical that never should have been in general use, as despite the immense suffering, no one really cared because not enough people were affected). Likewise, I’ve recently been thinking about the broader implications of the Ukrainian government’s decision to sacrifice its population and country to keep the war going so they can continue enriching themselves from it.

•Normalize and gradually increase the exploitation so people view it as a fact of life rather than noticing (let alone questioning) it. For example, since the medical system is structured to continually produce costly proprietary drugs patients must take for long periods (if not permanently), treatments which compete with this model are suppressed. When DMSO was discovered in the 1960s, it was better than any existing therapy for many illnesses, yet it was dismissed for “insufficient evidence” compared to “proven cures” (many of which were later pulled from the market), and it remained suppressed despite tens of thousands of studies showing its utility and foreign healthcare systems (e.g., Russia and Ukraine) adopting it. Most importantly, when I drew interest back to it sixty years later, it was still more effective than any approved therapy for many ailments (which is why that series got so much traction). A major reason I’ve put so much work into it, in turn, was to show that the primary obstacle to solving many of the illnesses we face is the structure of the medical system itself.

Note: I think one of the major mistakes the ruling class has made recently, in the pursuit of further profit, was to escalate the exploitation so rapidly that the public is now noticing it.

•Distract and preoccupy the populace so they don’t focus on the major issues facing them (e.g., with “bread and circuses” or by dividing them so they blame another segment of society rather than the ruling class actually creating their problems).

Note: one of my major fears about AI is that it effectively solves the problem elites have struggled with for centuries (being able to afford enough soldiers to police the population), since AI is much cheaper than a full time soldier and hence makes it feasible to exert a much greater degree of control over each member of the population.

The COVID-19 Pandemic

Since people are uncreative, the above playbook also explains exactly what happened during COVID.

In my own case, through internet posts, I believe I became aware of a problematic coronavirus circulating in China in late December (based on checking my calendars I think it was around December 19th, but when I looked up the timeline it appeared on the internet around December 31st). I subscribe to the view that pandemics are almost always massively hyped up to support the biopreparedness industry (detailed here), but in this case, I instead broke from my preconceived biases and became increasingly concerned about this virus as:

•It seemed to be quite dangerous and highly transmissible
•It seemed highly likely it was an lab-made weaponized pathogen.
•Despite more and more signs accumulating that it was the deadly pandemic the industry had been waiting decades for, rather than hype it up, the media (and the Democrat party) continually downplayed its significance and attacked those who raised concerns about it—even once it had spread to Europe and created a similar wave of problems to what was seen in China.

Given what Fauci and the health system had done to the (marginalized at the time) gay community during AIDS (where as much fear as possible was generated about the virus while everything that worked was suppressed, and a toxic and ineffective drug was pushed through despite public and Congressional pushback), I assumed Fauci and those behind him would do the same thing during COVID. As such, my sense was that if I did not find a way to treat this illness (as I had no faith the medical system would), people I knew were going to die, and likewise, if an effective cure could not be adopted, a lot of really bad stuff was going to happen (most of which subsequently did).
Note: I initially thought COVID would be an issue for about a year before it mutated to a much more benign variant (as this is what always happens), but once I saw how measures were being taken to prevent the population from developing herd immunity to protect the market for the vaccine (which was later admitted by HHS officials), I realized this would drag on far longer, particularly since the design of the vaccines also prevented the population from developing herd immunity.

Because of this, in the months leading up to COVID hitting America, in addition to looking down every alley I could for a viable solution to COVID, I tried to alert my colleagues to the problem we were facing (almost none of whom believed me) until eventually, in the middle of March, one working in NYC sent me this text (along with many more describing the catastrophe they were facing and the climate of fear there):

Note: one of the most common debates about COVID was if “it really mattered.” My own assessment is that the original variants (that many did not see) were much more dangerous than the later ones, individual susceptivity greatly varied, it only hit certain areas really badly (I still don’t know why this is, but my best guesses are either that harmful variants were seeded there or a collective fear in the area worsened the disease), and that as time went on and the industry had established itself but the virus became less dangerous, more and more things were done to justify the industry perpetuating itself (e.g., relabeling flus or automobile injuries as COVID and using harmful hospital protocols to significantly inflate the death rate). As such, depending on which part of that picture you focused on, COVID could appear to be extremely dangerous or completely harmless.

Likewise, once the pandemic started, I was inherently skeptical of sending people to hospitals, as:

•While hospitals are excellent at addressing many serious ailments, they often fare poorly with viral disease (as most effective antiviral therapies are not patentable and hence rejected by medicine).
•Hospitals are very quick to give up on patients and say “nothing can be done.”
•Hospitals are highly resistant to allowing people to try alternative therapies, even when everyone agrees that patient will die and nothing can be done (which had led to more cases than I can count of people being snuck alternative therapies in the hospital and then “miraculously” recovering).
•There was a climate of fear amongst medical professionals (as for the first time in their careers, they felt they were in danger too) so they wanted to minimize their interactions with patients as much as possible (which would lead to even worse care). Likewise, I was expecting below average care because the hospital systems were overwhelmed and locked into a triage mindset.
Note: generally, these issues tend to be much worse with large “prestigious” hospitals than small rural ones (which mirrored what I saw during the pandemic). For this reason, I previously wrote an article on the dangers of hospital care and how one can best navigate it here.

Likewise, I was also alarmed by two federal policies (that were likely shaped by lobbyists):

•First, to combat COVID, a series of (well-intentioned) policies were enacted, such as the government covering COVID hospitalizations for the uninsured (incentivizing hospitals to admit more “COVID” patients and diagnose admitted patients with COVID), shielding healthcare providers from malpractice when treating COVID (thereby incentivizing poorer care and the use of unsafe countermeasures), and the Trump administration doing all they could to secure ample ventilators for America (which incentivized ventilating patients who weren’t good candidates for ventilators and needing people without adequate ventilator training being needed to operate many of them—both of which increased mortality).
Note: one of the least appreciated facts about COVID was that since the spike protein (through disrupting zeta potential) caused microclotting throughout the body (which disproportionately affects the smallest vessels) blood oxygenation was much poorer in the periphery than the internal organs. Since oxygen saturation is measured in the finger tips, many patients hence had critically low blood oxygenation (which requires intubation) despite them clinically being fine, and since it took a while for the medical field to recognize many of these patients did not need ventilation (and that ventilation often resulted in death), for a prolonged period, many were inappropriately vented and died.

Most importantly, to make up for the money hospitals had lost (because they saw fewer patients for other things due to the lockdowns), grant subsidies were given to make up the shortfall. While these were initially automatic and first based on the previous year’s revenue (and then increased so the total came to about 2% of their net patient revenue), those that followed were allocated to hospitals in high COVID impact areas (hospitals that had higher numbers of COVID admissions), where, in addition to their standard reimbursement billing, hospitals received $76,975 per COVID admission, and then, after 4 months, $50,000 instead (as this policy predictably incentivized more “COVID” admissions—corroborated by a senior HHS official, in a media call stating that the reduced funding is due to the number of such admissions surging from about 50,000 in the first round to more than 400,000 by the time of the second round¹). Likewise, the March 27 CARES Act required Medicare to increase reimbursement for COVID hospitalizations by 20%.¹
Note: prior to COVID, Medicare’s average payment for someone hospitalized for a respiratory infection was $13,297, $17,437 if they were also vented for less than 4 days, and $40,218 if vented for over 4 days, so venting patients long-term effectively tripled the reimbursement (before the 20% add-on was included).¹

•Second near the start of the pandemic (4/29/2020) Fauci announced to the world that the antiviral remdesivir would be the standard of care for COVID, not unlike how he’d made the antiviral AZT be the standard of care for AIDS (despite minimal evidence of efficacy, and significant evidence showing it made AIDS worse). Beyond the AZT parallels, it was also a red flag that remdesivir was a non-specific antiviral that needed a home (as it had not worked for Ebola) rather than a therapy specific to COVID, that the existing data for remdesivir was very poor (Fauci even cited fairly lackluster benefits to justify it being the standard of care), and that like AZT, safety concerns existed with the drug.
Note: in contrast to remdesivir, the monoclonal antibodies were new drugs that were specific to COVID, and in turn, they actually worked quite well (which not surprisingly led to their access being increasingly restricted, as being able to treat COVID disrupted the existing business model).

Because of Fauci’s pronouncement, I felt hospitals would aggressively push remdesivir protocols as following the standard of care significantly shielded them from liability. More importantly, in November 2020, Medicare created the New COVID-19 Treatments Add-on Payment (NCTAP) to ‘mitigate potential financial disincentives’ for hospitals to use remdesivir, which paid hospitals 65% of whatever a COVID stay cost beyond the standard Medicare payment (capped at 65% of the outlier threshold)^1,2—but only if remdesivir or a small number of other drugs was billed on the claim (and the code could be used even if the hospital got the drug for free)¹. In turn, giving remdesivir to a patient headed for a long ICU stay meant Medicare would cover most of the losses that would otherwise come out of the hospital’s pocket, and the sicker the patient became (which remdesivir’s toxicity helped bring about), the more that code was worth. This was a huge deal, as normally a hospital had to absorb the first $29,064 of losses on an expensive Medicare case before outlier payments kicked in,¹so for each remdesivir patient, this returned up to roughly $19,000 the hospital would have otherwise lost—making it a done decision virtually every hospital would push for every patient to get it to shield them from the massive potential loss they faced from the more costly patients (which is normally counterbalanced by the profitable ones). Likewise, replacing remdesivir with something like ivermectin removed the code that triggered the payment, so it was actually fiscally worth it for hospitals to go to court to stop its administration.

So, in the early part of the pandemic, I quickly concluded the most valuable thing the hospitals could do for COVID was provide oxygen (and hence sourced a lot of home oxygen concentrators for people), and then went through a very nerve-wracking period of treating people across the country at home (who’d only contacted me late in the illness) and having to repeatedly make the call on whether home care would work or we had to take the risk of a hospitalization (where things became much more complicated due to how frequently things were mismanaged and us not having colleagues at the hospital who could address them for us). Much of this came from the fact that in addition to me expecting the hospitals to be unprepared to correctly treat COVID, they were also incentivized (and equipped) to aggressively hospitalize patients for COVID and have them fare poorly enough to require extended ventilation (which was often fatal).

Later, right before the vaccines came out, for many reasons I’ve detailed in this newsletter, I was concerned they would be unsafe and ineffective—which most of my colleagues refused to consider, as they were desperate for the solution the vaccine offered (as everything previously, possibly by design, had abjectly failed to mitigate the pandemic). So, once the failures of the vaccines became readily apparent, rather than admit it, the medical system kept on doubling down on them, leading to this meme:

As public resistance to the vaccines increased (due to both their toxicity and ineffectiveness), increasingly aggressive measures were taken to promote them. These included staff-vaccination mandates (in November 2021 CMS made COVID-19 vaccination a Condition of Participation for Medicare and Medicaid hospitals, so a facility that did not require eligible staff to be vaccinated could be terminated from those programs and lose that funding¹) and medical professionals (and medical students), along with many on the left, openly holding the unvaccinated in contempt.

On one hand this was alarming as it went against every principle of medical ethics (e.g., doctors are taught to have compassion and understanding for a combative drug addict who has an addiction related hospitalization and may carry hepatitis or HIV) but also did not surprise me, as in the 2015 measles outbreak (where 117 people got measles¹ and one previously vaccinated person died¹), the media incited a hysteria about it (presumably to enable the subsequent push for highly unpopular mandatory vaccine laws) at which point, I saw numerous physicians (and a few medical students who cycled through) that had branded themselves as “highly compassionate” and “viewing every patient’s life as sacred” wish death upon the children of parents who wouldn’t vaccinate them.
Note: I feel one of the major shortcomings in medical education is the minimal focus on ethics (despite physicians carrying a massive ethical responsibility), and as a result, “whatever results in a billable procedure” or “maximizes revenue” often becomes the guiding principle in medical ethics—which I believe explains why contradictory positions are frequently taken such as promoting late-term abortions where the fetus is viable but simultaneously mandating childhood vaccines to “protect the child” (or why many existing ethical principles were thrown out the window during the pandemic because so much money was to be made from feeding people through the hospital pipeline).

In turn, the media began promoting the message that if you did not vaccinate, you did not deserve to take up a bed at a hospital and medical professionals became quite condescending or hostile to hospitalized patients who had not vaccinated—all of which became worse once most of the justifications for COVID vaccination had been lost and a pivot was made to them protecting against severe illness (e.g., Fauci and the CDC director repeatedly claimed that 98-99% of patients in hospital and dying were the unvaccinated¹)—despite the trials not being able to determine this, numerous studies showing vaccinated had a higher hospitalization rate,¹ and later studies showing the benefit was mostly seen for the early variants in the elderly for a few months after vaccination. Because of this, I frequently heard stories of unvaccinated patients being treated poorly in the hospitals (and pushed towards the ventilator pathway), and I began hearing of cases of people lying and stating they were vaccinated to get better care.
Note: I always suspected the unvaccinated numbers were inflated (as the extreme mortality claims did not match what I was seeing), and eventually learned through one activist they’d been able to show their hospital was inflating their percentage of COVID admissions that were in unvaccinated patients. Later, I found out through Pierre Kory that the EMR they used (EPIC, one of the largest ones in the country) made vaccination status “vaccinated” or “unknown” (which was typically the status patients who vaccinated outside the hospital system ended up in—and quite difficult for providers to correct), but “unknown” was then interpreted by the CDC to mean “unvaccinated” (all of which is detailed in his excellent article on the topic). So in essence, rather than unvaccinated increasing your probability of being admitted to a hospital, being admitted to a hospital significantly increased your likelihood of being reclassified as unvaccinated. Most tellingly, EPIC corrected this (so the unvaccinated option reappeared and it was easy to change) after the need to increase unvaccinated numbers decreased.

So, if we take a step back, two things should be apparent:

First, many of the tactics the elite have used throughout history to exploit the population were at play here.

Second, many incentivizes were in place for hospitals to do bad things which went against the ethical conceptions most people hold of how the medical field could ever act.

COVID Hospital Protocol Hearing

Senator Ron Johnson (who understandably wanted to retire) made the decision to run for a third term in 2022 because he was appalled by what was happening during COVID and by the fact that almost no one was advocating for those injured by the COVID vaccines.

From the start of COVID, he sent (mostly ignored) oversight requests to HHS, and as a committee chair, began hosting Senate events questioning how things were being handled, beginning with 11/19/2020 and 12/8/2020 Senate hearings on using repurposed drugs to treat COVID before the hospital stage. Then, after he lost the chairmanship (as Senate control flipped in 2021), he held a series of roundtables and panels on COVID vaccine injuries, early treatment (which was the only solution to the pandemic and hence stonewalled by the medical system), and the other numerous ways the COVID response was mishandled^1,2,3,4 (along with additional events outside the Senate^1,2,3,4). Finally, in 2025, once Republicans regained control of the Senate, he became Chair of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (the Senate’s chief investigative body with broad subpoena powers), and began both aggressively pursuing federal records that would reveal the malfeasance during the pandemic and hosting a series of poignant Senate hearings on the same topics (along with childhood vaccine injuries and the healthcare system in general).^{1,2,3,4,5,6,7}

This week, he hosted a gripping hearing on the hospital protocols used throughout COVID that, due to how much many people related to the horror in it, went viral on Twitter (with many clips receiving hundreds of thousands to a million views). As such, while these hearings are long, I believe many will find this one worth watching in its entirety (especially with the context I previously mentioned factored in).

In the hearing, family members of patients who died in the hospital shared their surprisingly consistent stories alongside doctors and nurses who worked inside the system. In case after case, an otherwise healthy patient walked into the hospital and was isolated from their family. Once staff identified them as unvaccinated, they were told some variation of “you’re going to die” or “you’re unvaccinated, what did you expect?” Requests for ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, vitamins, or monoclonal antibodies were refused (and in several cases cut off right after the patient began improving on them).

Some of the doctors seemed to know this was wrong (e.g., one, when asked why she wouldn’t try anything else, teared up and said “I used to save lives”), but said their hands were tied, and in one instance, an Orlando hospital system had sent its 2,000 doctors a memo recommending against steroids, hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, and any preventive measures while recommending routine remdesivir. Remdesivir, in turn, was given anyway, often over explicit objections and frequently followed by kidney failure (in one case, to a patient with pre-existing kidney damage whom staff had told his mother did not have an active infection).

Patients were pressured or forced onto ventilators, and families were pushed to sign DNRs (in one case, to donate the organs of a man who was not an organ donor). Likewise, one patient was told she could only see her priest for last rites if she accepted remdesivir, and another family was told they might be allowed to visit if they switched their father to a DNR. Basic care such as food, water, hygiene, and clothing was neglected for days, and one physician shared that the only way he could get families in to visit was to write in the chart that each of his patients would die within 24 hours.

Getting out was no easier. One husband had to endure a six-hour standoff with police to bring his wife home (where she fully recovered on the treatments the hospital had refused her), a court order to give ivermectin was simply ignored (after which a hospital employee warned the wife that the doctors were angry she’d defied them and might let her husband die to prove ivermectin didn’t work), and families resorted to smuggling medicine in (e.g., in a stuffed novelty pillow or crushed into a feeding tube).

Likewise, the attorney who sued hospitals on behalf of 212 families shared that of the 72 cases where he got ivermectin administered, only three patients died, whereas every one of the 140 where he couldn’t died (making suing hospitals amongst the most successful medical interventions in history). Meanwhile, the clinicians described being fired, reported to their licensing boards, subjected to sham peer review, fined, or ordered into psychological counseling for giving patients what they’d asked for.

James Miller

Since this hearing is too long for many people to go through, I wanted to draw attention to one of its most widely seen parts—James Miller’s testimony:

Many readers here are familiar with Dr. Miller, both because he helped me write an article on the gradually disappearing art of surgery and because I’ve repeatedly cited the remarkable results he’s had with DMSO in his new practice. What many don’t know is that I got to know him very early in this publication’s history. Traumatized by what had happened to him in Washington, he reached out to me, and we began corresponding because I really liked where his head and heart were at (he had the rare capacity to see things for what they were and break from the crowd to do the right thing). Since I felt his story needed to be heard, and he both has a great deal of integrity and is an excellent communicator, I offered him a platform, and once he was ready, did what I could to get his story seen—beginning with the first article we published which went viral and was featured nationally on Fox News, followed by three others we put together^1,2,3 (including a detailed affidavit of what he’d witnessed) and most recently, his Senate testimony.

I’m immensely grateful he was given a place on the panel, as few things are more likely to break the narrative we’ve been stuck in than a doctor of his caliber saying on the record what really happened.

Dr. Miller’s Story

Dr. Miller was a trauma surgeon and the top producer at Providence Regional Medical Center Everett (meaning he operated the most, had the best outcomes and fewest complications, and made the hospital the most money). Before COVID, he’d already gotten a taste of how the system treats people like him. After he raised the standards for the surgeons while serving as interim director of the trauma team, a nurse leader emailed staff that “we need to get Dr. Miller,” eleven baseless complaints were filed against him in two weeks (including one accusing him of racism for waving hello to a maintenance worker in a hallway), and the email was then deleted from his inbox.

Note: those years also gave him a front-row seat to how robotic surgery had hollowed out surgical training (e.g., none of the hospital’s 7-8 urologists could remove a kidney without the robot, so he had to be given emergency privileges to do it). Those same urologists then became the leaders of the hospital’s safety committees, redefined “competence” so it had nothing to do with patient outcomes, and drove out those who objected.

In February 2020, his hospital admitted the first diagnosed COVID patient in America, and shortly after, the CDC sent it remdesivir, which leadership pitched to Miller and other physician leaders as a powerful antiviral everyone should wait for. In practice, it did not work, and the hospital’s infectious disease doctors seemed to know it (e.g., when Miller brought them a young trauma patient who was a textbook remdesivir candidate, the on-call infectious disease physician told him not to give it to her because she “seemed like a nice girl”).

Likewise, his hospital’s COVID wave peaked around March 17, 2020, and it never faced a shortage of beds, staff, or equipment—yet it kept promoting the idea it was overwhelmed. At one point in July 2020, Miller and his colleagues were drinking coffee at the nurses’ station of an ICU that was 30% full (with nurses being sent home for lack of patients) when someone pulled up a news story saying their ICU was overrun, at which point the ICU director panicked and called the administrators to strategize about the crisis. Death certificates, in turn, defaulted to COVID and were cumbersome to change (e.g., an elderly dialysis patient who came in with a brain bleed was repeatedly tested until she finally tested positive, and when she died from the bleed, Miller was prevented from correcting her death certificate).

Once the vaccines rolled out, things got darker. The head of infectious disease told Miller he was working with the governor’s office to make driver’s license renewals contingent on vaccination (and when Miller warned this would incite violent protests, he was excited by the prospect). Unvaccinated members of Miller’s church began telling him they’d been refused care by primary care and urgent care doctors (including diabetics who could no longer get their prescriptions), and when he raised this with the medical group’s chief medical officer, he was told it was the appropriate policy to “keep the staff safe.”

So Miller opened a free clinic through his church, and of the more than one hundred patients he and a few nurses (including his wife) cared for, only one died—after he sent her to the ER for oxygen and she was sent home without it. After that, they obtained oxygen concentrators for the clinic, and every other patient recovered. Meanwhile, once the federal directives began dictating hospital care, the unanticipated mortality in the hospital’s trauma patients doubled, yet when the administration was shown this, it made no changes.

In January 2022, Miller resigned but agreed to stay for 7 more months at the request of the Chief of Trauma to help orient new hires. Four days later, the hospital launched a sham peer review against him for a “microaggression” that had occurred a month earlier—asking an OR charge nurse to stop watching cat videos on her phone with the on-call team so they could operate on a patient who’d been waiting over nine hours for surgery to untwist his intestines. Subsequently, his colleagues were told not to speak to him if they valued their jobs, his four requests for a fair hearing were denied, and he was told he was suspended and would be arrested if he set foot on hospital grounds, even to collect his personal belongings (until his whistleblower attorney sent a letter, at which point he was told he had never actually been suspended and that the court-couriered letter the hospital’s CEO had sent him was a “typo”). A month later, after he had sold his home, he was exonerated by two separate investigations and told to return to work within the week—with the warning that any further accusation of “microaggressions” or similar offenses would get him reported to the national provider databases (which would end his ability to practice). When he asked for a mediator to rebuild trust with his surgical team, the hospital paid out over $100,000 rather than agree to a mediator, and then offered him more money if he signed a gag order (which he declined).

Note: roughly two thirds of that hospital’s surgical ICU nurses left, not from “burnout,” but from moral outrage over what they’d been made to do to patients.

Dr. Miller, in turn, chronicled the many disturbing things he witnessed (which helped set the course of the pandemic) in a far more detailed affidavit, which can be read here:

The Doctors We Lose

For the most part, surgeons can only operate under the umbrella of a hospital (and hence at the mercy of its administrators), so leaving Washington meant Dr. Miller had to give up the specialty he’d spent over a decade mastering. He now practices primary care in Florida, which has been great for him (as he can finally do what he knows will help his patients, and has had remarkable results with DMSO and with a variety of therapies for over a hundred vaccine-injured patients). For patients, however, it’s an immense loss, as a trauma surgeon of his caliber takes years to train, is exactly who you want operating on you, and is often the only person around who can fix the mistakes less competent surgeons make.

Sadly, his story was not an anomaly. Almost every clinician at the hearing who put their patients before the protocols was fired, reported to their board, put through sham peer review, or forced out, and Pierre Kory and Paul Marik (who embody the ICU doctors anyone would want caring for them) were likewise driven out of hospital medicine. As a result, the system steadily removes the doctors who will deviate from a failing protocol to keep you alive, and keeps the ones who will follow it and then tell your family “nothing more could be done.”

Johnson put it well at the end of the hearing—it doesn’t take many people being hanged in the town square before everyone falls into line—and noted that many of the doctors who privately whispered their thanks to him couldn’t afford to step out themselves (e.g., because they had $400,000 in student loans and families to support). This is a major reason why, as mentioned earlier, whenever we can safely do it, we prioritize getting patients who are on the border of being hospitalized well at home, as once someone is admitted, the doctors who would break protocol to save them are increasingly no longer there.

Conclusion

In the middle of COVID, a colleague told me he’d realized COVID was the Democrats’ version of the Iraq War. Both were sold to the public through lies and a fear campaign every media outlet parroted, both were used to justify sweeping emergency powers and recast anyone who questioned them as a threat (or a source of “misinformation”), and both allowed a small group of insiders behind the party to loot the country while countless people were harmed (e.g., Halliburton’s subsidiary KBR received $39.5 billion in Iraq contracts,¹ while Pfizer became the first pharmaceutical company to bring in $100 billion in a year, $56.7 billion of which came from its COVID vaccine and Paxlovid¹). Likewise, in both cases, almost no one responsible has been held accountable.

Despite spending more than any other nation to fight COVID, America ended up with one of the worst outcomes in the world (over a million deaths), whereas Africa, which could afford very little of what we did, fared far better (as even after accounting for underreporting, its mortality rate remained lower than Western Europe’s¹).

Given all of this, between April 2020 and January 2024, the share of Americans with a lot of trust in doctors and hospitals fell from 71.5% to 40.1%¹ (which the study’s authors framed as a barrier to getting people vaccinated)—trust the medical industry has worked for decades to create (as its entire business model depends upon it). Since much of that trust was created by public relations and media manipulation, the medical field has tried to solve the problem with more of the same.

However, since so much of the public watched what happened firsthand (and hence won’t swallow up a fabricated version of the past), and we have now entered an era where the vertical monopolization of propaganda the society has depended upon for nearly a century (media monopolized by a few large companies that all promote the same sponsored narrative) is no longer viable, as independent media has broken that monopoly (e.g., I’m nobody, but on my own limited budget I’ve produced numerous things seen by millions of people, and I am just one of many doing that). Because of this, no public relations campaign can fix the loss of trust in medicine that has been created. Rather, the only way that trust will return is if medicine is honest about what it did during COVID, holds those responsible accountable, protects rather than punishes doctors like Dr. Miller, and starts giving patients things that actually work.

Until that happens, the most important lesson from COVID is that while medicine provides numerous essential services, you cannot afford to fully depend on the medical system. That means learning to take care of yourself and your family (which also creates the economic pressure medicine needs to produce better outcomes so it can stay in business), knowing your rights as a patient, and unless you are fortunate enough to live near a hospital you can trust, never letting a loved one go into the hospital without an advocate.

As Johnson put it at the end of the hearing, when it comes to healthcare, you have to be your own advocate—and the more of us who can do that (or better yet know enough to not need much of what the medical system has to offer), the less leverage the system has over us and the more room doctors like Dr. Miller will have to practice the way they always wanted to. Given how bad things were just a few years ago, it’s been incredible to see how quickly things have shifted, and I deeply thank each of you for the support that has helped make that possible.

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• DMSO is an inexpensive “umbrella remedy” whose combination of therapeutic properties (e.g., restoring circulation, reducing inflammation, and reactivating dormant cells) makes it uniquely suited to treating neurological disorders that otherwise lack effective options.

• Hundreds of studies and many reader reports show DMSO can dramatically improve strokes, brain bleeds, traumatic brain injuries, and spinal cord injuries (including permanent paralysis), with the best results occurring when it is given soon after the injury.

• Extensive data supports DMSO for neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, ALS, MS, and prion disease, along with cognitive impairment, psychiatric disorders, chronic stress, seizures, and Down syndrome.

• DMSO is one of the most effective treatments available for pain (e.g., neuropathic pain, spinal pain, headaches, and fibromyalgia) and peripheral nerve damage, and since the eyes and ears are also extensions of the nervous system, it frequently improves vision, hearing, and tinnitus.

• DMSO’s ability to treat so many seemingly unrelated neurological conditions suggests they share root causes conventional neurology does not recognize, which is a major reason so many of these diseases remain untreated.

• This article condenses a four-part DMSO neurology series (covering approximately 4,500 studies and 1,000 reader reports) into an accessible summary and concludes with practical guidance on sourcing, dosing, and condition-specific protocols.

Dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) is a simple, inexpensive compound found throughout nature whose remarkable properties allow it both to treat a wide range of illnesses and to facilitate the use of many different (FDA approved) medical therapies. Yet, it exists in a strange limbo: it is one of the most extensively studied and used medicinal compounds, but most mainstream sources insist there’s no evidence it works for anything beyond its single FDA-approved use, interstitial cystitis, despite the fact that physicians and scientists, seeing its promise, independently conducted tens of thousands of studies demonstrating its therapeutic utility and that DMSO, on the basis of that data, is widely used in foreign medical systems.

DMSO’s peculiar status results from the fact it cannot be profited off of (e.g., a twenty dollar bottle will last a user for months). Because of this, there has been no incentive within the medical field to secure a costly approval for it within the FDA’s “pay-to-play system.” Rather, the FDA went to war against DMSO for decades (despite immense public protest to legalize DMSO) and as a result, almost all of the approved DMSO preparations on the market are DMSO pharmaceutical combinations (as they can be patented and then marked up). Likewise, there was no incentive within the natural health field to market it as a supplement, which has resulted in it becoming mostly forgotten by the time a 1994 law took away the FDA’s ability to restrict natural supplements like DMSO.

I find this egregious, as DMSO is able to:
•Treat a variety of common conditions (e.g., pain and injuries) in a dramatically effective, cheaper, and most importantly safer manner than the existing therapeutic options.
•Treat a variety of challenging and tragic illnesses that have few or no treatment options, in many cases producing recoveries so dramatic they are regarded as “miraculous” or “impossible.”

Since many of DMSO’s most incredible effects are seen with neurological disorders (that often otherwise lack satisfactory treatment options), a significant portion of the DMSO literature base has focused on this area. So, over the last six months, in an effort to make this option available to people, I’ve tried to concisely summarize approximately 4,500 studies and 1,000 reader reports of DMSO’s utility for neurological conditions. Unfortunately, given how much information this was, despite my absolute best efforts to compress it, the four articles I wrote^1,2,3,4 still totaled to 142,000 words. However, now that those four have been done (which I felt had to be done first as many of the claims I’ve made seem impossible within the conventional framework), it is possible to write a much shorter (and more accessible) summary of the DMSO’s uses in neurology which can link back to the more detailed pieces which provide all the corroborating references one might need before considering trying DMSO.

How DMSO Works

James Miller, MD: It is my impression, with no hard data, that ~80% of everything people see neurologists for goes away with DMSO. That is what my patients reflect back to me who choose to trial DMSO for their neurological problems.

DMSO’s unique ability to treat a very wide range of seemingly unrelated disorders makes it critical to understand how this happens, both because skeptical parties require mechanistic plausibility to accept that it can work, and because DMSO’s ability to treat so many challenging illnesses suggests whatever it does addresses the foundational causes of disease that medicine, despite its “best efforts,” has not been able to identify. DMSO’s mechanisms, in turn, break down into three categories: the conventionally recognized ones (with wide support in the literature), the documented but overlooked ones, and the mostly-unrecognized “alternative” ones (which have some supporting literature) that I believe underlie many diseases.

Since many of DMSO’s therapeutic effects are uniquely tailored to the needs of the nervous system, in those four articles (which began the second draft of the DMSO series), I laid out extensive body of research demonstrating those therapeutic mechanisms. They are as follows:

Widely Recognized Mechanisms

• Protecting cells from otherwise lethal stressors. DMSO made modern cryopreservation possible. The same protection extends to radiation, excitotoxins, heavy metals, nerve agents, heat, and loss of blood supply. It works partly by neutralizing the free radicals these stressors generate, stabilizing cell membranes, preventing the calcium influx that triggers cell death, and sustaining ATP production when mitochondria are compromised. CNS Neurons are among the most injury-sensitive and least regenerative cells in the body, so this is particularly valuable for the nervous system, particularly since many neurodegenerative disorders are caused by a continual source of neurotoxic stressors that gradually destroy nervous tissue (detailed here and here).

• Neutralizing free radicals and inflammation. Chronic inflammation is one of the most common drivers of neurological disease, and in our experience DMSO is one of the most effective anti-inflammatories available. Beyond being one of the most potent known hydroxyl radical scavengers (e.g., there are 135,000 results on Google Scholar for “DMSO radical scavenger”¹), DMSO suppresses NF-κB—the master switch that turns on inflammatory cytokines (e.g., in one endotoxin model, it cut ICAM-1, TNF-α, and neutrophil infiltration by roughly 80%¹), reduces the adhesion molecules that allow white blood cells to plug vessel walls and infiltrate tissue, inhibits inflammatory prostaglandins, reduces edema, and restores the circulation whose absence allows inflammation to persist. Unlike steroids and other immunosuppressants, however, it modulates rather than shuts down the immune system (while also potentiating cortisol so lower steroid doses can be used) (detailed here and here).

• Crossing the blood-brain barrier and carrying other agents with it. Within five minutes of skin application, DMSO reaches the bloodstream, and within an hour it has spread throughout the body (including into the bones), yet it does not accumulate, since 85% is excreted within 24 hours. The blood-brain barrier keeps most therapeutic agents out of the brain (often requiring very high doses so that some reaches it), but DMSO both crosses it and carries other agents across with it. This allows therapies to reach the central nervous system at much lower (and hence less toxic) doses than would otherwise be required (detailed here).

• Relieving pain. DMSO reduces pain transmission, relaxes muscles, reduces swelling and inflammation (addressing key sources of pain), and potentiates local anesthetics—which is why pain reduction was DMSO’s most popular use from the start (detailed here).
  Note: muscles compressing nerves contributes to many neurological issues.

Documented but Overlooked Mechanisms

• Inhibiting blood clotting. Neurons are among the tissues most sensitive to losing their blood supply (often ceasing to function the moment it is interrupted), so even small clots can cause significant neurological damage. A large body of research shows DMSO counteracts clotting through several independent pathways at once. It inhibits platelet aggregation and activation, selectively inhibits COX-1 and thromboxane A₂, raises cAMP and cGMP, scavenges the free radicals that trigger platelet activation, suppresses tissue factor (the protein that initiates the clotting cascade), and activates the body's natural clot-dissolving system, allowing it to break down existing clots as well as prevent new ones (e.g., in rats with injured carotid arteries, IV DMSO virtually abolished clot formation¹). Because DMSO normalizes coagulation rather than forcefully blocking a single pathway, its bleeding risk is much lower than that of conventional blood thinners (detailed here).

• Increasing circulation and reducing swelling. DMSO dilates blood vessels, stimulates lymphatic flow, and by neutralizing the free radicals that constrict vessels and impair nitric oxide, keeps them open under oxidative stress. It also acts as a targeted diuretic that reduces the swelling that compresses injured brain and spinal tissue (e.g., one veterinary review found it lowered pressure inside the skull faster than mannitol¹). Unlike conventional treatments for brain swelling, which often lower blood pressure and thereby reduce the brain’s blood supply, DMSO relieves the pressure while increasing blood flow to the brain (detailed here and here).
  Note: many neurodegenerative diseases appear to stem in part from impaired venous and lymphatic drainage from the brain, which traps toxins and the misfolded proteins that accumulate in these diseases (e.g., surgically restoring that drainage has produced marked improvements in multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer’s). Since DMSO increases both venous and lymphatic drainage, it offers a non-invasive way to produce many of the same effects.

• Clearing aged blood cells. IV DMSO causes osmotic hemolysis. As this selectively affects aged red blood cells (which happen to be prone to clumping), this hemolysis reduces blood viscosity and increases blood flow (e.g., one dog study showed a greater than 20% increase in cerebral blood flow following this hemolysis¹). A leading researcher, in turn, believed this explained the paradoxical observation that IV DMSO lowered hematocrit but raised cerebral blood flow (detailed here).

• Increasing parasympathetic tone. DMSO inhibits acetylcholinesterase, the enzyme that breaks down acetylcholine (the primary transmitter of the parasympathetic nervous system). Many practitioners consider excessive sympathetic (fight-or-flight) activity with deficient parasympathetic (rest-and-repair) activity to be a root cause of chronic disease. That imbalance sustains chronic psychological stress and agitation, constricts blood vessels, reduces blood flow to the brain (and other parts of the body), impairs healing, and keeps neural circuits locked in dysfunctional states. By restoring parasympathetic tone, DMSO helps counterbalance this and normalize autonomic function (detailed here).

• Blocking pain at its source and in the central nervous system. Beyond dampening pain signals, DMSO biophysically blocks the small nerve fibers that transmit chronic pain (leaving larger fibers untouched), blocks nerve ion channels much as local anesthetics do, and suppresses the NMDA receptors that drive central sensitization. Partly through scavenging free radicals, it also prevents the sensitization that often follows nerve injury. Finally, it strengthens the body’s own pain-inhibiting circuits and opioid signaling while producing its own opioid-independent pain relief (e.g., comparable to morphine but lasting three times as long¹), allowing it to address pain conditions other medications cannot touch (detailed here).

• Repairing and rebuilding nerves. When nerve fibers are cut or crushed, their ruptured membranes must reseal quickly to prevent the cell from dying, and DMSO significantly enhances this resealing, even under conditions that normally impair it. It is also one of the most potent known promoters of microtubule assembly (the internal scaffolding nerves need to regrow—in one case lowering the threshold for it 8- to 10-fold¹), and drives stem cells to differentiate into neurons. This provides a mechanistic basis for the nerve and spinal cord regeneration repeatedly observed with it (detailed here and here).

• Acting as a chemical chaperone. DMSO stabilizes proteins in their correct shape and dissolves misfolded aggregates such as amyloid, and breaks down the abnormal tissue of fibrotic contractile disorders (e.g., scleroderma, Dupuytren’s, and Peyronie’s^1,2). As these protein aggregates play a key role in many neurodegenerative disorders, this mechanism likely plays a major part in DMSO’s ability to address these disorders (detailed here).

Unrecognized Mechanisms

• Dispersing clumped blood. A large body of research, pioneered first by Western and later by Russian scientists, found that blood cells clumping together (”sludging”) and forming microclots that obstruct the smallest vessels is a root cause of many diseases (mirroring Chinese medicine’s concept of “blood stasis”). This clumping can be triggered by attractive forces (e.g., positive ions or pathologic proteins) or by a loss of the negative charge (zeta potential) that keeps blood cells apart. Infections, vaccines, and the COVID spike protein all cause blood cells to clump, while improving their dispersion frequently produces dramatic improvements across a wide range of ailments, so a significant portion of this newsletter has focused on this forgotten concept (detailed here). In addition to preventing while blood cells from plugging the smallest vessels, DMSO has effects similar to agents that restore zeta potential, but rather than acting electrically, it prevents microclotting by neutralizing the forces that draw blood cells together (e.g., in a 2009 study, heating rats’ cerebrospinal fluid caused escalating microclotting followed by brain damage, all of which DMSO prevented^1,2,3). Since the nervous system is exquisitely sensitive to impaired microcirculation, this likely underlies many of DMSO’s benefits for neurological disorders (detailed here).

  Note: ozone is another marginalized low-cost therapy that a vast body of forgotten literature shows treats a broad range of diseases (many overlapping with DMSO’s). I am currently compiling that literature, and from what I’ve seen, ozone’s ability to reduce red blood cell adhesion appears to be one of the core mechanisms behind its broad therapeutic activity.

• Restoring the blood flow the brain loses to chronic stress. A multi-decade Russian research program found that chronic stress drops cerebral blood flow from roughly 50 to under 30 ml/100g/min, setting off the degenerative changes seen in “stress” and psychiatric illness. Oral DMSO, particularly when combined with vitamin E, was the most effective intervention they tested (detailed here).

• Resetting cellular structure. DMSO binds water more strongly than water binds to itself, and at cell membranes, it pulls water away from their surface. At lower concentrations, this tightens and stabilizes the membrane, while at higher concentrations it opens temporary pores. Both effects reverse as DMSO diffuses away, which is what allows it to carry substances across membranes without damaging them and to protect cells during freezing. A similar reversible process occurs within the cell’s internal skeleton (e.g., within 20 to 30 minutes, DMSO drives actin from the cytoplasm into the nucleus, and once DMSO diffuses out, the cell’s normal structure is restored within 1 to 2 hours^1,2). Critically, when these structures reform, they appear to do so in a healthier configuration, with DMSO strengthening normal cellular architecture while breaking down pathological configurations (e.g., those in cancer cells). Many chronic conditions stem from pathological nerve circuits that can be “reset” with a short-acting local anesthetic, so this may explain why DMSO produces similar benefits (detailed here).

• Reviving dormant cells. Injured tissue frequently enters a dormant “penumbra” state (resembling the cell danger response) where it stops functioning but has not yet died, and it can remain that way for years before either recovering or dying. Across the body, studies and patient reports indicate DMSO can reawaken these dormant cells (e.g., one leading DMSO researcher repeatedly found that animals with flatlined EEGs regained brain activity within about ten minutes of receiving DMSO¹). I suspect this results from a combination of DMSO restoring microcirculation (and clearing trapped cellular waste), sustaining cellular energy production, resetting cellular structure (and neuronal firing), and stabilizing microtubules, while also blunting the burst of free radicals that occurs when blood flow returns to oxygen-starved tissue. Neurons readily enter this state (e.g., the penumbra surrounding a stroke is a well-recognized concept in conventional neurology), so this property likely plays a key role in DMSO’s remarkable ability to treat neurological disorders and suddenly bring “long dead” tissue or lost neurological function back to life (detailed here).

With this context in mind, let’s now review what the data (and many corroborating reader reports) show DMSO does for a wide range of neurological disorders.
Note: for the majority of the conditions described below, I located and summarized at least 100 studies supporting the use of DMSO for them in the longer articles.

Strokes

Roughly 800,000 Americans have a stroke each year, and despite immense efforts to improve outcomes, strokes remain a leading cause of death and disability. This is largely because clot-busting tPA, the only approved drug for ischemic strokes, cannot be given until a CT scan rules out a brain bleed (so treatment is typically delayed by hours as brain tissue continues to die), reaches only a small fraction of patients within its window, meaningfully benefits about 13% of those who receive it,¹ and carries a 6.4% risk of a symptomatic brain bleed.¹ After a stroke, there is also essentially no therapy that restores lost function. DMSO sidesteps each of these problems, as it treats ischemic strokes, partially treats hemorrhagic ones, has no known risk of worsening a bleed, can be given at home or in an ambulance, and protects and revives the brain tissue a stroke would otherwise destroy. For this reason, one of my primary goals has been to raise awareness of DMSO for strokes and move toward emergency services (or patients at home) giving it immediately while the standard workup proceeds (since some bleeds require emergency neurosurgery).

Supporting this are hundreds of studies (most in animals, plus a large number where DMSO was combined with another agent), with the human ones including the following:

• In a 2002 trial of 11 ischemic stroke patients, IV DMSO (with fructose diphosphate) left 63% “improved” or “markedly improved” at three months, versus 20% on standard care, and the benefit held even when treatment began well after the stroke.¹

• In 100 Chilean patients with cerebrovascular disease, DMSO accelerated recovery from hemiplegia and aphasia.^1,2

• In 127 elderly patients with cerebrovascular disorders, DMSO iontophoresis produced clinical improvement in 86% by the fifth session (versus delayed improvement with standard care).¹

• In 250 patients with cerebrovascular disease, DMSO iontophoresis (with vinpocetine) stabilized cerebral blood flow and improved blood supply to the large cerebral arteries.^1,2

• In three newborns with perinatal hypoxic brain injury, DMSO-vitamin E electrophoresis normalized muscle tone and reflexes faster than standard care.¹

Stanley Jacob (the physician who pioneered the research into DMSO) considered DMSO so important for strokes that he gave patients home stroke kits so they could inject it themselves the moment symptoms began, and a 1992 review concluded DMSO outperformed mannitol, dexamethasone, and barbiturates as a neuroprotectant for strokes.¹

Note: many profound stroke recoveries exist within the DMSO literature. For example, one author reported that a teacher found unconscious after a major stroke was treated with DMSO at home within minutes and was back teaching with no disability when school resumed after the Christmas break, while a woman who had been in a coma for three months after her stroke began responding a month after starting topical DMSO and three years later was living normally.¹

In monkeys, dogs, rats, gerbils, and mice (where unlike humans, DMSO can be tested in experimentally induced neurologic injury), DMSO consistently shrank or prevented the brain damage from blocked arteries, protected the surrounding “penumbra” tissue so it did not die, reduced brain swelling and blood-brain barrier breakdown, blocked the injury that occurs when blood flow returns, extended the window in which treatment could still work (e.g., to six hours in dogs), reduced mortality, and restored brain electrical activity, frequently outperforming the therapies it was compared against (e.g., hyperbaric oxygen, hemodilution, dexamethasone, and barbiturates). Hundreds of additional studies where DMSO was used to deliver another agent (e.g., curcumin or resveratrol) showed the same protective pattern.¹

Note: because DMSO is an effective and non-toxic solvent, it is routinely used in experiments to deliver other therapeutic agents. These studies typically assume DMSO is inert (so DMSO alone serves as the “control” and is rarely tested against saline). Collectively, these combination studies tend to yield results similar to those of DMSO alone, and when DMSO is occasionally tested against saline, it often independently produces the therapeutic effect attributed to the tested agent (something the authors sometimes acknowledged,^1,2 but in other cases could only be discerned from the study data¹). Beyond providing a separate body of evidence corroborating DMSO’s efficacy, I believe this also accounts for why many preclinical studies fail to replicate in clinical trials, as by that stage DMSO (which both potentiates the tested agent and is therapeutic in its own right) is typically no longer used. Replication failure is a major problem science has unsuccessfully contended with for decades.

I hence listed these combination studies in the four-part DMSO series, both for the corroboration they provide and to give additional options to individuals dealing with the conditions described here (as DMSO commonly works even better with another therapeutic agent). Within those studies, curcumin and resveratrol are by far the most frequent combinations (improving nearly every condition covered in the series), followed by melatonin, sulforaphane, quercetin, ginkgo biloba and its ginkgolides, tanshinone IIA, baicalin, the ginsenosides, paeoniflorin, astaxanthin, tetramethylpyrazine, triptolide, berberine, astragaloside IV, icariin, thymoquinone, carvacrol, luteolin, ursolic acid, EGCG, and fisetin (along with hundreds of other natural and pharmaceutical agents).

Many readers, in turn, have reported DMSO resolving a stroke on the way to the hospital, often leaving the ER unable to find evidence one had occurred (e.g., “The ER doc came in to tell me that I had not stroked, despite speech impairment and other signs. I told him I took DMSO”),^1,2 a medicinal chemist who drank DMSO as his stroke began credited it with preserving his ability to move and was back to full-time work six weeks later,¹ and many others have reported substantial recoveries from established strokes (e.g., a husband partially paralyzed by a stroke was playing guitar and singing while standing with one foot on a chair three months later).¹

Note: DMSO’s ability to protect the brain from losing its blood supply is mirrored in the heart (which is similarly sensitive to this). Across roughly 390 studies, DMSO reduced the size of heart attacks (e.g., from 50% to 21% in rats¹), essentially eliminated bleeding within the heart muscle after them (0 of 8 pigs versus 7 of 7 controls¹), raised the output of damaged hearts,¹ prevented scarring, and drove stem cells to become heart muscle,¹ while several readers reported using it to stop heart attacks^{1,2,3,4,5,6,7} (and others noticed large drops in blood pressure, in one case from 148/90 to 109/70 within 30 minutes of a small oral dose¹). Likewise, roughly 145 studies and 90 reader reports show DMSO’s circulatory effects treat conditions such as varicose veins, blood clots, Raynaud’s, and non-healing ulcers (e.g., Stanley Jacob found half of Raynaud’s patients had their symptoms eliminated,¹ one study of hundreds of diabetic ulcer patients reported a greater than 94% success rate,¹ and one reader who sprayed DMSO on her varicose veins nightly reported that “in 13 months they are entirely gone”).¹ These are discussed further here.

Brain Bleeds, Traumatic Brain Injuries, and Brain Swelling

Once the brain swells or bleeds, the rising pressure inside the skull (ICP) progressively crushes brain tissue, yet the existing options for lowering it are poor: mannitol can cause pressure to rebound above where it started, and barbiturates lower blood pressure and force patients into a coma. As such, there has been less-than-satisfactory progress over the decades in preventing the death and long-term disability that follow a severe head injury or brain bleed. DMSO lowers ICP within minutes without rebound while increasing blood flow to the brain, neutralizes the toxic iron released by spilled blood, and protects the neurons that would otherwise die in the hours and days after an injury. Hundreds of studies support this (including an unusually large number of human ones):

• In 11 near-death patients with dangerously high ICP (from trauma, encephalitis, or brain bleeds) who had failed standard therapy (including barbiturates and mannitol), IV DMSO brought ICP down within minutes, and three who were expected to die recovered well.^1,2

• Of nine patients paralyzed after surgery for a ruptured aneurysm, all but one fully recovered, several within an hour (e.g., a 67-year-old woman who had lost her speech and the use of one side and had not responded to mannitol was fully alert and had regained her strength 45 minutes after DMSO, while one man’s paralysis returned when DMSO was stopped and resolved again once it was resumed).^1,2

• In 10 patients with severe closed head trauma (ICP of 40 to 127 mmHg), ICP began falling within 30 minutes, and by three months seven had minimal or no impairment.^1,2,3 An earlier report of 10 similar patients also found DMSO rapidly lowered ICP and improved their neurological outcomes.¹

• In 10 patients with severe head injuries (Glasgow Coma Scale of 6 or below), seven survived, six without gross deficits.¹

• In 12 TBI patients, DMSO rapidly reduced ICP in 21 of 23 treatments (with the two that failed also failing to respond to mannitol or furosemide).^1,2

• In 35 patients undergoing emergency cranial surgery, DMSO controlled ICP in 75% (versus 53% with standard therapy), including half of those who had already failed conventional treatment.¹

• Of five children and adults with closed head injuries, a 1.5-year-old and a 7-year-old with high ICP both fully recovered after IV DMSO (while the three older and more severe cases did not survive).¹

• A UC San Diego neurosurgeon credited DMSO with saving 11 of 30 head injury patients judged near death, calling the result “phenomenal,”¹ and his colleagues found DMSO was often effective when barbiturates had failed (with its main obstacle being that it partially dissolved the IV tubing of that era).¹

• In a Ukrainian trial of 75 severe TBI patients, IV DMSO reduced the oxidative damage that drives secondary brain injury and accelerated neurological recovery (e.g., meningeal and autonomic symptoms improved in over 95% compared to standard therapy alone).¹

In monkeys, dogs, cats, rabbits, and rats, DMSO repeatedly outperformed the standard treatments for brain injuries. Across simulated hematomas, brain compression, gunshot wounds, head impacts, and brain bleeds, it rapidly lowered ICP and brain swelling, preserved blood flow and oxygen metabolism in the brain, prevented the surge of free radical damage that follows a bleed, reduced lesion size and neuronal death, improved memory and motor function, and dramatically increased survival (e.g., 14 of 15 monkeys with a simulated hematoma survived with DMSO versus 10 of 15 with urea and 0 of 10 with saline).¹

Readers have also shared that DMSO facilitated recoveries from aneurysms and brain bleeds (e.g., an 84-year-old with a grade 3 aneurysm),^1,2 including one who provided a corroborating CT scan,¹ and a physician who shared IV DMSO left his father “totally mentally restored in 4 hours” (he was discharged 36 hours later). Readers with concussions have also reported benefit,¹ though the data there is much thinner and results are likely to be more variable.

Note: it is critical that DMSO’s ability to resolve many life-threatening conditions (e.g., strokes and heart attacks) is not used as a justification to delay emergency care, as some of these will be due to causes that require urgent hospital intervention. Rather, DMSO’s best use is as a complementary therapy given while trying to reach the hospital (and hopefully having significantly recovered by the time you arrive).

Spinal Cord Injuries and Paralysis

Because, like the brain, the spinal cord does not regenerate, spinal cord injuries are considered permanent, and patients are told to prepare for a miserable life of paralysis along with the many severe complications that accompany it). Yet veterinarians have used IV DMSO for decades to get paralyzed dogs and horses back on their feet, with 1980s veterinary textbooks already listing standardized protocols.¹ In humans, the greatest benefit occurs when DMSO is given within 90 minutes of injury, but it can also produce significant rehabilitation years or even decades later. Hundres of studies and many reports support this:

•Stanley Jacob treated three patients who arrived paralyzed 5, 6, and 9 hours after injury (far beyond what was thought recoverable), and two regained the ability to walk.¹ Jacob also found DMSO helped many of the complications paraplegics face (e.g., chronic intractable pain, bladder infections, bedsores, and poor temperature control).¹

•An engineer paralyzed for 12 years made remarkable improvements after starting DMSO.¹

•A college student with a C4-C5 fracture whom Jacob began treating nearly two years after his injury gradually regained sensation, limb movement, and hand function (until the FDA cut off his access), recovering enough to graduate.¹

Note: the only formal human study (a safety study of seven patients with spinal cord injuries) found no harm to the kidneys from IV DMSO.¹

Readers have also shared that DMSO helped them recover from spinal cord injuries. Two of the most dramatic cases I received were:

•While playing hockey, Jackson suffered the same C1/C2 injury that left Christopher Reeve paralyzed for life and was (accurately) told he would never breathe on his own or move his arms or legs again, so with nothing to lose his mother gave him DMSO in the ICU. His full recovery was so miraculous that it was covered by many news stations and seen by millions online (who did not know DMSO was involved).

Note: further corroborating DMSO’s role, a faster improvement was seen on the side of his body Jackson’s mother could apply more DMSO to (due to him being on a vent).

•After being told she would become a paraplegic after severing her spinal cord, Rosa began DMSO five days after her injury and walked again (which Mary Beth Pfeiffer later verified by tracking her down in Ecuador).¹

In dogs, cats, rabbits, and rats given spinal cord contusions, compressions, cuts, or loss of blood supply, DMSO consistently prevented or reversed paralysis (e.g., in dogs given injuries that left every untreated animal permanently paraplegic, most DMSO-treated dogs walked again, and when the spinal cord’s blood supply was cut off, 11 of 12 DMSO-treated dogs fully recovered versus 1 of 12 controls). It also preserved nerve fibers and their myelin, reduced swelling, scarring, and free radical damage, produced visible nerve regrowth through the injury site (with coordinated leg movement returning in rats whose spinal cords had been cut), extended the time available for surgery, and outperformed methylprednisolone, naloxone, dexamethasone, and hyperbaric oxygen.¹
Note: like many other conditions, many DMSO combinations also treated spinal cord injuries,¹ including a randomized trial of dogs with naturally occurring disc-related spinal cord injuries, where DMSO alone produced the same improvement as the experimental drug it was supposed to be the vehicle for.¹

In veterinary practice, many similar recoveries have been reported (e.g., a dachshund paralyzed despite 14 days of steroids was walking the morning after a single IV dose,¹ and a comatose poodle with a neck fracture was walking again within two weeks¹), and multiple textbooks and reviews list DMSO among the best-supported treatments for neurological injuries in horses.^1,2,3

DMSO has also been used for other spinal cord conditions:

•Spasticity—In Russian patients with spasticity from a wide range of causes, DMSO iontophoresis reduced spasticity, pain, and reflex excitability and improved gait (with one patient progressing from needing a cane to walking independently).¹ A reader with vaccine-induced Stiff Person Syndrome likewise found it was the only thing that relieved 22 months of constant spasms (”I have it with me at all times”).¹

•Radiation damage—Topical DMSO (followed by acupuncture) halved the treatment duration for radiation-induced spinal cord damage while reducing paralysis and sensory deficits.^1,2

•Arachnoiditis: In 42 patients with chronic arachnoiditis of the brain, DMSO iontophoresis significantly increased the number discharged with improvement,¹ and in another case, it resolved swelling of the optic nerve with no recurrence at three years.¹

Spinal Pain

Back and neck pain are among the leading causes of disability, yet they are notoriously difficult to treat, because the same symptoms can arise from dozens of different causes, so treatments targeting any single one (including costly surgeries) fail most patients. DMSO, in contrast, addresses many of those causes at once (e.g., tight muscles, inflamed joints, impaired circulation, bulging discs, and dysfunctional nerve circuits), which likely explains why spinal pain is one of the most common conditions readers report it transformed. Roughly 170 studies (mostly from Russia and Eastern Europe, where DMSO is a standard part of spinal care) and over 300 reader reports support this:

•In a Russian placebo-controlled trial of 68 patients, DMSO gel dropped pain from 7.46 to 2.58 (versus 7.13 to 4.73 with placebo) and improved disability scores by 60% (versus 35%).^1,2,3,4,5

•In a 1968 trial of 38 patients with disc herniations, DMSO halved treatment duration.¹

•In a rehabilitation program of 320 patients, DMSO reduced pain to 0 to 2 in 89% (versus 73% of controls), with remission maintained in 80% when repeated annually.¹

•In four studies of 64 to 147 patients with cervical radiculopathy, DMSO compresses (as part of conservative treatment) succeeded in 69 to 84% of patients.^1,2,3,4

•In cervical osteochondrosis, DMSO applications cut disability days 4.7-fold over two years,¹ fully resolved pain in 85% of 40 patients with accompanying shoulder pain (while also improving their sleep),¹ and when combined with therapeutic mud, improved 100% of patients after 5 to 6 sessions (versus 50% with mud alone after 10).¹

•In 55 patients with piriformis-related sciatica, a DMSO protocol reduced pain scores from 71.4 to 20.2 (versus 36.2 with standard therapy).¹

•In 63 machine operators with occupational lumbosacral radiculopathy, DMSO iontophoresis (with other therapies) halved pain scores.¹

•In well over a dozen Russian studies (including one of 221 patients where 98.2% showed a reduction on CT scans), DMSO-enhanced iontophoresis of a papaya enzyme shrank disc herniations by 2 to 7 mm in 75 to 98% of patients and allowed roughly 45% to avoid surgery, a protocol used in over 8,500 patients in Armenia alone.^{1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9}

•In 115 patients treated with laser surgery for lumbar disc herniations, postoperative DMSO iontophoresis contributed to favorable outcomes in 86% at one year.¹

•Injecting a DMSO-containing mixture into damaged discs produced marked improvement in 57% of patients with severe chronic disc pain,¹ and in a comparison study, it outperformed a standard procedure (intradiscal electrothermal therapy), with no patients worsening versus 36% with the standard procedure.¹

•In 114 patients, aspirin dissolved in DMSO and delivered by ultrasound relieved pain in 78% after 5 to 6 procedures (versus 60% after 12 to 15 with the prior method).¹

•In 50 patients with spinal complications (e.g., disc herniations), a DMSO-based photodynamic protocol eliminated pain in 70% and was effective in 90%.¹

Hundreds of readers have reported relief from chronic back pain, sciatica, neck pain, spinal stenosis, degenerative discs, and failed back surgeries, often after years of failed treatments.¹ For example, a reader whose 12.5 mm bulging disc left her unable to stand without crying could stand after seven days, and seven months later imaging showed the disc had shrunk to 3 to 4 mm,^1,2 a reader with over 50 surgeries called DMSO “life changing,”¹ a 79-year-old bedridden for three weeks with sciatica was out of bed the day after her first application,¹ a 78-year-old family physician with severe kyphoscoliosis who had declined surgery is now more active than he was 40 years ago,¹ and a reader with ankylosing spondylitis saw their CRP (an inflammatory marker) fall from a chronic 9 to 12 to 3 after two months of DMSO.¹

Neurodegenerative Diseases

Despite decades of research and billions of dollars, there are no cures for the major neurodegenerative diseases, and existing drugs at best modestly slow their progression. As mentioned before, DMSO addresses the key drivers of these diseases, and collectively, roughly 500 studies support its use in neurodegenerative disorders.
Note: while oral and topical DMSO can help neurodegenerative disorders, like strokes, the most significant benefits are typically seen with IV DMSO.

ALS

ALS progressively kills the motor neurons controlling voluntary movement, typically causing suffocating death within two to five years, and the few approved drugs only modestly extend survival. For this reason, it immediately caught my attention when a colleague shared IV DMSO halted the progression of ALS (after which I learned Stanley Jacob had also successfully treated ALS with DMSO, including one patient who had “instant, overnight and slightly delayed wonders of therapy” before the patient’s doctor forbade further treatment)¹. Likewise, once I mentioned DMSO’s utility for ALS, a few patients with nothing to lose tried it and reported dramatic results including:

•Todd, an Air Force veteran with terminal ALS who’d just ordered a wheelchair when he started DMSO. His brain fog vanished, his breathing crises stopped within three days, his reflexes healed, and he eventually was dragging 340-lb beams across a road and now has reported being mostly recovered (e.g., he recently posted a video walking up and down a steep dirt hill carrying two large buckets of gravel for a retaining wall).

Note: Todd decided to discontinue DMSO (without telling anyone) so he could make a stronger case DMSO was helping him, after which his condition regressed (and then improved once he resumed).

•Carrie has bulbar ALS and was declining so quickly she stopped recording herself so her family would not have to rewatch it. With nothing to lose, she tried DMSO, and her speech, breathing, mobility, fine motor skills, and even her smile began returning. Her doctor was so impressed with her progress that he is now setting up a dedicated IV DMSO area for his patients. Like Todd, she has noticeably improved since this interview was filmed (e.g., she now drives most days, has much more energy, and her facial structure is visibly coming back).

•Another reader reported visible improvement in her father with ALS,¹ while one with cramping fasciculation syndrome (which mimics early ALS) who had reached the point of planning suicide found oral DMSO largely eliminated his cramping and allowed him to sleep through the night.¹

Since those videos came out, I learned through that network that other patients have been using IV DMSO with success for ALS, while conversely, one reader who tried it briefly couldn’t detect an improvement. The reports I’ve received, in turn, contradict our own limited experience (that IV DMSO only halts the progression of ALS rather than reversing it), and at this point I am not sure if the better results readers have reported are due to certain subsets of ALS being more responsive to DMSO, or higher doses being used (as we tend to err on the low end of dosing to avoid potential side effects).

Lastly, while very little formal research has been done in this area, in ALS mice, long-term oral DMSO increased survival and improved motor performance,¹ and in cells DMSO stabilizes SOD1, the protein whose misfolding drives many cases of ALS.¹

Note: the most realistic path for an FDA approval for a new indication of DMSO I’ve identified is IV DMSO for ALS, so if an ALS group attempts this, I will do my best to support their endeavor (as I believe it will open a lot of doors which will help a lot of people).

Parkinson’s Disease

Parkinson’s results from the progressive loss of the brain’s dopamine-producing neurons, and while existing drugs temporarily replace the lost dopamine, none stop the disease from progressing.

In animals, DMSO repeatedly counteracted each of the neurotoxins used to model Parkinson’s (MPTP, rotenone, 6-OHDA, and the herbicide paraquat, one of the strongest known environmental risk factors for the disease), protecting the dopamine-producing neurons and the surrounding brain tissue, while dozens of natural and pharmaceutical agents delivered with DMSO reduced the toxic protein aggregation, inflammation, and motor deficits that characterize the disease.¹ In the laboratory, DMSO also reversed rotenone’s complete blockade of microtubule assembly.¹

Likewise, a case-control study (which linked many chemical exposures to Parkinson’s) found people with young-onset Parkinson’s were one tenth as likely to have been exposed to DMSO as healthy controls.¹

A few readers (and physicians who reached out to me in private) have reported some success with DMSO, including a research scientist with Parkinson’s who systematically tested oral DMSO and found that at his optimal dose, bradykinesia was eliminated, pain and dystonia fell by 80%, and stiffness by 50% (while higher doses made him worse),¹ along with another who, after an IV of DMSO and mannitol, “bounced down a flight of stairs without using the handrails, cut his own food for a week after, spoke clearly, opened cab doors.”¹ Conversely, another reader who’s shared their Parkinson’s journey (and had a positive response to DMSO) shared that copious oral DMSO did not help them.

Given this (along with a cell study where concentrations far above normal use accelerated the clumping of alpha-synuclein, the protein that aggregates in Parkinson's—although this did not occur in mice¹) and our experience that IV DMSO typically halted (rather than reversed) Parkinson’s, my present assessment on this topic is:

•DMSO will help a subset of Parkinson’s patients but not all (so it is worth trying) but at the same time is less efficacious than what is say seen for ALS.

•Proper dosing and monitoring of symptomatic response to DMSO is critical for Parkinson’s (detailed here), as a potential for counterproductive overdosing exists.

•In many cases, oral DMSO may not suffice but IV DMSO may be able to help (as we’ve seen numerous cases of it halting but not reversing Parkinson’s).

•In the case of Parkinson’s it may be necessary to combine DMSO with another natural compound which has therapeutic activity in Parkinson’s (of which a few promising candidates have already been identified).

Note: since DMSO is one of many modalities I’ve used in practice (rather than the sole thing for over a dozen people a day for decades) and there are so many different conditions DMSO can be used on, there are many clinical situations readers enquire about (pertaining to themselves) that I (and colleagues) simply have no direct experience in and likewise, despite tens of thousands of published DMSO studies, there are many conditions no one has ever gotten around to studying DMSO’s utility in. For this reason, I have often provided the rationale (or evidence) for why something could work with DMSO, but avoided going further as I just don’t know. Likewise, since starting this series (where I am effectively pooling from the experiences of tens of thousands of DMSO users and clinicians), I have learned of many DMSO applications we either had an opportunity to explore (or never even considered) that have successfully resolved challenging illnesses.

Alzheimer’s Disease and Dementia

Alzheimer’s is the most common form of dementia, and after decades of research focused almost exclusively on removing amyloid plaques, the costly amyloid drugs have largely failed (with significant side effects), while natural therapies that address the root causes of Alzheimer’s and have been shown to treat the illness have been marginalized (detailed here). DMSO, for example, addresses reduced blood flow, inflammation, and protein misfolding, and roughly 190 studies (detailed here) support its use for dementia. These include:

• In 18 Moldovan patients with probable Alzheimer’s, DMSO produced improvements in memory, concentration, communication, and orientation that were evident at three months and especially pronounced at six,¹ and the leading DMSO neurology researcher likewise reported DMSO improved cognitive function in Alzheimer’s patients treated for six months.¹

• A 1980s Japanese review noted DMSO had been used to dissolve amyloid deposits in Alzheimer’s, with one report of partial improvement in motor function.¹

• Across numerous animal models of Alzheimer’s (streptozotocin-treated rats, amyloid-injected rats, genetically engineered mice, and worms), DMSO improved learning and memory, reduced brain inflammation, increased the connections between neurons, delayed amyloid-induced paralysis (by 48 to 98% in worms), and extended lifespan, while in rats with chronically restricted blood flow to the brain (modeling vascular dementia), it prevented the memory loss that otherwise followed.¹ Over a hundred additional studies found agents delivered in DMSO did the same.¹

Likewise, numerous readers have reported dramatic improvements in dementia. For example, after two weeks of oral DMSO, a reader’s aunt with dementia who had not spoken in over a year began talking again,¹ while another’s 93-year-old mother with 15 years of dementia stopped having sundowners and regained her personality.¹

Multiple Sclerosis

MS causes the immune system to progressively destroy the myelin insulating the nerves of the brain and spinal cord, and existing therapies suppress the immune attack but do not restore lost myelin. Many studies support DMSO’s use here, including:

• In a 1984 Russian study of 34 MS patients, DMSO produced “a very positive result,” particularly in relapsing-remitting MS.¹

• In a study of 35 MS patients, DMSO gels were recommended for their chronic neuropathic and spasticity-related pain,¹ while in MS patients with trigeminal neuralgia, DMSO applications allowed carbamazepine to be reduced or stopped.¹

• In the standard animal models of MS, a large number of agents delivered in DMSO improved clinical scores, reduced inflammation, and promoted remyelination.¹ In cell studies, DMSO drives the production of the cells that make myelin^1,2 and inhibits the challenging clotting triggered by myelin debris.¹

DMSO authors have also reported successes, including:

• Stanley Jacob gave oral DMSO to a 29-year-old woman paralyzed by MS, and she walked again (”Her improvement was dramatic, as dramatic as any benefit I have ever seen”). Six years later she was still walking, driving, and caring for her family.¹

• A California woman confined to bed in the fetal position and expected to die regained leg movement and the ability to feed herself over a year of DMSO.¹

Readers with MS have also reported benefit. For example, one reader’s wife, who had not had a pain-free day in the year and a half since developing MS-related trigeminal neuralgia, saw her pain drop 90% after testing 70% DMSO cream on a small spot of her face, and after applying it across the trigeminal area the next morning, was “99.9%” pain-free (with the pain not returning after three days without it).¹ Two readers likewise found DMSO stopped their “MS hugs” (the painful band-like squeezing around the torso), one of whom had previously “just had to endure them or go to the hospital for morphine,”^1,2 while a reader diagnosed with MS 34 years ago who now takes daily DMSO each morning has since stopped every pharmaceutical drug (including over-the-counter NSAIDs) and feels “fabulous,”¹ and another who has used it for a year for MS alongside fibromyalgia and CRPS called it “a godsend.”¹

Prion Disease (CJD) and Other Protein Misfolding Diseases

A variety of fatal neurological diseases result from misfolded proteins, and since DMSO is one of the best-known chemical chaperones, many studies of these diseases have found benefit from DMSO alone or in combination with another agent. For example:

• In cells modeling Huntington’s disease, DMSO partially prevented cell death, increased cell viability, decreased aggregated huntingtin protein, and increased its soluble (non-toxic) form.¹

• In prion-infected hamsters, DMSO prolonged survival and increased the urinary clearance of prion protein, and DMSO-treated prion aggregates had less than 1% of the infectivity of untreated ones.¹

• In Niemann-Pick disease type C (a fatal genetic disease of childhood), oral DMSO reduced seizures, improved EEGs, and shrank the enlarged liver and spleen in Japanese patients,¹ including an 8-year-old girl whose seizures decreased enough to taper her medication and whose brain atrophy stopped progressing over two years of treatment.¹ In mice with the disease, DMSO also extended survival and delayed neurological symptoms.¹

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the most common human prion disease, is universally fatal and has no treatment, making it quite notable that one reader successfully treated her cousin with advanced (confirmed) CJD, making him, to the best of my knowledge, the only person who has ever recovered from it:

Note: this nurse requested that her face be blurred out, but we have confirmed in numerous (unblurred) communications with her she is who she claims to be.

Cognitive Impairment, Brain Fog, and Memory

The same processes that eventually cause dementia (e.g., poor blood flow, inflammation, and cells trapped in a dormant state) first cause cognitive impairment and brain fog, which conventional medicine has essentially no treatment for. Many studies support DMSO’s use here including:

• In 104 elderly adults with organic brain disease (from strokes, head injuries, or degenerative conditions), DMSO combinations produced “a highly favorable effect on the psychic and somatic functions of senile patients.”^1,2

• In 100 Chilean patients with cerebrovascular disease, DMSO produced favorable changes in wellbeing, agility, mood, sleep, and speech.^1,2

• In 127 elderly patients with cerebrovascular disorders, DMSO iontophoresis improved memory, hearing, dizziness, sleep, and cognition in 86% by the fifth session.¹

• In 154 patients undergoing surgery to restore blood flow to an acutely blocked leg artery, IV DMSO before the blood flow was restored resulted in milder cognitive issues afterwards (along with less kidney and heart-lung dysfunction).¹

• In animals with chronically reduced blood flow to the brain, damaged cerebellums, or exposure to brain-damaging drugs, DMSO prevented or reversed the resulting memory loss and neuronal damage¹ (e.g., improving memory by 54% in rats with blocked carotid arteries^1,2), and a large body of combination studies showed agents delivered in DMSO counteracted the cognitive damage caused by anesthesia (a well-recognized trigger of dementia), sleep deprivation, diabetes, sepsis, epilepsy, and chronic pain.¹

Many readers have reported similar benefits. For example, a family physician diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment by Mass General Neurology reported that after adding oral DMSO (alongside other lifestyle changes), “my memory is now better than it was decades ago.”¹ Likewise, readers have reported DMSO clearing brain fog from anesthesia (within a week of starting it after hip surgery),¹ COVID vaccines (often with topical application to the neck),^1,2,3,4 long COVID,^1,2 statins,¹ zolpidem,¹ fluoroquinolones,¹ chronic fatigue syndrome,^1,2 and TBIs,¹ along with a variety of memory improvements (”Memory is insanely good now”),¹ all of which is cataloged here.

Psychiatric Disorders, Chronic Stress, and Sleep

Psychiatry’s drugs manage symptoms rather than treat the underlying illness (often requiring lifelong use) and carry significant side effects. However, a great deal of evidence suggests many psychiatric conditions have a physical basis in the brain, and DMSO’s effects on circulation and inflammation mirror therapies that frequently improve these conditions. For example:

• At a Peruvian psychiatric hospital, 42 patients were taken off their medications and given DMSO injections. All 14 acute schizophrenics improved rapidly and dramatically and were discharged within 45 days without recurrence, manic patients rapidly calmed, alcoholic psychoses resolved, and patients with OCD and severe anxiety also responded well (with the authors noting DMSO worked without the sedation of conventional tranquilizers).¹

• In 17 patients with treatment-resistant depression lasting 5 to 20 years, adding oral DMSO to their antidepressants resolved the depression in 82.3%, which persisted through one to four years of follow-up.¹

• In Chile, a DMSO amino acid formulation was used to treat mood and anxiety disorders, and in elderly patients treated with it for cognitive decline, mood shifted from depressed to cheerful.^1,2

• In 210 women with chronic gum disease, a DMSO treatment resolved the gum disease and lowered their anxiety.¹

• Russian reviews have noted DMSO can be used for psychiatric disorders and that injected DMSO calms psychotic patients.¹

• As mentioned above, a multi-decade Russian research program found chronic stress reduces blood flow to the brain, triggering the brain damage seen in psychiatric illness, and that DMSO was the most effective intervention they found (with their results subsequently beginning to be replicated in clinical trials at the Moscow Medical Academy).^1,2,3,4 In their animal work, DMSO given before chronic stress completely prevented stress-induced ulcers, anxiety behaviors, and blood pressure disturbances, while dozens of other animal studies found agents delivered in DMSO reversed depression, anxiety, PTSD, and psychosis across the standard models.¹

Although DMSO is not a sleeping pill (and in animal studies had minimal effect on sleep at normal doses), dozens of readers have reported it transformed their sleep by resolving the pain, restless legs, breathing problems, or neurological issues that had kept them awake (in some cases after years of being suicidal from sleep deprivation).¹ This mirrors human studies where sleep improved as DMSO resolved knee arthritis¹ or neck and shoulder pain.¹ Many readers also independently noticed their dreams became far more vivid or lucid.^1,2,3,4,5

Seizures, Encephalitis, Myasthenia Gravis, and Movement Disorders

Seizures: Many studies have evaluated DMSO for seizures, collectively showing a biphasic effect (therapeutic doses suppress seizures while very high doses can provoke them). In Niemann-Pick patients, oral DMSO reduced seizure frequency and improved EEGs,¹ veterinarians use IV DMSO in seizing horses and foals,^1,2 and in animals, dozens of agents delivered in DMSO reduced seizures and the brain damage that follows them.¹ One reader shared, “I’m not going every three days to emergency with seizures” (linked to the COVID booster).¹

Encephalitis: DMSO has also been repeatedly evaluated for brain inflammation from infections and other causes. In humans, DMSO has been used to treat viral meningitis^1,2 and to enhance bacterial meningitis treatment,^1,2 while in horses it has been used for herpes and West Nile encephalitis.^1,2 In animals, agents delivered in DMSO protected against a variety of lethal viral and parasitic brain infections and sepsis-induced brain injury.¹ One reader who was sent home from the ER with viral meningitis (”there’s nothing we can do”) applied DMSO to the base of the skull and was “healed” within 24 hours.¹

Myasthenia gravis: In 1980, researchers accidentally discovered that the DMSO they were using as a vehicle was independently lowering acetylcholine receptor antibodies that cause MG (by 52% in rats, persisting six weeks after treatment stopped),¹ and DMSO also fully restored nerve-muscle function in a laboratory model of the disease.¹ No human trial was ever done, but readers with generalized MG have reported no myasthenic crises since starting DMSO in 2022, with one describing it as “better than the pyridostigmine I used to take 6x/day,”¹ another going from 30 prescription medications to nearly none,^1,2 and a third reporting “my swallowing and speaking goes back to normal.”¹

Hydrocephalus: One reader’s brother, whose neurologists had given him a few years to live, was treated by Stanley Jacob with DMSO, stabilized in a way his doctors said was “making medical history,” and lived 30 more years.¹

Movement disorders: A single DMSO injection during pregnancy completely prevented a neurological ataxia in lambs (0% versus 60% of controls).¹ Readers have reported improvements in essential tremors (e.g., an 80-year-old regained the ability to write within a month),^1,2 vaccine-induced tremors,¹ and restless legs (in some cases after decades of medication).^{1,2,3,4,5,6,7}

Down Syndrome and Developmental Disorders

When I first dove into the DMSO literature, the claim I had the most difficulty believing was that it significantly improved Down syndrome, as I, like most doctors, assumed nothing could be done for a genetic condition. However, many studies and Congressional testimony corroborate it, including:

•In Oregon, 67 children with Down syndrome showed dose-dependent developmental improvements on DMSO with no side effects.¹

•In a 1976 Chilean study of 15 young children with Down syndrome, DMSO with amino acids raised motor scores from 56 to 72 and social scores from 40 to 64 over a year (while controls remained unchanged), along with physical improvements such as reduced tongue enlargement and better muscle tone,¹ and a separate Chilean study of 55 children also found large developmental gains.¹

•In an Argentinian study, 18 children with Down syndrome given DMSO and amino acids⬖ showed statistically significant acceleration of their development (particularly language) compared to 91 controls.¹

•In a 1969 study of 44 severely developmentally delayed children, over 70% responded favorably, with gains in IQ, reading, writing, coordination, and behavior,¹ while in another 1969 study of 30 learning-disabled children with language disorders, the same formula produced gains in speech, initiative, self-care, reading, and writing.¹ In Argentina, 13 developmentally disabled children (without Down syndrome) also improved with it.¹

•At a 1980 Congressional hearing, testimony described Melody Clark, predicted never to progress mentally beyond age six, who after seven years on DMSO functioned at a second-grade level (with her dentist also testifying her palate, jaw, and tongue had normalized).¹ Likewise, Billy King, who had the mental capacity of a ten-month-old at 14, reached that of a seven-year-old two years later and eventually held a job in a bookstore,¹ while Bronwyn Nash, frail and unable to gain weight at 10 months, began developing steadily once started on DMSO.¹

After I published this data, the parents of a two-year-old with Down syndrome reported she began sleeping better, became more verbal, and started crawling after starting DMSO (”It’s almost like she’s not even the same kid she was two weeks ago”).^1,2

Finally, the German DMSO community has since refined these amino acid formulations and reports significant benefit for learning disabilities and developmental delays.¹ Additionally, while no direct data exists for autism, numerous mouse studies found agents delivered in DMSO improved autism-like behaviors,¹ one reader shared DMSO was a key part of a protocol that treated her son’s autism,¹ and one reader shared that topical DMSO relaxes her daughter’s tight muscles from cerebral palsy.¹

Peripheral Nerve Damage and Neuropathies

Peripheral nerves can regenerate, but slowly (about 1 mm per day) and often incompletely, while the treatments for neuropathy and nerve pain (e.g., gabapentin, Lyrica, or opioids) at best partially relieve symptoms and carry significant side effects. DMSO both regenerates damaged nerves and blocks the small fibers that transmit chronic pain, and hundreds of studies and reader reports support its use for these conditions.

Nerve regeneration: Many studies have evaluated DMSO’s effects on nerve repair. In animals with cut, crushed, or compressed nerves, DMSO consistently improved regeneration, increasing the number and myelination of regrown nerve fibers, restoring nerve conduction (e.g., increasing nerve signal strength by 935% in rats with severed sciatic nerves^1,2), reducing scarring, improving walking and sensation, and, when used to bridge nerve gaps, outperforming autografts (the surgical gold standard). It even induced limb regeneration in adult frogs (which normally cannot regrow limbs).¹

Readers have also reported numerous remarkable peripheral nerve recoveries. For example:

•Rebecca’s leg was crushed in a car accident ten years ago. Surgeons saved it, but the tissue turned gray and she lost all feeling in it, and nothing helped for a decade. After starting DMSO, blood flow visibly returned to the tissue and sensation began coming back.¹

•A reader’s husband had a leg muscle that was dying from a compressed nerve, pain that painkillers did not touch (to the point he would cry outside each night), and a drop foot his neurosurgeon considered incurable as the muscle was too far gone. Within five minutes of DMSO going on his leg, half the pain was gone, and after eight weeks, the dead muscle began growing back (which then made it possible for the flabbergasted surgeon to perform the nerve release surgery that got him walking without a brace).¹

•A reader whose feet had been paralyzed for 13 years started taking oral DMSO daily and after 3 months was able to walk without braces.¹

Complex regional pain syndrome: CRPS is one of the most debilitating pain conditions and has no cure, yet roughly 50 studies (including several randomized trials) have found topical DMSO effective, particularly early in the disease (giving DMSO have Level 1 evidence for the condition). These include:

•A 1985 study reported an approximately 90% recovery rate when treatment began early.¹

•In an RCT of 31 patients, DMSO cream reduced the median disease score from 5 to 0 (versus 4 to 2 with placebo).¹

•In 37 patients, pain scores dropped from 5.3 to 0.9.¹

•In a 146-patient RCT, roughly 80% improved.¹

•In a 145-patient comparison, DMSO outperformed N-acetylcysteine and was more cost-effective.^1,2

•In 29 patients, DMSO reduced pain by 3.09 points over a year, with 89.7% reporting quality-of-life improvements.¹

•In 8 patients, a DMSO-ambroxol cream improved pain in 6, often within 30 minutes to 2 hours.¹

As a result, German, Dutch, and Russian guidelines recommend 50% DMSO cream for acute CRPS,^1,2,3,4,5 and readers have reported success, with one who has used it daily for 18 years calling it “a freaking Miracle.”¹

Note: CRPS closely matches the German concept of an interference field (which neural therapy treats by injections of a local anesthetic like lidocaine, which resets the dysfunctional nerves), making it notable that CRPS responds not only to neural therapy but also DMSO (which likewise provides a neurological reset).

Trigeminal neuralgia: This is one of the most severe pain conditions known, and it frequently stops responding to treatment but does respond to DMSO. For example, in 35 patients whose trigeminal neuralgia had lasted over a year, 26 improved with topical DMSO and 13 fully recovered,¹ in MS patients DMSO allowed carbamazepine to be reduced or stopped,¹ and in 154 patients with various conditions (including trigeminal neuralgia and facial neuritis), a DMSO iontophoresis protocol produced marked improvement in 93%.¹ Numerous readers have reported significant success with trigeminal neuralgia,¹ including one reader’s mother, who had been in near-constant pain for years, was pain-free by the evening of her first application and had no flareup over the following three weeks.¹

Shingles and post-herpetic neuralgia: Post-herpetic neuralgia is one of the most debilitating complications of shingles and frequently does not respond to standard treatments. However, many studies have shown it responds to DMSO:

•A 1992 RCT of 171 patients found an antiviral in DMSO was superior to acyclovir at preventing it,¹ and a 1974 RCT of 118 patients found it significantly improved post-herpetic neuralgia outcomes.¹

•In facial shingles (the form most likely to cause post-herpetic neuralgia), the combination cut the median duration of pain to 13 days (versus 1 to 3 months), with pain persisting beyond 30 days in 30% versus 82%.^1,2

•For established cases, 6 of 9 patients in one series had a complete remission,¹ a German study reported positive results in 10 of 11 cases,¹ and 18 of 22 in another series had a good response.^1,2

•In 25 patients, a DMSO combination relieved post-herpetic neuralgia pain within roughly 10 minutes.¹

•At the 1980 Congressional hearing, a Cleveland Clinic physician testified that when DMSO was applied during acute shingles, they never saw post-herpetic neuralgia follow.¹

Facial nerve palsy: In a controlled study of 65 Bell’s palsy patients, DMSO compresses significantly increased the cure rate and shortened recovery,¹ DMSO is part of the standard Russian protocols for facial nerve palsy,¹ and numerous readers have shared it resolved Bell’s palsy, including a reader with Ramsay Hunt syndrome who saw facial movement return within a week.¹

Compression neuropathies: DMSO is recommended in Russian clinical guidelines for tunnel syndromes such as carpal tunnel.^1,2,3,4 In diabetics with carpal and cubital tunnel syndromes, DMSO applications improved 83% of affected hands (most modestly) without raising blood sugar (as steroid injections do),¹ in 11 patients with radial nerve compression it reduced pain by 69% and restored wrist extension in 73%,¹ and in patients with traumatic nerve injuries, DMSO with combined B vitamins produced EMG-confirmed recovery in all of them.¹ Over 50 readers have also reported carpal tunnel and related compression improvements (e.g., for sciatica).¹

Peripheral neuropathy: In one study of patients with peripheral neuritis and neuralgia, DMSO produced a full remission in 66% and a partial one in 22%,¹ while in workers with vibration disease (nerve and circulatory damage from power tools), DMSO compresses improved most cases and reduced or eliminated the need for medications.^1,2 In animal models of diabetic and chemotherapy-induced neuropathy, many agents delivered in DMSO restored nerve function.¹ Over 100 readers have reported neuropathy from diabetes, chemotherapy, vaccines, and unknown causes responding to DMSO. For example, a diabetic who had lost about 80% of the feeling below his knees regained it to about 85%,¹ a husband’s feet that had been “basically numb” for nine years regained feeling after a few applications,^1,2 a Shingrix-induced demyelinating neuropathy’s foot spasms stopped the first night,^1,2 and an 85-year-old’s “blackish blue” toes returned to normal color with feeling returning to her heels.¹

Chronic Pain

Pain was DMSO’s most popular use from the start and remains the most common testimonial I receive. My best estimate from well over a thousand pain reports is that 80 to 90% of people who try DMSO for pain notice a meaningful improvement (which matches what early DMSO researchers observed).

Neuropathic pain: Neuropathic pain (e.g., burning, shooting, or electric pain from damaged nerves) is one of the most difficult types of pain to treat. Hundreds of studies have shown how DMSO addresses it (along with many where DMSO was used to deliver another pain-relieving agent in animal models of nerve injury). DMSO produces pain relief comparable to morphine but lasting roughly three times as long (independent of the opioid system),^1,2,3,4 selectively blocks the small nerve fibers that transmit chronic pain, dampens the central sensitization that makes pain chronic, and potentiates local anesthetics and opioids.¹ Studies include:

•In 21 patients with acute pancreatitis, rectal DMSO completely relieved pain within 12 hours in 57% (versus 17% of controls) and within 24 hours in all of them.^1,2

•Adding DMSO to an opioid (pethidine) in acute pancreatitis likewise significantly enhanced pain relief.¹

•During kidney stone lithotripsy, topical DMSO with lidocaine outperformed a standard anesthetic cream.¹

•DMSO with an anesthetic eliminated the need for painful needle anesthesia before eardrum procedures in 164 cases.^1,2

Many readers have likewise have reported it resolving phantom limb pain,^1,2,3 nerve pain that persisted for years after surgery (e.g., a reader who had lost all feeling in her armpit after breast cancer surgery regained it after four applications),¹ and burning, shooting, or electrical nerve pain from many other causes (e.g., an aircraft mechanic with pain “like an electrical shock on fire” in his hand had it resolve after a single application).¹

Headaches and migraines: Many studies and reader reports show DMSO helps headaches, with tension, sinus, and neck-related headaches responding most consistently (whereas migraines respond more variably and best when DMSO is used early). Research includes:

•Stanley Jacob found over 75% of 59 headache patients responded to topical DMSO, including 13 of 17 with arthritis-triggered headaches and 4 of 5 with sinus headaches.¹

•In 10 patients with headaches from various causes, DMSO helped all of them, with relief within 1 minute to 3 hours,^1,2 while another study found DMSO relaxed the neck muscles within 60 minutes and relieved the accompanying tension headaches.¹

•In 190 patients, topical DMSO produced good or excellent results for many types of headache and neck pain (best in tension, post-traumatic, disc, and sinus-related cases).¹

•In 15 tinnitus patients who also had headaches, DMSO completely resolved the headaches in 7.¹

•In 120 patients with migraines and neck-related headaches, a treatment protocol including DMSO applications cut migraine frequency by up to 50%.^1,2

•DMSO applications were also effective in 105 children with headaches and neck spine disorders.¹

Reader reports include one with chronic migraines since age seven who found DMSO at the onset of aura made it “disappear and dissolve,”¹ a reader’s husband with migraines two to three times a week for 30 years had only one in 45 days after starting DMSO,¹ and a physician reader used it to cure a colleague whose headaches “none of the neurologists could fix.”¹

Fibromyalgia: Fibromyalgia has few effective treatments. Stanley Jacob reported 70% of his fibromyalgia patients benefited,¹ a Russian study found a DMSO protocol normalized its dysfunctions,¹ and over a dozen readers have reported DMSO eliminating or greatly reducing their pain (e.g., one became pain-free for the first time in 25 years).^1,2,3,4,5 However, since fibromyalgia patients are frequently sensitive to treatment, they often need to start at low doses.

Sensory Organs

The eyes and ears are also extensions of the nervous system (e.g., the retina develops as an outgrowth of the brain, and hearing depends on delicate sensory cells and the nerve connecting them to it). Their exceptionally high metabolic demands make them particularly vulnerable to impaired microcirculation, so DMSO’s ability to restore blood flow, revive dormant cells, and dissolve protein aggregates frequently restores their function as well (which is extensively detailed in articles separate from the neurological series^1,2).

DMSO concentrates in the cornea (reaching 2 to 4 times its blood level),¹ which likely explains why early DMSO patients so often noticed their vision improving while it was being used for something else. This led to studies such as one where, of 50 patients with retinitis pigmentosa or macular degeneration given DMSO eye drops, 22 had improved visual acuity and only 2 continued to worsen¹ (although a follow-up study could not confirm a benefit for retinitis pigmentosa),¹ while Stanley Jacob documented a series of long-blind patients regaining sight (e.g., a man blinded for over 30 years by a dynamite explosion began seeing flashes of light).¹ Readers have in turn reported DMSO improving most standard eye conditions (e.g., floaters, cataracts, glaucoma, macular degeneration, dry eyes, and nearsightedness), often after nothing else had worked. One report provides a particularly striking example of how DMSO restores nervous system tissue, where Murray, a 75-year-old who had been blind in one eye since birth, began using DMSO for his sinuses and after a couple of months could see colors and detail in that eye for the first time in his life.¹

Likewise, a nurse who had been left seeing only shadows in her right eye after a fall fractured her orbit five and a half years earlier began seeing light in it after eight months of using DMSO on her eyes (with the eye also starting to turn back toward center), while the vision in her other eye improved and many of its floaters cleared.

Note: readers frequently ask if DMSO can be safely applied if one has IOLs from a cataract surgery. The American Academy of Ophthalmology has reported there is no evidence of (presumably systemic) applications of DMSO causing issues for IOLs,¹ while the German community (and ophthalmologists there) have found low dose DMSO applied to the eyes does not cause issues. At higher doses, issues may occur (depending upon the material the lens was made from), but the actual degree of risk remains unknown.

The ears show a similar pattern. In 15 patients with tinnitus of at least six months that they had been unable to adapt to, a month of a DMSO spray (with other agents) improved all of them, with the benefit lasting at least a year and some also regaining hearing on audiometry,¹ a New York City clinic reported most of its tinnitus patients were permanently cured within a month,¹ and in air travelers whose ears could not equalize pressure, nasal DMSO resolved 75% of cases.¹ A few studies also report success treating hearing loss with DMSO, but these were typically either case reports of specific ailments or used combinations rather than DMSO alone.¹

Readers have reported the same for tinnitus (e.g., 24/7 tinnitus of over 20 years almost completely gone after two weeks)¹ and also for hearing loss, which I believe often stems from impaired circulation to the ear. For example, sudden hearing loss in both ears reversed after one reader applied DMSO gel behind the ears (instead of the steroids their ENT offered),¹ another reader’s husband had to have his hearing aids recalibrated twice as his hearing kept improving with DMSO ear drops,¹ a woman with 14 years of hearing loss reported a serious improvement after six weeks of DMSO in her ears,¹ and 35 years of Eustachian tube dysfunction cleared within a week of nasal DMSO (restoring stereo hearing).¹

Note: since tinnitus is such a common challenge, successful DMSO cases inspired Pierre Kory’s practice to begin a clinical trial (which has thus far been successful). From all the reports I’ve received, DMSO seems to help about 50% of tinnitus cases, with the failures, I believe, being due to tinnitus having many different causes (which vary in their responsiveness to DMSO), many people using suboptimal applications of DMSO, and certain causes of tinnitus often requiring DMSO combinations rather than DMSO alone.

Lastly, there is also a bit of data on DMSO’s uses for the nose and tongue (e.g., it was found to treat burning tongue syndrome,¹ the German DMSO community identified one DMSO combination frequently restores lost smell and a few readers have reported DMSO alone may have restored their smell or taste).
Note: like other parts of the nervous system, DMSO was also found to safely facilitate the delivery of compounds to the taste bud sensory cells.¹

Rethinking Neurological Disease

There is a longstanding joke in medicine that neurologists are excellent at diagnosing diseases but not at treating them. Much of this stems from neurological diseases being defined by where the damage occurs and what it looks like rather than by what caused it, so once the diagnosis is made, there is often little to offer besides managing symptoms and monitoring the decline.

DMSO’s ability to help such a wide range of seemingly unrelated neurological conditions argues that many of them share common root causes, and that those causes are ones conventional neurology neither tests for nor treats (e.g., impaired microcirculation, dormant cells that have stopped functioning but not yet died, protein aggregation, excessive sympathetic tone, and dysfunctional nerve circuits). Because these causes go unrecognized, the diseases they produce are typically labeled “idiopathic,” “degenerative,” or “incurable,” and as a result, a vast number of patients are never offered anything that addresses why they became ill. Recognizing them, in contrast, opens the door to treating many conditions medicine has long considered hopeless.

Fortunately, one of DMSO’s most important characteristics is that patients do not need to wait for the medical system to change its paradigm to benefit from it, as DMSO is inexpensive, widely available, and can be used at home by anyone willing to learn how to use it. This is also critical for changing that paradigm, as the one pressure medicine reliably responds to is patients shifting their spending towards a superior alternative.

As such, in the remainder of this article, I will provide:

•Practical guidance on sourcing each grade of DMSO (including what is needed for IVs) and dosing it topically, orally, and intravenously.
•Emergency protocols for strokes, head injuries, and spinal cord injuries (including what to do on the way to the hospital).
•Protocols for neurodegenerative diseases (e.g., Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s), cognitive impairment, chronic stress, and developmental disorders, along with the supportive therapies we have found enhance DMSO’s effects.
•Protocols for neuropathic pain, spinal pain, headaches, compression neuropathies, facial nerve disorders, and spasticity.
•Protocols for the eyes, ears, and nose (e.g., tinnitus and hearing loss).

Read more

The best solution I’ve been able to come up with is to have monthly open threads where anyone can ask whatever is needed (e.g., any lingering questions from the previous month) so I could make a point to always reply to them (as having them all in a single place makes it easier to get to them and also possible for others with the same question to see that answer).

Each time I do a monthly thread, I try to tag it to a topic I’ve wanted to write about but I do not quite feel is enough for its own article. In last week’s article, since many asked, I shared some of my key perspectives on supplements, including that ideally for the body, nutrients (particularly minerals) should be gotten from your diet rather than in concentrated supplements. However, that can be tricky, especially if you do not live in an area where it’s possible to procure high quality produce grown locally in healthy soil. Fortunately, one food group bypasses the soil problem entirely and is readily available to us.

Seaweed

“Seaweed” is a catch-all for thousands of species of marine algae, grouped by pigment into browns (kombu, wakame), reds (nori, dulse, sea moss), and greens (sea lettuce). Lacking true roots, they absorb everything they contain directly from the surrounding seawater, concentrating minerals far beyond what land plants typically reach, something coastal cultures around the world each seem to have discovered on their own. For example:

•In Monte Verde, Chile, archaeologists found nine species of seaweed alongside medicinal plants in a settlement dated to roughly 14,000 years ago, which suggests they were used for both food and medicine.

•By the first centuries AD, Chinese medical texts were specifically documenting Sargassum seaweed as a treatment for goiter, a medicinal use still incorporated today.

•Greco-Roman remedies included seaweed in the treatment of gout, joint ailments, and venomous bites.

This recognition by ancient cultures across the world that had no communication with each other suggests seaweed provided unique health benefits that were tangible enough the simplest medical systems could recognize them. Modern nutritional science, in turn, shows they were onto something. One of the more remarkable demonstrations of this is in the gut: the intestinal bacteria of Japanese individuals carry genes for digesting the polysaccharides in nori that are absent in North Americans, and those genes were acquired directly from the marine bacteria that live on seaweed.¹

Note: another extraordinary aspect of seaweed is how quickly it grows (e.g., the widely consumed species that make laver and nori are ready for their first harvest within 30-90 days of seeding, and then can have numerous successive harvests every 10-20 days¹), along with the fact it can be grown across vast stretches of coastal water where nothing else is being farmed. As such, at a time when the nutrient content of our food supply keeps declining, one of the few foods able to make up the difference also happens to be one of the easiest and cheapest to produce at scale, both for people and for livestock.

Seaweed’s Nutritional Content

Sea vegetables carry an unusually broad spectrum of minerals and trace elements the body needs for basic physiological function, often at levels that dwarf what you’d find in land plants. Most contain vitamins A, C, and a range of B vitamins, and a handful are among the only plant-based foods on earth that provide meaningful amounts of B12 (e.g., a 2024 study found seaweed significantly improved B12 levels in vegetarians).
Note: high B12 seaweed contains the best forms of B12¹ and is also a rich source of (healthy) folate.¹

Protein content swings anywhere from roughly 10% to over 40% of dry weight depending on species, and seaweed protein is complete, so all nine of the essential amino acids are present (the nine the body cannot synthesize on its own). Seaweeds are also low in fat and remarkably high in fiber and among the richest natural dietary sources of iodine.

Most importantly, since seaweed absorbs minerals directly from seawater rather than soil, mineral content in seaweed runs up to 100x higher per gram than land vegetables across the board (e.g., one study found nori has 3 times more bioavailable iron than spinach, gram for gram — and sea lettuce, 5 times more).

Note: land vegetables today measurably contain less calcium, iron, and other minerals than they did in 1950. While this is commonly attributed to the soil becoming demineralized (as the primary input given to soil is nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium), decades of selective breeding to meet other priorities also plays a key role¹—both of which are not applicable to seaweed.

Conversely, this also means that if seaweed is grown in contaminated water, it will pick up the contaminants present there, which has led to extensive debate on which brands and forms of seaweed are the best to eat, particularly since many of the ancient societies which cultivated seaweed did so at a time when there was much less lead in the oceans. This, I believe, argues for two key principles—getting seaweed from clean sources and not consuming them in excess but rather treating them as a complementary part of a complete diet.

Note: one of the most common concerns with seaweed is its arsenic content. Data in this area is often misleading, as testing rarely distinguishes organic arsenic (which in seaweed exists mostly as arsenosugars and is far less toxic) from the significantly more toxic inorganic form. The main exception is hijiki, which contains a substantial amount of inorganic arsenic, so many guidelines (appropriately) caution against consuming it. For other seaweeds, preparation also makes a large difference: one study found that washing, soaking, cooking, and boiling reduced total arsenic content by up to 58.8%, 91.5%, 50%, and 60% respectively.

The key nutritional components of commonly consumed forms of seaweed are as follows:^1,2,3,4,5,6

• Nori — Comparable to beef liver on B12, tomatoes and lettuce on vitamin C, and bananas in fiber content.¹

• Wakame — A meaningful source of iodine and folate (which are needed for healthy fetal development), that also has a high fucoxanthin content that’s shown promise for metabolic health.¹

• Kombu (Kelp) — Among the strongest iodine accumulators of any living organism on Earth, with potassium and calcium levels that dwarf most conventional foods.¹ Is also a natural source of fucoidan, a bioactive polysaccharide studied for its wide variety of therapeutic properties (particularly reducing pain and inflammation).¹

• Dulse — Exceptionally high in potassium and B12 for a plant, with EPA (a key fat in fish oil) making up to half its total fatty acid content.^1,2 Particularly protein-rich when harvested in winter and early spring.^1,2

• Irish moss — High in protein (35% dry weight), with a favorable mineral profile and floridoside, the compound behind its use in natural moisturizers.^1,2

• Sea lettuce — B12 high enough on its own to exceed the full adult daily RDA, plus calcium covering over a third of an adult male’s daily need. Unusually low iodine for seaweed.¹

• Caribbean sea moss — A diverse source of minerals and trace elements, with notable protein and EPA content.^1,2

The Global Iodine-Deficiency Predicament

Seaweed is one of the richest natural sources on the planet of iodine (which the thyroid requires to function). Just a few grams a day can meet or exceed your entire daily requirement without supplements, fortified salt, or anything processed.

How many grams depends entirely on the species. Dried nori averages around 16 mcg of iodine per gram and wakame around 42, whereas kombu averages roughly 2,350 (and some kelp flakes exceed 8,000).^1,2 As such, reaching the 150 mcg RDA takes about 9 grams of nori but less than a tenth of a gram of kombu, and a single gram of kombu delivers twice the 1,100 mcg US upper limit.

Note: because iodine is critical for health, to ensure the population received it, it is added to (iodized) salt. In contrast, most of the natural sources of salt—which I detailed here and believe are superior for your health compared to table salt due to their robust mineral content—do not contain significant amounts of iodine (which makes alternative dietary sources like seaweed important for individuals consuming them).

However, despite decades of widespread iodized salt initiatives, roughly 1.9 billion people (31% of the global population) still have inadequate iodine intake, and diagnosed deficiency cases rose about 23% between 1990 and 2021. Moreover, iodized salt itself isn’t the dependable dietary source most people assume: a 2008 study of US salt samples found iodine content ranging from 12.7 to 129 mg/kg against a labeled 45 mg/kg, with over half the samples falling below the FDA’s own recommended range.
Note: since other halogens (e.g. fluorine and bromine) compete with iodine, many have argued their widespread presence (e.g., via water fluoridation, perchlorate contamination of groundwater and food,¹ or the switch from iodate to bromate as a dough conditioner) is responsible for the widespread functional iodine deficiency seen here. Supporting this, adequate iodine intake has been found to mitigate fluoride’s effects on the thyroid.¹ Fortunately, California recently outlawed bromated flour, so this may at last be changing.

In the United States, the decline is visible in the national survey data. Median urinary iodine fell from 320 mcg/L in 1971–1974 to 145 mcg/L by 1988–1994 (with pregnant women since dropping further to 125 mcg/L),¹ and more than 15% of American women of childbearing age now fall below 50 mcg/L (the level the WHO uses to define moderate deficiency in a population).¹ A newer contributor is the move away from dairy, which at roughly 85 mcg per cup¹ is the main source of iodine in most Western diets, as a 2017 analysis of 47 plant-based milks found most contained about 2% of the iodine in cow’s milk.¹

Japan’s historically low goiter rate — as low as one case per million people — is attributed to heavy seaweed consumption. Compare that to the US today, where goiter affects roughly 1.3–2.5% of working-age adults, or 13,000 to 25,000 cases per million — a rate 13,000 to 25,000 times higher than Japan’s historic low, even after decades of salt iodization. At the same time, excessive iodine should also be avoided (e.g., subclinical and overt hypothyroidism is more common in iodine-sufficient, seaweed-heavy regions and in individuals with chronic iodine deficiency, a sudden increase can create hyperthyroidism), which is why intake and preparation methods are essential.

Traditional cultures that ate the most seaweed also utilized practices that kept the dose in a sustainable range. The best example is kombu. Since its iodine is water-soluble, boiling kombu for 15 minutes removes up to 99% of it,¹ so kombu that is boiled and then eaten (as many traditional preparations are) carries a fraction of what the dried strip did. Conversely, that iodine ends up in the water, making dashi (the broth made by simmering kombu and then discarding it) a concentrated source, with kelp-based soups measured at anywhere from 165 to 7,750 mcg per serving.¹ The Japanese also eat kombu sparingly (roughly half a gram per person per day) and typically alongside soy and cruciferous vegetables, both of which reduce how much iodine the thyroid takes up.¹ None of this context made it into the Western conversation about seaweed, where kombu is often eaten whole or swallowed as kelp tablets.

Note: Indigenous Mesoamerican cultures processed corn with limewater (nixtamalization) before eating it, which makes niacin bioavailable. Skipping this step results in pellagra, a niacin-deficiency disease that killed thousands across the American South and Europe into the 20th century.

Human trials, in turn, have tested whole seaweed providing roughly 475–1,320 mcg of iodine per day for up to eight weeks without causing thyroid abnormalities, exceeding the European upper limit in some cases while remaining below Japan’s 3,000 mcg upper limit. This hence indicates that, while high, the iodine levels in seaweed are not a risk if it is consumed appropriately.

Isolated iodide, however, has not shown the same margin. In a four-week randomized trial of healthy adults, subclinical hypothyroidism began appearing at 400 mcg per day of supplemental iodide (in 5% of participants) and reached 47% at 2,000 mcg,¹ which is why the American Thyroid Association advises against iodine or kelp supplements above 500 mcg per day.¹ The people who need to be most careful, though, are those with existing thyroid disease (e.g., Hashimoto’s, Graves’, or thyroid nodules), in whom excess iodine can tip the gland into either hypothyroidism or hyperthyroidism.¹ Similarly, high seaweed intake can cause or worsen symptoms in individuals with thyroid autoimmunity, and the transient hypothyroidism and iodine-induced goiter seen in Japan typically reverse once seaweed is restricted.¹ Likewise, daily kombu was found to suppress thyroid function in healthy Japanese adults until it was stopped.¹ If you have a thyroid condition or take thyroid medication, I would hence stay with the low-iodine seaweeds (e.g., nori and sea lettuce) unless someone is monitoring your thyroid.

Iodine’s Overlooked Role in Women’s Health

A strong case can be made that iodine deficiency underlies many different chronic illnesses, and in my own experience, iodine is one of the trace minerals that, when correctly supplemented, most commonly provides a tangible improvement in health.

Classically, iodine is viewed as necessary for the thyroid (as thyroid hormone contains iodine), so many of the core functions of thyroid hormone (e.g., fetal and infant brain development, growth, metabolic rate, heart rate, body temperature) go hand in hand with sufficient iodine.

Since iodine is essential, many tissues in the body preferentially accumulate it. Beyond the thyroid, these include the breasts, ovaries, placenta (for the fetus), prostate, uterus, gastric mucosa, salivary glands, thymus, skin, and eye. Deficiency in each produces its own signature (e.g., a dry mouth from the salivary glands, or dry skin that cannot sweat).¹

Note: this same concentrating mechanism is why potassium iodide tablets are distributed during nuclear emergencies. Radioactive iodine falls on pastureland, cows eat the grass, and it concentrates in their milk — the thyroid can’t differentiate between radioactive and regular iodine, so drinking contaminated milk can cause a toxic overload. After Chernobyl, childhood thyroid cancer cases in Belarus jumped roughly 45-fold, largely traced to contaminated milk. Potassium iodide works by pre-emptively flooding the thyroid with safe iodine so it does not accumulate radioactive iodine.

Women bear the brunt of this. Breast tissue places a large additional demand on the body’s iodine, and estrogen has been found to inhibit iodine absorption (whereas testosterone promotes it),¹ which likely explains why thyroid disease is several times more common in women than men.

This is most clearly seen with fertility. Research has found that even mildly iodine-deficient women take longer to become pregnant (with a 19.4% reduction in the likelihood of conceiving each cycle), other research has linked more severe deficiency with greater reproductive difficulty, and a small 2025 pilot study found iodine supplementation improved markers of egg quality in women with diminished ovarian reserve, which is especially noteworthy as more women choose to start families later in life. In the United States, an NIH study of 467 women trying to conceive found 44% were moderately to severely deficient, and those women were 46% less likely to become pregnant in any given cycle.¹

More importantly, once a woman becomes pregnant, the fetus depends entirely on her iodine for its brain development. Severe deficiency during pregnancy causes cretinism (profound intellectual disability, along with impaired hearing, speech, and motor control), two separate meta-analyses found iodine-deficient populations have a mean IQ 12 to 13.5 points below iodine-sufficient ones, and controlled trials in Papua New Guinea, Zaire, and China found that correcting the deficiency before or during early pregnancy eliminated new cases of cretinism entirely and raised children’s developmental scores by 10-20%. Nor is this confined to the developing world, as in a British cohort, children whose mothers were even mildly deficient during pregnancy scored lower on verbal IQ and reading at age 8.¹

Outside of pregnancy, one of the most common consequences of an iodine deficiency is goiter, where the thyroid enlarges (making it appear as though there is a tumor in the neck). Notably, a similar process also occurs with the breasts and ovaries (which David Brownstein helped bring attention to). For example, iodine deficiency was found to produce fibrocystic-like changes in mammary tissue in animals, while studies of women with fibrocystic breast disease have repeatedly found over half of those given iodine showed substantial improvements in breast pain and fibrosis. In the best controlled of these, a randomized, double-blind trial of 111 women, 3–6 mg of iodine per day (but not 1.5 mg) significantly reduced breast pain, tenderness, and nodularity over six months, with no dose-related adverse events.¹

Furthermore, iodine used to enter the American diet through two sources that have since shrunk or disappeared: iodine-based disinfectants in milk production and iodate dough conditioners in commercial bread, which in 1980 bread makers replaced with bromide. As those sources vanished, US dietary iodine intake fell by roughly half — a period during which fibrocystic breast disease by some estimates rose from about 3% to 90% of American women. Breast cancer rates in Japan are roughly 66% lower than in the United States.¹ Likewise, well-documented migration studies have found that Japanese women who emigrate to the US see their breast cancer risk climb over successive generations until it approaches that of US-born women, which has led some to hypothesize that fibrocystic breast disease, some breast cancers, and even uterine fibroids are in part iodine-deficiency disorders.

As these fibrocystic changes precede cancer, I have long suspected a key reason why men get prostate cancer and women get breast cancer is that the glands are unable to get the minerals they need, and over the years, I have seen numerous approaches show varying degrees of success in treating cancer (or pre-cancerous changes) with appropriate supplementation.
Note: DMSO has shown remarkable and consistent efficacy for a variety of eye diseases (detailed here), including “incurable” macular degeneration. One of the only other approaches I have ever seen treat macular degeneration gave high doses of the nutrients and minerals the eyes needed, which has led me to speculate that these degenerative processes can result either from insufficient dietary sources of the nutrients needed, or from a functional nutritional deficiency (where inadequate blood flow prevents enough of the nutrient already present within the blood from reaching the target tissue). Supporting this, older manipulative literature reported goiter improving once the blood supply to the thyroid was improved, and the DMSO community has found many glandular disorders throughout the body responded to topical DMSO combined with iodine.

David Brownstein, the physician who has arguably done the most work in this area, in turn has reported that properly testing for and resolving iodine deficiencies within his own patients (e.g., with a high-dose iodine protocol) has:

• Rapidly resolved fibrocystic breast disease, often within two to four weeks. One nurse had spent 15 years having cysts drained at a university breast clinic and was contemplating a bilateral mastectomy. A month after starting iodine, her breasts were soft and pain-free, and her mammograms later normalized.

• Eliminated ovarian cysts, and improved or reversed cysts and nodules in the uterus and thyroid, which he found typically takes three to six months.

• Shrunk breast tumors in women who had declined conventional care, when iodine was given as part of a broader nutritional program. In one woman, a PET scan six weeks after she raised her dose showed her metastatic tumors necrosing from the center. In another, the tumors had “diminished considerably” on ultrasound at 18 months, and her mammogram and ultrasound were later read as normal. In a third, the cancer did not progress over three years and the lesions slightly regressed.

• Restored fertility. For example, a 42-year-old with two miscarriages in the previous two years, who was excreting 22% on his iodine loading test (he treats 90% as sufficient), conceived shortly after starting iodine and described it as the easiest pregnancy of her life.

• Shifted estrogen metabolism toward estriol, the weakest estrogen and the least stimulating to breast tissue (which Jonathan Wright also observed). Conversely, iodine deficiency increases both ovarian estrogen production and the sensitivity of the breast’s estrogen receptors.

• Mobilized bromide. In a small in-office comparison, his breast cancer patients excreted roughly twice as much bromide as women without cancer, and that excretion rose further once they started iodine.

• Improved a range of other conditions, most notably autoimmune thyroid disease. In his initial series, 92% of his Hashimoto’s and Graves’ patients were iodine deficient by his testing, and he reports nearly all improved dramatically once that was corrected as part of a broader program. For example, a Graves’ patient who had refused radioactive iodine saw her hyperthyroid symptoms resolve within four weeks, and a Hashimoto’s patient’s thyroid antibodies normalized over six months. Roughly a third of his hypothyroid patients also needed to lower their thyroid hormone dose, and he has described decade-long daily headaches, chronic fatigue, brain fog, and psychiatric symptoms lifting once the deficiency was addressed.

Of the more than 6,000 patients he has tested, over 96% were deficient by his loading test, and he favors a high-dose approach (significantly exceeding the RDA). He has also reported the problems that come with these doses: palpitations in sensitive patients that resolved once the dose was cut, TSH elevations that can persist for up to six months, and detox reactions as bromide is displaced. For this reason he advises doing this with an iodine-literate practitioner rather than alone, and not starting it mid-pregnancy without one.

Note: in the literature, the fibrocystic response has held up in controlled trials and the fertility link in cohort studies, whereas the rest of Brownstein’s observations (including his loading test and the doses themselves) has never been put to a controlled test.

Supporting Metabolic Health

The salt in seaweed makes some people worried it can raise blood pressure. Beyond this link being unsubstantiated, seaweed actually gently normalized blood pressure.

Note: the link between salt intake and blood pressure is typically non-existent (whereas avoiding salt for “health” causes a wide range of issues)—all of which is detailed here.

Specifically, peptides found in dulse, nori, and wakame have demonstrated activity against the renin-angiotensin system, including ACE inhibition—the same blood-pressure-regulating pathway targeted by common ACE-inhibitor medications (the class of blood pressure medications which overall provide the greatest therapeutic benefit). These seaweed peptides hence help blood vessels relax, easing circulation and lowering blood pressure.

Dulse peptides have also demonstrated direct renin-inhibitory activity, suggesting that seaweed proteins may influence multiple steps in the blood-pressure-regulating process. Importantly, these peptides are naturally present in the whole seaweed, meaning you don’t need to purchase an expensive isolated peptide product to incorporate them into your diet.

Of the three, wakame has particularly compelling human evidence. In a randomized, double-blind study, consuming 4–6 grams of dried wakame per day resulted in a 10.5 mmHg reduction in systolic blood pressure at the 6-gram dose, about the equivalent of a tablespoon—or what you’d add to a bowl of miso soup.

Seaweed has also shown promise for normalizing blood sugar. In one trial, participants with type 2 diabetes eating a kombu-wakame blend for four weeks saw postprandial glucose drop from 254 to 203 mg/dL, along with lower triglycerides and increased HDL. In another, wakame eaten with a meal lowered both glucose and insulin within 30 minutes in people with untreated type 2 diabetes.

Brown seaweeds also contain compounds that inhibit alpha-amylase and alpha-glucosidase, enzymes responsible for breaking down carbohydrates, potentially slowing glucose absorption after a meal. Fucoidan, one of its isolated compounds, has also been shown in diabetic animal models to lower fasting blood glucose and improve insulin sensitivity. A 2023 meta-analysis of human studies found that brown seaweed consumption improved postprandial glucose, HbA1c, and markers of insulin resistance overall.

Seaweed Nutraceuticals

While I generally prefer consuming seaweed—and most things—as a whole food, there are cases where isolating and concentrating one of its compounds makes sense, particularly when you want amounts that would be difficult to obtain through diet alone. Brown seaweeds are the source of several compounds now sold as concentrated extracts, three of which are particularly interesting:

• Fucoidan: A sulfated polysaccharide that has attracted significant research interest for its anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, anticoagulant, and antiangiogenic activity. It has also been investigated for antitumor effects. Most notably, kombu has been used in Chinese medicine for over a thousand years to treat edema (a symptom of kidney disease), and in 2003 China approved a kombu-derived fucoidan capsule (Haikun Shenxi) for chronic renal failure. A review of 15 years of its clinical use found that across 50 papers and 2,130 treated patients, 87% improved on kidney function markers versus 65% of those given routine treatment alone.¹
  Note: these results are for extracted fucoidan rather than whole kombu, whose potassium content is a problem in advanced kidney disease, and since fucoidan is an anticoagulant, concentrated extracts do not belong alongside blood thinners.

• Fucoxanthin: It has been studied for anti-inflammatory and anticancer activity, as well as its effects on fat metabolism, including triglycerides, liver fat, and fat absorption.

• Alginate: A natural polysaccharide with an especially interesting application for acid reflux. In the stomach, alginate-based formulations can form a floating gel-like “raft” over stomach contents, creating a physical barrier that helps keep acid away from the esophagus rather than suppressing stomach-acid production. Human trials and a meta-analysis of randomized studies have found alginate-based therapies can improve GERD symptoms. Alginate also binds strontium: in a 1966 human study, 1.5 grams taken with a meal halved the absorption of radioactive strontium without affecting calcium, making it the fallout counterpart to potassium iodide.

Sea Moss

The Caribbean Irish moss drink dates back to the 1800s, with its origins commonly traced to Irish laborers and immigrants who brought their tradition of preparing Irish moss to the Caribbean, where locally available seaweeds such as Gracilaria came to be used instead. Back in Ireland, Chondrus crispus had become an important famine food, helping sustain impoverished coastal communities during the potato famine.

This concoction became a sustained piece of Caribbean culture, cooked with milk, vanilla, and spices, and taken for general vitality and male libido. In recent years, it’s gained a new spotlight in wellness circles as “sea moss gel”, a longevity tonic and superfood, particularly marketed for its mineral density and its reputation for vitality and libido support.

Studies on sea moss have documented its mineral, amino acid, and omega-3 content, along with demonstrated antioxidant activity and prebiotic effects, including increases in beneficial gut bacteria and short-chain fatty-acid production.

Making the gel yourself is straightforward and far more economical than buying pre-made jars. The ability to soak it and blend it into a nearly tasteless gel also makes it one of the easiest ways to consume seaweed. A traditional Jamaican preparation combines sea moss with spices and milk.

Lastly, Irish moss is also the source of carrageenan, a food additive some avoid due to its potential to worsen bowel inflammation or past reaction to it.¹ While this same issue has not yet been reported for Irish moss, caution should be exercised if you already avoid carrageenan.

Note: if you wish to prepare this, look for dried sea moss with clear sourcing, sustainably harvested and sun dried, and ideally, tested for heavy metals. That said, there’s less concern with heavy metal exposure here since the finished product is a diluted gel and at the recommended serving of 1-2 tablespoons a day, you end up consuming a small fraction of the concentrated dry-weight numbers even if the source sample tested high.

Sourcing Your Seaweed

One of the major challenges with moving to a healthy diet is that junk food succeeds because it appeals to core food desires that are hard to find in the healthier alternatives. For example, to help patients struggling to quit, I spent years searching for a healthy alternative to potato chips (eventually finding one that was easy enough to make at home many found it allowed them to make the transition). For this reason, seaweed has become immensely popular as a “potato chip substitute.” Unfortunately, most of the existing seaweed brands are loaded with bad oils, to the point they are arguably worse than the chips they replaced.

For this reason, I’ve put quite a bit of work into trying to identify the best brands of seaweed to consume (for the various reasons one would be interested in). In the final part of this article (which serves as an open thread for you to raise any questions which have accumulated over the past month), I will cite what are presently the healthiest (and tastiest) seaweed brands on the market, how to make sense of the conflicting data on their metal content, and answer a few of the common questions about iodine supplementation.

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•While the importance of vitamin D is generally recognized, many of the other critical functions of light within plants, animals and human beings remain almost completely unknown, and hence are the focus of this article.

•One of the defining characteristics of modern life is continual exposure to unnatural light (particularly from energy efficient light bulbs). This is viewed as relatively benign, but decades of forgotten research (and a growing body of new research) show it is a root cause of a myriad of inexplicable physical and behavioral illnesses.

•Cells communicate with each other through faint emissions of ultraviolet light. This was once one of the most active fields in biology (yielding over 700 papers, 11 Nobel nominations, and a blood test which detected cancer with over 95% accuracy) before it was abandoned for political reasons and forgotten.

•The eyes and the blood conduct light throughout the body. When this process is disrupted (e.g., by glasses with lenses that filter out critical parts of the spectrum), a variety of significant illnesses can develop.

•In 2022, the federal government effectively banned the incandescent bulb because most of its output is “wasted” infrared rather than visible light, despite our bodies using that infrared for a myriad of essential processes. Senate Energy Chairman Mike Lee introduced a bill to bring those bulbs back, which yesterday received its first hearing, and with public support, can free us from the unhealthy bulbs that have been forced upon us.

Over the years, I have become convinced sunlight is one of the most essential nutrients for the body. For example, as human beings moved further and further north from Africa and had increasingly lower sun exposure, their skin became progressively lighter, something which argues the human body needs light and that the whitening of human skin in the higher latitudes was a protecting mechanism designed to ensure enough of the remaining sunlight could get inside the body.
Note: an explanation of how the darker parts of the skin prevent UV from entering the body can be found here.

Unfortunately (outside of very specific patentable applications), since no one has a financial interest in promoting sunlight it hence has no lobbyists, almost everything we hear about instead focuses on why it’s terrible for us (as sunlight prevents many diseases other industries profit from). For example:

•As discussed in a previous article, dermatology was one of the least desirable professions in medicine. They then transformed themselves into one of the most sought after ones by rebranding themselves as cancer fighters and convincing everyone to get regular skin cancer exams where any potential cancer could be quickly removed, often for thousands of dollars apiece, quickly making dermatology into one of the highest paying specialties. A centerpiece of this rebranding was making benign cancers be labeled as deadly ones and claiming sunlight caused skin cancer (which while true, omitted to mention that that a lack of sunlight is what causes fatal skin cancers). Because of this, a lot of dermatology morphed into scaring people senseless about the sun, and despite billions being spent each year on skin cancer, the total death rate from skin cancer remains almost entirely unchanged (instead we simply diagnose and “treat” far more of it).
Note: in this article, I will attempt to explain why unnatural light causes skin cancer.

•While many factors contribute to cancer, the focus is often on sunlight and smoking as the primary culprits. I believe this emphasis explains why cancer rates continue to rise, as the true causes of cancer remain underexplored. Industries with vested interests lobby to keep these causes off-limits, diverting attention from potentially significant contributors to cancer.

In this article, I will present some of the forgotten knowledge on the incredible importance of light.

The Importance of Sunlight

Prior to dermatology’s disastrous war on the sun, the value of sunlight was widely recognized in medicine. For example, in the early 1900s, heliotherapy (sunbathing) was used with great success for treating many (otherwise incurable) conditions, such as the 1918 influenza, tuberculosis, and many other diseases.

The existing data, in turn, shows that sunlight provides an immense degree of benefit. For example:

•Sunlight is critical for mental health. This is most well appreciated with depression (e.g., seasonal affective disorder). Sadly, many workers (especially night shift workers such as those in hospitals) do not get that essential light exposure and suffer immensely. For example, consider this study of Chinese operating room nurses which found their mental health was significantly worse than the general population and that this decline was correlated to their lack of sunlight exposure (which I would argue does not benefit the patients they care for).

Note: I really got this point once, where after a long period of hospital night shifts under fluorescent lights, noticed I was becoming clinically depressed (which has never otherwise happened to me and led to another physician I was close to offering to prescribe antidepressants). I decided to do an experiment and stuck with it for a few more days, then went home and bathed under an Ott full spectrum bulb I’d been able to obtain, at which point I almost instantly felt better.

•Many different studies have found sunlight exposure dramatically reduces one's risk of cancer (e.g., this large study found high solar UVB exposure halved one’s risk of breast and prostate cancer).

•An excellent 20-year study of 29,518 women found that avoiding the sun made one 60% more likely to die (a 130% difference compared to those who had the most significant amount of sun exposure), and the most considerable benefit from regular sunlight exposure was reducing one’s risk of dying from heart disease.
Note: that study also found a variety of other common diseases were much less likely to affect those with adequate sun exposure.

•In a 2024 analysis of the UK Biobank, both measures of UV exposure that were examined (sunbed use and how much solar radiation reached the participant’s home) were associated with a lower risk of dying from any cause, from cardiovascular disease and from cancer. Likewise, when 88,905 Biobank participants wore light sensors for a week, those with brighter days and those with darker nights were each less likely to die over the following 8 years.

•Normal sunlight is critical for facilitating the circadian rhythm our body’s depend upon to rest and repair themselves. In turn, a major cause of the modern insomnia epidemic (and the profound health consequences it entails—which are discussed further here) are artificial light exposures, while one of the most useful treatments for it is to simply start your day with a full sunlight exposure.

Typically, sunlight's benefits are thought to be due to producing vitamin D (a critical nutrient) within the body. However, I have long suspected that many of the benefits of vitamin D are not due to the vitamin itself but rather that its elevation serves as an indicator that the body is having regular sunlight exposure and hence is experiencing the myriad of benefits sunlight provides. For example, when 24 healthy volunteers were exposed to UVA (which does not produce vitamin D) at a dose equivalent to about 30 minutes of summer sun, their arteries dilated and their blood pressure dropped, as nitric oxide stored in the skin was released into the circulation. The dermatologist behind that work, has since argued (e.g., in this review) his specialty’s position on sunlight needs to be rethought. Similarly, a meta-analysis found that spending an hour or more a day in the summer sun was associated with a 16% lower risk of breast cancer, whereas simply living somewhere with more ambient UV was not.

Note: that being said, vitamin D supplementation can often be very beneficial. However, in almost all cases, elevating your vitamin D levels through appropriate sunlight exposure provides significantly greater benefits than supplementation.

What is Light?

Waves, by definition have a few fundamental properties:

•They require a medium to travel through. For example, the medium for waves at the beach is the ocean, whereas the medium for sound is the air.

•They travel at specific speeds.

•They have a specific wavelength and frequency (which are inversely related to each other).

•Their strength is determined by how many waves elapse in a second (a higher frequency correlates to a higher total energy) and how greatly each individual wave disrupts its medium (e.g., a small wave at the beach has much less energy than a tsunami as does a loud sound compared to a quiet one).

By far, the most common wave in our lives is electromagnetic radiation, which is defined as a wave that travels at the speed of light and, unlike all other waves, does not have a medium it travels through (which is why EMR can travel through space and many objects). “Light,” for instance, is one type of EMR.

Since there is an inverse relationship between a wave’s wavelength and frequency, a variety of different types of EMR exist depending upon their wavelength. For example, visible light comprises the EMR with a wavelength between 380nm-700nm, as this is the EMR the eye can “see.” At the same time, depending on the wavelength of the EMR, its properties (e.g., color) vary immensely.

Likewise, many other types of EMR also exist (e.g., Gamma rays, x-rays, ultraviolet, visible light, infrared, microwaves, and radiowaves) which each have different properties. However, despite EMR being one of the fundamental constructs of our reality, much of its biological significance is still not recognized. For example, I feel some of the biggest misunderstandings about EMR are as follows:

•Natural light tends to have a fairly wide range of frequencies present within it (e.g., this is why sunlight splits into a rainbow once it passes through a prism). In contrast, artificial light tends to have a much narrower range of frequencies present within it which differs greatly from what biology evolved to handle.

•This is easiest to see by comparing bulbs. A standard white LED emits a sharp spike of blue at around 450nm, a broader hump of yellow, and almost nothing past 700nm. An incandescent bulb, like the sun, emits a smooth curve that keeps rising through the red and continues past 2000nm, so most of what it produces is infrared we cannot see.¹
Note: since the government grades bulbs on visible light per watt, that infrared was scored as “waste,” which is how the incandescent bulb came to be banned.

•The label “ultraviolet” is given to the EMR that lies between visible light and x-rays. This implies all UV is the same, when in reality, each type of UV (UV-A, UV-B, and UV-C behave very differently) and are present in very different amounts (e.g., the atmosphere blocks most UV-C from reaching the surface of the Earth).

•Infrared penetrates much deeper into the body than UV (5-40mm vs. 0.02-0.15mm) and in 2025, researchers at University College London were able to measure the infrared in sunlight after it had passed through the human body and found that it created systemic effects. Additionally, standard glass (for the most part) blocks UV from traveling through it.

•Conventional science typically describes the adverse effects of EMR as being a property of how much energy the EMR has and if that energy is sufficient to break molecular bonds (termed ionizing energy). For example, gamma rays (which are released by nuclear weapons) are so dangerous because their ionization energy is so powerful they shred the molecular structures of the body (e.g., DNA) apart. Conversely, microwaves (which are instead on the low energy end of the electromagnetic spectrum) are deemed to not be dangerous because they contain too little energy to ionize molecular bonds.

•The previous point is not entirely correct because while EMR typically passes through whatever it contacts, if it instead “matches” that medium, it will store inside it and have a dramatically greater effect on it (e.g., this describes the concept of a resonance frequency). This is important because a wide number of critical living structures (e.g., mitochondria) evolved to have a resonance for a specific type of EMR and then respond to them while everything around them is largely unaffected by that specific type of EMR. Unfortunately, this aspect of science has been largely glossed over by our scientific apparatus, something I believe is due to the fact biophysics opens the doors to creating a variety of un-patentable medical therapies, and because it implicates a lot of the EMR we are now saturated in (e.g., the microwaves cell phones bluetooth and Wifi use) as a cause of poor health.

For example, radar works by sending out a large pulse of microwave energy in each direction (through the unit spinning around), and then using the reflections it receives from any radar pulse into the atmosphere to indicate the presence of an object being there. I personally think radar is far from benign as I’ve read numerous stories of soldiers stationed next to radar units (where the microwaves are exponentially stronger) becoming severely ill, I know many EMF sensitive people can tell if far away radar units are firing, and I personally can feel something when I am at an airport each time a radar sweeps by. While that seems abstract, I recently saw a brief video by John Ott that perfectly demonstrates the reality of this phenomenon:

Biophotons and Mitogenic Radiation

Note: in another article I wrote on this critical subject I highlighted how it underlies many of the therapies now used in regenerative medicine.

A fundamental principle within biophysics is that cells emit very faint photons (predominantly within the ultraviolet spectrum) they use to control growth and communicate with other cells and that when biophoton transmissions go awry, disease results (leading to abnormal photon emissions from tissue being seen in many disease states). For example, cancers have abnormal biophoton emissions, and (when studied) carcinogenic substances significantly disrupt the wavelength of these photons, whereas similar compounds that do not disrupt those biophotons are not carcinogenic (an observation which led Fritz-Albert Popp to create the discipline of biophotonics).

One of the most interesting observations made within biophotonics was that the cytopathic changes caused in a cell by viral infections or toxin exposures could be “transferred” to another cell in the immediate vicinity when the cells had no physical connection but were optically connected through a UV transmitting window, while conversely (as this Russian study shows), cells injured by radiation could be healed by being placed by healthy ones.
Note: when cells are irradiated, nearby unirradiated cells can also show radiation-like injury (known as the bystander effect). Recently, evidence has accumulated that ultra-weak biophoton emission contributes to the bystander effect.^1,2,3

Likewise, in health, biophoton emissions cycle with the circadian rhythm (e.g., when a Japanese team imaged the light coming off the human body, it peaked in the late afternoon and stayed low overnight, even in volunteers kept awake under constant light¹), whereas in chronic illness, Robert Naviaux (the researcher who pioneered studying the cell danger response) mapped each stage of the cell danger response to a characteristic level of emission the body becomes stuck at.¹

Alexander Gurwitsch was one of the earliest researchers to study this. In 1923, he discovered that living cells (of both animals and plants) gave off extremely faint emissions which triggered the cells around them to leave their lag phase, enter mitosis and divide, leading him to name it mitogenic radiation [MGR]. After realizing that ordinary glass but not quartz glass blocked it, he concluded that MGR was a type of ultraviolet light (as this is how UV behaves), and much later, it was confirmed to be exactly that (with a wavelength between 190-350 nm).

Note: MGR is very faint (making it difficult to detect), and its emission from biological systems typically requires the system to be illuminated with light (which makes the faint mitogenic emissions much more difficult to spot). Eventually, roughly a decade after Gurwitsch’s death, researchers were able to capture this radiation with sensitive photomultiplier devices.

After studying it in detail, Gurwitsch realized that MGR required a very specific dosing and pattern (e.g., through being pulsed) to achieve its optimal effects, and that too much quickly became counterproductive (e.g., light UV exposure stimulated the growth of yeasts, while stronger UV exposure killed them). For example, light interrupted 100-800 times a second produced the effect in 13 seconds (versus 6-8 minutes for continuous light), while yeast responded to the UV from living tissue at intensities orders of magnitude lower than they did to UV from a lamp, and responded far better to a lamp emitting a mix of wavelengths than to one emitting a single spectral line.¹

As this was very challenging to do artificially, the value of MGR was primarily in what it facilitated the diagnosis of (e.g., blood typically emitted MGR, but if someone had cancer it did not, and as a result, with a high degree of accuracy, the hospital he worked at was able to determine if someone had a cancer purely by assessing if MGR had disappeared from their blood). This was eventually traced to a peptide which appeared in the blood of cancer patients and quenched its UV emission (termed the “cancer quencher”), whereas in the other states where blood stopped radiating (e.g., fatigue, starvation, old age, diabetes or sepsis), this was instead due to metabolic byproducts which absorbed the UV, a difference the test could distinguish. In animals, the quencher appeared long before a tumor could be felt (e.g., in rats, 9-12 days after tumor cells were implanted versus 28-32 days) and disappeared within days of the tumor being successfully removed (while its persistence predicted a recurrence). Likewise, in the clinics which used it to screen newly admitted patients, both its sensitivity and specificity exceeded 95%, roughly thirty years before the first conventional blood tumor marker (alpha-fetoprotein) was discovered.¹

Additionally, Gurwitsch and those who followed him (many of whom also were within the Soviet Union) found that:

•Both living tissue and enzymatic reactions (e.g., the synthesis of amino acids) emit MGR, while MGR (and UV light) can catalyze the synthesis of biochemical molecules.

•Once many biological substances (e.g., blood) were exposed to MGR, they would then emit MGR, which was termed “secondary MGR.” In many cases, secondary MGR was able to precisely match the frequencies and duration of MGR that were necessary for the best response to it in tissue throughout the body, and could significantly exceed the energy that had initially been received. I suspect this is why ultraviolet blood irradiation creates significant systemic effects but only works when a small portion of the blood is irradiated.

•Injuring or killing cells would cause them to release an intense flash of MGR which lasts for minutes, has a very different spectrum from typical MGR, and cannot be triggered again until the cell has recovered. Most recently, in 2025, physicists at the University of Calgary used cameras capable of detecting single photons to image the light coming off living things, and found it rose wherever a plant’s leaf had been injured, while in mice it dropped markedly once they died.

Note: I suspect the flash comes from exosomes being released from the cell (while conversely, it is recognized that biophoton signaling will cause cells to release exosomes¹,²). Likewise, I suspect you often see such rapid systemic changes after therapeutic exosome infusions is because of the regulatory photons they release into the body.

•Faster-growing cells tended to be mitogenic while slow-growing ones were not, with the primary exception being cancer cells.

•Certain parts of the body (brain tissue, the cornea of the eye, active muscles, and blood) had much greater emissions of MGR (and muscles from frogs freshly taken from the wild emitted far more than those from frogs kept for months in an aquarium¹).

•A dissected optic nerve was found to radiate mitogenic radiation throughout the optic tract when the eye was exposed to unfiltered sunlight.
Note: recent research supports this. When freshly isolated rat eyes (and separately their lens, vitreous humor and retina) were exposed to visible light, each re-emitted photons afterwards,¹ while when light of various colors was shone on one end of a rat spinal nerve root, photon activity significantly increased at the other end, something a nerve conduction blocker (procaine) or metabolic inhibitors prevented.¹ Likewise, the Müller cells of the retina are already known to guide light, and physicists at the University of Calgary have shown that the myelin sheath surrounding nerve fibers could allow them to function as optical waveguides.¹

•Blood vessel walls were found to not block the transmission of mitogenic radiation, and within the blood vessel, MGR was best conducted when the vessel itself was energized, a quality likely imparted into the blood by the electrical charge of the heart.

•As tissue goes through different developmental stages its MGR changes (which suggests MGR helps guide growth and differentiation, something no biochemical mechanism has been able to explain). For example, as people age, their blood emits less and less MGR (and it temporarily declines after stress or exertion), and this may account for why their bodies have more difficulty healing from injuries.

Note: in the 1930s, researchers determined that partially restoring the MGR of an older person’s blood improved senility.

Another Forgotten Side of Medicine

Within 25 years of Gurwitsch’s discovery, over 700 papers had been published on it by more than a hundred researchers around the world (fewer than 3% of which failed to find the effect), Gurwitsch had been nominated for the Nobel Prize 11 times, and a future Nobel laureate (Dennis Gabor) had been among those who confirmed the radiation was ultraviolet. The research then stopped, as it was interrupted in Europe by World War II, increasingly dismissed in the West as “Soviet science,” and in 1948 persecuted within the USSR alongside genetics.¹

It was never seriously resumed, even though physical instruments later confirmed the emissions his school had detected biologically (e.g., from onion roots, embryos, yeast, excited nerves, the working heart and malignant tumors)_,¹ the author of a 1967 paper in Nature declaring MGR disproven went on to improve his equipment, detect it, and spend the next twenty years confirming the UV emission’s intensity, wavelength and timing matched what had been reported in the 1930s,¹ and a physical basis for how such faint light could trigger cell division has recently been proposed.¹

Sadly, while the subject of MGR has an immense number of important implications for biology, very few know of the topic now (even within disciplines like regenerative medicine where MGR modulating therapies significantly improve clinical outcomes), as like many other forgotten sides of medicine, the vast body of literature behind this unpatentable therapy could not keep it from being swept away in the sands of time.
Note: I consider one of the most important discoveries made by these researchers was that the eyes conducted MGR into the body.

John Nash Ott

Note: most of this section is a summary of Ott’s book Health and Light.

As plants move quite slowly, it is typically not possible to see their movement (although exceptions do exist such as plants that reflexively contract like Venus fly traps or if one is in areas where nature has an unusual abundance of vitality, with careful observation, it’s sometimes possible to see rhythmic movements in the periphery of a tree).

Time-lapse photography (where shots taken far away from each other are turned into frames for a motion picture) made it possible to accelerate this microscopic movement of plants and hence make it visible. One of the pioneers of time-lapse photography was John Nash Ott, who began working on it in 1927 (while in high school) and because of the popularity of newfound art, got a lot of business. For example, this is some of the footage in a Disney motion picture Ott was hired for:

Note: some of Ott’s flower time lapses can be viewed here and here.

Time-lapse photography was immensely challenging because it required maintaining a consistent frame and lighting for months (and sometimes years) at a time, but due to his talent, Ott (a very awake individual) was able to consistently produce results and remained in high demand for decades (whereas many others simply could not pull it off).

From doing this, Ott figured out a variety of ways to manipulate the movement of plants (e.g., many move towards sunlight), and got very serious about it. For example, this was a highly-regarded time-lapse video (slightly under 2 minutes long) he spent 5 years producing. Where he was able to make primroses “dance” and then “bow” to a classic waltz:

Through doing this, Ott realized the plants were reacting to the light he was using to film them (as he often used specific light filters to get the right color for each picture) and began to see that plants were exquisitely sensitive to both light in general and also depending on the plant, specific colors. As he began to explore the effect of light on plants, he then realized many similar effects could be seen in animals and humans. I will now list some of Ott’s most interesting discoveries.

Note: much of Ott’s work was predicated on the recognition that UV for the most part does not pass through glass, and he hence needed to use special types of windows (e.g., certain plastics) for natural light to be let in.

Light and Plants:

•Standard glass filters out the essential UV light many plants (and animals) depend upon. Conversely UV light produced the strongest and healthiest plants. For example, amplifying (e.g., by placing aluminum under plants which reflected the UV light in sunlight back up to plants), when tested on squash plants increased their yield five-fold and eliminated both viral and insect infestations from the plants.
Note: one of the most unexpected discoveries Ott made was that when he started leaving a full spectrum light with long wave UV on at night (to prevent burglaries) in a kitchen that happened to also have UV transmitting windows, he noticed that the orange and grapefruit trees outside burst into bloom out of season and bore exceptionally large fruit—which again signified a small amount of UV light could have a massive effect on plants. Likewise he also found certain fruits (e.g., apples) needed UV to ripen, while others (e.g., tomatoes) ripened in the darkness.

•Plants (e.g., tomatoes) that appeared to be sickened or dying from a contagious virus would recover and bear fruit once they received normal unfiltered sunlight—a recovery considered to be impossible by tomato growers.
Note: because of this observation, Ott thought there was merit in examining the pleomorphic theory of biology.

•Plants were often sensitive to very specific wavelengths of light. For example, morning glories would not open in the morning if they were exposed to red light during the night but if the red was filtered away, nighttime light exposure did not prevent them from later opening.

•The same pumpkins will have flowers of both genders. Ott discovered that while under a skylight and a supplemental fluorescent light, their male flowers grew while the female ones withered and died. The next season, when he used a different bulb (daylight-white tubes) with a bluish glow, the opposite happened: the female ones thrived while the male flowers died.

•X-rays (emitted from the ends of most fluorescent light tubes and the older cathode ray televisions) would cause chaotic and disordered growth (e.g., beansprouts would often have their roots grow upwards—something Ott concluded was due to the natural direction of their growth having evolved to be opposite to the background x-rays, as since those come from the sky, this would typically direct the roots into the ground).
Note: interestingly, the X-rays which affected plant growth were too small for the instrumentation of the time to detect (which highlights why many of the arguments about the safety of low strength electromagnetic fields (EMFs) aren’t biologically sound).

Later, Ott learned that wheat seedlings on the international space station grew similarly to the plants he exposed to X-rays, which Ott attributed to their increased multidirectional exposure to cosmic rays.
Note: The Secret Life of Plants (which can be watched here) also demonstrates the extraordinary sensitivity of plants to their environment.

•Certain plants needed to first “sleep” in darkness (otherwise they would not bloom), and in some species Ott studied, this sleep needed to occur during the night (e.g., putting them in a pitch black room during the day would not help them to bloom). Ott then tried putting them at the bottom of a 650 foot coal shaft (as this largely blocks the cosmic radiation from the sun that is present during the day) while illuminating them with incandescent bulbs (which do not emit cosmic radiation) and observed the plants immediately went to “sleep” which indicated plants are quite sensitive to the trace levels of cosmic radiation in our environment. When he instead put them at 100 feet down the shaft (which partially shielded them from cosmic rays), a partial response instead occurred, as the plants still appeared to go to sleep but were much less responsive to opening in the morning once they were brought to the surface.
Note: the reason a circadian rhythm (which is maintained in complete darkness) and the need for sleep exist in almost all living organisms is still somewhat of a mystery. I believe Ott’s experiments help shed light on where parts of it is actually coming from.

Light and Cells:

Ott studied plant cells (from Elodea grass) under a microscope and discovered that when exposed to full spectrum light, all their chloroplasts (the structures that perform photosynthesis) would stream through the cell in an orderly fashion (an example of which can be viewed here). Conversely, when he removed UV from that light, many chloroplasts would leave the stream, clump together, and stop moving, while when he also added a red light filter to his microscope (which made the light red by removing the non-red light), more chloroplasts would stop moving, while others would take a shortcut and cut through the cell. When he tried a green filter, the shortcut pattern changed and some of the chloroplasts would resume moving, while when a blue filter was used, their motion mostly returned to normal. Then, when the filters were removed and long UV was added, the normal motion immediately resumed (however if excessive UV was added, the cells would rupture). Finally, regardless of what he did, the chloroplasts gradually slowed down and would not resume moving until they had a dark period to “sleep.”
Note: I believe some (but not all) of Ott’s observations would have been explained by the spontaneous flow liquid crystalline water creates.

These results then inspired him to study the effects of different light in animal cells.
Under a microscope, he looked at the pigmented cells within the retina (from rabbit eyes). There he found:

•Their pseudopodial activity (movement preceded by the cell’s membrane stretching out like an arm which essentially creates the appearance of it walking along) would become abnormal under shorter wavelengths (e.g., blue light), while longer wavelengths (e.g., red light) would cause the cells’ membranes to rupture and their contents to spill out.
Note: using near infrared spectroscopy, researchers recently found that blue light (420nm) at the levels present in our everyday environment destabilized mitochondrial metabolism in the mouse retina, and that this persisted for at least an hour after the light was turned off.

•Their cellular reproduction (mitosis) would stop after being exposed to red or blue light for approximately three hours, while full spectrum light instead helped the cells reproduce.

•Like the plant chloroplasts, the activity of their pigment granules would slow down at the end of the daytime period and would require a dark period uninterrupted by light before resuming their normal response to light energy.

•After a 12-hour continuous exposure to ordinary incandescent light each day for one week, an estimated 90% of the pigment granules became sluggish in their action and remained virtually motionless at one end of the cell until a bit of long UV was added (at which point the pigment granules would become active again and resume their normal movement within the cell).
Note: it’s not clear to me how Ott defined long UV, as he implied it was UV with a wavelength greater than 290nm (which is both UVA and most UVB) and that it was blacklight UV (which is near the visible boundary of UVA).

•When he studied chicken embryo heart cells, he consistently found that blue light (which is often present in laboratories) caused them to go through contortions, whereas, like the pigmented retinal cells, red light weakened their cell membranes and caused them to become more likely to burst.
Note: Ott then showed these changes to a few experts and reported: “Several well known virologists have commented that this reaction resembles cells being attacked by viruses.”  

Additionally, Ott also cited the work of researchers working with slime molds who found that for them to sporulate, they had to be in a chamber for a few hours and exposed to cool light (e.g., yellow and green), whereas if they were exposed to warm light (e.g., orange pink), they did not grow.

In short, Ott found it remarkable that he could induce a greater change in cells (e.g., through increasing their metabolism or killing them) by varying what light the cells were exposed to than with the tranquilizer drugs he exposed the cells to.

Note: footage of Ott’s cell experiments can be found in the video at the end of this section. Additionally, different types of fluorescent light exist. Commonly, they have a yellow-orange color to give their light a warm feel as that is often people’s preferred color. In Ott’s experiments, he typically compared the effects of cool white fluorescent lights, daylight white ones, and pink ones.

Light and Animals:

Gender Differentiation—Since light had a gender based effect on the sexual development of a pumpkin, Ott decided to explore the effect in animals through having fish tanks undergo long-term exposure to pink fluorescent light. From this, he found if those fish laid eggs, the new fish that hatched would all be female (although about 20% developed stunted male characteristics as they aged—suggesting they were more intersex than female). In total, they found the results held true for the 50 fish they hatched (many of which had different parents).

Note: all embryos begin as being female, however in males, the androgen gene (the Y chromosome) activates and transforms the developing embryo into a male. In turn, many classic cases of transgenderism result from a defect in this process (e.g., the cells do not respond to androgens like testosterone which prevents male development from occurring)

This experiment was then repeated by a chinchilla breeder who needed more females (2 had recently died and in the last three years, 9 males and 1 female had been born). As she had been using a frosted incandescent bulb (which blocks a significant amount of their light spectrum) alongside a distant window at the end of the room for illumination, Ott sent her two transparent incandescent bulbs, which were received at somewhere between a third to halfway through their gestation and then turned on. Eight weeks and one day later, he received a letter of gratitude stating 3 females had been born—indicating the lights had exerted their effect during the pregnancy (rather than on the male or during conception). This was then followed by another letter several months later stating the next litter were all females (which presumably had instead had that light throughout their entire pregnancy).

Later, in April 1970, Ott worked with the Kline Chinchilla Research Foundation to complete a 5-year study which over 2000 chinchilla breeders participated in. They found that when the standard incandescent light bulbs were used in the breeding rooms, the litters would average 60-75% males, whereas when “daylight” incandescent bulbs were used, the ratio of males to females would be reversed and average 60-75% females.
Note: Ott also repeated this experiment in horses but I was unable to find the final data for it.

Animal Fertility:

•In the fish experiments (which were not receiving any natural light), Ott also discovered that the fish would not lay eggs until he reduced the light intensity and only had the lights on for 8 hours a day.

•When Ott bred rabbits, he found he got much better results from natural UV light (through UV transmitting windows) than with artificial lighting.
Note: this approach also yielded an “almost unbelievable improvement” with breeding rats and mice.

•When female minks do not get pregnant after mating, they often get an injection of a pregnant mare serum before attempting the second mating. When minks were exposed to blue light (from being behind blue glass), they all became pregnant on the first mating. Conversely, when behind pink glass, after three attempts (and hence two injections) only 87% became pregnant, while 90% of the male minks were classified as “non-working.”

•Suspecting the x-rays from cathode ray color TVs could affect animals, Ott discovered that once he placed one in the vicinity of his animal breeding program, significant disruptions occurred (e.g., rats went from having 8-12 young to 1-2 young per litter—many of whom then did not survive), and it took 6 months for breeding to return to normal once the TV was removed.

Note: as discussed below, Ott also discovered ways to improve animal fertility.

Light and Animal Health:

•In a group of 536 mice born under natural UV light, 97% survived to maturity. In a group of 679 born under fluorescent light, 88% survived to maturity, with the highest survival rate (94%) being seen in those who lived under cool white, warm white, and daylight white lamps, and the percentage noticeably declining under different, deeper-colored lights (with the lowest rate, 61%, resulting from exposure to pink fluorescent lights).

•Rats raised in total darkness had fur that was soft and smooth in texture, quite thick and fully developed. Rats of the same breed exposed to artificial lights instead had coarse and extremely bristly fur. Additionally, many of the rats raised under daylight white fluorescent light were completely bald on the tops of their heads and often down the ridge of their backs. In parallel to this, the large chinchilla study found if their periods of darkness were lengthened, it would trigger the development of their heavy winter fur, which is what they are often bred for.

•Two breeds of research rats that frequently develop tumors also often inexplicably have their tails gradually become necrotic and fall off. When one breed was kept under pink fluorescent lights for 12 hours a day, within 3 months, they would become spotted and develop sores, which then went away within 30 days if the rats were returned to natural light. However, if they were instead kept under the pink light for 6 months, the tail gradually became gangrenous and, bit by bit, sloughed off until there was a complete necrosis of the tail—which curiously had no bacteria or fungi within it.

•Those rats exposed to pink fluorescent light also developed excessive calcium deposits in their hearts (calcific myocarditis), were more tumor prone, had smaller litter numbers, and had challenging behavioral problems.

•Mice kept under dark blue fluorescent light had higher blood cholesterol levels than mice kept under red light. Additionally, many of the male (but not female) mice under blue light became obese.
Note: in a 2025 study, mice exposed to the 420-450nm blue light which dominates LED bulbs were found to gain weight rapidly compared to controls, while in a 2019 study fruit flies raised under white LEDs lived half as long as those kept in darkness, a loss which almost entirely disappeared once a yellow filter removed the blue.

•Ott noted an aquarium had been using the same blacklight UV lamps (originally for decorative purposes) that Ott had found benefitted his research animals. He inquired and found out that this light addressed a major problem in their fish—exophthalmus (the eyes popping out), a condition attributed to a virus that curiously was rarely seen in fish kept outdoors and subject to natural lighting conditions.

•Ott discussed reports from Manitoba, Canada, of dairy herds, located within two miles of telephone microwave relay towers, giving considerably less milk, poultry producing only a fraction of their usual egg quota and flocks of chickens going into sudden, unexplained hysterical stampedes.
Note: more recently, many have also argued cell phone towers have played a major role in the decline of bee populations.

•In addition to disrupting fertility, Ott also discovered that the X-rays from (older) colored TVs caused all the young rats around it to die in 10-12 days. Two rats that appeared extremely lethargic and almost dead prior to their demise were then professionally autopsied at the moment of their death, at which point several instances of brain tissue damage were discovered.

•For seven years, one shed at a mink farm inexplicably had experienced a significant increase in the young born in the litters there alongside a significant improvement in the condition of their fur. As this increased the farm’s revenue, they tried to figure out what was causing it, but other than establishing the worst performing minks likewise improved when put into the shed, it remained a mystery. After Ott investigated, he realized it was due to an adjacent building having an aluminum siding (whereas the other ones were next to buildings with iron sidings), and since only aluminum reflects UV, Ott measured the farm and determined a significantly higher UV level was present in that shed.

•Ott cited a 1971 study of golden hampsters which found that when hampsters were fed a cavity provoking diet (a high carbohydrate one containing 60% sucrose), those that spent 12 hours a day under fluorescent light with UV added (to approximate natural light) averaged 2.2 cavities, whereas those under cool white fluorescents averaged 10.9 cavities. Additionally, the cool white light resulted in an 80% reduction in the development of their male sex organs.

Note: UV light exposure also increases agricultural productivity as hens will lay significantly more eggs, are less likely to become sick, much less likely to die, and will grow faster (e.g., a 1953 study found it caused young chicks to typically gain an additional 30-40 grams), to be much less likely to develop disease, to require less feed, and to not have their egg laying decrease in their second year of life. Similar benefits (e.g., increased egg laying) have also been found in turkeys.

Animal Cancers:

Note: much of the research Ott referenced in his book was never published and instead simply learned of by communicating with the researcher.

•A study exposed rats to carcinogenic chemicals and different light conditions. Those in total darkness had the least cancer, while those living under daylight mimicking fluorescents had significantly smaller and less frequent tumors than those under incandescent bulbs.

•A mouse study designed to study malignant melanoma found mice kept under simulated daylight develop tumors at a slower and diminished rate compared to those under cool white fluorescent light.
Note: fluorescent light exposure has also been linked to melanoma in humans.

•Another study of mice that were highly susceptible to cancers, had 30 pairs kept under daylight white fluorescent lights, 30 pairs kept under pink fluorescent lights and 8 pairs which instead received daylight filtered through standard window glass. The pink group developed cancer the fastest, the daylight fluorescent group took a month longer, while the window group took 2 months longer. Ott did a follow up to this with 2000 mice and found out that on average, mice under a pink light developed cancer and then died in 7.5 months, while as the light was improved, their life span progressively lengthened (up to 16.1 months).

•Another experiment transplanted tumors into mice, and found that for slow growing tumors, those kept under natural light had an average life span of 43 days whereas mice kept under cool white fluorescents had a lifespan of 29 days.
Note: no difference was observed for fast growing tumors.

•When approximately 500 minks were kept behind pink glass, and 500 were kept behind blue glass, 4 of those exposed to pink light died from a strange illness that the farmers had never seen before, with their autopsies showing what appeared to be a cancerous condition of the abdominal area including a number of vital organs.
Note: due to unforeseen circumstances, a pathological examination of those organs was never performed.

Animal Behavior:

•When breeding lab rats (or mice) it is standard procedure to remove the male from the cage before the litter is born so he will not eat them. However, when provided with natural light, he instead cared for the young (especially when the mother was gone) and was much more docile and friendly (and less likely to bite) than those kept under fluorescent lights.
Note: a frequent cause of leaks from Biolabs (e.g., the controversial bat lab being built in Fort Collins CO) are the animals biting lab workers.

•Animals kept in captivity (e.g., reptiles birds and mammals) were less likely to attack each other if kept under blacklight UV. Ott specifically discussed witnessing this in regards to fin-nipping (which had been a problem at an aquarium until black lighting was brought there), and noted that it has gradually become recognized that blacklights have made it possible for many fish that could never previously be kept in captivity to now be kept in aquariums.

•A report from the Houston Zoological Gardens in Texas (published in the 1969 International Zoo Year Book by the Zoological Society of London) reported that a number of reptiles and amphibians became noticeably more active when the cool white and daylight white fluorescent tubes in their cages were replaced with full-spectrum lighting, and that snakes that had previously refused to eat (including a rare type which was very difficult to keep alive in captivity) ate once put under those lights.

•After a Syracuse, New York zoo installed a new light to stop vandalism, many animals there started acting like it was spring and began mating (e.g., cougars, geese, lambs, deer, bear, kangaroos and chimpanzees) and in turn had many offspring.

• After 4 years, a Bronx, New York zoo was able to get puffins to breed by installing a full-spectrum lighting system.

•A 1969 study evaluated how often mice would voluntarily run on a wheel and found those in red and dark environments ran the most, followed by the yellow group, followed by those in a blue-green and daylight colored environment. Additionally, albino mice had the greatest response to the different colors.

•When minks were kept in a pink environment, they became increasingly aggressive, difficult to manage and in many instances actually vicious, whereas in a blue environment, they became friendly and docile, and in thirty days could be handled with bare hands like ordinary house pets.

•Rats exposed to cathode ray TV x-rays became increasingly hyperactive and aggressive in 3-10 days, and then became progressively lethargic, and at 30 days they needed to be pushed to be moved. Shielding significantly reduced this, although an incomplete result may have resulted from another unshielded TV in the vicinity, which Ott hypothesized (due to studies such as this one) was a result of acetylcholine release (as at low and then high levels it triggers each of the behaviors observed).
Note: this study is interesting because I have seen very similar behavior occur in humans.

•Ott cited Dr. Susan Korbel from the University of Arkansas reporting laboratory rats “dancing around” and acting “as though they had been given a type of nerve gas used in World War I” when they were subjected to low levels of microwaves.

•A study evaluating the effect of stress on a propensity for alcoholism perplexingly found rats preferred water on weekdays, but alcohol on weekends. After this was eventually correlated to the lab being completely dark on the weekend, a group of non-stressed rats were kept in the darkness (where they then developed alcoholism), which was followed by rats not kept in the darkness or exposed to stress being given pineal melatonin injections (as this is released during darkness) and them also becoming alcoholics.

All of these animal results are quite shocking, and Ott argued that any animal experiments must control for the light conditions in order to be reproducible. Sadly, decades later, the inability to reproduce experimental data is still one of the largest issues science faces (and very little thought is given to the unhealthy lighting used in research labs).

Light and Humans

Each of Ott’s findings in plants and animals in turn generalized to humans and led to a number of remarkable discoveries.

Glasses:

After working with plants under artificial light conditions for two years, Ott gradually developed arthritis in his hip and a great difficulty walking, at which point he tried everything he could to identify the cause of the arthritis or to create a cure for it (including lots of sunbathing—which rather than helped him, made him worse). At one point, his glasses broke, and because he did not like his replacement, he decided to do without glasses, at which point he noticed an immediate and progressive improvement in his condition, and before long feeling better than he had in 4 years and regaining his mobility (which was later confirmed by hip x-ray and a doctor’s physical exam). This, in turn, led him to suspect a primary route of light to his body was the eyes (as sunbathing had not helped him at all—rather it made him worse) and that the UV blocking properties of his glasses had created major issues for him (as he had worn sunglasses both while driving to the beach and while sunbathing).

After some investigating, he discovered that:

•Reducing his time in a studio, being under a television studio bright light from 2 hours to 40 minutes helped him, but each time he did that or drove while looking through a windshield he still felt worse.

•This regimen (healthy light reaching the eyes) also addressed the increasingly common head colds and sore throats he’d experienced over the last few years that no remedy had worked for.
Note: as discussed here, I believe one of the key characteristics of a viral upper respiratory infection is a lowering of the physiologic zeta potential.

•He had a friend follow his healthy light regimen and their hay fever vanished.

•He encountered someone who’d worked for him, who had since been on an assignment that required being in a lot of intense indoor artificial lighting and had not only become diabetic from it, but had his diabetes cause blood vessels in both eyes to burst and make him to almost blind. Because of this, he’d taught himself to read braille and had been reassigned to the photography dark room, but sadly had continued to have additional blood vessels in his eye burst. Ott suggested the regimen, and after 6 months, there had been no additional blood vessels burst and he had partially regained his sight.

•Ott met someone who had Graves disease (an autoimmune thyroid disorder that causes the same eye swelling seen in the fish) and was not responding to radiation treatment. On the chance it could save her sight, she tried Ott’s full spectrum regimen, and her eyes healed. Ott then learned that her husband was having issues with recurrent skin cancers (which his doctor had recommended against additional surgery for), so he had him fix his eyelight exposure, get more natural light and stop watching television, and after 5 months, his skin became normal.

•Ott found a study of Cree Indians in northern Manitoba, Canada, who had an exceptionally high rate of pterygium (abnormal growth of tissue in the eye) who he then discovered had also been given specially designed sunglasses to block sunlight from damaging their eyes. Ott then searched for people who had developed pterygium while on military duty in the tropics, and in his small sample found all had worn prescription sunglasses.

•Ott found out that when the eyes are blocked from receiving UV (including where one is but the other is not through customized contacts or glasses), the UV deprived pupils will dilate to let more light in (resulting in different sized pupils when UV is present but one eye is blocked from getting it). This both makes sunglasses appealing (as a more dilated pupil gives one a more vivid perception of their surroundings) and suggests that the body has a regulatory mechanism to ensure it gets enough UV light from the environment.

•Ott found a study that showed 7-10 days of exposure to an ordinary (110 lux) light bulb could damage eye cells, but if the eye cells were instead exposed to a 1500 lux bulb with a green filter on it, severe damage occurred in 40 hours. Ott also identified reports that showed exposure to continuous green light damaged the eyes of several types of rats, mice, hamsters, and the Galago monkey.
Note: many sunglasses use green filters.

While Ott’s belief that glasses deprive the eyes of wavelengths they need never gained traction in medicine, ophthalmology recently arrived at a version of it. In a series of studies since 2017, Japanese researchers found that violet light (360-400nm, right at the edge of UV) suppresses the progression of nearsightedness, and that children who wore eyeglasses (which block it) had their eyes elongate faster than children wearing contact lenses which let it through.¹ They traced this to a violet-sensitive photoreceptor in the retina (OPN5),¹ and when they measured violet light around Tokyo, found it was abundant outdoors and essentially absent indoors, as windows, eyeglasses and modern lighting all filter it out.¹

Note: my present hypothesis is that the eyes (via natural UV light entering the optic nerve) serve as one of the primary sources for mitogenic radiation to enter the body (given what the previous MGR research showed) and it is also very likely they serve a similar function for other essential frequencies of light (as various schools of medicine have established introducing different colors of light into the body produce therapeutically relevant effects).

Cancer:

•At an African hospital, Ott learned there had been a surge in cancers (whereas previously there had been none) and that while there had been no change in their lighting during this period, sunglasses had become a status symbol that people in the area had started regularly wearing.

•After he convinced a doctor to have 15 cancer patients follow his light regimen over the summer months of 1959, it was determined that 14 of the 15 did not have their cancers progress (the one who did had still worn regular glasses), and several had shown possible improvements.

•Ott learned of a school that had the highest rates of leukemia of any school in the country (5 times the national average). After investigating, Ott learned all of it had occurred in two classrooms, and in both of them, to avoid an outside glare from a nearby glass building, their teachers had closed the curtains for the room and switched to using artificial lighting in the room which happened to be warm (orange-pink) fluorescents. After several years (prior to Ott arriving), those two teachers left, and the new teachers switched back to sunlight in parallel with the bulbs being switched to the cooler fluorescent color. This in turn resulted in a complete disappearance of the leukemia cases and it being labeled as an unsolved mystery.

•Ott learned of a man in his early seventies who had just been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer who wore sunglasses most of the time and was sent a copy of the regimen Ott had used. His cancer disappeared and he lived for 8 more years before dying from a heart complication.

•Ott learned of a patient with recurrent cervical leukoplakia (a precancerous condition) who had been advised to get a hysterectomy. She decided to do the light regimen, her remaining leukoplakia shrunk (and was eventually removed), and had no further recurrences (hence avoiding the surgery).

•Ott spoke to an elderly man who had prostate cancer and was scheduled for surgery who had been wearing pink tinted eyeglasses. After correcting his glasses, cutting down television and being outdoors, his cancer disappeared on its own.

•Ott learned of a patient with a rapidly progressing cancer which was expected to be fatal in 4 months. Ott changed the lighting in his hospital room and at his home, and the man ended up living for 10 months, was free of pain (which is often a major issue in these types of situations) and was highly active until he died.

•Ott learned of an older woman who had a fast-spreading terminal cancer and had a small ozone generator (which uses UV light) set up in her room which was missing a covering and hence continually shined UV light into her room. Two years later, she was in excellent health.
Note: this may have also been an effect of the ozone or negative ions being generated.

Health and UV Lighting:

•Ott found a restaurant where for decorative purposes, everyone worked continually under active blacklight, and rather than become ill, they had been in peculiarly excellent health (even when flu epidemics swept through the area), and were a remarkably happy, courteous and efficient group where everyone seemed to get along well together. Ott in turn used their UV exposure as his initial blacklight dose for the animals he studied.

•During 1968-69, a flu epidemic swept the country, with 5% of those in his county being sick at one time (leading to many businesses temporarily shutting down). The one exception was a manufacturer who employed 100 employees, who never had someone get ill, and coincidently had recently switched to UV transmitting windows and full spectrum lighting. Following this change, it was also observed that employees became much happier and work productivity increased by 25%.

Lighting and Human Behavior:

•Ott learned of a radio station where the white fluorescent lights throughout the station were replaced by pink ones to “brighten the mood,” and after two months they began to develop personnel problems (e.g., poor performance on air, becoming difficult to control and at odds with the management and two resignations being received). At some point, a male employee said “If those pink bulbs aren’t removed I’ll go out of my mind,” which management immediately responded to (replacing all of them with white lights) and within a week, all the personnel problems were resolved.

•Ott learned of a survey of 300 college students to determine if they wore colored contacts or glass lenses, and found out that the three students who wore pink colored ones were also considered to be the most psychologically disturbed students in the college.
Note: I have met a few people I believe this process was at work with.

•Ott also learned of a college football player who had been hyper-aggressive and helmet throwing, who 30 days following Ott’s suggestion to stop wearing pink tinted glasses became a very relaxed and confident person whose football performance significantly improved. Additionally, he also learned of another player on the team whose performance mysteriously regressed, and once it was tagged to him installing psychedelic red lighting in his dorm room (which was removed) his performance on the field returned.
Note: workers who work in red colored rooms have been found to have elevated anxiety, distraction, dysphoria annoyance and stress scores (which reduce when they go to rooms with different colors).^1,2,3,4,5

•In 1964, a news story swept the nation of 30 children who had developed nervousness, continuous fatigue, headache, loss of sleep and vomiting but after an extensive workup (e.g., for infections or contaminated food or water) the only commonality found was that they all were watching television for 3-6 hours on weekdays and 6-10 hours on weekends. Their doctors recommended cutting all TV, and in the 12 who did, all recovered in 2-3 weeks, whereas for those 18 who cut it down to 2-3 hours a day, it took 5-6 weeks for recovery, and with 11 then going back to normal TV viewing and having their symptoms return.
Note: because the media is much more corrupt now, stories like these never reach the airwaves.

Ott in turn suspected this was due to the x-rays being emitted by the cathode ray tubes inside televisions (which had greatly increased since color TVs needed three operating at a higher voltage than the single one within a black and white TV), and began the previously mentioned studies which demonstrated many color TVs were emitting x-rays which were significantly harming plants and animals. Following this, Ott was sent to a newly created school for children with learning and behavioral difficulties, measured the x-ray emissions of the TVs in their homes, and found many had unexpectedly high emissions. They were promptly removed, and two months later significant behavioral improvements were noted in those students, resulting in many being allowed to return to their normal classes.
Note: since x-rays were also emitted from behind the television, one of the improved children was a little girl who had been sleeping next to a wall that was behind a defective TV.

•In 1973, Ott conducted a pilot study in a Chicago school where two out of four classrooms had their cool fluorescent tubes replaced with full spectrum fluorescent lights whose ends were shielded to prevent x-ray transmission and electrically shielded (to ground them and prevent their radio transmission—as Russian research had shown fluorescent radio waves altered human EEGs). The students were then monitored with randomized time-lapse photography (so the teachers would not know when to tell the students to behave).

Students (e.g., first graders) under the normal lighting demonstrated nervous fatigue, irritability, fidgeting, flailing their arms, jumping out of their seats, frequent lapses of attention, and other hyperactive behaviors, but once the new lighting was installed, within a week those under it had a marked improvement in their behavior. Initially, they settled down, paid more attention to their teachers, and became less nervous. Over the next few months, the youngsters appeared calmer and far more interested in their work (e.g., one boy who had been in constant motion and was inattentive to everything became quiet, able to sit still and concentrate and had become capable of independent study to the point he’d taught himself to read while the experiment was conducted).

Note: following this study, Ott reported that similar results had been obtained from two schools in California and that in his original group, the students who received healthy lighting were later discovered by their dentists to have had one-third the number of cavities.

Finally, those who would like to know more about Ott’s work, this is a documentary Ott put together. It was uploaded by someone with whom Ott had shared his wish for the world to know about this knowledge so it did not become another forgotten side of medicine.

Ott’s Legacy

No one in science has made a major breakthrough in science by conducting double-blind studies. Breakthroughs are made by careful observation—John Ott

Ott found himself in a rather peculiar situation. While much of his research threatened the prevailing interests (and hence was destined to be buried—for example, the schools refused to continue his miraculous lighting regimen for their students), there simultaneously was a great deal of interest from the scientific community in his time-lapse photography. Because of this, Ott continually had windows to share his research with scientists around the world and was gradually able to create an independent center to further his research.

On one hand, he had some success (e.g., he played a pivotal role in getting the most dangerous TVs taken off the market and he was responsible for getting full spectrum lighting onto the market) but simultaneously, he ran into continual road blocks and despite his best efforts kept on ending up at blind alleys because institutions he’d work with decided they just could not publish his data (often for spurious and unscientific reasons). Nonetheless, because of how remarkable his insights were, they are periodically shared within the alternative medical field.

I would now like to highlight a few of Ott’s discoveries mentioned in the previous section.

First, given how harmful glasses could be for humans, it appears that the eyes serve a vital function in allowing natural light to nourish the body. Ott argued this was because the eyes were directly connected to both the pituitary and pineal glands and that these critical glands became abnormal without healthy light exposure. While I agree this is a major issue (e.g., we often find getting a patient well requires restoring the normal function of one or both of these glands), I do not believe this is the primary reason why exposure of light to the eyes is so important.

Second, in many of his microscopic observations, Ott noticed that the mere application of light created spontaneous motion within the structures he observed.

Third, Ott (along with scientists around the world, particularly those in Russia) believed our species was suffering a widespread chronic epidemic arising from a widespread deficiency of sunlight which in turn caused a variety of severe issues throughout the body.

Fourth, Ott believed that different parts of the body were highly sensitive to minute amounts of light (or EMR) at very specific frequencies. Likewise, he also suspected the effects of many drugs and pathogens were mediated by which specific frequencies of light they absorbed or reflected, a conclusion many others have also arrived at (e.g., a wide range of photosensitizing drugs exist and many believe red food dyes cause hyperactivity because they create red light within the body). It’s worth noting that a longstanding practice of medicine which utilized a variety of colors previously existed in the United States (which a few of my color-inclined colleagues still utilize with great success). This for example was from a 1939 reference about the therapy:

In contrast, we live in a world where artificial light produces very specific wavelengths of light which are both much stronger (in that wavelength) than what the body would typically be exposed to, which results in certain aspects of biology being over-activated and others under activated. Likewise, one of the key points Ott tried to demonstrate is that the trace amounts of background radiation we are exposed to, rather than being harmless in reality exert very real effects that correctly designed biological systems can easily detect.

The Incandescent Bulb Ban

For over a century, the light most Americans lived under at night came from a heated filament, which (like the sun or a fire) emits a smooth spectrum that is mostly infrared. In 2007, Congress passed a law which, if the Department of Energy did not finish its own lighting standards in time, required it to prohibit the sale of any general purpose bulb producing less than 45 lumens per watt. In 2022, the Biden administration put that prohibition into effect, and in 2024 finalized a second rule which raises the minimum to roughly 120 lumens per watt in 2028.¹ As incandescent bulbs produce 10-18 lumens per watt,¹ this was a ban, and the 2028 standard will eliminate almost everything besides LEDs.

Note: we have also been gradually replacing our (orange) sodium vapor street lamps with white LED street lights (which I greatly dislike). In 2016, the American Medical Association put out guidelines warning against the blue-rich LEDs most cities were installing, as the existing evidence showed they are at least five times more powerful at suppressing melatonin than the lamps they replaced (whereas wood fires and low wattage incandescent bulbs do not have this effect), brighter nighttime lighting is linked to poor sleep, obesity, and possibly cancer, diabetes and heart disease, their intense blue light scatters within the eye (creating a glare that worsens nighttime vision for drivers) and can damage the retina, and they disorient nocturnal wildlife (e.g., birds, insects, sea turtle hatchlings and migrating salmon). Residents in turn complained of a “prison atmosphere” and needing heavy drapes to sleep, and Davis, California paid $350,000 to replace its new lights. The AMA hence advised only using warmer (3000K or lower), shielded and dimmable LEDs, which are just 3% less efficient.^1,2

The problem is what a lumen is. It does not measure light, but rather how bright light appears, using a curve adopted in 1924 that weighs each wavelength by how strongly it registers in our daytime vision. Green and yellow hence count the most, blue and deep red count for very little, and violet, ultraviolet and infrared count for almost nothing. That curve however only describes one of the things the eye does with light. Decades after it was adopted, a separate set of light-sensing cells was discovered in the retina which set the body’s clock rather than form images, and respond most strongly to blue light around 480nm (which the lumen curve counts at roughly one-seventh the value of green), while the violet-sensitive receptor discussed earlier responds to light the curve does not count at all. Likewise, it has nothing to say about the red and infrared the rest of the body (or mitochondria within the eye) absorbs. So under this standard, a bulb that puts most of its energy into infrared is wasting it, one that produces a narrow band of visible light and nothing else is nearly perfect, and the blue spike in an LED registers as a minor part of its output despite being the part the body’s clock reacts to the most.

In 2023, 248 scientists who had collectively published 2,697 papers on light and the circadian clock reached a consensus that the blue-enriched LEDs replacing our older bulbs disrupt circadian rhythms, that this disruption raises the risk of breast cancer, obesity, diabetes and sleep disorders, and that LED bulbs with a high blue content should carry a label warning they “may be harmful if used at night.”¹ Similarly, when 52 household bulbs were recently measured, cool white LEDs and compact fluorescents were each estimated to suppress melatonin by about 12%, warm white LEDs by 3.6%, and incandescent bulbs by 1.5%,¹ while a study of actual homes found those lit with energy efficient bulbs had nearly double the circadian-active light in the evening of those still using incandescents, and that nearly half of all homes were bright enough to suppress melatonin by 50%.¹

The lost light is also highly consequential. Glen Jeffery’s team at University College London has spent years showing that deep red and infrared light (670-900nm) increases mitochondrial energy production, whereas the 420-450nm blue which dominates LEDs suppresses it. In 2024, they showed that shining 670nm red light on people’s backs for 15 minutes reduced the blood sugar spike from a glucose drink by around 27%.¹ Then, in January 2026, they published an experiment mirroring much of Ott’s work. In a London office building lit entirely by LEDs (and with windows coated to reflect infrared), they placed ordinary 60 watt incandescent desk lamps around the benches of 11 workers for two weeks, while 11 others served as controls. The color contrast vision of every worker near the lamps improved (by roughly 25%), nothing changed in the controls, and the improvement lasted for two months after the lamps were taken away.¹ The authors noted that incandescent bulbs are being phased out on the basis of a standard which only considers visible light, and that their attempts to recreate the missing spectrum with infrared LEDs had limited success.

Last year, Senator Mike Lee of Utah, who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, introduced the LIT Act (S. 1568) to undo this.¹ It removes general purpose light bulbs from the Department of Energy’s efficiency program, cancels the 2022 and 2024 rules, and prevents the agency from writing new ones,¹ while leaving LEDs on the shelf for anyone who wants them. Lee has made his case on the grounds of cost and consumer choice, and said of the rules that “these regulations have nothing to do with saving the planet — they’re about controlling people.”¹ He has also introduced a broader bill to reform how the Department of Energy sets efficiency standards for the roughly 60 other products it regulates.¹

Yesterday, a hearing was finally held on the LIT Act, indicating this bill at last is gaining momentum (especially as this policy change is favored by the Republican party) so I edited the hearing down to where it was discussed:

Note: watching Congressional and Senate hearings makes it depressing how much people will twist the truth to support industry (as the light bulb industry does not want to deal with competition from incandescent bulbs). What I found particularly comical here was the immense concern over the energy consumed by incandescent light bulbs (and other appliances) but not by data centers.

I hence believe it is pivotal we support Senator Lee’s efforts (as many within the Democrat party are committed to supporting these green energy saving measures as their health consequences are not taken into consideration). If this matters to you, the most useful thing you can do is use this directory to ask your Senators to support advancing and consider cosponsoring S. 1568 and to ask your Representative to likewise support advancing and consider cosponsoring H.R. 3341—particularly if your senator is one of the people on that Senate committee (Barrasso-WY, Cantwell-WA, Cassidy-LA, Cortez Masto-NV, Cotton-AR, Daines-MT, Gallego-AZ, Heinrich-NM, Hickenlooper-CO, Hirono-HI, Hoeven-ND, Hyde-Smith-MS, Justice-WV, King-ME, Lee-UT, McCormick-PA, Murkowski-AK, Padilla-CA, Risch-ID, Wyden-OR).

Note: there are many other issues with these artificial lights I did not cover here (many of which I greatly dislike being around).

Liquid Crystalline Motion

A major mystery in biology is how fluids are able to continually move throughout it without a pressure gradient (e.g., one created by a pump) existing to drive that flow. For example, once blood returns to the capillaries, it transitions from no blood pressure to a rapid flow within the veins, something that should not be possible within the conventional pressure based hydrostatic model. Likewise, the force that would be needed for the heart to move blood throughout the circulation greatly exceeds the force that the heart muscle is capable of providing (which is a key reason why certain schools of medicine believe the heart’s primary function is not to pump blood through the body).

Gerald Pollack at last found an answer to this vexing question. Many throughout history have observed that water often enters a state where it doesn’t quite behave like a solid, but neither does it act like a liquid. Pollack, building upon their work, concluded that under the right conditions, water (H₂O) can kick out hydrogen atoms, and transform into a lattice of negatively charged H₃O₂ molecules. Those conditions specifically are the presence of a polar (charged) surface which can form the base to begin building this H₃O₂ lattice and an external energy source to fuel its creation.

This fourth phase of water (discussed further here) has a variety of unique properties, such as the fact it:

•Behaves like a gel or liquid crystal.

•Has an existing charge gradient which energy can be harvested from (due to the negatively charged H₃O₂ existing adjacent to the positively charged H ions).

•It has a remarkable degree of solidity and flexibility which allows it to both reinforce everything within the body, protect surfaces of the body (e.g., the blood vessels from damage), and lubricate the motion between adjacent surfaces so they can slide against each other (all of which is discussed further here).

However, one property in particular stands out. When a tube coated with liquid crystalline water is emerged in a body of water (or a water-based solution like blood), a spontaneous flow will occur from one end of the tube to the other. This in turn functions as the basic pump which is used throughout nature (e.g., plants use it, cells use it, and many vessels besides those for blood in the body utilize it as well).

Pollack ultimately concluded that this flow occurs because the formation of liquid crystalline water continually releases positively charged protons, which repel each other and are driven forward. It’s noteworthy that almost all the critical vessels within the body are structured so that they can create a liquid crystalline pump and, hence, spontaneously direct flow through the body.

Sunlight in turn plays a variety of critical roles here as it:

•Induces the release of nitric oxide (which dilates blood vessels and is one of the most important factors for cardiovascular health and increasing circulatory flow).

•Catalyzes the synthesis of cholesterol sulfate, the primary substance the body uses to form the polar base liquid crystalline water is assembled from, which both makes spontaneous flow possible and protects blood vessels from the damage which would otherwise degrade their function and eventually result in a fatal cardiovascular condition.

•Poor zeta potential often significantly inhibits liquid crystalline water pumps from moving fluids. UV light (as shown by the video from the previous section), in turn improves zeta potential and to some degree addresses that issue.

•As Pollack’s book shows, sunlight provides the energy that drives the formation of liquid crystalline water, as many of the wavelengths of light which are the most effective at producing liquid crystalline water are also the types of light present within sunlight.

Note: the EZ size ratio quantifies how effective different types of energy are at creating liquid crystalline water.

Infrared is the most effective part of the spectrum at building liquid crystalline water, and it is also what LEDs lack. Relatedly, one proposed explanation for why red and infrared light increase mitochondrial energy production is that the light acts on the water bound within the mitochondria rather than on an enzyme.¹

If we take a step back, this also suggests the body was designed to capture sunlight (which makes sense given how good sunlight feels for the body). For example, whenever you are in the sun, (likely due to the production of nitric oxide) the veins at the surface of the body will dilate and in effect make it possible for a significant amount of venous blood to receive the sunlight which can pass through the skin there. Likewise, since sunlight drives the production of liquid crystalline water and hence blood flow, this ensures that new blood is continually getting exposed to sunlight at the most superficial veins. Similarly, it also provides further evidence for the “wasted” energy in incandescent light bulbs is actually their most important part.

Note: the entire liquid crystalline water topic is discussed in more detail here.

Blood Conducts Light

Much of Ott’s work revolved around getting the light we needed inside the body. Parallel to this, a variety of other innovators discovered that bringing light inside the body (e.g., with a laser) yields a variety of meaningful benefits. Similarly, like Ott, they often found illness results from the body's inability to bring the light it needed into itself.

One of the oldest approaches to bringing light inside the body was to extract blood from the body and then transfuse it back in, exposing it to light (typically ultraviolet) before it had entered the body and thereby bypassing the barriers skin created to light entering the body.

When I started experimenting with this therapy, I began noticing that I would often see rapid improvements occur which seemed to be occurring too quickly for it to simply have been a product of the blood itself circulating through the body and affecting whatever it came into direct contact with.
Note: I have also observed this rapid change with a few other therapies (e.g., the previously mentioned exosomes), which I believe in part work through mitogenic radiation.

Since I noticed there were often immediate subtle physiologic changes one could notice once illuminated blood entered the body (alongside a subjective feeling of improvement within sensitive patients), I started experimenting with turning the external light source on and off midway through a treatment.

From this, I noticed that once a direct line of blood had been formed from where the light source was contacting the blood outside the body to where the blood entered the body at the IV site (but not before a connected circuit had been established, such as when the bloodless saline which had primed the IV was still emptying into the IV), there would be an immediate response in the patient (within a few seconds) to the light source being changed. I interpreted this to mean that blood could conduct light, and hence by illuminating one part of the circulation, it rapidly illuminated all (or most) of it.
Note: I also repeatedly tested this on myself and was able to verify under controlled conditions that I could tell when the blood outside my body was and was not being exposed to light.

Presently, I believe this conductivity is due to:

1. The secondary emissions of ultraviolet radiation from blood cells. Earlier for example I discussed how the researchers of MGR observed that exposing certain things within the body (e.g., blood) would cause them to emit MGR. Likewise, when blood is exposed to UV light and then placed in darkness next to photography paper which is sensitive to UV light, the photography paper will be exposed, indicating that the blood is emitting light.

2. Many living proteins function by transferring electrons from one place to another to facilitate the basic processes of life (for example, the electron transport chain is what mitochondria use to produce the energy which sustains the body). A class of circular biological models known as the porphyrins excel at this function (e.g., they are part of the mitochondrial electron transport chain), and as Arthur Fristenberg makes an extensive case for in chapter 10 of his book about the biological toxicity of EMFs, porphyrins effectively function as semiconductors and are used in the most critically important parts of the body (e.g., throughout the nervous system). Two of the most well known porphyrins are as follows:

As chlorophyll makes it possible to extract the energy from sunlight and turn it into fuel, many have hence speculated hemoglobin can do the same, and it is my belief that it plays a critical role in allowing the energy from sunlight to transfer throughout the bloodstream. Likewise, others (e.g., Dr. Mercola) have concluded that a critical role of the mitochondria is to transfer and convert photons from sunlight into electrons that can be processed in the electron transport chain of the mitochondria and converted it into energy (ATP) the body can use.

The University College London group has independently arrived at several of these points. They attribute the harm from LED blue light to it being absorbed by porphyrins in the mitochondria (which then generate singlet oxygen), and have repeatedly found that light applied to one part of the body changes what happens elsewhere (e.g., red light on the back lowering blood sugar,¹ or in an animal model of Parkinson’s disease, light directed at the abdomen or legs protecting the brain¹), which they posit is because mitochondria signal each other through factors carried in the blood.¹ Additionally, one of the most published melatonin researchers (and colleagues) has proposed that near infrared light, which reaches muscle, brain and bone, stimulates mitochondria to produce their own melatonin as an antioxidant, and hence that daytime sun matters as much for melatonin as nighttime darkness.¹

Note: I believe other aspects of the body (e.g., the nerves and the physical correlates of the acupuncture channels) also conduct light.

3. Blood cells having a high absorbance of specific visible light and UV wavelengths. For example, to quote on study on red blood cell light absorbance:

The outstanding absorption peaks appeared at 416nm [long UV], 542nm [green], 578nm [yellow] in the absorptions curve of RBC, but there were also absorption peaks at 282 [UV B], and 345 mm [UV A]. The absorbance of RBC almost reached zero, and no characteristic absorption peaks between 600-800nm wavelength were observed.

Note: as this study shows, white blood cells also have a strong affinity for absorbing UV light (which likely underlies part of the therapeutic efficacy of ultraviolet blood irradiation).

Assuming blood indeed conducts light, this provides an important context to many of the ideas outlined thus far. For example:

•It explains why a localized administration of light can rapidly have a systemic effect throughout the entire body (something commonly observed when a light based therapy is utilized).
Note: I suspect this also applies to stem cell therapy.

•It explains the vital importance of sunlight exposure to the eyes. Since the eyes are by far the most transparent part of the body to light (e.g., the early pioneers of zeta potential evaluated it within the body by looking at the behavior of blood cells within the vessels of the eyes), the eyes serve as the gateway which allows sunlight to travel throughout the body.

•It explains why wearing glasses can be so incredibly problematic and why the ophthalmology profession's focus on preventing UV sun damage to the eyes is misguided.

•It helps to explain why many people observe significant benefits from practicing sungazing.
Note: while some individuals benefit from sungazing, the scientific literature contains many cases of people who damaged or lost their sight due to it (and I likewise have occasionally encountered someone this happened to—along readers sharing cases where DMSO healed it), so I believe it is often much better to simply get the eyes healthy natural light exposure throughout the day.

•It explains how mitogenic radiation can be precisely applied throughout the body and the significance of the optic nerve radiating mitogenic radiation into the brain once it’s illuminated by sunlight.
Note: in a previous article, I also discussed Russian research which shows how the heart is able to direct blood throughout the body to where it is most needed (e.g., to heal damaged tissue).

Conversely, it also raises another important question. What happens when this process is disrupted?

For example, a common observation in chronic illness is that one loses the ability to tolerate being exposed to the sun (either within their eyes or on their skin), and as I’ve read through the work of many pioneers of light therapy, I’ve noticed many of them felt those who most benefited from it were those who for one reason or another had partially lost the normal ability to metabolize external sunlight.

Similarly, we find one’s tolerance to sunlight (e.g., how long it takes them to develop a sunburn) dramatically improves as they undergo some type of restorative process to repair the body’s metabolism of sunlight. For example, as discussed in the previous article, unhealthy dietary changes appear to have played a key role in the body’s ability to tolerate sunlight, as when these nutritional issues are corrected, the body’s ability to tolerate sunlight often dramatically increases.

Note: generally speaking, the best approach to sunbathing is to do it around noon (as this is when the healthiest UV is present) and stop once your skin starts to show the initial signs of excessive exposure (e.g., white skin becomes slightly pink).

Presently, I’ve identified two models to explain why many have lost the ability to metabolize sunlight.

First (due to the properties of liquid crystalline water) the transference of light into the body relies upon the ability of blood (or interstitial fluid) to freely flow in the smallest vessels at the surface of the body so new fluids can continually be exposed to (and absorb) light they bring into the body. One of the most common things which impedes microcirculation throughout the body is a poor physiologic zeta potential, as once fluids begin to clump together, smaller pumps (such as the liquid crystalline water derived ones), no longer suffice to create a fluid flow within them. In turn, this leads to fluids at the surface of the skin becoming over exposed (e.g., overheated) and the surrounding tissue eventually experiencing a sunburn from that excessive energy.
Note: I’ve long suspected this process going awry underlies many dermatologic conditions.

Secondly, as discussed above, it’s very possible a key function of the mitochondria is to absorb the energy of photons and convert them into energy the body can use. If the mitochondria are unable to adequately perform that function (which sadly is often the case as mitochondrial dysfunction is now one of the most common chronic illnesses in our society), that will result in a bottleneck occurring within their electron transport chain, which in turn creates both reductive stress, and the light’s energy needing to dissipate into another part of the body which is not designed to absorb it (which hence damages it).

Note: I’m presently not sure which of these models is more correct. Furthermore, due to how much they overlap with each other (e.g., people with complex chronic illnesses typically both have a poor zeta potential and mitochondrial dysfunction, and fixing one of these often improves the other), it’s very possible both are applicable.

Conclusion:

One of my longstanding beliefs is that whenever a cheap and widely available therapy exists, the medical system is incentivized to bury it, as lucrative markets emerge once its benefits are no longer there. Natural light is one of the clearest examples of this. Despite over a century of research supporting it, a wide range of medical devices which work by putting specific wavelengths of light into the body (the most remarkable of which, ultraviolet blood irradiation, is discussed here), and most importantly, people simply feeling better in natural light, its importance has been almost completely dismissed by the medical profession, and we have instead been subjected to ever increasing amounts of unhealthy light (often without any say in the matter).

Given how long this has gone on, I find it almost unbelievable that there is finally the political will to let us move back towards a healthier form of light. I am hence immensely grateful to Senator Lee for being willing to take this issue on, and to each of you, as your support for this publication is what has made it possible to bring forgotten sides of medicine like this one back into the public’s awareness. I sincerely hope each of you will take a few minutes to contact your Senators about S. 1568 (or Representatives about H.R. 3341).

To learn how other readers have benefitted from this publication and the community it has created, their feedback can be viewed here. Additionally, an index of all the articles published in the Forgotten Side of Medicine can be viewed here.

• Throughout the development, production and distribution of the COVID vaccines, whenever a choice had to be made between safety and efficacy, efficacy won—a pattern which can be traced through the antigen chosen, the nanoparticles used to deliver it, the modifications made to the mRNA, and the doses selected.

• Once the vaccines reached the public, a series of things happened which were not supposed to be possible, the most significant being that the spike protein kept being produced for months or years after injection, and that unvaccinated people around the vaccinated became ill in clear and reproducible patterns.

• For years I assumed this was simply the predictable result of a rushed and profit-driven product. However, while researching the existing vaccine designs, I learned that bringing foreign DNA into the nucleus of cells is already an established vaccine technology—which not only offers a far more feasible explanation for the persistence, but suggests those designs were chosen knowing what they would do.

• This matters because continual antigen production and spread through a population are not accidents of these platforms. They are the longstanding goals of vaccination itself, and are now being made explicit by the next generation of “replicon” vaccines which are designed to keep producing antigen long after injection.

• Spike protein injuries have consequently become one of the most widespread and complex illnesses the population currently faces, yet there is almost no mainstream research on them and no established protocols for treating them—which is why I am continually asked what can actually be done.

• This article is the result of a large project to answer that question. It covers the treatments which have consistently worked, why the far greater number of failures reveal so much about both the supplement industry and how chronic illness is approached in general, and everything we now know about shedding.

I have always been drawn to puzzles that contain large amounts of “unknown information” as this forces you to consider a wide range of possibilities, but simultaneously have the discernment to recognize which of those potential answers is the most probable and hence is less likely to backfire on you if you commit to it.

On one hand, many people have a total intolerance for anything uncertain or unsanctioned (which is why many medical professionals are unwilling to do anything slightly “unorthodox”—even if it is essentially a given that the existing conventional options will lead to a bad outcome for their patient (e.g., death from an “incurable” illness). On the other end of the spectrum, many people will be too eager to commit to unsubstantiated answers, and in many cases (due to confirmation bias), collect a body of highly questionable evidence that supports their chosen possibility (which in the case of the COVID vaccines, has resulted in numerous theories briefly going viral which are completely at odds with reality—and often basic science).

This, in turn, has been the lens I’ve observed the COVID vaccines through, as beyond the mRNA gene therapies still being in the experimental stage when they were given to the entire population, we saw a lot of very strange things occur which hence invited equally strange explanations for what was going on.

For example, since the vaccines came out, embalmers have been observing science fiction-like massive rubbery clots coming out of the bodies of deceased individuals who had been vaccinated. A few citizen researchers, in turn, have been trying to draw attention to this issue and have conducted numerous surveys of embalmers (which many professional organizations resisted) that were able to show those clots indeed were being found, and recently were able to have the 2022-2025 results be published in a medical journal—where across 808 responses, 66% to 83% of embalmers reported finding these clots in roughly 19% to 27% of embalmed bodies.

These disconcerting findings in turn met a variety of expected responses ranging from refusals to discuss the topic at all, to denials they existed (despite the extensive work the citizen journalists did to reveal that they did) to a variety of shocking explanations being put forward to explain what they were (e.g., alien parasites or nanotechnology).

While I was trying to make sense of this topic, I came across a largely unnoticed paper on COVID-19 that stated the spike protein causes fibrin (which the body uses to create long-lasting blood clots) to misfold. Since the body depends on a precise balance between enzymes creating and breaking down fibrin clots, if misfolded fibrin were to be formed, there was a high likelihood that the body's clot breaking enzymes would no longer match it, and hence that the body would not be able to break these clots, thereby allowing them to grow unchecked until they eventually became the massive clots embalmers were finding, particularly since the study modeling this was able to show (nowhere near as large) irregular fibrin clots formed by the spike protein that were resistant to the enzymes the body used to break down clots—all of which I detailed in this 2022 article. That model then became the accepted explanation and researchers were subsequently able to develop blood tests that showed the amyloid (misfolded) fibrin clots were present in the bloodstream.

Malice or Malfeasance?

Whenever something bad happens on a large scale, a case can normally be made that it was due to a deliberate desire to harm others, incompetence (and a tendency to double-down on one’s mistakes), or simply a complete lack of concern for the human cost of whatever they want to do. I tend to lean towards the latter explanation, as the strongest case frequently exists for it and it does not require ascribing (often ultimately unknowable) motives to someone else.

As such, from early on with the COVID-19 vaccines, I formed the impression that the vaccine industry (and to some extent the US government) felt they needed to get the vaccines to market as quickly as possible. For instance, leaders wanted a “working” vaccine to get to market as soon as possible (and ideally before the 2020 election) so the economy could be opened up, Operation Warp Speed was effectively a winner-take-all competition so whoever got the first vaccines to market would likely make most of the money in it and there was a real likelihood the population would develop herd immunity to COVID-19 before the vaccines came out (negating the need for them in the first place), which led not only to the vaccine being rushed along, but also federal health leaders trying to stall the virus enough for the vaccines to still have a market (e.g., HHS insiders admitted many of the 2020 "containment" measures were done to isolate the population so herd immunity could be delayed,¹ and Scott Gottlieb, a recent FDA commissioner who became a Pfizer board member in 2019—advocated for lockdowns and publicly gave statements we were much further away from herd immunity than what he privately told the CIA^1,2). In contrast, African nations which did nothing for COVID-19 rapidly developed herd immunity to COVID and had dramatically lower death rates than the Western Nations.
Note: one of the most appalling aspects of this strategy was not only was herd immunity delayed to protect the vaccines, but the unnatural “immunity” the vaccines gave prevented the population from being able to develop herd immunity to COVID-19, thereby turning a passing pandemic into a permanent seasonal infection. This was because the COVID vaccines created a very narrow immunity that locked the immune system onto the original strain (of a rapidly mutating virus), thereby both provoking the rapid evolution of variants but also making those locked onto the original virus less able to mount an immune response to the newer variants—shown by both Cleveland Clinic Research¹ and countless Reddit reports of individuals being more likely to catch COVID the more shots they’d gotten¹ (and in many cases catch COVID numerous times). While this was probably not intentional, it is notable that just two months after the COVID vaccines hit the market, vaccine CEOs were already talking about the COVID vaccine becoming an annual vaccination like the flu shot.^1,2,3,4,5

To expedite the vaccines, again and again, I identified how they appeared to have made the decision to cut as many corners as possible in each stage of its development, testing, production and distribution. As such, I long believed the fiasco we saw was simply due to a desire to make money and a complete lack of concern over the consequences the actions taken would create. However, while researching the existing vaccine designs for a recent article, I came across a rather surprising piece of information that has changed my perspective on what actually happened with the vaccines.

How Vaccines Work

When the body is exposed to a foreign invader, a series of defensive responses are mounted. Some of these are relatively non-specific and hence can initiate immediately, while others are specific to the microbe and, though often more protective later, initially require time to become effective (as the tiny fraction of your randomly generated immune cells which match the invader must encounter them and then after being activated, have time to reproduce enough that a sufficient amount of those cells are present to control the invader).

Note: life revolves around having DNA (or RNA equivalents in certain viruses) be transformed by cellular enzymes into corresponding mRNA sequences, which is then transformed into corresponding protein sequences. Because of this, most organisms contain unique protein sequences that give them a “molecular fingerprint.”

The theory of immunization, in turn, is that if you introduce the antigen (protein fingerprint) of the invader (without the invader also present), it becomes possible for the body to develop adaptive immunity to the antigen (and hence the pathogen which contains that antigen) without also having to survive a potentially dangerous infection. As such, a variety of different antigens are routinely injected under the belief doing so will create immunity to disease—even though in reality this frequently does not work or creates a host of problems from unintended off-target “immunity.” However, due to the religious fervor around vaccinations, the medical field essentially believes in the infallibility of this approach and continually tries to find every feasible way that can be done.

As such, over the years, a variety of methods have been created to develop these antigens.

Originally, the infectious microbe would either be cultured and then chemically inactivated (e.g., killed), filtered or selectively bred (via repeated passages through cellular mediums) so that the microbe was made less dangerous (e.g., no longer infectious) while still containing sufficient antigens to create an immune response (along with the microbe sometimes reproducing within the host and creating even more antigens to ensure the development of an immune response).

Later, once genetic engineering entered the picture, things would either be modified to produce the antigen so it could then be extracted (e.g., modified yeasts for Merck’s HepB and HPV vaccines or moth cells for Novavax), or a virus would be modified to carry the antigen and then mass produced outside of the body so those antigens could be delivered via the viruses (e.g., J&J or AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccines).

Later still, genetic engineering made it possible to instead have the vaccine recipient’s cells produce the antigen (thereby allowing a much lower initial dose of the vaccine to be used). Many public health officials, in turn, pushed for this approach as it takes much less time to create the synthetic mRNA which did that than producing traditional vaccine antigens, thereby making it possible to bring vaccines to market for a new infection much sooner (whereas with annual flu shots, they have to be produced before the flu season and frequently end up being for different strains than what is circulating).

Note: there are a variety of safety and efficacy issues with each of the vaccine designs (e.g., many of the “essential” ones on the market either provide almost no benefit or make their infections worse) and when I went through all the standard ones, I could only identify one you could make a good case provided a net benefit (along with a few non-standard ones like rabies after a bite). However, as mentioned before, due to the faith surrounding vaccines, every vaccine is assumed to be completely safe, effective and essential regardless of the actual data or logic underlying that assumption.

Designing the mRNA Vaccines

The vision of mRNA vaccines that was sold to the public is:

• A carefully crafted sequence of mRNA is created and then manufactured at scale.

• This mRNA is introduced into cells by injecting muscles with lipid nanoparticles containing the mRNA (which then travel into just the muscle tissue and the cells in them).

• Once in the cells, mRNA is transformed by the cellular machinery within the cytoplasm into a foreign antigen which gradually travels out of the cell and coats its surface, where the immune system can recognize the antigen and develop an immune response.

• Not long after, the immune system breaks the mRNA down and the entire process stops.

However, while that was the vision, it had major problems, and for decades attempts to find an acceptable balance between safety and efficacy failed (Dr. Malone, one of its pioneers, abandoned lipid-nanoparticle delivery in the 1990s after documenting its profound toxicity¹). This is best shown by Moderna, which raised billions from investors by selling the vision of life as software you could rewrite into health, yet could not deliver what was arguably the easiest mRNA therapy target on the market — a rare disease needing a single missing liver enzyme — because no dose was both low enough to be safe on repeat injection and high enough to work.¹,² According to former Moderna employees in 2017, this left vaccines as the only viable use of the technology, since a vaccine needs just one or two doses and the toxicity that made repeat dosing impossible never had a chance to accumulate.¹

So, by the time COVID-19 arrived, both companies that would bring mRNA vaccines to market were in trouble. Moderna had gone public in December 2018 in what was then the largest biotech IPO in history, raising $604 million at a $7.5 billion valuation—and then watched its stock fall more than 19% on its first day of trading.^1,2 It had no product, $60 million in revenue against $606 million in operating expenses, an accumulated deficit of $1.5 billion, and shrinking cash reserves, and it closed 2019 at $19.56 a share, below its $23 offering price.¹,² BioNTech was in a similar position: it had never taken a product past phase 2, its losses were widening, and its October 2019 IPO had to be cut from 13.2 million shares at $18–20 to 10 million at $15 before it could get done, closing its first day lower still.^1,2 One month before that IPO, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation had bought a $55 million equity stake in BioNTech (with up to $100 million in total funding pledged), reportedly at around $18 a share, meaning the foundation was underwater the day the company listed.^1,2 In other words, mRNA's two flagship companies entered 2020 needing exactly what a former Moderna employee had described three years earlier: a "miraculous, Hail Mary sort of save."¹

Given this, I felt it was a given they would take advantage of everyone’s desperation to get a viable vaccine to market by both cutting as many corners as possible and by leveraging the vast institutional support for the vaccine (e.g., liability protections, poor oversight of clinical trials, and zealous media support for the vaccine—particularly since Bill Gates, a key investor in the technology, had also cultivated a vast sphere of media influence through “donations” to many leading publications¹). As such, I was curious to see how they would solve the irreconcilable challenges with the mRNA technology and hypothesized whenever a balance needed to be found between efficacy and safety, efficacy would be chosen to expedite getting a COVID-19 antibody producing agent to market (since the widespread faith in vaccines makes robust antibody production one of the primary metrics regulators care about despite it often having a poor correlation to clinical benefit).

What follows is an (incomplete) list of how that balance was struck:

1. Choosing a toxic antigen: The easiest target for a vaccine was the COVID-19 spike protein since this was a novel part of the virus, needed for infection and highly immunogenic, so both Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccines were designed around causing cells to mass produce this protein (which was slightly modified so it could not fuse with cells and hence “safe” ¹) as this was by far the fastest way to reliably create an antibody producing vaccine. However, there were a few problems with this approach.

Chiefly, since the (positively charged) spike protein was inherently toxic in numerous ways (hence why it was so immunogenic), by mass producing it inside the body, an effect was created that was arguably worse than a COVID infection (particularly for the individuals whose bodies could not clear the spike protein—which was shown as the distinguishing factor in a January 2023 study).

Furthermore, this design was predisposed to creating off target immunity. For example, since the highly toxic antigen was expressed on the surface of cells, it was well-suited for provoking autoimmune responses—something made considerably more likely by the fact that the spike protein shares sequences with numerous human proteins.¹ A 2022 peer reviewed analysis identified a motif shared between the spike protein and thrombopoietin (where cross-reactive antibodies could produce the thrombocytopenia seen in these patients), along with another motif shared with PRKG1, which is involved in platelet activation, and with tropomyosin, which is linked to cardiac disease¹ (with the authors explicitly noting the implications of their findings for vaccine design).^1.

Note: beyond autoimmune disorders frequently being associated with the COVID vaccines, pathologists who examined the bodies of individuals who died after vaccination found unusual inflammatory infiltration and immune destruction of normal tissue expressing spike protein vaccine antigens (e.g., within the heart).^1,2

Likewise, by forcing the body to lock onto a single antigen (the original COVID-19 spike protein), pressure was made to rapidly mutate COVID to a different spike protein, thereby making immune systems locked onto the original strain less able to respond to the new ones (which as said before is why I believe the vaccines prevented us from developing herd immunity to COVID-19)—an issue sadly also seen with many other vaccines that use a small number of antigens.

Note: in 2022, I spoke to a few people who argued that China, knowing the US’s approach to vaccine development, may have designed COVID-19’s spike protein so that the likely vaccine for it would be highly dangerous. While it’s impossible to prove or disprove that hypothesis, it is noteworthy that China’s Sinovac instead used a traditional vaccine design (inactivating a COVID-19 virus), was significantly safer than the mRNA designs and debatably offered comparable efficacy to the mRNA vaccines^1,2 (which rather than proving malice could simply illustrate that the Chinese were intelligent enough not to pursue a bad vaccine strategy).

2. Choosing dangerous lipid nanoparticles: as mentioned before, one of the unsolvable challenges in mRNA technology was making the lipid nanoparticles which delivered them inside cells be both safe and effective (as since mRNA carries a strong negative charge, a strongly positive lipid is needed to package it, but nothing in the body is permanently positively charged, so those lipids damage whatever cell membranes they touch—and simultaneously, since most of the particles are digested before they release anything, far more of them have to be injected than the body can tolerate). Curious how this would be solved, I read through regulatory documents leaked from the EMA (Europe’s FDA) in December 2020, and noted that when the nanoparticle design chosen (ALC-0159) was discussed, only efficacy was highlighted as a rationale for it—indicating, again, that since there were so few viable ways to make these nanoparticles work, efficacy was prioritized over safety so the products could be brought to market (while the only concern regulators raised was that since its metabolite was an acetamide and certain acetamides have been linked to liver cancer, this could potentially be an issue). As such, I felt it was likely these nanoparticles would have toxicity and issues with spreading to unintended sites in the body which was indeed what happened (e.g., confidential Pfizer documents were obtained through a May 2021 Japanese FOIA showing the vaccine nanoparticles accumulated in the ovaries).
Note: there are a few potential explanations for the significant clotting seen with COVID-19 and the vaccines (e.g., the previously mentioned amyloid clots or our observation the vaccine causes a high rate of the rare but severe autoimmune clotting disorder antiphospholipid syndrome—likely due to it provoking the immune system into attacking the phospholipid coating of spike protein expressing cells). However, my observation from the start of COVID-19 is that the positive charges of both the spike protein and the lipid nanoparticles (which matter more acutely) appear to be what is causing the rapid clotting (and microclotting) seen with the vaccines and why so much of my focus since 2020 has shifted towards restoring the physiologic zeta potential.

3. Making mRNA resist degradation: Since foreign mRNA was rapidly degraded by cells, it was not possible to ensure enough would persist long enough to produce enough spike protein to generate the needed immune response. To address this, rather than using uridine (one of the four building blocks of RNA), the synthetic mRNA was manufactured with a modified version of it, pseudouridine, as RNA containing pseudouridine both resists degradation and hides from the immune sensors that would otherwise detect and destroy foreign RNA. In the body, this is a tightly regulated process where specific enzymes modify specific sites on specific mRNAs, and to this day it is not understood well enough to predict what a given modification will do. Rather than attempt to replicate that, the manufacturers simply replaced every uridine in the sequence and did so with N1-methylpseudouridine, a synthetic molecule more potent than the natural version which does not exist in the human body thereby guaranteeing enough was done for the mRNA to persist long enough to work.^1,2

This however led to two major problems. First, since the process was overshot, the mRNA no longer merely lasted long enough to produce an immune response—it persisted for months, continually producing spike protein the whole time. This was first shown by a 2022 Stanford study that found vaccine mRNA and spike protein still present in the lymph nodes of recipients 60 days after their second dose (the latest point at which they looked),¹ and corroborated by a Massachusetts General Hospital autopsy study that detected vaccine mRNA in the lymph nodes and heart muscle of patients who died within 30 days of vaccination,¹ another study which found mRNA persisted in the blood of 37% of recipients for at least two weeks after vaccination,¹ along with being found in human blood, placenta and semen in many cases over 200 days since vaccination.^1,2 Second, the key reason pseudouridine allows the mRNA to persist is that it hides it from the innate immune sensors (TLR7, TLR8, RIG-I and PKR) which exist to detect foreign RNA and destroy it.^1,2 The long term consequences of this immune suppression however were never tested, and hence may play a contributing role in the immune suppression and cancer being seen following COVID vaccination.

Note: Codon optimization (which increases protein production from mRNA) may have also caused the vaccine to excessively produce spike protein in the cells—once again illustrating that efficacy was chosen over safety.

4. Excessive dosing: with any substance, as greater amounts are taken, adverse reactions and severe ones become more common (to the point everything has a lethal dose). For something to be viable as a medicine, the dose needed to create a therapeutic effect has to be below its toxic dose, and generally, the greater that difference (the therapeutic window) is, the better the medication is (e.g., one of the main reasons why I’ve been able to promote DMSO is because the therapeutic window is so wide, most people who use it correctly have positive rather than negative effects), whereas the narrower it is, the more high risk the medication is and the more precisely its dosage has to be controlled (e.g., this is why chemo is frequently given at infusion centers). Further complicating this, the toxic dose (and effective dose) vary person to person, so frequently, the medication’s therapeutic window is narrow enough no optimal dose exists for everyone, which results in the medical system throwing the sensitive patients under the bus who can’t tolerate the standardized doses the medical system revolves around.

With the mRNA technology, as mentioned above, a major problem was that the therapeutic window was too small for it to be a viable therapy (as doses high enough to work were also toxic), and while the therapeutic window widened when vaccination (rather than addressing a genetic defect) was the goal, the fundamental issue still remained that there did not appear to be an optimal way to dose the therapy. As such, I was curious how this would be addressed, and immediately noticed Moderna used a dose which was 3.3x greater than what even Pfizer would use (something I attributed to Moderna at that point being desperate to bring a viable product to market). Remarkably, subsequent safety data showed Moderna’s vaccine indeed had a higher rate of side effects, but despite a dose toxicity relationship being demonstrated, regulators never did anything to address it.

Producing the mRNA vaccines

One of the greatest challenges with bringing a pharmaceutical to market is scaling up its production. So, as you might guess, a lot of corners were cut here as well to be able to bring a viable product to market. These included:

1. Vaccine mRNA rapidly degraded: This was one of the primary regulatory concerns with the vaccines (e.g., in the leaked EMA documents, numerous datasets were cited by regulators that showed the vaccine mRNA rapidly broke down into fragments), and is, I believe, why when the vaccines were first launched, a huge deal was made about keeping them ultra-frozen until injection (e.g., Pfizer shipped at -90°C to -60°C and Moderna shipped at -50°C to -15°C¹). However, once the launch happened, this gradually became forgotten (e.g., the vaccines were left out for long periods at vaccination clinics and they switched to just refrigerating them).
Note: when I initially learned about this, I was worried it would cause abnormal mRNA fragments to form that could be a potential safety risk, but I now believe this actually made the vaccine safer (as the more time they had to break down, the less active mRNA there was), and to some extent, this was supported by an adverse event reporting analysis that found vaccine lots distributed further away from Europe’s manufacturing site (and hence having longer to break down) had a lower rate of adverse events, as did ones taken further away from the date of manufacture.

2. Doctored Western Blots: To assess if an intended protein is present, Western Blots are one of the most commonly used tests, and in the pre-AI era, due to computer generated ones being much less amorphous than natural ones, authors would frequently get caught fabricating Western Blot tests (e.g., this caused billions of dollars and years of Alzheimer’s research to be wasted on the amyloid hypothesis and was only caught after the fact by an independent investigator who noticed the artificial blots). Given that it was a major question if the mRNA vaccines could actually work as promised (especially given their tendency to rapidly break down) when we looked into it, we realized the blots needed to assess what was being produced were likely fabricated.
Note: while I assumed this was done to gloss over the fact the vaccines had poor quality control (with many not producing the promised product), from looking at all the available blots, another reliable researcher made the case they showed something else which was not disclosed was in the vaccines too (and to this day, it has not been identified).

3. Vaccine contents varied lot by lot: in addition to numerous VAERS analyses (and published papers) showing the toxicity of COVID vaccine lots varied greatly, when Ryan Cole examined the COVID vaccines under a microscope (as detailed on The Highwire), he found what was present in the vaccines varied greatly (and likewise, Japan pulled 1.63M vials of Moderna’s vaccine after visible metal particles were found in them). Cole felt these observations indicated there were real quality control issues with the vaccines, that properly mixing the vaccines was challenging and that the process for the vaccines was very poor (resulting in some individuals getting excessive doses and others effectively getting saline shots—which mirrored our own experiences). Remarkably, when the UK’s MHRA was asked through a FOIA what testing had been done to look for contaminants in the COVID vaccines, they disclosed that some vials had been sent for a visual inspection test, which consisted of reviewing them against two monochrome backgrounds to observe particulate matter visible to the naked eye, and explicitly stated the composition of the vaccine was not examined.¹

Note: while Cole’s explanation for this is the most probable explanation, it is also possible saline was given because not enough vaccine product was available to meet the committed orders.

4. The production process was changed. When the original COVID vaccines were made for the clinical trials, in Process 1, they were produced by:

•Starting with a circular plasmid that had the vaccine sequence on it.
•Using PCR to copy that sequence and turn it into linear DNA.
•Having T7 RNA polymerase make the vaccine mRNA from those linear
•DNA templates.
•Purifying the result so that, for the most part, what you had left was the mRNA.

The problem with this approach, however, was that it did not scale anywhere close to the volume needed for the public roll-out. So when it came time to bring it to market, they cut corners and improvised a different way with Process 2:

•Starting with the same kind of circular plasmid and introducing them to E. coli bacteria.
•Growing E. coli that now had that plasmid in them.
•Using an antibiotic to eliminate E. coli in the culture that did not have the plasmid (as beyond producing a spike protein, the plasmid also contained a gene for antibiotic resistance).
•Once they had a pool of bacteria carrying the plasmid, they killed them and extracted the plasmids which were then cut into linear DNA.
•Having T7 RNA polymerase make the vaccine mRNA from those linear DNA templates.
•Purifying the result so that, for the most part, what you had left was the mRNA.

This shift, in turn, created a few key issues such as a different product being tested in the clinical trials than what was given to the public. Of these, the greatest one was that in Process 2, a different DNA plasmid was used, and that altered plasmid was not effectively purified from the final product. This, in turn, was discovered by Kevin McKernan, who having a background in genetic sequencing, decided to find out what was in the vaccines and discovered that not only was plasmid DNA present in them, but they contained an undisclosed SV40 virus promoter sequence (which included 72 base pairs that were repeated). These results were eventually published in a 2025 paper, that also showed the rate of adverse reactions to the COVID vaccines had a correlation to the presence of SV40 containing plasmids.

Note: McKernan’s sequencing found fragments up to 3.5 kb in length^.1 (which is many times the size of the SV40 promoter-enhancer region), and the same testing established that this DNA sits inside the lipid nanoparticles, which shields it from the enzymes that would otherwise break down loose DNA in the body.¹ Furthermore, the plasmid contamination he detected was corroborated by many other labs.¹

The switch to Process 2 also changed the methylation of that DNA, as Process 1 used PCR (which produces unmethylated DNA) whereas the bacterial strain used in Process 2 methylates the exact bacterial signature sites our innate immune system evolved to recognize as an invader. Industry is well aware of this, as CpG DNA deliberately used as a vaccine adjuvant is kept unmethylated—and McKernan suspects this is part of why Pfizer resisted removing the residual DNA, noting their product contains roughly ten times more DNA than Moderna’s at a third of the mRNA dose.¹

The presence of the SV40 promoter understandably drew significant concern—due to the virus this sequence comes from being strongly associated with cancer and potential cancer triggering effects being associated with the sequence,^1,2,3,4 along with the vaccine plasmids being discovered in unusual aggressive cancers,¹ and reports that raise the possibility vaccine plasmids integrated into the DNA of cancers.^1,2,3

Note: in 2004, Australia's TGA commissioned a review of the health consequences of SV40 contamination of the polio vaccines, which dismissed the cancer concerns by arguing that the SV40 sequences being detected in human tumors were most likely laboratory contamination, as many of the reported positives carried a deletion mutation found in experimental plasmids but not in the infectious virus. At the time this was a reasonable explanation, since there was no other conceivable source of those plasmids. It is not reasonable now, as the same logic dictates that a population injected with plasmids containing those sequences is a route by which they can reach human tissue.¹,²

Giving the benefit of the doubt to the industry, its presence was due to:

• The SV40 virus’s enhancer being established as a potent way to bring foreign DNA into the nucleus of many different mammalian cells and have the cells then turn that DNA into mRNA (which then created the intended protein). As a 1999 paper on the subject put it, the nuclear envelope is a major barrier to the uptake of plasmids and one of the most significant unsolved problems in non-viral gene delivery—and while various fragments of the SV40 region support nuclear import to some degree, it is the “72-bp repeats of the SV40 enhancer” which facilitate maximal transport.¹

• The SV40 enhancer being combined with a specific antibiotic-resistance gene, so that it could be ascertained if mammalian (e.g., human) cells were taking up lab-altered plasmids (as they became resistant to lethal antibiotic concentrations).

• This package often being bundled with the sequences needed to grow and select the same plasmid in bacteria, so that the same construct could be used for both mammalian and bacterial cell experiments without the cost of having to switch between the two (and hence is frequently used in biomedical research)

• BioNTech choosing to use this dual package (which already contained the SV40 part) as the backbone for creating the plasmids used to make their vaccine (despite not having any need for the SV40 part) because they already had easy access to the (well-established) dual package and wanted to use something as quickly as possible to scale up COVID-19 mRNA vaccine production rather than take the time to create a new backbone (much in the same way they did not take more robust measures to ensure residual DNA was consistently removed from the mRNA vaccines).

As such, while this is a bit jaw dropping, when I learned about it, I simply interpreted it as yet another example of speed and efficacy being prioritized over safety. Notably, Moderna’s vaccine plasmids did not contain SV40¹ (as they instead chose to use a backbone without it), which again illustrates that there was no real justification for Pfizer’s decision to keep it there.

Furthermore, later FOIAs revealed that five months after McKernan revealed the undisclosed plasmid contamination, Canada’s Health Agency deemed it inappropriate for the SV40 sequences to be included in the plasmids used to manufacture the vaccine and requested for them to be removed—a request Pfizer disregarded (and received no sanctions for).

Mysteries of the COVID Vaccines

After the COVID vaccines came out, a variety of odd things were observed that were hard to make sense of, and I spent a while investigating them. Some of these I felt were ultimately false (e.g., many of the alarming things individuals saw in the vaccines under the microscope were actually normal findings). Others I ultimately did not know what to make of (e.g., after many people online said the vaccines made them magnetic, I was able to find and evaluate one person who claimed this and noticed that his body appeared to magnetize paramagnetic metals until they became magnetic, I found a Luxermbourg study , where 29/30 vaccinated [with both mRNA and non-mRNA COVID vaccines] were magnetic while 0/30 unvaccinated were, but then also found a larger study James Thorp MD conducted which found about 60% of both vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals were magnetic, leading Thorp to conclude that humans have some degree of natural magnetism which had nothing to do with vaccination).

However, there were also a few inexplicable observations I became increasingly convinced of as time went on.

COVID Vaccine Persistence

When the COVID vaccines were originally pushed to the public, public health officials and the media promised a variety of things that were not supported by existing data (e.g., that the COVID vaccines would stop disease transmission).
Note: a common tell for a con is if legitimate objections are addressed with rhetoric rather than data—a pattern we saw through COVID-19.

As such, while reading through the Pfizer EMA leaks, I was very curious to see what was being said in private about the three largest safety concerns about the vaccine (autoimmunity, fertility issues and cancer). To my initial surprise, this is all that was discussed throughout the documents:

Genotoxicity: No genotoxicity has been provided. The components of the vaccine formulation are lipids and RNA that are not expected to have genotoxic potential. That being said, the novel lipids possess an acetamide moiety which is classified as possible human carcinogen (IARC Group 2B) with debated genotoxic mechanism, which should be discussed further (OC).

Vaccination with modRNA is expected to induce robust neutralising antibodies and a concomitant T cell response to achieve protective immunity. Nevertheless, no further discussion was provided regarding the risk of autoimmune responses induced by the modRNA. The Applicant is invited to further discuss the possibility that the mRNA vaccine can trigger potential autoimmune responses and how do it plan to possibly evaluate their occurrence

Given that these issues—especially genetic damage from an experimental gene therapy—were the largest concerns with the vaccines and hence most likely would have been tested, I formed the hypothesis (in December 2020) that internal testing had shown there were serious issues with all three, and Pfizer had concluded their best option was to pretend to have never tested it so they could claim plausible deniability once the issues were later discovered (or to sweep the independent evidence of it happening under the rug).

As the vaccines began to enter the market, I then began noticing countless media outlets state that the vaccines could not change your DNA and that anyone who thought so lacked a basic understanding of science. However, rather than provide evidence, they always referred back to “experts” like Paul Offit and Anthony Fauci who stated:^1,2

1. The vaccines cannot enter the nucleus of the cell

2. mRNA from the vaccines breaks down rapidly in the cell, so it does not have time to enter the nucleus and change your DNA.

3. mRNA is not DNA, and hence believing it can change DNA represents a fundamental lack of knowledge of biology.

Note: beyond the subsequently discovered SV40 plasmids, there were numerous other issues with these arguments such as the mRNA being deliberately modified to persist in the cytoplasm, and already published studies contradicting their statements (e.g., an August 2021 paper showing vaccine spike protein concentrated in the nucleus, a May 2021 study showing endogenous LINE-1 retrotranscriptases were integrating COVID-19 RNA into human DNA and a February 2022 cell study showing the Pfizer vaccine's mRNA was reverse transcribed into DNA inside human liver cancer cells within six hours, likely via the LINE-1 mechanism).

Beyond potentially causing cancer, one of the main reasons so many people were concerned about vaccine DNA integration was because this meant that the your body would perpetually produce the vaccine spike protein (rather than the process stopping once the mRNA broke down). In turn, we came across numerous clinical datasets suggesting this was happening such as:

•Autopsy studies showing the tissue (of people who had died unexpectedly up to six months after vaccination) was flooded with spike protein.

•Spike protein antibody bloodwork (in vaccinated individuals) studies showing elevated spike protein levels for months if not years after vaccination (the levels of which often roughly correlated with their clinical status) along with vaccine injured patients who clinically responded to spike protein binders months if not years after vaccination (who then often regressed if the binders were not continued, suggesting they were still being produced in the body).
Note: the only commercially available test (offered by Quest or LabCorp) measures existing antibodies to the spike protein receptor binding domain, and provides values anywhere from 0-2,500 (Quest) or 0-25,000 (LabCorp) or higher than the test’s maximum value (2,500 or 25,000). Clinically, we’ve seen that on LabCorp’s long COVID patients rarely get levels above 4,000, whereas in those with vaccine injuries, it can be anywhere from 0-25,000 with many being over 25,000. In turn, a rough (and debateable) correlation exists between the antibody levels (which do not directly measure spike protein levels) and a patient’s illness (along with its levels improving or worsening generally correlating to a patient’s symptoms improving or worsening)—with the strongest correlation existing between a level above 25,000 and subsequently developing an autoimmune neurodegenerative condition. Curiously, many patients do not have their antibody levels decline with time (which is what you typically see after a COVID infection), which again suggests spike protein is being produced within the body that then stimulates an immune response. Conversely however, some of these cases may instead have been from people who had antibody levels far above 25,000 who then had their antibody levels decline (but this cannot be detected as they are still above the 25,000 cut off). Additionally, these observations have been corroborated by others (e.g., Alex Berenson has also shared reports of vaccinated individuals who’ve had spike protein antibody levels over 25,000 for months after vaccination).

•When the spike protein could be directly measured (which requires specialized tests still not available to the public), long term persistence was observed. Currently, the longest dataset (Yale’s LISTEN study), showed it had persisted for over a year, with the longest case reaching 709 days of spike persistence at the time the study was finished (which sadly has remained a pre-print because no journal will publish anything critical of the vaccine program).

Because of this, a few schools of thought emerged on what was causing this persistence. These were:

•Genomic integration was happening (and hence that the nucleus was continually producing small amounts of vaccine mRNA).

•Rather than being due to a genomic integration (which would be rare enough it was unlikely to account for most of what was being seen) the persistence was due to the vaccine mRNA not breaking down and hence continually producing spike protein.
Note: the people I spoke to who I considered to be the most knowledgeable about mRNA technology tended to favor this explanation (as they felt it was by far the most probable).

•The actual issue is not continual cellular spike protein production, but rather a permanent dysregulation of the immune system (which can frequently happen after an autoimmune provoking stimulus). Numerous clinicians I know treating COVID vaccine injuries have gradually come around to this perspective (while others generally agree with it but feel a subset of vaccine injured people are still producing spike protein—mirroring the observations of Yale’s study).
Note: some have also postulated the “persistence” may have resulted from the gut microbiome (e.g., endogenous E. coli) being transfected by vaccine plasmids and then producing spike protein which travels into the body. That said, to the best of my knowledge, no one has ever tested if this is occurring. However, Pierre Kory spoke with researchers in Italy and Germany who developed a way to test for spike protein in the stools and urine and found that most people they tested (vaccinated or unvaccinated) had fragments in both which appeared to come from gut bacteria being transfected by the COVID virus (as it matched the virus rather than vaccine spike, and had bacterial modifications). Assuming this is true (and the data was collected and interpreted correctly), it indicates that there is widespread spike protein exposure in the population.

Each of these explanations is compelling, and likely partially true. However, as I recently realized, there is actually a much simpler explanation for what is happening.

Vaccine Shedding

If a vaccine produces its antigens by replicating within the body, that vaccine has the ability to “shed” to others, as a tiny portion of it that reaches someone else can then reproduce into a much larger amount within the other person, thereby producing enough of an antigen there to also provide them with immunity. This, in turn, is viewed as one of the classic risks from using live viral vaccines (e.g., this is well recognized with the polio vaccine and a case can be made it is the source of many measles outbreaks) but simultaneously, by definition, is categorically assumed to not occur from any other vaccine type (with the exception of live bacterial ones—where it is much less of an issue than with viral ones).
Note: there has been some other work into self-spreading vaccines (primarily for wildlife but also theoretically for humans), but despite some pushing for it (so vaccination can reach difficult to un-vaccinate populations), there has thus far been a general restraint on using this technology.

Once the COVID vaccines came out, I began to hear numerous reports of individuals who had made a point not to vaccinate then becoming ill after being around someone who was vaccinated (particularly if they had recently been vaccinated or there was prolonged close contact with them) and I quickly noticed there was a clear and recognizable pattern to the symptoms experienced (e.g., menstrual abnormalities were one of the most common patterns, to the point quite a few of my post-menopausal friends began experiencing immediate and significant bleeding).

Since the COVID vaccines, by definition, could not shed, each time this point was raised, it was gleefully debunked much in the same way Fauci and Offit explained that it was impossible for the COVID vaccines to change your DNA. Given this, I felt it was essentially a lost cause to ever expect it to be investigated, so (with Pierre Kory’s help), I collected a lot of provider data that had accumulated on this phenomena, put out a call for readers to share shedding experiences (collecting over 2,000 of them), and searched the literature for everything known about this phenomenon.
Note: I ultimately received significantly more than 2,000 reports, but eventually stopped compiling them because they repeated the data seen in the earlier reports and our time to do projects like this is finite (currently that time is allocated to collecting reader DMSO testimonials at that point—of which 7,600 have been collected).

From this whole project (which can be read here), it then became evident that clear and reproducible events could be seen with:

•Who was affected by shedding.
•What situations triggered shedding symptoms (including that while rarer, “secondary shedding”—where someone exposed to a shedder then “shed” onto someone else and made them ill—did occur).
•What governed the severity of the symptoms experienced.
•How the symptoms could be prevented and mitigated.
•What symptoms were experienced—which resembled but had clear differences from COVID-19, long COVID or vaccine injuries.
Note: the most frequently reported shedding symptoms (in rough order of frequency) were abnormal menstrual bleeding (which far outnumbered everything else), headaches, rashes, flu-like illnesses, tinnitus, fatigue, dizziness, nosebleeds, unexplained bruising, shingles, a distinct odor around the vaccinated, palpitations, coughs, sinus congestion, muscle pain, gastrointestinal issues, and brain fog. Many others (e.g., swollen lymph nodes, hair loss, neuropathy, chest pain, and viral reactivations) were reported less often but still recurred throughout the reports. A few of these (e.g., nosebleeds) were unique to shedding injuries but not seen from other spike protein injuries. Additionally, many noticed “shedders” had a characteristic odor (and less frequently, a characteristic taste or feel), and a 2023 study a found that COVID vaccination produces a distinct exhaled VOC signature that can distinguish vaccine recipients from unvaccinated controls with high accuracy (as did a 2025 one which found the sweat VOC profile shifted after vaccination), providing a plausible chemical basis for the frequently reported odor around “shedders.”

It’s also worth noting that the shedding experiences were quite common. For example, after I described (in detail) everything which was known about shedding, readers here shared:

Since medical phenomena are almost never accepted without a mechanistic basis (and mRNA shedding was “mechanistically impossible”) I hence spent a long time looking for every possible mechanism, and from the many potential candidates I identified (each of which a case could be made for), I identified three I felt were the most probable to be true.

1. Exosome mediated shedding: Since the mRNA vaccines worked by causing the cells to produce massive amounts of spike protein that eventually came out on their surface, parts of the expanded cell membrane eventually blebbed off, causing exosomes (vesicles made from cell membranes) to be released which were studded with spike proteins that could then be exhaled or sweated out from the body and trigger reactions in others. Supporting this (in addition to it fitting numerous reports we received):

•COVID-19 infections were repeatedly shown to alter the exosome system,^{1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8} long COVID (and more severe acute COVID) is characterized by the presence of spike protein studded exosomes,^1,2 (which have been found circulating a year after infection¹) and at the start of the pandemic, it was discovered that using therapeutic (healthy) exosomes produced dramatic results from severe COVID-19^1,2,3 (something I and many colleagues also observed)—all of which led me to believe the spike protein “poisons” the exosome system.
Note: the spike protein has a high (heparin dependent) affinity for binding to the surface of exosomes. So, if it was not already there when the exosome initially formed, it can also attach to exosomes traveling in the bloodstream.

•One study showed the COVID vaccine’s spike proteins also altered the exosome system.

Note: a later case report detailed a man suffering from a significant COVID vaccine injury where spike protein coated exosomes were detected 1173 days post vaccination and vaccine mRNA containing exosomes were detected 1284 days post vaccination.¹

•A 2023 peer-reviewed study found that unvaccinated children who were around COVID-19 vaccinated parents developed an immune response to the spike protein that was not seen in children with unvaccinated parents and spike protein antibodies were found in surgical masks worn by the physicians. This led the authors to hypothesize that antibodies were being directly transferred through the parent’s breath to their children.

•Significant amounts of (RNA containing) exosomes can be found in your breath, and like exosomes from other tissues in the body, lung derived exosomes vary depending on the disease state of the lungs (“sicker” people have “worse” exosomes).^1,2,3 Exosomes from COVID patients, in turn, are highly inflammatory,^1,2 potentially clot forming¹ and are taken up by the lung cells.¹
Note: where the vaccine ends up in the body is highly dependent upon the charge of the lipid nanoparticles (essentially if they are negatively charged, they match the biodistribution data Pfizer provided, whereas if positively charged they go to the lungs—detailed here). As there was a significant subset of COVID-19 vaccine injured patients who developed lung issues, and a subset of recipients who were the primary "shedders," I suspect this was due to the wide variability in COVID vaccine production causing some to receive positively charged lipid nanoparticles which ended up at the lungs.

•Since spike coated exosomes trigger an immune response to the spike protein,¹ an inhaled vaccine was made from lung derived exosomes coated with spike proteins¹ (they were lung derived so the lung cells would be more likely to absorb them). These spike protein exosomes both generated an immune response and were absorbed into the body (and were repeatedly demonstrated, when injected, to effectively immunize at nano-gram levels¹,²). Once absorbed, those exosomes travel to other tissues and organs in the body, which (based on all the reports we’ve received and the patients we’ve seen) are known to be affected by shedding. Likewise, a 2021 review paper highlighted the feasibility of this approach and that numerous companies were developing exosome based COVID vaccines which contained either COVID-19 antigens (e.g., spike protein) or mRNA to create them.

Note: exosomes are very similar to the lipid nanoparticles used to deliver the mRNA vaccines (in fact, two studies detected vaccine mRNA within the breast milk exosomes of recently vaccinated mothers^1,2—potentially explaining the shedding reactions breast feeding infants developed), but to the best of my knowledge, their presence was never assessed in the breath of vaccine recipients.

2. Bacterial Transmission—if bacteria are transfected with the COVID-19 vaccine plasmids (and then reproduce), they will express the COVID-19 protein (and potentially be able to alter bacteria they come in contact with so that they too do the same)—a process which has been shown to occur in the gut with other plasmids.¹ This, in turn, provides a way that the COVID vaccine could behave like a traditional “live viral” or “live bacterial” vaccine that sheds. However, while this fits some of the observations reported, it has never been directly assessed (the closest was that vaccination caused a 41-73% decrease in one of the most beneficial gut bacteria species^1,2 — which potentially could have been caused by spike protein appearing on other bacteria). As such, I feel it’s worth raising the hypothesis (and have reached out to researchers who could evaluate this), but it remains a complete unknown. Something quite close to this was documented by accident in 2020, when four asymptomatic lab workers repeatedly tested positive for COVID on the nucleocapsid PCR but were negative for every other viral target—as what they were actually carrying was the plasmid they had worked with, which persisted in their nasal passages for up to three months after they stopped handling it, with the authors concluding either it had lodged in their nasal tissue or that E. coli containing it had colonized their noses (and a household member who never entered the lab also tested positive).¹

Note: one (oral) COVID vaccine was created which engineered E. coli bacteria with plasmids to either have spike protein on their surface (thereby creating both blood and mucosal immunity). Additionally, another was made which caused the bacteria to produce nanobodies (tiny antibodies that bind a single domain) against the spike protein which were expelled from the bacteria within exosome like vesicles that then traveled through the gut lining to the lungs and brain.^1,2

3. SARS-CoV-2 Shedding — In a significant number of the reports I looked at, after being exposed to an (asymptomatic) shedder, the individual (and often multiple other unvaccinated members of the group) became ill with one or more of the following:
COVID-19, a COVID-like illness, a flu which may have been COVID, a severe COVID infection that hospitalized and sometimes killed them.

Yet in contrast, before the vaccine rollout, they never had this issue (e.g., normally they never got sick, even around those they knew got COVID). This in turn means either that a remarkable coincidence keeps on happening, or that the vaccine increases your risk of transmitting COVID-19.

As it so happens, there are a few things that argue for the latter such as:

•The design of the vaccine does not create mucosal IgA immunity. This means it does not prevent COVID-19 from colonizing the respiratory tract and hence makes one still able to spread COVID-19. Rather, the vaccine’s design primarily reduces reactivity to the spike protein (i.e., COVID-19 symptoms). As such, vaccinated individuals can be infected with COVID-19 but not show symptoms of infection (which is also a major issue with the pertussis vaccine many are erroneously forced to take to see their grandchildren).

•The vaccine is immune suppressing. On one hand, this causes individuals who have a latent COVID infection to either start shedding the infection or become severely ill (which as I show here is a common but forgotten problem with vaccines). On the other hand, it causes individuals who have been vaccinated to be unable to develop permanent immunity and, hence, continually catch it.
Note: I have received numerous reports of vaccination causing an existing minor COVID infection to become life threatening,

In short, for some reason, individuals who do not get COVID will come down with it in the presence of a shedder, and in my assessment, this happens frequently enough for it not to be a simple coincidence.

Based on all of this, the possibility exists that vaccinated individuals with COVID infections either excrete higher concentrations of the spike protein than those with natural immunity, or have chronic infections they never clear (but show minimal symptoms of—leading to many being exposed to them). However, the existing data on the length of infectiousness and viral counts in the noses of those infected with COVID-19 (which may be biased) shows minimal differences between the vaccinated and unvaccinated. As such, while it seems that vaccination causes certain individuals to give others COVID, to the best of my knowledge data does not exist to support that claim and there may be some other process concurrently occurring which makes those around a shedder more susceptible to catching COVID-19 from them.

As you might guess, of these three models, I believe the strongest case exists for the first (exosome mediated transmission).

Note: Kevin McKernan stated that he was initially (and understandably) skeptical of the shedding phenomenon because he felt there could not be a high enough exhaled dosage for it to affect those who breathed it in (whereas I regularly encounter people who are that sensitive microdoses of a potent agent will still affect them). In turn, he shared that what changed his opinion was the potential presence of plasmids in exosomes, as these could serve as a self-replicating vector that allowed a small amount to noticeably affect those exposed to it.

DNA Vaccines

Since there is an irrational faith in vaccines, new designs are always being explored regardless of how unwise they are. Despite knowing this, I was quite surprised to learn “DNA vaccines” (which use synthetic DNA to create mRNA which creates the antigen cells then expel) existed, as this both seems to be a terrible idea, and directly contradicts all the messaging the vaccine industry has given that vaccines cannot change your genome.

Following this, I was then curious as to exactly how this technology worked (and once I found out, when it was developed). Briefly:

• Plasmids are created from a standard industry backbone (which contains a sequence that transports DNA into the mammalian nucleus) along with the DNA sequence that will become the target antigen.

• E. coli are transfected with that plasmid, the bacteria which took it up are bred, and the plasmids are then separated from the bacteria to become the vaccine product.

• The plasmids are injected into the body (typically with a jet injector or electroporation to force them into cells, but successful designs such as the first one brought to market simply injected the plasmid into muscle).¹

• Once inside a cell, the plasmid either enters the nucleus on its own (particularly when the cell divides and the nucleus is more porous), or the plasmid has a transport sequence that brings it into the nucleus regardless of which phase of the cell cycle it is in—where the cell’s own machinery turns it into vaccine mRNA (and from there into the antigen).^1,2,3

• This technology has been worked on for about 30 years¹ and there is now a human COVID-19 DNA vaccine¹ (licensed in India) along with several veterinary ones.^1,2 All of the licensed products use a CMV promoter (which was also used to produce J&J and AstraZeneca's adenovirus vector COVID vaccines)—however, the 72 bp SV40 enhancer has been added to many experimental DNA-vaccine plasmids both because it helps get the plasmid DNA into the nucleus and because it can also boost transcription once it is there.^1,2

Once I realized this, it cast two of the questions I’d pondered since the start in a completely different light.

First, it provides a completely different answer to the persistence problem, as if plasmids are being transported into the nucleus and then being transcribed to mRNA once there (but remaining separate from human DNA), this provides a much more feasible way for extensive production of the mRNA to occur, as it is effectively “in your DNA” but at the same time, does not have to meet the high threshold of integrating into the genome for this to happen (which is why many I spoke to had believed DNA changes could not account for the majority of the spike persistence being seen). More importantly, this is not merely theoretical, as delivering plasmid DNA into the nucleus is a licensed and working vaccine strategy,¹ and it was made to work with far cruder tools than the COVID vaccines had available, since those products rely on a CMV promoter and physical force rather than the two elements which most efficiently solve this problem (the SV40 enhancer—which the DNA vaccine literature identifies as the sequence producing maximal transport of plasmid DNA into the nucleus,¹,² and lipid nanoparticles). This is also McKernan’s assessment, as he considers the focus on genomic integration to be something of a limited hangout given that most plasmids operate episomally, and notes they can also be packaged into exosomes.

Second, while I still believe every bad choice made with the mRNA vaccines could be attributed to pursuing profit with a complete lack of concern for how others were harmed, it’s hard not to notice the chosen designs coincidentally mirrored existing vaccine designs (or that Pfizer refused to change them even when health regulators pushed them to and Moderna was using a SV40 free plasmid). Given that the chosen approaches were well-established vaccine production techniques, I feel it is reasonable to infer they were most likely aware of the expected effects of utilizing them. This is important as those “expected effects” dovetail with the core goals of a vaccination program.

Goals of a Vaccination Campaign

Since the faith of vaccination revolves around provoking the body to produce a targeted immune response (e.g., antibodies), and since the profession has long sought to validate itself by eliminating infectious disease and claiming victory over nature, vaccine programs will inevitably err towards overstimulating that response to ensure as few people as possible have an insufficient one — which in turn requires ignoring or dismissing the consequences of that excessive stimulation, rather than trading a partial reduction in efficacy for a significant improvement in safety. The regulatory pathways are set up to support this, as the primary basis for approval is typically a consistently robust antibody response rather than a demonstration of safety.
Note: I believe a major issue with the HPV vaccine came from the fact its antigen had many overlaps with human tissue (which the immune system resisted forming an immune response to it), so a much stronger immune provoking adjuvant and massive antigen doses were needed for the vaccine to work (e.g., Gardasil 9 contains 270 micrograms of antigen whereas the recombinant hepatitis B vaccine contains only 20 micrograms^1,2). This resulted in the scale being heavily tipped to efficacy (rather than safety), and as a result, the HPV vaccine had an extraordinarily high rate of causing autoimmune disorders.

In this regard, one of the challenges vaccines face is that while natural immunity lasts for a long time (e.g., it is often lifelong), the body will typically “resist” the effects of a vaccine’s artificial stimulation of select parts of the immune system, so over time, vaccine derived immunity fades away (with the rate varying greatly depending on the vaccine). Boosters, in turn, are given either because the original vaccine derived immunity faded, or because the pathogen has mutated to a strain no longer covered by the vaccine (resulting in the immune system being “locked onto” the incorrect strain).

For this reason, one of the longstanding goals of the vaccine industry has been to effectively mimic what occurs in nature (a continual low level boosting of the population from individuals they encounter with minor infections).

One way to do this is to ensure the vaccine continually triggers a lighter immune response long after injection—which both the persistent mRNA and nuclear plasmids (which produce mRNA) accomplish by ensuring a steady supply of spike protein is produced after vaccination. This was recently explicitly illustrated by Japan’s next generation “replicon” COVID vaccine (approved in 2023 and deployed in October 2024), as it is designed to extend antigen production, so in addition to the mRNA coding for the spike protein, it contains mRNA coding for an enzyme which copies that mRNA, so that it is continually replicated as it is broken down and hence retained in the body far longer.¹ Its manufacturer’s selling point, in turn, is that the effect lasts, and in their Japanese trial, the antibody titer six months after the replicon vaccine was higher than the titer one month after Pfizer’s, with high titers still present at one year.¹ Yet their own pharmacokinetic data showed the mRNA was largely gone from the muscle within 15-30 days and the spike protein undetectable by day 15—leaving their head of R&D to admit the mechanism behind a year of elevated antibodies is not actually understood¹ (with a Japanese vaccine expert separately noting that the long term safety of this vaccine—which had already been given to 18,000 people was not yet possible to know¹).
Note: this vaccine was also subsequently licensed in Europe and the United Kingdom.

In short, the same industry which insisted the original mRNA vaccines could not persist (despite the fact they do) has now built a product around making them persist, still cannot explain what its own product is doing, and has responded to the Japanese clinicians and nursing organizations raising these questions by threatening them with civil and criminal legal action.¹,²

This is a critically important point as the entire justification for a continually produced antigen assumes doing so is both safe and effective (when in reality, the antigens often have a cumulative toxicity, while simultaneously, it has been repeatedly shown that overstimulating the immune system to focus on one antigen reduces its ability to respond to other threats it encounters—which is why vaccines like the COVID shot have been repeatedly shown to increase one’s subsequent risk of catching disease¹). As such, a real possibility exists that the chronic illnesses seen after vaccine injuries persist because vaccine antigen production persists as well.

Note: Arkmedic (an excellent researcher) recently made the case that the COVID vaccines were not the first to be designed to get foreign DNA into cells.¹ Since every recombinant vaccine is manufactured with plasmids and residual plasmid DNA survives into the final product, what matters is whether anything in the vial can carry that DNA across the cell membrane — and aluminium, the most widely used adjuvant in vaccines, turns out to be exactly that (as do other widely used vaccine components). A 2007 paper from ETH Zurich found aluminium nanoparticles transfected human cells more efficiently than any other metal oxide tested, and were the only ones to do so at calcium concentrations approaching those found in the body.¹ Corroborating this, in 2012, HPV DNA was found bound to the particulate aluminium adjuvant in Gardasil,¹ and the FDA has acknowledged the presence of residual DNA fragments in that vaccine since 2011 while maintaining they pose no safety risk.¹ Notably, Gardasil's competitor Cervarix uses a comparable aluminium-lipid adjuvant,¹ so this is not a quirk of one manufacturer's formulation.¹ The only study the industry has ever offered against this was a three-page 1999 communication co-authored by the Swiss vaccine regulator, which reported zero transfection from nine commercial vaccines — using a cell line with two publications in the entire PubMed database and no control to establish the assay could detect anything at all.¹ That said, some of this may simply be convergent chemistry, as a good transfection agent is a positively charged or amphiphilic particle which binds nucleic acid and disrupts membranes, while a good adjuvant is often a positively charged or amphiphilic particle which concentrates antigen and disrupts membranes so the innate immune sensors fire. If so, the situation is arguably worse rather than better, as it would mean the risk is inherent to adjuvanted recombinant vaccines rather than an avoidable formulation choice—and it still leaves the question of why it is disclosed nowhere

Another is to ensure the vaccine is able to spread in the population, both supplying a continual source of external boosting to those who already got the vaccine and to ensure those who did not vaccinate still are protected. The shedding observed with the COVID vaccines (and the 2023 study showing a transfer of COVID immunity) demonstrates this was indeed happening, and the fact that the strongest evidence exists for it being mediated through exhaled (or sweated) exosomes—which, like DNA plasmid transfection, was already an established vaccine technology—suggests this may have been an intentional feature of the mRNA vaccines rather than an accident (particularly since it is a given overproducing an antigen within a cell will cause the release of exosomes containing the antigen).

Note: the more speculative mechanism I touched upon (self-spreading plasmid transfection of bacteria), could have supported either goal (e.g., by having the gut microbiome produce spike, a continual internal production of it will repeatedly boost the recipient, while by having those bacteria travel to others—something which routinely occurs with the human microbiome—it would be possible for the vaccinated individual to stimulate the immune system of others). However, I must emphasize that this is a much more theoretical possibility as the research needed to critically assess it has never been done (at least publicly).

That said, everything I have described here is simply my best guess to make sense of all the inexplicable things we have observed the COVID vaccines do and it is quite possible some of the inferences I made here from the existing data (e.g., the exact mechanisms or motives at play) are entirely incorrect. What’s so frustrating is that none of it needs to be guessed at as each of the scientific points I’ve raised could be assessed with currently existing technology—but they likely never will be because too many parties have too much to lose if the wrong answer is arrived at. As such, I don't know the correct way to proceed, but I nonetheless feel real attention needs to be brought to these issues, as otherwise, the industry will continue hurtling forward with “safe” genetic technologies that have a wide range of known and unknown risks—that before long, we will be stuck with.

Mitigating The Disaster

A common metaphor used to describe how the predatory ruling class enacts their agenda is the boiling frog analogy (where a frog placed in hot water will jump out, but one placed in water that is slowly heated will stay in until it dies).

Note: this is actually an urban legend, as frogs will still leave if the temperature is raised slowly (something which unfortunately led to many cruel experiments as researchers sought to verify this claim). However, while the analogy does not hold for frogs, it does appear to hold for us, as again and again, changes which would have been fiercely resisted had they been implemented all at once were instead accepted without much protest once they were introduced gradually enough that no individual step seemed worth objecting to.

My longstanding view with the COVID vaccines, in turn, is that the industry had been counting on exactly that gradual acceptance, as a wide host of issues exist with the mRNA platform (and the DNA vaccines which may follow it) that had been slowly phased in over decades without much notice. What happened instead is that many longstanding agendas all rushed to use the pandemic to bring themselves to fruition at once, and because the antigen chosen to be mass produced by these injections was the spike protein (which is toxic to many different parts of the body), the problems with the platform were common and severe enough that it was no longer possible to sweep them under the rug. For example, had a less reaction provoking antigen been used, it is highly unlikely enough people would have noticed effects like shedding and demanded they be looked into. So, as horrific as the process was, it woke the public up to something being very wrong in the field of vaccinology in a way that another fifty years of incrementalism never would have.

If the Italian and German stool and urine findings hold up, spike protein exposure is now near universal rather than confined to the vaccinated, which means we are in a post-spike world and the relevant question has shifted from how to avoid exposure to how to become resilient to it. For the subset who clearly cannot tolerate it (e.g., those affected by shedding), the question then becomes why—and my best guess is that it comes down to their bodies not being able to effectively form neutralizing antibodies against it, as a 2023 study found this was the differentiating factor between adolescents who developed myocarditis after vaccination and those who did not.

I say “best guess” because that is all anyone can offer. A novel protein was introduced into essentially every human being on earth and is demonstrably capable of causing disease in a subset of them, so spikeopathy should by now be a recognized discipline with its own researchers, diagnostics and literature. Instead, as Kory put it to me, there are a handful of practitioners figuring it out independently while conventional medicine maintains the illness does not exist.

Nonetheless, while the injuries the COVID vaccines created brought long overdue attention to the dangers of this platform, they also created a disaster many of us have been struggling to fix ever since. In the final part of this article (which at reader request I have been working on for a few months), I will go through each of the approaches we have found work for the common subsets of vaccine injuries, how the use of supplements there mirrors the issues we see when they are used for many other conditions, along with some of the less appreciated aspects of the higher-end treatments now coming into vogue (e.g., plasmapheresis) which are necessary for getting the best outcomes from them, and address the questions I am most often asked about shedding (e.g., how do you counteract it, and what has been learned about shedding and sexual intimacy).

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• Throughout history, harmful products have rarely been removed because of the harm they caused consumers or the environment; they were removed once an equally profitable alternative existed. Here I will apply that principle to the largest deployment of capital in American history—the AI data center buildout.

• Roughly $800 billion is being spent on AI infrastructure this year, $1.4 trillion next year, and data centers now account for nearly a quarter of all nonresidential construction starts in the country. Because they need city-sized amounts of power, they are being placed next to communities, which are experiencing rising electricity bills, constant noise, and a cluster of health complaints that closely matches what electrically sensitive people have reported for decades.

• A Bloomberg analysis of 770,000 home sensors suggests why: data centers inject enormous amounts of “dirty electricity” back onto the grid, and the worst power distortion in the country clusters within 20 miles of them. Meanwhile, the administration’s response to the growing opposition (which has already recalled local officials and become a midterm issue) has been to override it rather than address it.

• The industry’s proposed alternative, data centers in space, fails on physics and economics, and even if it worked it would leave nothing behind for anyone on earth.

• A better option exists on U.S. soil, and the unprecedented need for power next to it creates the first real chance in fifty years to bring a cheap, safe, and abundant form of nuclear energy to market—one that was demonstrated at Oak Ridge in the 1960s but abandoned because it could not make weapons.

• The decisions that determine whether America builds this or buys it from China are being made now, and this article lays out how taking that path can not only protect communities across the country from the proliferation of data centers but also at last make affordable and abundant green energy.

Much of what is written here is guided by the fact I spend a lot of time thinking about the problems the world faces and what solutions could potentially address them, either now or in the future when cultural circumstances change. This year I realized a few longstanding issues were converging into a potential long-term solution that I wanted to have this newsletter help bring to light.

The Law of Displacement

One of the depressing things I have come more and more to terms with as I’ve gotten older is how so, so, many things ultimately come down to money (e.g., a lot of medicine is structured into sales funnels that ensure robust sales of medical services and many seemingly irrational ways the practice of medicine is structured finally make sense once you see it through that lens).

As such, all throughout history, you can cite examples of people being exploited for profit (e.g., for most of human history in most societies slavery was widely practiced). Once science entered the picture, this frequently resulted in profitable technologies being deployed which advanced the national wealth but harmed a significant portion of the population in the process (e.g., Monsanto’s profitable chemical plants poisoning their community’s water supply).

In all the case studies I’ve looked at, a recurring process occurred:

•Industry was aware of health issues from their product, but buried all of it (with this frequently being revealed in subsequent lawsuits).

•The profit margins for the products were typically larger than the cost of keeping it on the market (e.g., they could afford to fund doctored science that cast sufficient doubt on health issues with the product). Likewise, typically a small enough number of people were directly harmed (e.g., an isolated community or less than 1% of the people who took a pharmaceutical) that it was easy enough for the industry to sweep everything under the rug—especially since until recently, corporate news controlled the media landscape and was structured to support narratives from large corporate clients.

•Government typically sided with industry, due to some combination of lobbying (e.g., bribes), the industry effectively controlling the narrative (so government regulators thought the product was “safe”) or the government viewing the product as a strategic national asset which justified a certain degree of sacrifice to promote the national interest.

Because of this, you would again and again see things that were clearly toxic be able to stay on the market for decades despite those harmed by them doing all they could to bring attention to the issue (and supportive researchers providing the data to substantiate their claims).
Note: the most extreme example of this is likely the COVID vaccines, as the scale of harm they have done eclipses arguably any other product in history, there is widespread public opposition to them (to the point a clear majority now refuses to take them) and more researchers have come forward to expose their dangers than virtually any other product in history—but nonetheless—the FDA continues to advocate for them. Why? Because there is so much money to be made off mRNA technology too many parties are simply not willing to let it go.

Rather, what typically gets these products off the market is a commercially viable alternative to them being developed, as at that point, the same profit can be made, but it is no longer necessary to bear the additional cost of defending the old product to keep it on the market (which, for lack of a better term, I call the “law of displacement”).

For example, almost immediately once leaded gasoline was created in 1922, serious health concerns were raised about it—the Surgeon General questioned it before a gallon had been sold, workers making it began dying within months of its 1923 launch, and the engineer who invented it wrote the industry’s reassurances to the government while recovering from lead poisoning himself. However, since GM held the patent and collected a royalty on nearly every gallon of gasoline sold in America, rather than be ethical, GM wrote into its contract with the Bureau of Mines that the government’s safety findings required company approval before publication, then funded a university laboratory that produced essentially all of the “safety” data on lead for the next forty years. When Caltech’s Clair Patterson proved in 1965 that Americans carried roughly a hundred times the lead burden of their ancestors, the industry tried to buy him and then had his government contracts pulled. As such, all of the efforts to get lead out of gasoline were unsuccessful (which is truly remarkable given the massive health consequences of it such as 256,000 premature deaths from cardiovascular disease each year in America).

Rather, what did was the catalytic converter as automakers needed them to meet the 1970 Clean Air Act, lead destroys them on contact, and in 1970 GM (which had conveniently sold its stake in the lead business a few years earlier) announced it was switching away from leaded gas. As such, once the world’s largest carmaker needed unleaded fuel, refiners had a product that was just as profitable to sell, and the same machine that had defended lead for half a century quietly phased it out. Notably, a non-toxic alternative had existed the entire time (GM’s own researchers had tested ethanol blends before lead); it lost because it couldn’t be patented (whereas by 1970 other patentable additives existed).

Furthermore, this is not an isolated pattern. For example, DuPont fought the science linking CFCs to ozone depletion for fifteen years, then abruptly reversed its position in 1988—once it held the patents on the replacement refrigerants. The Montreal Protocol had been signed the year before, and the “impossible” phase-out proceeded on schedule.

Likewise, many things in medicine have fit this pattern:

• Seldane (terfenadine) was known from 1990 to cause fatal arrhythmias when taken with common antibiotics, but stayed on the market until 1998—eighteen months after the same company got Allegra approved (which is simply Seldane’s active metabolite without the cardiac risk). The FDA’s own withdrawal proposal stated the reasoning plainly: now that a safer alternative existed, Seldane’s risks were no longer acceptable.

• Rezulin (troglitazone) caused fatal liver failure and was pulled in Britain in 1997. The FDA kept it on the market until 2000, and when it finally withdrew the drug, explicitly cited the fact that Avandia (rosiglitazone) and Actos (pioglitazone) were now available to replace it.

• Bextra (valdecoxib) was withdrawn in 2005 for cardiovascular risk and rare, life-threatening skin reactions, with the FDA noting it offered no advantage over the NSAIDs already on the market—while Celebrex, Pfizer’s bigger-selling COX-2 inhibitor (with the same COX-2 class risk), was allowed to stay.

• Phenacetin was one of the most widely used painkillers in the world and was linked to kidney failure in the 1950s. It wasn’t banned in the U.S. until 1983, by which point Tylenol (phenacetin’s own metabolite) had already taken over its market.

• Barbiturates were known to be lethal in overdose and highly addictive by the 1930s, yet remained the default sedative for another thirty years until Librium and Valium (benzodiazepines) arrived in the 1960s with fresh patents and the same customers.

• Halothane hepatitis, a frequently fatal liver necrosis, was recognized within a few years of halothane becoming the standard anesthetic in the 1950s. It was tolerated for three decades until patented replacements (isoflurane, desflurane, sevoflurane) captured the operating room in the 1980s and 90s. Tellingly, halothane is still widely used in poorer countries where those patented pharmaceuticals are unaffordable.

• Tardive dyskinesia, an often irreversible movement disorder, was identified in patients on Thorazine and Haldol by the late 1950s and accepted as a cost of doing business for forty years. The older drugs were rapidly displaced once patented “atypical” antipsychotics arrived in the 1990s—which then turned out to cause diabetes and metabolic syndrome at rates that arguably made them no safer, only newer.

• The whole-cell pertussis (DTwP) vaccine had a high rate of causing encephalitis and nearly bankrupted the vaccine industry in lawsuits, leading to the 1986 National Vaccine Injury Act being passed (giving the industry immunity from lawsuits). As activists had begged for years for the safer but more expensive Japanese acellular (DTaP) vaccine to replace the DTwP vaccine (which the industry refused to spend the money to do), the 1986 Act was structured to require HHS to promote safer vaccines (leading to the necessary research being Federally funded) and a few years later DTaP quietly replaced DTwP (except in poorer nations where the WHO continues to promote DTwP).

• After the idea of X-raying a fetus throughout pregnancy was proposed in 1923, it was quickly taken up by the medical profession. Before long, evidence accumulated that this was very dangerous, but it was not until 1975 that the obstetric field shifted away from it—a shift that largely occurred because an alternative way (ultrasound) was found to conduct those routine exams.

• Cylert (pemoline), an ADHD drug, carried liver-failure warnings from 1996 onward but stayed on the market until 2005, once the stimulant market was fully covered by other products and it no longer filled a gap.

• OxyContin’s abuse potential was known to Purdue for a decade before it “solved” the problem in 2010 with a crush-resistant reformulation—which conveniently extended its patent protection and let the company argue the original (now unsafe) version should be blocked from generic competition.

So, while there are many harmful products on the market I believe should be banned, rather than continually emphasize how bad they are, I try to have my focus here be directed towards safer alternatives which can displace them, as I feel that is the most realistic way to get them off the market and have them stop harming people.

The AI Boom

One of the topics I’ve seen many people debate is how far AI is likely to go as on one hand, there are projections it will displace many people’s jobs and completely redo the economy, while on the other many argue that dystopian vision is simply hype the AI industry is creating to justify inflated stock values as the companies go public (and to obtain private investor funding prior to that).

Given the potential cultural implications of AI, I’ve hence put a lot of thought into how they actually generate their answers, the relative accuracy of the different types of responses they get, how AI can be a productivity increasing or decreasing tool, and the overall effects I expect them to create upon the society (e.g., a lot of the responses AI gives are terrible because its conversational style is tuned to please raters, which produces the same pretentious and obnoxious responses that dominates Reddit). From that, I’ve essentially concluded:

•A significant portion of the population prefers to follow the crowd, tends to defer to authority, and is somewhat averse to the hard effort it requires to think for oneself or deal with adversity. For these people, AI (as most currently understand it) will be irresistible, resulting in them being trapped in a bubble where they can’t grow or change (exemplified by the rising phenomenon of AI boyfriends and girlfriends) and it becoming increasingly easier for the system to manipulate them into compliance (in part because AI answers inevitably regress toward the orthodoxy of their training data and the preferences of the people who rate their answers).

•A smaller portion will recognize that AI provides a tool that allows them to greatly increase their productivity. This, I believe, will ultimately lead to a wealth explosion that will be concentrated in the upper classes (hence increasing the income division in society). However, I do not believe this benefit will be seen for many of the people pursuing it due to them failing to recognize what AI is and is not useful for. Put differently, AI will benefit users who make a point to keep their own agency while using it and harm those who hand it over.

•Since many of the things we are trained by the educational system to do are ultimately algorithmic (and hence possible for AI to do), AI will place an increasing pressure upon the population to shift to providing things which offer an inherent value that goes beyond what can be automated and trained (e.g., a genuine authentic human presence in medicine that is naturally therapeutic). However, I do not think many of the people who economically need to do this will do so, and as a result, AI will also amplify the income inequality in society from the opposite direction (by making the less wealthy poorer).

•A significant portion of the value of AI comes from things most users cannot see (AI interfacing with programs rather than individual users talking to chatbots), as this setup makes it possible for programs (or programs connected to physical systems) to do a lot of things that previously were not possible (e.g., to create a variety of highly profitable technologies or meticulously micromanage the population). Because of this, I suspect one of the main purposes of the chat bots (beyond creating positive PR for the AI industry) has been to provide free human training that can be used to develop these far more lucrative invisible systems.

To put all of that in more concrete terms; initially, I was strongly opposed to using AI as I felt it was highly inaccurate (due to it sharing the exact same subtle biases I was used to seeing on websites like Wikipedia) and found its pretentious and condescending style of conversation to be extremely obnoxious (until we realized you could stop a lot of that by telling the chatbots to stop “sounding like Reddit”). Later, I realized it was very useful for rapidly executing second and third order searches (e.g., I am going from point A to point B, based on my criteria, the possible routes I can take, and the time I am leaving, what is the optimal place for me to stop at midway) as it could quickly do all of that rather than requiring me to manually sort through each part of the decision tree (saving a lot of time).

Likewise, with writing, I was initially strongly opposed to using AI at all both because I could not tolerate the errors it continually introduced (e.g., AI hallucinations or regressions to the orthodoxy) and because I did not like the feel of AI writing (which beyond having a “Reddity tone” also just felt empty, which was a deal breaker as I am not willing to ask readers here to read things I myself would not want to read). I then switched to viewing AI as a good way to obtain “orthodox” perspectives (many of which are correct) and edit what you are working on (which for me works best by generating word document copies of articles with suggested edits highlighted so I can go through each one and manually add in the ones that make sense).

Later, I realized that while AI has a high rate of hallucination for anything it generates on its own (and pulls from fairly limited datasets), it’s fairly good with material you directly give it to process. So if you understand the entire pipeline that is required to create a finished output, it often makes sense to save a lot of time by having AI automate certain parts of the pipeline (rather than asking for the whole thing start to finish—which inevitably creates a highly erroneous and useless output). Because of this, one of the main things we’ve done over the last year has been to give them well over ten thousand studies (from all the databases AI systems do not look at) and have them process each one into a paragraph highlighting all the pertinent data in the study (and then sort those paragraphs by category and then sort those categories by overlapping information).

From doing this, it’s made it possible to compile a lot of information that simply was never accessible before and to do it in a very short timeframe (thereby making it actually possible to get all of this into the public domain while RFK is still HHS Secretary). For example, papers get exponentially harder to write the more sources they contain, and the capstone paper on DMSO for brain spine and heart injuries the top experts in the field wrote (after spending a decade researching the subject) contained 78 references—yet the four articles I released this year on this topic collectively contained nearly 5,000 references.^1,2,3,4 So while doing these four articles was immensely time consuming, with the help of AI (and very careful vetting of the outputs), it was possible to do orders of magnitude more than anyone ever has been able to do before, thereby, at last making that forgotten literature base accessible.

One of the main reasons I did all of this, in turn, was because I knew it was simply not feasible for independent researchers to ever uncover most of the actual research that had been done with DMSO. As such, my hope was that by making it all easily available, other researchers could copy my work and use it as a foundation for their own works on DMSO (as prior to me beginning this project, I’d realized almost every DMSO book in print rather than independently research the subject had just copied what was in the previously published books and hence all were collectively drawing from a very limited pool of scientific studies). So, if a much larger body of compelling literature was made available to everyone, it would effectively promote the therapy and make something that could help a lot of people widely available, thereby creating the pressure to shift us to a better model of medical care (which is why I chose to start by the writing the longer and far more difficult articles which make that critical literature available rather than jumping to the shorter ones that have more commercial appeal).

This has basically happened, and over the last two years, a lot of books and articles have started to be published on using DMSO which are incorporating many of those forgotten studies that have never before been seen in print. However (and this is the key point), what I’ve noticed is that most of them were AI generated summaries of what I wrote rather than the authors using them as a scaffolding to assist in developing their own DMSO content. On one hand, this has been problematic as the AI summaries introduce a significant amount of errors or misinterpretations (so in cases where authors who did this credited me, many people have asked me why I said something I never actually did but the AI summary erroneously concocted).

However, what I feel is far more important (and why I shared this story) is that even in cases where I’d already done the vast majority of the work for anyone who would want to broach the DMSO topic (and held off on writing the shorter DMSO pieces so an economic niche was created for other people to do it), when authors were faced with the choice between doing the last bit themselves or letting AI do it with the errors doing so inevitably entails, they chose the latter. I mention this because I do not think this issue is at all unique to DMSO, but rather that (as I alluded to in the first bullet point of this section) if AI provides an easier and faster way to do tasks at the expense of quality, human nature dictates that a lot of people will use AI to do that (which amongst other things is why the amount of content on the internet is rapidly increasing while in tandem its quality is rapidly declining).

So to summarize, I feel AI is a very useful tool which makes a lot of things previously not possible possible. However, my fear is that the majority of users will treat it as a crutch and not utilize it in a manner that productively enhances their own lives (or their personal development). In contrast, there will also be a sizable number of individuals who will grasp how to effectively leverage AI, but I think there is a high likelihood most of them will not have the ethics (or wisdom) to prevent their projects from harming humanity (e.g., one of the current AI enabled gold-rushes is AI facilitated mass surveillance while another is using mRNA to cure illnesses by "rewriting the programs your body runs on"—neither of which is likely to provide a net benefit to humanity). Put differently, the tool amplifies whatever its user brings to it, but most people instead rely upon AI to do everything for them.

Note: since America’s tech industry originates from a very left-wing area, it exists within a cultural ethos where presenting the appearance of aiming to benefit humanity is paramount. Because of this, many people I’ve spoken to have collectively seen more investor pitches than I can count from Silicon Valley tech companies over the years that claimed the company would help humanity but in reality were entirely about profit and often later created a negative impact on humanity (e.g., Facebook’s first president recently admitted he deeply regrets what they did to children’s brains). Because of this, I am fairly skeptical about all the (repackaged) utopian language I am seeing being increasingly wrapped around AI—particularly since more and more military spending is going towards developing AI weapon systems, which I feel is very dangerous for humanity (as once human beings are no longer held back by being confronted with the visceral reality of killing another person it opens the doors to unspeakable horrors occurring).

Datacenter Proliferation

Despite unresolved questions existing on the inherent worth of AI, leaders around the world (who seem unable to grasp AI is well suited for certain tasks but not others) have made the decision to go all in on creating robust national AI frameworks as AI dominance has been equated with economic supremacy and being a superpower in the 21^st century.

In America’s case, this has mostly meant the government clearing the way for private money rather than building anything itself. On his second day back in office (building on the precedent he established in his first term of expediting business projects he felt advanced America’s interests—such as Operation Warp Speed or obtaining massive amounts of ventilators and hydroxychloroquine), Trump hosted the launch of Stargate (a $500 billion, four-year private venture between OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle, and MGX to build roughly 10 gigawatts of AI data centers—much of which has not yet come to fruition), and in July 2025 the White House released an “AI Action Plan” whose central pillar was “Build American AI Infrastructure.” The accompanying executive order designated any data center needing more than 100 megawatts of new power as a priority federal project, directed agencies to fast-track and narrow their environmental review, opened federal land (including contaminated Superfund sites) to them, and directed the Commerce Department to arrange loans and guarantees for qualifying projects with at least $500 million of private capital behind them. That same month's tax bill restored full immediate expensing for this type of investment,¹ which David Sacks (who ran AI policy for the White House until this year) has credited as a key driver of what followed.

What followed has no precedent—Sacks told the G20 on September 2, 2026 that about $800 billion is being invested in AI infrastructure in the United States this year, that the figure is expected to reach $1.4 trillion next year, that the estimates keep being revised upward, and that the only comparable buildout was the railroads in the 1800s¹ (it already exceeds the fiber-optic buildout of the internet era). The companies’ own numbers agree: Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta spent around $410 billion in 2025 and plan roughly $725 billion or more in 2026,¹ with analysts projecting their combined spending will pass $1 trillion in 2027 and Goldman Sachs expecting $5.3 trillion from those four companies alone by 2030.¹ In short, these are some of the most profitable enterprises in human history, and they are now spending so fast that Alphabet's (Google's) free cash flow went negative in the second quarter of 2026 for the first time since it became a public company.¹

Much of this shows up as physical construction. The Census Bureau only recently began tracking data centers as their own category, and when it did, it found they had overtaken traditional office construction in the country.¹ By July 2026 data center construction was running at an annual pace above $75 billion, up nearly 60% from a year earlier—during a month in which total U.S. construction spending fell (with residential construction down 7.3% from the previous year).^1,2 Data center construction projects now account for nearly a quarter of all nonresidential building in the country (and the buildings are only about a fifth of a data center's cost; the equipment inside is the rest), with nearly three times as much spent so far this year as in the same period last year¹ while nearly every other category of investment is flat or falling.¹ In turn, one analyst group estimates AI capital spending is adding roughly 1.4 percentage points to U.S. growth this year,¹ and Sacks has argued it accounted for about 75% of first-quarter GDP growth.¹

Note: this spending is not confined to America. China, for example, is preparing to spend around 2 trillion yuan ($295 billion) over the next five years on data centers,¹ the EU has announced a €200 billion "InvestAI" initiative,¹ Saudi Arabia is deploying hundreds of megawatts of Nvidia and AMD chips through a state-backed company,¹ and the UAE is building a 5-gigawatt AI campus in Abu Dhabi.¹ One analyst group, in turn, puts global data center capital expenditure (by a narrower definition than Sacks's) at roughly $800 billion per year in 2026 and projects $31.6 trillion will be spent on AI infrastructure through 2050.¹

Community Resistance

While understandable fears that AI will displace jobs have created public opposition to AI, the primary source of political pushback against the industry has actually come from communities AI data centers are being placed in. This is because:

•Data center processors require a massive amount of energy (a single facility can draw as much power as a mid-sized city), which in turn is spiking electricity demand¹ and hence electricity costs in the areas around them (as the grid upgrade costs get passed to residential ratepayers—so a key fight in most states is over who pays for those upgrades). That said, the extent to which data centers are raising electricity prices is hard to quantify as estimates vary widely (e.g., some have found none, one found a 10-20% increase and others found far more; the clearest documented case is the PJM grid serving the mid-Atlantic, whose independent monitor attributed most of a ten-fold jump in capacity prices to data center demand), but even in the most cited extreme cases, other pre-existing factors could explain some of the increases that occurred.
Note: those upgrades also mean new high-voltage transmission lines being run through communities, which raises residential exposure to the low-frequency magnetic fields that IARC classifies as a possible carcinogen and which have repeatedly been linked to childhood leukemia at exposure levels far below existing standards (an association IARC considers real but unexplained, as no [accepted] mechanism has been established).¹

•Since all that electrical usage creates heat, many facilities (particularly those using evaporative cooling) also require large amounts of water.¹ As such, ia March 2026 study estimated that $10–58 billion of new water infrastructure will be needed by 2030 to meet this demand (assuming the water is even available), with data centers' additional peak-day requirement by then roughly matching New York City's entire daily water use.¹ Presently, this translates to communities with robust water infrastructures being relatively unaffected, but smaller ones having challenges such as reduced water pressure and price increases, especially during surges (e.g., hot summer days). Furthermore, like the electrical cost increases, it’s hard to estimate exactly what degree of the increase can be attributed to data centers vs. pre-existing factors which were already increasing costs.
Note: evaporative cooling also produces blowdown (leftover water concentrated with salts, biocides, and corrosion inhibitors, plus traces of metals from pipes). This wastewater is usually sent to a municipal plant or a permitted discharge where poor handling can still stress a small treatment plant or creek.

•Data centers create a significant amount of constant noise (primarily due to the cooling systems, but also diesel generators during tests or outages, with some sites also having onsite turbines that run all the time). This noise makes it very unpleasant to live next to the centers and has resulted in many people who invested their lives into homes near the data centers wanting to move but having trouble doing so, with many saying the centers made their homes harder to sell (and as such, more and more heartwrenching documentaries are appearing on how communities have been negatively affected by data centers). Likewise, many are now reporting health effects from living in proximity to data centers (which is in part due to the air pollution their generators create¹).
Note: since data centers need a lot of power, land, and fiber, many newer ones are being placed in less affluent communities, including in the Midwest, so this is becoming an increasing problem in my region (which is a large part of why I wrote this article)—while in contrast, it’s easy for people in more affluent areas that don’t host them (but often profit off them) to not notice as cheaper regions are favored for new data center deployment.

Because of this, there is increasing community pushback against the data centers, which has led to local politicians who approved them despite vocal opposition in their communities subsequently being recalled¹ and data center opposition becoming one of the key issues in the midterms in certain affected districts.^1,2 More than 300 state bills targeting data centers were filed in the first six weeks of 2026 alone,¹ and in July New York's governor signed the nation's first statewide moratorium, pausing new hyperscale data center permits for a year."^1,2

In response to this, the industry has become increasingly aggressive in buying up land for the data centers (and pressing landowners to sell), while utilities use eminent domain for power lines across private land to serve those sites, and the industry has both lobbied politicians at every level and sued municipalities to push the projects through—all of which is expected given how much money is being invested.
Note: the industry is also beginning to work on innovations (e.g., onsite power generation and closed-loop cooling), which illustrates the displacement effect is already beginning.

Likewise in response to the pushback:

•President Trump has recently taken the position it is against one’s interest to oppose data centers:

•Individuals like Vice President Vance have tried to find middle ground positions like emphasizing the necessity of tech companies needing to build the power generation for the data centers rather than take it from the local grid and spike local electrical prices.

•Fox News originally aired data center concerns (and claimed they could be solved with deregulation, infrastructure improvements or developers absorbing some of the costs). However, as public opposition grew (e.g., in March 2026, 71% of Americans opposed data centers being constructed in their areas) Fox pivoted to the position that supporting data centers was necessary for US technological dominance, and that opposing data center proliferation helped China’s interests (e.g., “You’re against data centers, you are for China”). In tandem, Republican leaders have pressed the position that opposition to data centers is (at least in part) a Chinese campaign against America’s interests.
Note: as I discussed in a recent interview with Pierre Kory, dealing in absolutes is immensely problematic for society. So, while it is true opposition to data centers likely helps China, and that some of that opposition is probably being egged on by groups that benefit from the Trump administration’s AI attempts being derailed, that does not negate the fact that the thing motivating most of the opposition to the data centers is the impacts they are having on communities.

•The large conservative influencers have become split on the datacenter topic (e.g., Ben Shapiro has said opposition to them equates to working for China and Russia, others have linked opposition to existing left-wing groups, Matt Walsh has rejected both panic-bans and a no-questions buildout, arguing there are real problems with how centers are being rolled out that require a serious public debate before the country sprints further, and Tucker Carlson has come out strongly opposed, arguing communities are being stripped of the power to say no while paying the costs and getting no convincing public benefit).

Data Center Health Effects

Thus far, in this newsletter, I’ve focused on one half of this equation: some individuals are much more sensitive to toxicity, and hence are disproportionately injured by pharmaceutical drugs but then gaslighted by their doctors and community when they experience those inevitable injuries. The way I make sense of this is by viewing injuries as distributing on a bell curve, where the severe injuries (that are unmistakeable) are fairly rare, while the less severe (but harder to recognize ones) are fairly common.

This distribution pattern sadly makes it easy to dismiss the injuries, as the extreme ones are rare enough that they can be written off as spontaneous coincidences unrelated to the pharmaceutical, while the common ones are minor enough they are either not recognized or attributed to something else. In contrast, the way I interpret this curve is that if I see a cluster of severe events, I immediately assume the agent is dangerous and there will likely be a massive number of less severe effects, and likewise, if I see a high rate of people reporting moderate reactions to something (especially in different parts of the body), that means there are severe ones hiding in the background.

The COVID Vaccine Bell Curve

Since the COVID vaccine is fairly toxic and was given to a massive number of people, beyond this bell curve occurring, all of it was amplified to the point people who are not trained to spot it could still tell it was occurring. As such, when the COVID vaccine was approved, I had concerns it would have issues (which led to me advising people to hold off on it until more was known), but I initially expected the issues to primarily be chronic problems like delayed onset autoimmune diseases, increases in cancer a few years down the road and future fertility impairments (the potential risk of which I felt would most likely exceeded the meager benefit the vaccine was likely to offer).

However, the week it was released to the public, I began seeing distant colleagues post on social media they felt absolutely awful after vaccinating (but still intended to continue) and having multiple patients each day (in the demographics the vaccine had thus far been rolled out to) complaining about fairly significant (but not life-altering) reactions to the vaccines they’d never experienced from other shots (which most of the other doctors wrote off as not enough to justify skipping the second dose—despite reactions typically being worse from the second one).

As such, within a week I realized I had significantly underestimated the toxicity of the shot, and began pleading with people I knew to not get it as I was fairly certain the reactions I was seeing meant there were also going to be a lot of more severe ones that likely would take a while to show up (after which I had to watch quite a few of the people I cared about who didn’t listen to me develop much more severe chronic complications from the vaccine). Likewise, after about a month, I started having people around the country (many of whom I had not spoken to in years) reach out to ask if the COVID vaccines could cause sudden death as this had happened to a relative or friend.

I share all of this to highlight both why I have been so upset about the whole COVID vaccine program (as with the extremely limited data I had access to at the time, I could tell within a month of their rollout they were one of the most dangerous pharmaceutical products in history—yet the regulators with orders of magnitude more data than me could not at that time—and instead have continued to double down on their safety claim regardless of how much evidence mounts against the vaccines) but also to give an illustration of how this bell curve functions in real life.

However, that is only one half of the story. The other is simply that people are more sensitive to stimuli in their environment (which often goes hand in hand with them being predisposed to illness following a toxin exposure). For example, one of the projects with this newsletter has been to expose the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine shedding phenomenon, something we were told was impossible based on the design of the vaccine, but nonetheless we saw more and more cases of as time went on and eventually collected enough data to determine there were clear reproducible patterns in what was happening that elucidated what was actually occurring (all of which I detailed here). With the shedding phenomenon, I was originally clued into its reality because a few highly-sensitive patients I knew told me they could tell if someone had recently been vaccinated (as it made them ill and they shared overlapping sensory observations) and because numerous unvaccinated women (closer to the middle of the bell curve) had shared with me being around a vaccinated individual significantly disrupted their menstrual cycle (indicating that while shedding reactions were less severe than COVID vaccine reactions, there were likely still rarer severe reactions I would likely later come across and eventually did).

Note: when profitable projects are pushed through at the expense of the population, “sensitive” people normally bear the brunt of the human cost, but in almost all cases, are viewed as an acceptable sacrifice (since they are rare enough they can be swept under the rug) rather than as “canaries in the coal mine” that indicate larger but not yet detected issues will arise in the future.

The EMF Sensitivity Bell Curve

One of the areas where all these concepts best converge is with electromagnetic field sensitivity, as:

•A minority of people are “electrically hypersensitive” being both able to feel EMFs and becoming quite ill around them (which ultimately requires them to live in low EMF areas—which sadly are becoming increasingly rare).
•Some (myself included) are EMF sensitive (so we sometimes sense certain EMFs) and feel generally better in low EMF environments but can essentially tolerate everyday life (e.g., I will go to cities when I need to but prefer rural areas).
•Some don’t notice EMFs at all, but with careful deduction you can link certain symptoms they have to EMF exposure (which goes away once they go to low EMF environments or do things like turning off their wifi router at night and not keeping their phone by their bed).
•Many people really do not seem to be at all affected by them (but the data that would be needed to assess their longterm risks of things like cancer is not there).