What is the Source of The Modern Epidemic of Chronic Illness?

Reviewing the highlights and implications of Nicole Shanahan's VP nomination

Note: while this article has a political focus, it is primarily a discussion of the (relatively unknown) root causes of chronic illness in America.

A year ago, I endorsed RFK Jr. for president and helped promote his campaign launch. Since then, he has had an unprecedented degree of success and is already the most successful independent presidential candidate since Ross Perot’s historic 1992 run.

Because of this, there has been an immense interest on who RFK Jr. would nominate as his running mate. Yesterday, he chose Nicole Shanahan, a lawyer, philanthropist, and entrepreneur who is deeply connected to the Silicon Valley political elite (e.g., she is the recent ex-wife of Google’s co-founder with whom she shares an autistic daughter).

Shanahan’s acceptance speech in turn received millions of views on Twitter, and since I could not find a correctly clipped version of it, I am including that here:

In this article, I will share my thoughts on the the most important highlights from her speech and what I believe to be the political implications of RFK Jr.’s choice to nominate her.

The Epidemic of Chronic Disease

Over the last century, there has been a tremendous advancement in medical science and many previously insurmountable conditions are now easily managed by the conventional medicine. At the same time, almost every mentor of mine has shared with me that they observed from the start of their careers to the end of it:

•The rates of chronic illnesses in the population increased.

•Many diseases appeared that had previously been almost unheard of.

•Many holistic treatments which patients had previously had dramatic responses to they now only marginally responded to.

Note: part of my life’s work has been tracking down the lost and forgotten medical cures and then seeing which did and did not work. I believe the final bullet point plays a big part in explaining why it’s so hard to determine which ones were legitimate, as while some are still phenomenal, I believe some of the others that don’t get results now weren’t hoaxes but rather simply are no longer appropriate for the current age we live in.

In turn, quite a few of my mentors asked the same question I did to their mentors, and shared that my “grand-mentors” (or great-grand-mentors) likewise observed this same decline throughout the course of their careers. From this, I’ve been able to trace a continuous observation of that progressive decline being directly reported since the late 1800s (and about 50 years earlier if I am make some inferences I believe are reasonable, and earlier still if I include what many of the doctors of the era reported about the early mercury preparations).

This discovery thus raises an obvious question: what has caused that decline in humanity’s health? I’ve put a lot of thought into this and believe that while the widespread use of a few of the allopathic drugs (e.g., mercury) was incredibly problematic, by far the biggest shift occurred after the widespread adoption of the disastrous smallpox vaccine roughly 200 years ago (which was discussed in detail here).

Since that time, numerous additional insults have been added into our environment and each one has created a significant (and sustained) spike in chronic illness that the current generation has become acclimated into accepting as the “new normal” until it is no longer questioned, while the doctors who bore witness to the catastrophic explosion in chronic illness become forgotten, and the cycle repeats.

For example, a good case can be made that the vaccines manufactures being given complete legal immunity in 1986 for their products (which incentivized a glut of not necessarily safe vaccines flooding the market) was directly responsible for the unprecedented spike in chronic illness which began shortly after. Likewise, many physicians in practice have observed their patients became much sicker once the COVID vaccines came out, and a big part of why I write here is so that this decline in health does not again become normalized and forgotten.

Note: I believe a key issue behind all of this is that the existing economic system incentivizes selling lucrative treatments for conditions rather than actually curing them. Because of this, the explosion of chronic disease is “good for business” and those seeking to cure it are vastly out-funded by the corporations who profit off it and can afford to buy a monopoly for their business.

RFK Jr.’s consistent message has been that the epidemic of chronic disease facing our children is the greatest threat our country faces, and that for our country to remain viable something must be done about it.

Note: the above slide references this study and this study.

In turn, this epidemic was a key theme of Shanahan’s acceptance speech.

Note: the Vigilant Fox (an anonymous Substack author I’ve become friends with because of his sincere commitment to moving things in a positive direction) clipped the above segment yesterday and it has already received over a million views on Twitter. This suggests there is widespread interest in our epidemic of chronic disease.

Here, Shanahan declared:

Conditions like autism used to be 1 in 10,000.

Now here in the state of California, it is 1 in 22. One in twenty two children affected. Allergies, obesity, anxiety, depression, our children are not well. Our people are not well. And our country will not be well for very much longer if we don't heed this desperate call for attention.

We are facing a crisis in reproductive health that is embedded in the larger epidemic of chronic disease.

Because it has been so personal for me and my daughter, I got deep into the research and consulted some of the best scientists and doctors. Let me tell you what I found. There are three main causes.

One is the toxic substances in our environment, like endocrine disrupting chemicals in our food, water and soil. Like the pesticide residues, the industrial pollutants, the microplastics, the PFAs, the food additives and the forever chemicals that contaminated nearly every human cell.

Second is electromagnetic pollution.

Third, I'm sorry to say, is our medications. Pharmaceutical pharmaceutical medicine has its place but no single safety study can assess the cumulative impact of one prescription on top of another prescription and one shot on top of another shot throughout the course of childhood. We just don’t do that study right now and we ought to. We can, and we will.

Additionally, she later discussed the immense problems we face from our poor soil and highlights that most of them would be solved through regenerative agriculture if we stopped financially incentivizing bad practices with the existing farming subsidies and regulations:

Note: I believe our current dysfunctional farming paradigm stems from policies put in place by Nixon’s Secretary of Agriculture to lower food prices, which forced independent farmers to leave the business and shifted America to mass-monocultures of cash crops like corn wheat and soy.

The Causes of Chronic Disease

In parallel to establishing if there has indeed been a continual rise in chronic disease, my other goal has been to determine what’s caused it, as that provides the key to potentially undoing it and helping many of the patients I work with who are debilitated by these illnesses.

Unfortunately, since there are so many potentially unhealthy things in our environment, it’s almost impossible to avoid all of them and we inevitably run into the situation where each person who looks into it simply sees the complex problem through their own cognitive filter. Because of this, there are a lot of intelligent people in the integrative health field who are convinced they have found the root cause of chronic illness—but exactly what that cause is greatly differs depending on who you ask.

For instance, since between 18%-85% of Americans are allergic to cockroaches and those allergies are strongly associated with quite a few illnesses, I met one doctor who was absolutely convinced the root cause of illness in America was the widespread contamination of cockroach remains in our food supply.
Note: while I don’t believe that hypothesis is the root cause of chronic illness in America, I do believe it serves as a strong argument against having everyone eat bugs.

One of the most useful datapoints I originally got for answering this questions came from a mentor who worked for over a decade at the one of American’s premier integrative medical clinics which frequently saw the toughest cases no one else could solve. He told me that they typically found one or more of the following was the root cause of their patient’s chronic illness.

• Heavy metal toxicity.

• Chemical toxicity.

• Electrosmog (EMFs).

• Infected root canals.

• Geopathic Stress (which was often treated by changing where they slept).

• Toxic scars (which are treated with neural therapy).

• Unresolved (often generational) family conflicts (which they often treated with family constellation therapy).

• Vaccinations.

• Pharmaceutical drugs.

Note: It was never clear to me if my mentor (who has since passed) included disturbances in the pleomorphic ecology of the body as they often treated this but I don’t recall him specifically including it on his list.

I’ve essentially found this is my own practice, and most of the most talented doctors I’ve worked with agreed with that list. However, there are still a few major issues with it.

First, by nature of narrowing its focus to the key factors, it excludes many of the other frequent causes of chronic illness (e.g., trapped emotions, childhood trauma, or the myriad of other dental issues).

Second, there are a lot of toxic chemicals in the environment, so “chemical toxicity,” is somewhat ambiguous. I do however agree that for the limited time she had, Shanahan did an excellent job touching upon many of the major offenders (however many others like the organic solvents were skipped).
Note: one of the things I find particularly unfortunate about this category is that while many of the items on the above list are relatively easy to address and can quickly make large improvements for patients, addressing chemical toxicity is often much more challenging—which speaks to how important it is to reduce its presence in our environment.

Third, this list was produced a few decades ago, so some of the things we are dealing with now did not exist at the time or were much less widespread (e.g., the EMFs. glyphosate, or the proliferation of debilitating chronic infections which appeared to have originated from biolab leaks).

Finally, we believe it excluded a few critical things. Those were as follows:

1: The homeostasis of the body depends upon regular natural rhythms, and modern society (particularly technology) has heavily disrupted those rhythms. Additionally, many chronic diseases states further disrupt those rhythms (e.g., sleep) and cannot be healed until the normal rhythm is reestablished. In my eyes some of the most consequential disruptions include:
•Loss of the natural light cycle (e.g., this is why many people consider blue light to be such a huge problem.
•Loss of the natural temperature cycle (normally we went to sleep when it was cold and the body sleeps better at colder temperatures).
•Loss of the circadian rhythm since we go to bed at such different times now.
•Loss of the natural movement cycle (previously we spent much of the day moving, and by being mostly sedentary a variety of problems such as psychiatric illness, fluid stagnation and bone loss occur).
•Loss of the pacing between eating and not eating so we no longer have periods of fasting (especially before bed).
•Loss of the pacing between thinking and not thinking. Many spiritual traditions believe our minds were not meant to be thinking all the time and our nervous needed periodic rest to regenerate itself—yet that is the opposite of what happens in modern society (e.g., whenever you are on a computer, your CNS is continuously forced to make decisions).

2: A variety of problems exist with the food supply (e.g., the agrochemicals in it, the proliferation of experimental GMOs, the fact that we eat so many unhealthy oils, grains and sugars, and all the toxic chemical additives put into the food). Of these, I believe one of the largest problems is how nutritionally deficient much of our food is.

While to some extent that deficiency is a result of food processing (e.g., for a variety of different reasons avoiding processed foods typically improves one’s health), I believe the primary issue is that our intensive agricultural practices have destroyed the vitality of the soil as I frequently notice significant benefits of foods grown in fertile soil and harms of demineralized soil (e.g., Roundup is remarkably effective at binding the minerals our body requires for its ligaments and bones).

Shanahan in turn was the executive producer for a popular 2020 documentary about regenerative agriculture and the importance of helping our soil regain its vitality. This likely explains why she focused on the issues in her acceptance speech.

Note: a significant amount of the focus on remineralizing the soil came from the 1936 Senate Document 264 which told the compelling story of a doctor who realized the root cause of many illnesses he was seeing was America’s soil being demineralized and detailed the remarkable results he obtained from remineralizing the soil after he determined what was missing. However, while this document is “authentic,” it did not originate from official government records (rather it originated from a Cosmopolitan article read into the Senate record) so there is no way to verify its account (this is the most balanced discussion I’ve found on it).

3: One of my now deceased mentors discovered he was able to heal a great number of people by simply having them breathe pristine air, and it was quite profound how much being in one of those areas improved my physiology. Sadly, oxygenated places that are completely free of air pollution were hard to find 50 years ago, and now are far rarer.

Note: one of the goals of this publication has been to properly map out the importance each of these causes and how they contribute to the unnatural aging consuming our society (e.g., every now and then I meet an elderly person whose vitality and mind makes them appear decades younger than they are and without exception they always tell me they have always adamantly refused to take pharmaceutical drugs). At this point I’m about a third of the way mapping all of this out but the most important thing has now been completed, a series on zeta potential and one on the cell danger response, each of which I believe often is the pathway through which each of the agents in this section ultimately harms the human body.

Fixing This Mess

Shanahan proposed’s solution to this was relatively straightforward:

It is not about a new pill or, “finding the cure.” We know the cure is cleaning up our environment and providing the basic public goods that are the foundational conditions for health and healing. It is about a shift in our priorities. It is about compassion. Chronic disease, addiction, poverty, depression, this is where Americans are hurting the most.

Note: I felt this point was important to emphasize because it the exact opposite of what our profit medical system has morphed into—selling as many profitable “treatments” as possible that can never actually lead to health. This may also explain why every politician besides RFK Jr. she met with refused to seriously looking into what is making America sick.

Shanahan then proposed how she would utilize her experience in tech to fix this:

In short, she planned to:

•Have RFK work on eliminating the industry capture of our regulators (which is the primary reason why the government is handling our nation’s health so egregiously).

•Develop AI systems which could sort through health records to determine the root causes of illness.

•Get access to the large databases we had with America’s health data and within a few weeks of assuming the vice presidency, have those AI systems determine exactly what was making American’s ill.

By mentioning this, she touches upon a very important point. The initial rush for “more data” and “evidence based policy” was based upon the belief modern data technologies could solve the problem leaders had always faced—how to make the correct decision (which they often didn’t) when faced with an overwhelming amount of (often contradictory or incomplete) data.

While this was good in principle (which led to the belief in data rapidly becoming adopted—especially within the tech circles as it allowed them to make a lot of money on the internet), it had a major problem. Data would often unearth inconvenient truths (e.g., that a practice everyone was deeply invested in was actually a bad idea), at which point, the data stopped being listened to.

Because of this, we have devoted an immense amount of society’s resources towards collecting data, yet, very little to (publicly) analyzing it. This is why for instance, in 2007, recognizing that the many vaccine adverse events were not being identified, the the federal Agency for Health Care Research Quality designed an AI system to identify them through electronic health records.

In 2010, that system found 2.6% of vaccine recipients experienced an adverse event within 30 days of vaccination, suggesting that less than 1% of (acute) vaccine reactions are identified. Because of this, rather than it being deployed throughout America, it was scrapped and we never heard of it again. Likewise, the CDC has been sitting on a massive database which could make it possible to identify which acute and chronic conditions are caused by vaccination, but despite decades of petitions to make it available to the public, they never have.

Note: years ago, one of my distant colleagues, working alone, created a rudimentary AI system which could comb EHRs and identify important health trends within the data. While there was initially interest in his project, before long it got shut down. I share this story to illustrate that Shanahan’s proposal is not a complex or novel idea, but rather an existential threat to the pharmaceutical industry as it cannot afford to have its products be exposed for how unsafe or ineffective they actually are.

The Political Implications of This Nomination

Since Shanahan comes from a very liberal background, I have heard a wide range of opinions on her nomination (e.g., many liberals like her while many conservatives who support RFK Jr. believe she is far too left-leaning). Based on this, I believe Trump greatly benefitted from this nomination as his supporters are much less likely to vote for a Shanahan ticket than Biden’s (particularly since a large segment of Biden’s base will emotionally resonate with Shanahan).

This in turn suggests RFK’s choice will help to ensure Biden (who is one of the worst presidents in American history) does not get reelected. Given that the Democrat party is engaging in active methods to sabotage his campaign (e.g., they’ve broken all existing precedents by refusing to provide RFK Jr. with Secret Service protection despite mainstream media platforms petitioning them to and simultaneously have been working around the clock to block his ballot access across America), this suggests they very much see him as a threat.

Simultaneously, by appointing an “insider” to be his running mate, this provides RFK Jr. with a chance to begin drawing the Democratic Party away from the disastrous path they’ve been sucked into.

To provide some context:

After Bush won two elections many in the Democratic party felt he should not have won, per my understanding, a decision was made for the Democratic party to pursue larger corporate donors so they would have the necessary cash to not lose another election. To quote the New York Times and the Guardian.

President-elect Barack Obama brought in nearly $750 million for his presidential campaign, a record amount that exceeds what all of the candidates combined collected in private donations in the previous race for the White House, according to a report filed Thursday with the Federal Election Commission.

Traditionally, after the conventions, both presidential candidates opt for a federal programme that give their campaigns a set sum beyond which they cannot spend. That has been the pattern since 1976, meaning that the two presidential candidates have been on a level financial playing field.

But the 2008 presidential campaign is entering uncharted waters. Last month Obama decided to opt out of a government funding programme that gives candidates $84m but prevents them spending any more. It's a calculated risk. Obama is gambling on his ability to raise more than that to spend on his campaign between August and November and, more importantly, not be bound by any spending limits.

Note: the 2024 election is projected to be the most expensive one in history.

Once Obama was elected, the Democratic party became allied with Big Tech, the pharmaceutical industry and biotech (e.g., Monsanto), while each of those industries simultaneously become interwoven with each other (e.g., Big Tech heavily invested in Pharma). This resulted in it becoming trendy for members of the left to support those industries (e.g., Apple did a remarkable job of branding their products for this) and the focus of the left being switched from its more traditional populist positions to the nebulous promotion of Diversity Equity and Inclusion or fighting climate change (while simultaneously ignoring how their corporate sponsors flagrantly abused the environment and ethnic minorities oversees). As Shanahan explains, this led to more and more people feeling alienated by their party.

As I lived in a very red area, I didn’t initially experience this cultural shift and I instead first realized something ominous was brewing in 2011 after Obama removed Gadaffi from power. For context, I considered this to be one of the worst actions of his presidency (discussed further by Jimmy Dore here) and something that went against all international norms and what Obama was supposed to stand for. It thus was remarkable for many of us to watch the Democrat party be turned into a pro-war party which was no different from the neo-conservatives under Bush.

Note: this greatly accelerated in 2018 and 2020, when a variety of military intelligence operatives collectively ran for Congress and became a sizable constituency in the Democratic party, at which point they successfully shut down all attempts for a peaceful foreign policy. Because of this, now the only anti-war candidates in the Democratic party are outsiders like RFK Jr. and as shown in this part of her speech, Shanahan:

One of the most ominous things occurred at the end of Obama’s presidency when after a national campaign was launched from California in 2015 to instill vaccine mandates around the country, I consistently saw the Democratic leadership vote for the mandates regardless of how much their constituents requested them not to (whereas the Republican leaders typically listened and eventually voted against the mandates).

In turn, I watched vaccination become a political issue and the left which had previously been skeptical towards the pharmaceutical industry become hateful towards anyone who questioned vaccines (including the numerous liberal mothers who had vaccine injured children).

At the time I thought this was quite strange, since at same time (i.e. in 2015) mainstream outlets began warning against vaccination becoming polarized and turned into a political wedge issue (e.g., see this early 2019 article) as this would greatly reduce the willingness of half of the country to vaccinate. This in turn created the unexpected political climate where multiple Republicans (including two doctors) were willing to question aspects of the vaccine program after a presidential debate host repeatedly asked them to attack Trump for him previously suggesting vaccines weren’t necessarily safe:

Note: in addition to Trump’s public statements linking cases he saw of autism to a vaccine and his repeated interactions with vaccine safety activists, I know through two degrees of separation that also happened within his family (which is likely why he made repeated attempts to do something about it during his presidency). As Shanahan has an autistic daughter (with one of the richest men in the world) and is also speaking out publicly on vaccine safety, it is looking like we are entering an election where the majority of the 2024 presidential candidates not only believe vaccines cause autism but are willing to say so publicly—something I never expected to see in my lifetime and which I believe is a testament to how much more frequent these brain injuries are becoming.

Once COVID happened, I realized everything I’d witnessed over the last 5 years had been part of a coordinated campaign (which the WHO termed the Decades of Vaccines after Bill Gates proposed it in 2010 at the World Economic Forum) to enact the reprehensible vaccine mandates we saw across the globe in 2021.

The political polarization ended up being key for this campaign. For instance:
•During the Obama presidency, I watched the Democratic base which had previously been extremely skeptical of the pharmaceutical industry become its zealous supporters.
•When the COVID vaccines hit the market, we watched many liberal individuals who had direct experiences with childhood vaccine injuries throw all of that out the window so they could be first in line to vaccinate.
•Once everyone who was willing to voluntarily vaccinate vaccinated, by having the issue become politicized, it made the left willing to endorse harsh sanctions (e.g., mandates) against those who did not vaccinate.

As much of this originated from the San Francisco Bay Area, many of its wealthy residents have a very strong commitment to the vaccine narrative and speaking out against the medical industrial complex carries stiff consequences. Silicon Valley entrepreneur Steve Kirsch, for example, went from being a highly respected Democrat philanthropist to being ostracized by much of his former peer group and having his numerous charitable contributions be quickly forgotten once he publicly questioned vaccination.

Shanahan’s willingness to break from the ranks and do the same indicates we may be nearing a pivotal tipping point. I feel this is extremely important because Silicon Valley (which was originally founded on utopian ideals) has had an incredible influence over the course humanity has taken, and we are at an inflection point where it could either bring us in a very positive or a very dark direction (e.g., one of mass surveillance and censorship from AI).

Conclusion

Every society throughout history has followed the same cycle, alternating between periods of institutional buildup and decline

Presently, the United States has an exponentially growing problem with corruption (which sadly goes far beyond just our healthcare system) and in tandem we are watching the profound consequences of our institutions falling apart. RFK Jr. for example highlighted this point at the event by having an insider explain how the food and pharmaceutical industry now routinely bribes the people who should be looking out for our health:

Because of our accelerating institutional decline, we are seeing increasingly brazen actions being committed by the corporatocracy. In this publication, I’ve tried to document how much of the horrendous conduct we saw throughout COVID in fact simply built upon the corruption which had been festering for decades but was largely ignored. Through doing so, my hope was that I could do my part to help move us on a trajectory towards institutional buildup rather than allowing our downward slide to continue (as sadly things can get much worse than they already are).

Since we are now nearing the point where things are becoming bad enough people on the sidelines are becoming motivated to become involved in fixing our democracy, it’s allowing previously unthinkable things to happen. For decades, RFK Jr. was silenced by the national media, yet now, he’s defied all expectations for how his campaign would do and he’s at last being allowed to speak critically about vaccination on national television.

When I gave my endorsement of RFK Jr. a year ago, I said the most important reason to support his candidacy would be so that he could force the topic of vaccine safety into the national spotlight. Because of how many people were severely harmed by the horrendously conducted COVID-19 vaccine program, there was a once in a lifetime window to bring the public’s attention to this issue, and it indeed appears that RFK was able to get in before it closed.

Because of his success, he has now a window to do something even more important—begin undoing the hijacking of the America’s progressive movement and return them to fighting for their fellow citizens rather than doing the bidding of the medical industrial complex or the military industrial complex. Much of the Democrat party, especially the younger voters can see that their party is no longer serving their interest so many have already left the party.

However, many who know things are wrong still haven’t because of the immense political polarization that surrounds the populist MAGA movement. However, since Shanahan is someone many of the younger voters can emotionally relate to, she can provide the populist message they will be able to hear and want to follow.
Note: this is likely why she chose to say “There is only one candidate for president who takes the chronic disease epidemic seriously, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, and I will be his ally in Making Our Nation Healthy Again” during her speech.

Likewise, since she fits so well into the current ethos of Silicon Valley, the Kennedy-Shanahan ticket has a real shot of convincing the Democrat party megadonors that they need to seriously reconsider what they are doing—especially if Trump wins this the election and Kennedy gets a massive portion of the vote.

As I conclude this article, I want to sincerely thank each of you for the part you have played in helping to create the grass roots movement which has made it possible to shift the overpowering juggernaut we faced just a few short years ago. Finally, I would like to share what I believe was the most important line of her speech:

The vision we share is a vision of national healing. It is an America that leads the world no longer through Force of Arms but through the power of example. It is an America that wages peace through diplomacy.

Note: A complete index of the articles published here on the Forgotten Side of Medicine can be found here.