I was staying in Aubervilliers last November for a “Whistleblowers” Lanceurs d’Alerte conference. Aubervilliers is in the North-East of Paris – not one of the tourist areas. Some French friends suggested the reason Paris was hosting the Olympics was because it offered the authorities an opportunity to flatten that part of the city and regenerate it – clearing out the undesirables.
The conference was in the nearby Maison des sciences de l’Homme, whose métro stop is Front Populaire. The station name hints that this district was once at the heart of Parisian socialism. The hotel was on Rue de la Commune, the centre for the Parisian Commune uprising in 1870 that Marx and others thought might be the start of the expected communist revolution. Most of the metro stations, boulevards, and street names round about conjured up left wing heroes.
Rather than the ‘Revolution’, after 1870 the Commune provided an excuse to flatten these parts of Paris, and run wide boulevards through them to make them easier to invade and control. The boulevards helped make Paris the tourist destination it is today pushing it’s people further and further out.
The area from Aubervilliers to the Gare du Nord has its boulevards and parks, but is rundown. The boulevards had drug dealing streetcorners and the hobos and junkies collected in the parks. I mentioned to friends in one of the posher areas of the city one evening that I had to head downtown for an interview in a place near the Gare du Nord the following day and figured on walking. Google maps suggested it would take an hour.
You can’t, I was told. It’s dangerous. You look like an American – you’re bound to be mugged. Please don’t.
I set off the following morning faithfully following Google Maps. There was a complicated bit to navigate, soon after starting, which ran beside a major motorway. There didn’t seem much of a path, more of a track, but it wasn’t much of a stretch, and things seemed likely to improve.
Pretty soon after setting foot on the track, I met a Hobo, who tried to tell me in words and gestures, this was no way to go. Dead end. He was gaunt, dressed in rags, and seemed agitated at what I was up to. Given the warnings I’d had, and aware of the computer and key worldly goods in my backpack, I wasn’t getting too near him for detailed advice. I was more worried that he was just the first of others I was going to have to navigate.
Turned out he was right. The track came to a dead end. The options were to retrace my steps or dash across a busy motorway. Death felt like a real possibility, but I dashed. After some more tortured hop skip and jumps I ended up on a boulevard. Filled with what looked like drug-dealing or something that was a lot more interesting than I was. The boulevard was rundown, the air was grimy, and very few people in sight looked anything like me. Not a Paris that tourist me had ever seen before.
But I got to the Gare du Nord.
The route had not been pretty, not an advertisement for Paris. It had, however, been efficient and prettiness is skin deep. I’d learnt something more about Paris. But I’d learnt something more as well. The route was efficient but could have killed me.
The Hobo was a better guide than Google. If I’d heeded him, the route would have been a lot safer, probably cleaner and less polluted. Is efficiency the supreme virtue or is there more to life than efficiency?
The following day I had to present at the Conference and I described the walk. We now have – you now get – Google Medicine and Google Docs I told them and are not exposed to just the same kind of hazards linked to a triumph of efficiency over all other virtues as my Google Map option had exposed me to.
TAiL Wags God
This brings us back to Weber’s dilemma outlined in Technological Assistance in Living – where if anywhere does morality enter into what he then (1900 A.D.) saw as our new science based world?
In Politics as a Vocation, Weber introduces the leader of the nation as the Deus Ex Machina who would bring the element of individual judgement into the technological machine and bureaucratic machinery. But, while he stresses that the leader takes responsibility for doing this and the people might decide to vote him out of office as a result, it feels semi authoritarian, surprisingly so for a liberal like Weber. This may have been why he found it difficult to get a buy-in from German socialists – who he was trying to persuade not to imprison us in an Iron Cage of bureaucracy, a Deep State.
Science gives rise to technologies but science and technology are fundamentally different. Technologies eliminate judgement calls. The algorithm in any technology embodies a fixed path from A to M. This is the same with bureaucratic techniques, which differ from law in a way that parallels the distinction between science and technology. Bureaucratic technique embodies a fixed path from N to Z.
We need science not technology when a doctor is faced with a person who has become suicidal after consuming a technology like Singulair, Accutane or Cymbalta, someone who has not gone from A to M as planned or hoped. Science involves a judgement call as to how we might now get from A to M. It needs not just a judgement call by a medical leader or dictator, but as with all science a judgement that embodies a consensus.
It was once second nature for doctors to accommodate to the idea that their technologies which could help often didn’t. They now find it increasingly hard to accommodate to this.
In the same way, there is a real crisis in law at the moment, anticipated perhaps by Weber who was worried about an inevitable encroachment of Deep State bureaucracy on government. In his day, this encroachment was giving rise not just to the Kafkaesque figure of a bureaucrat but also to regulations. Both bureaucratic procedures, and regulations governing the production of technologies like drugs to certain standards, were encroaching on law.
The bureaucrat ethic involves sending 6 million to the gas chamber if that is what the orders from above say. There is no way to hold the bureaucrat personally liable in circumstances like this.
Similarly if companies keep to agreements with regulators like FDA or EMA as to what they need to show in order to get a license for their drug they are effectively above the law, if tens of thousands die, unless perhaps it can be shown they have cheated in some way.
If the Holocaust was the supreme example of where bureaucratic virtue could take us, a company maneuver, twenty years ago, probably not widely known about outside of US medico legal circles is a good example of where regulation can take us.
From 2004, following the Vioxx and the Antidepressants and Suicide catastrophes, companies began arguing that if FDA had approved a drug and drug label, the company was effectively immune from legal action in the event their drug appeared to cause an injury.
The word Pre-Emption came on the radar of everyone with an interest in drug induced injury cases. FDA approval, it was argued, pre-empted actions against a company. The waters got murky at this point. The Pre-Emption argument was put forward by the Chief Counsel to FDA, Dan Troy – who was ex-GSK. This close connection between companies and such a convenient argument likely didn’t help them win in the end but they did win battles on the way and got a lot of cases thrown out.
Innocent until Proven Guilty
Lawyers today have the same sense of bureaucracy and regulation encroaching on what was traditional legal practice, as doctors have of guidelines and FDA approvals encroaching on traditional clinical practice and seeming to convict a person having problems on a drug without the doctor being able to assume the patient was innocent – and their claim the drug is causing the problem is correct – until proven guilty.
In legal circles, many lawyers appear to think they should not defend a figure like Harvey Weinstein. But as with science, its at moments like these that justice demands a hearing with a jury able to come to their own consensus as to what the evidence they have been faced with indicates – whatever a surrounding bureaucratic, media or cultural consensus might indicate..
In a Weinstein like case, it’s not bureaucratic process or regulation getting in the way – it’s Google or Michel Foucault or both. Apart a link to Harvey Weinstein through prolific sexual activity, how has Michel Foucault emerged onto this stage?
Briefly a member of the Communist Part in the 1960s, Foucault split from the party and went on embrace an apparently democratic Governance from the Bottom Up rather than Government from the Top Down, which he argued our newly developing abilities to collect data on our activities might put within our reach. The numbers would replace the Rule of Law – which was a nineteenth century Liberal way of managing the world.
Translated into a new fangled idiom, our data exhaust would enable us to ‘choose’ the efficient, which of course is the rational, course of action. Google is a machine for doing precisely this.
Google, however, is like Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) in that both generate data on non-existent average people. These marriages of technology and technique generate a Deep Mind to complement the Deep State that worried Weber. Deep Mind in this sense shapes the reactions of lawyers who turn down cases in the way Guidelines shape medical minds so that they increasingly cannot see or hear the innocent person in front of them.
Science and law, in contrast, share a common value centered on a freedom that allows Us to make judgement calls based on the observables We have seen, even if these conflict with what a Deep Mind or Deep State suggest should be happening . The We element of this last sentence points to a democratic basis critical to science and law. Arriving at a ‘We‘ is arriving at a crack through which the light gets in.
Deep Mind affects not just our abilities to do science and law, it looks like it also affects the most intimate things we do, the way we parent for instance, in other words the way We make an Us, and it may be playing a part in falling Fertility Rates also – see Shrink Yourself to Better than Well.
When Weber was writing it was still possible to think of political leaders and doctors still seemed to be leading what happened in healthcare. No longer. The Holocaust made clear that where we once had religious leaders were now religious figureheads who watched from the sidelines as a State apparatus decided what to do with lives not worth living.
We now have political and medical figureheads rather than leaders.
Hoboland – To the ‘Beaten Track’
“Who would you rather have make this decision as to whether this drug is, on balance, going to save people or, on balance, going to hurt people?” he asked. “An expert agency, on the one hand, or 12 people pulled randomly for a jury role who see before them only the people whom the drug hurt and don’t see those who need the drug to cure them?”
Daniel Troy’s Poison Pill
How a former Bush appointee has the high court poised to wipe out consumer suits over dangerous medical products—and possibly much more.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2008/03/daniel-troys-poison-pill/
When it comes to notorious Bush political appointees, Daniel Troy’s name doesn’t usually make the top-10 list, overshadowed as he is by more high profile cronies such as FEMA’s Michael Brown. But for three years in the president’s first term, Troy served as the chief counsel to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), where he quietly advanced a legal revolution that is playing out in earnest in the U.S. Supreme Court this year. This revolution has the potential to affect the health and safety of the nation’s citizens for years to come, all while making Troy a rich man. In fact, his career is an illustration of how the Bush administration’s revolving door has allowed industry lawyers to radically reshape regulatory agencies to benefit the big businesses they once represented and then profit from those changes when they return to the private sector.
Back in 2001, when the president tapped Troy for the FDA, Bush made history for turning the general counsel’s job into a political appointment, when most of the previous occupants of the position had been civil servants. The appointment was a sign that the president intended to impose a political agenda on the agency. A former clerk to Robert Bork, Troy was a die-hard conservative who had spent most of his career suing the FDA on behalf of drug and tobacco companies over regulations those industries didn’t care for. Before going to the FDA, he had worked at the D.C. powerhouse law firm of Wiley, Rein & Fielding, where he represented a number of pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer, which paid the firm more than $350,000 for Troy’s services the year he was appointed to the FDA. A year after the ban on working on matters involving former clients had passed, Troy quickly got to work helping out the drug companies who used to pay his fees.
Under Troy’s leadership, the FDA started showing up in state courts, offering briefs in civil cases on the side of drug companies being sued by people who’d been injured by dangerous prescription drugs and other medical devices. In an unprecedented move, agency lawyers argued that because those products had been approved by the FDA, such lawsuits were “preempted” by federal law and should be dismissed.
Troy’s FDA was promoting the idea that tort lawsuits in state court interfere with federal regulatory authority by letting judges and juries second-guess decisions over drug labeling and approval made by the experts in federal agencies. The drug companies were arguing, with the agency’s help, that FDA approval for a product should be the gold standard and that if companies meet that standard, they shouldn’t be subjected to the rules of 50 different states trying to impose their own health and safety standards through lawsuits.
Promoting preemption is a radical new policy for the FDA, which has long believed that, far from interfering with its mission, state tort lawsuits actually enhanced public safety by providing a financial incentive for companies to comply with federal regulations. Troy’s predecessor, Margaret Porter, a career official, wrote in 1997 that the agency had a long-standing policy against preemption, because “even the most thorough regulation of a product such as a critical medical device may fail to identify potential problems presented by the product…. Preemption of all such [tort liability] claims would result in the loss of a significant layer of consumer protection.”
The Bush administration has embraced preemption largely because it allows the White House to use its regulatory power to achieve what big businesses haven’t been able to do through legislation, which is immunize themselves from lawsuits over defective products. In recent years, federal agencies, dominated by industry insiders, have written preemption language into safety regulations, from rules issued by the Consumer Products Safety Commission governing mattress flammability to those introduced by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on seat-belt placement and automobile-roof strength. In fact, while the NHTSA was run by a former lawyer for DaimlerChrysler, it issued a roof-strength regulation that was so weak the only possible explanation for its issuance was that it was designed to help auto manufacturers head off lawsuits. Even the EPA has gotten into the act, once filing a brief on behalf of Dow chemical supporting its preemption defense in a case before the Supreme Court in 2005.
But no federal agency has pursued a preemption agenda as aggressively as the FDA did when Troy worked there. In 2003, he appeared at a conference of defense lawyers and in-house legal counsels from drug companies and publicly invited them to contact his office if they had a case the FDA could help them out with. “We can’t afford to get involved in every case,” he said, according to an affidavit written by someone who was there. “We have to pick our shots…so make it sound like a Hollywood pitch.”
During Troy’s tenure, between August 2001 and November 2004, the FDA participated in several private lawsuits, including one involving Pfizer, and argued that state courts and juries were illegally usurping federal regulatory power by trying to impose safety standards on drugs or medical devices approved by the FDA. The results of Troy’s intervention in the state court suits were mixed, but, to be sure, the FDA’s position bolstered the drug companies’ position.
Troy’s work at the FDA didn’t go unnoticed. In 2004, after he attracted some negative publicity for coming to the aid of his former client Pfizer in a lawsuit, Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.) attempted to defund his office. In November of that year, Troy retreated to private practice, where he continues to counsel companies regulated by the FDA. But before he left, he ensured that the preemption doctrine was firmly enshrined at the FDA in regulatory language covering drug labeling.
The “preemption preamble,” as it’s known, states that this rule preempts all state tort lawsuits against manufacturers who make drugs approved by the FDA. The regulation allows drug companies to invoke the FDA’s approval to beat back lawsuits without actually having to get the agency to enter the case. This is a hedge against future Democratic presidents who might want to institute a change of course. The preamble was inserted into the regulation without any public input. Since then, lawyers have repeatedly invoked it when defending companies against personal-injury lawsuits.
The courts have not swallowed Troy’s work whole hog. Several courts have rejected the preemption argument outright, and as a result the Supreme Court, which has not been especially sympathetic to injured plaintiffs, recently decided to clear up the confusion. Its most significant ruling arrived in late February in Riegel v. Medtronic. The case was filed by the family of Charles Riegel, who was injured when a balloon catheter burst during an angioplasty. He later died, and his wife sued the manufacturer, alleging that the catheter was defective.
The court ruled for the manufacturer in an 8-1 decision, siding with Troy, who filed an amicus brief on behalf of the medical-device industry arguing that because the device had received premarket approval from the FDA, private lawsuits in state court were preempted. The decision effectively wipes out pending litigation over everything from faulty pacemakers to defective insulin pumps. But the decision is a huge boon to Medtronic, a company whose conduct in the marketplace has hardly been stellar. Not only has it been accused of bribing surgeons to use its products, but the FDA has recalled a host of the company’s products. Now, people who have been injured by some of Medtronic’s products will have no way of forcing the company to pick up the tab.
Last week, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a second preemption case, Kent v. Warner-Lambert, which was filed by Michigan residents injured by the recalled diabetes drug Rezulin. Michigan bans lawsuits against drug and medical-device manufacturers for products approved by the FDA, but it has an exemption allowing suits to proceed if the manufacturer won approval of a product by engaging in fraud. Troy’s firm represents Warner-Lambert in the case. On behalf of the government, the U.S. solicitor general argued that even conning the FDA into approving a product wasn’t a good enough reason to allow a suit proceed. On Monday, the court upheld a Second Circuit court decision permitting the case to move forward.
But the decision was hardly a reason for plaintiffs and consumer advocates to rejoice. The only reason the defendants didn’t prevail was because Chief Justice John Roberts owns stock in Warner-Lambert’s parent company, Pfizer, and had to recuse himself. In all likelihood, he would have voted with the other conservatives in favor of the manufacturer. The 4-4 decision doesn’t bode well for the plaintiffs in another coming drug case that the justices decided to take up, much to the surprise of veteran court watchers. The plaintiff in Wyeth v. Levine is a musician who won a multimillion-dollar jury verdict after her arm was amputated due to an improperly administered drug. The drug company, Wyeth, is arguing that the verdict should be overturned because the FDA’s 2006 preemption preamble on drug labeling bans such lawsuits. If Wyeth wins, essentially all private, state-court lawsuits over dangerous drugs and medical devices will be wiped out—and a window into the workings of the companies poorly regulated by the FDA will be boarded up.
Indeed, the underlying assumption behind preemption is that federal regulatory agencies actually do a good job of protecting the public, when there is a host of evidence suggesting that’s not the case. In fact, it’s been the very private lawsuits that big companies want to eliminate that have often led to major efforts to strengthen the nation’s health and safety net.
If the Supreme Court follows Troy’s lead, it won’t just be pharmaceutical and medical-device lawsuits that are affected. A ruling for the drug company in Levine could also limit lawsuits over everything from toxic chemical exposure to tainted beef—a pretty grim scenario for the average consumer. And there’s reason to believe the court will do just that.
During the oral arguments in the Kent case last week, Justice Stephen Breyer, one of the high court’s most liberal justices, showed little sympathy for the plaintiffs or confidence in juries. “Who would you rather have make this decision as to whether this drug is, on balance, going to save people or, on balance, going to hurt people?” he asked. “An expert agency, on the one hand, or 12 people pulled randomly for a jury role who see before them only the people whom the drug hurt and don’t see those who need the drug to cure them?”
The arguments showed how successful Troy and other preemption advocates have been in changing the focus on the legal debate, from providing recourse to those injured by faulty products to protecting the companies that make them. They have launched a legal revolution that is as profound as the consumer protection movement Ralph Nader touched off in the 1960s and ’70s, only the beneficiaries are the big corporations that want to escape the last remaining check on their work: private lawsuits. The Supreme Court’s decision in Riegel and its move to take up the other preemption cases suggests that the revolution is indeed having a transformative effect.
‘Troy’s work whole hog.
The kindness of Hobos. Hope you gave him a few Euros
This is well worth a watch if anybody can stomach the sight of these two chums again. If not press the subtitles button. Blair especially is obsessed with AI, He gets very excited about the future of AI ‘revolutionising healthcare’
It’s all very fanatical – we know where that leads.
BBC News
Political Thinking with Nick Robinson – Series 1: 65. The Blair and Hague One
Political Thinking with Nick Robinson
Series 1: 65. The Blair and Hague One
What happens when two former political rivals become allies? Sir Tony Blair and Lord William Hague sit down with Nick Robinson to discuss their vision for a new ‘national purpose’. They reflect on facing each other across the dispatch box 25 years ago and how to deal with an unstable world.
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Duration26 minsFirst shown10:30pm 27 Jan 2024Available for 11 months
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In the House of Commons, the PM said the vaccines were safe; John of Bring the Noise, was at the GB News People’s Forum
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuLS5zFZLjg
Andrew Bridgen MP reposted
GB News
@GBNEWS
‘I want you to look into my eyes Rishi Sunak and I want you to look at the pain, the trauma and the regret I have in my eyes.’ An audience member asks the Prime Minister why he and others affected by the covid vaccine ‘have been left to rot’.
#GBNPeoplesForum
https://twitter.com/GBNEWS/status/1757140906036060499
This has been splashed around the main stream media…
BRING_THE_NOISE
Brianne Dressen
@BrianneDressen
Yep. His anger and desperation is very real, not rare amongst the injured.
https://twitter.com/Nohj_85
Andrew Bridgen MP reposted
GB News
@GBNEWS
‘I want know why we were lied to. I want to know why they were trying to vaccinate kids of primary school age when COVID posed almost no threat to them.’
@Nigel_Farage
says ‘Richard Tice is absolutely right’ about calling for a public inquiry into the COVID vaccine.
https://twitter.com/GBNEWS/status/1757533207539372057
Dr Tess Lawrie
@lawrie_dr
Negotiations are taking place to significantly expand the control of the World Health Organization (WHO) over global public health responses and thinking via a) amendments to the International Health Regulations (2005), and b) a pandemic treaty/accord (WHO CA+). Both instruments can be seen as complementary.
While the submitted IHR amendments, if approved, would greatly enhance the powers of the WHO as well as its Director-General (or their financiers) vis-à-vis states and non-state actors, the pandemic treaty in its current form would create a new, cost-intensive supranational bureaucracy and impose an ideological framework under which to operate in matters of global health.
The World Health Assembly has set a deadline of May 2024 for putting the proposed amendments to the IHR and the pandemic treaty to a vote.
The proposed IHR amendments and the pandemic treaty (WHO CA+) – if agreed upon – will inevitably be used to advance the interests of a few powerful actors at the expense of others. They represent an unprecedented attempt at legalising the concentration of undemocratic power under false pretence that necessitates a swift, effective and robust response.
The envisioned legal framework for monopoly power over aspects of global public health will not lead to better pandemic preparedness but to a repetition of some of the worst decisions taken during COVID in the event of a declared emergency in the future.
One of the worst decisions made during COVID – and promoted by the WHO, among others – was to impose an mRNA product that was still in the experimental phase on populations, including children and babies.
My team and I are in the process of systematically analysing the WHO’s own VigiAccess database that lists adverse reactions reported by people after taking a drug or vaccine. In this data, there is a clear signal that the COVID vaccines have caused significant harm and death in a part of its recipients. Until now, neither the WHO nor national governments have come to terms with that.
Instead of handing those responsible – including the compromised WHO leadership – more undemocratic and unaccountable power, let us strive to implement a better way!
For more information please see: https://worldcouncilforhealth.org/policy/
CC: @P_McCulloughMD @Abridgen @NassMery @PierreKory @FLSurgeonGen @thecoastguy @BretWeinstein @RealEddieHobbs @EpochTimes @efenigson @RobertKennedyJr @mattletiss7 @VigilantFox @TheChiefNerd @OracleFilmsUK @nzdsos @chrismartenson @james_freeman @kharaguchi @laralogan @profnfenton
https://twitter.com/lawrie_dr/status/1757462822114492754
Dr. Tess Lawrie on supranational bureaucracy…
France: mRNA criticism punishable in the future
15. February 2024
by Thomas Oysmüller
https://tkp.at/2024/02/15/frankreich-mrna-kritik-kuenftig-strafbar/
In the future, a new criminal offence in France may put people in prison who ask them to refrain from appropriate medical treatment (according to “science”). The bill was pushed through the National Assembly on Wednesday. Critics call the law “Article Pfizer.”
Without much attention, a law was passed in France on Wednesday that can criminalize resistance to mRNA treatment. Anyone who advises against mRNA or other “medical treatments” that are “obviously suitable according to the state of medical knowledge” for treatment, In the future, he will be sentenced to up to three years in prison in France or receive a fine of up to 45,000 euros.
Repression against medical critics
It was a hard-fought affair, but the Macron regime ultimately got its way. Article 4 of the new law, which was first deleted but then reinstated, is central. It creates a new criminal offence and criminalises the “request to discontinue or refrain from therapeutic or prophylactic medical treatment” as well as “the request to use practices that are presented as therapeutic or prophylactic”. This means that any resistance to mRNA treatment (and other corporate medical methods) can also be criminalized in the future.
Biologist Annelise Bocquet, for example, is correspondingly shocked. She wrote on Wednesday evening: “To my international friends and colleagues: Today, a law was passed in France that calls any resistance to mRNA LNP injections a ‘sectarian aberration’. It carries a penalty of up to three years in prison and 45,000 euros.”
More….
Good god, Appleby!
louis appleby
@ProfLAppleby
Science wins – in the end.
Prof Michael E. Mann
@MichaelEMann
“US climate scientist Michael Mann wins $1m in defamation lawsuit” by Guardian Staff for @guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/09/us-climate-scientist-michael-mann-wins-1m-in-defamation-lawsuit
Sacred Scientists
https://joannenova.com.au/2024/02/mark-steyn-ordered-to-pay-1-million-to-deter-climate-deniers-from-criticizing-sacred-scientists/
Simon Wessely’s best man at his wedding to Clare Gerada; this trio have devastated ‘the science of antidepressants’.
Appleby floats around ‘suicide prevention’ like a witch on a broomstick and like a mass of gloop.
Mark Steyn to pay $1M.
https://www.steynonline.com/14091/how-things-stand
In March he is back in court to fight Ofcom.
Steyn vs Ofcom, in the King’s Bench Division of the High Court in London next month. Many listeners have asked how they can support this important free-speech case on the right to tell the truth about Covid and the vaccines.
https://davidhealy.org/whats-going-on-here/
‘I have no idea what it would take to get you to realise this is not about Holmes innocence or guilt – he is gone away forever and would have preferred to be dead. The issue is that very few people in the US or UK in anything remotely resembling this situation are getting a fair trial.
Long before Holmes I approached ACLU about this issue – who wanted nothing to do with it for fear of jeopardising prisoners access to healthcare. I realize there is an access to healthcare issue in the US but I don;t think the people on this list need to act like you are an embattled minority. Your job is to change this so both those not getting care and those not getting justice get a better deal.’
The rickety route; is it destiny to be ‘Proven Guilty’?
Perfect…
Straightforward and realistic, Norman Fenton gives us the picture about ‘Academic Cliques’ and the roads leading to Corruption in Science…
When academics put their political activism above their scientific integrity
https://wherearethenumbers.substack.com/p/when-academics-put-their-political?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1229032&post_id=141691768&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1q23na&utm_medium=email
In addition to the covid nonsense we spoke a lot about how left-wing political activists masquerading as academics/‘scientists’ have contributed to the increased authoritarian control over many aspects of our lives.
‘Lying for the greater good’ …
https://www.interieur.gouv.fr/actualites/communiques-de-presse/adoption-par-lassemblee-nationale-du-projet-de-loi-visant-a
Adoption par l’Assemblée nationale du projet de loi visant à renforcer la lutte contre les dérives sectaires et à améliorer l’accompagnement des victims
Aujourd’hui, l’Assemblée nationale a adopté une loi majeure visant à renforcer la prévention et la lutte contre les dérives sectaires en France. Ce vote marque une avancée significative pour renforcer la protection des citoyens contre les abus et les manipulations exercés par les charlatans, les gourous et tout autre mouvement sectaire.
https://www.liberation.fr/checknews/une-loi-va-t-elle-interdire-de-critiquer-le-vaccin-contre-le-covid-19-20240213_4WMIPDIJWJFKZHECA6FFYO7G64/
Une loi va-t-elle interdire de critiquer le vaccin contre le Covid-19 ?
Article réservé aux abonnés
La pandémie de Covid-19 en Francedossier
Le projet de loi contre les dérives sectaires, dont certaines dispositions ont fait tiquer le Conseil d’Etat, suscite des contestations. Son article 4, en partie réécrit, a finalement été voté par les députés.
par Elsa de La Roche Saint-André
publié le 13 février 2024 à 17h37
Question posée par Mathieu le 10 février 2024.
Ces mardi 13 et mercredi 14 février, l’Assemblée nationale s’est penchée sur le «projet de loi visant à renforcer la lutte contre les dérives sectaires». Parmi les dispositions que comporte le texte, l’une est particulièrement contestée : la création d’un nouveau délit sanctionnant la provocation à l’abandon ou à l’abstention de soins. En bref, il s’agit de punir le fait de pousser un malade à ne pas suivre ou arrêter de suivre le traitement prescrit par la médecine conventionnelle, et de l’exposer ainsi à de graves risques pour sa santé.
A en croire l’émission Touche pas à mon poste du 9 février, le projet conduirait à «interdire la critique contre le vaccin du Covid». Une critique qui n’est pas isolée. Depuis plusieurs semaines, au moins deux pétitions circulent en ligne dans le but de «faire obstacle à son article 4». L’une émane de l’Association internationale pour une santé naturelle, scientifique et humaniste, une structure suisse déjà épinglée pour avoir relayé de fausses informations sur la gestion des pandémies (ici par 20 Minutes par exemple). Dans le texte joint à sa pétition, l’organisme écrit qu’un tel texte «menace de punir toute personne qui oserait remettre en question ou critiquer les traitements médicaux officiellement approuvés, y compris les médicaments et les vaccins».
From Ariane Denoyel
The CheckNews article is not on the database but there’s the one below.
Under the guise of protecting fragile people and defending science, it’ll be impossible to criticize pharma unless you can prove you’re a whistleblower (good luck)
Liberation (website)
Society, Wednesday February 14, 2024 477 words
Sectarian abuses: the National Assembly approves the creation of an offense of “provocation to abandonment of care”
RELEASE
As part of a bill to combat sectarian abuses debated this Wednesday, February 14 by deputies, the creation of such an offense aims to avoid serious consequences for the health of people influenced.
This is a text long awaited by specialized associations. In an electric atmosphere, the National Assembly finally approved this Wednesday, February 14, the creation of a new offense of “provocation to abandonment of care”. This article of the bill to combat sectarian abuses, much debated, was defeated on Tuesday evening by a coalition of oppositions. After a new deliberation requested by the presidential camp, this new offense finally won, this Wednesday, February 14, a majority of votes, and will punish “provocation by means of pressure or repeated maneuvers” to the abandonment of care, exposing to “serious consequences” for health.
Faced with “gurus 2.0” and their false promises of curing cancer with “mistletoe injections” or “lemon juice”, the executive is particularly keen on this new crime. But the deputies of France Insoumise, the Republicans and the National Rally denounce in unison a threat to “public liberties” and to “whistleblowers” who criticize the pharmaceutical industry. The announcement of a second vote on this article therefore provoked the indignation of these opponents, with points of order and suspensions of the session. Far-right MP Thomas Ménage criticized the presidential camp for “disregarding the vote of popular representation”.
The article does not “apply to whistleblowers”
The article modified by the majority was finally adopted by 182 votes to 137, with the support of the Socialist Party in particular. The socialist Arthur Delaporte welcomed the return of this measure, “more necessary than ever” to “defend science” while “people are saying unacceptable things on social networks”. The article has indeed been rewritten so that it “does not apply to whistleblowers”, underlined the majority rapporteur, Brigitte Liso. This new offense of provoking abandonment or withholding care will be punishable by one year’s imprisonment and a fine of 30,000 euros, with penalties increased to three years’ imprisonment and a fine of 45,000 euros when the provocation was followed by effects.
The Secretary of State, Sabrina Agresti Roubache, had underlined the “evolution” of sectarian excesses, in particular of the “conspiracy sphere” on the internet. The stormy atmosphere in the hemicycle revived the wounds of the debates on the health pass and vaccines against Covid, with several battles against the far-right camp. Between 2015 and 2021, reports of sectarian aberration increased by 86%, according to the latest figures communicated by the Interministerial Mission for Vigilance and the Fight against Sectarian Abuse (Miviludes). A growing phenomenon of control, taken seriously by the authorities.
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Home News Regulation GMC to reconsider investigating doctor accused of vaccine misinformation
GMC to reconsider investigating doctor accused of vaccine misinformation
Eliza Parr
16 February 2024
The GMC will reconsider its decision not to investigate a high-profile cardiologist amid concerns he is spreading ‘vaccine misinformation’.
Yesterday, the regulator admitted it had made an ‘error’ when deciding whether Dr Aseem Malhotra’s fitness to practise (FTP) should be investigated.
Last year, Doctors’ Association UK co-chair Dr Matt Kneale had asked the GMC to review its decision not to investigate Dr Malhotra.
When the regulator concluded that the ‘grounds for a review hadn’t been met’, Dr Kneale, with the help of the Good Law Project, launched a judicial review (JR) against the GMC.
He and a group of doctors had previously called for a FTP investigation of Dr Aseem Malhotra based on what they claimed is his ‘high-profile promotion of misinformation about Covid-19 mRNA vaccines’.
Dr Malhotra, a consultant cardiologist, campaigner and author, has over half a million followers on social media platform X, with many posts focusing on what he claims are adverse effects of mRNA Covid-19 vaccines.
The GMC’s statement yesterday said: ‘In 2023, Dr Matt Kneale asked us to review our decision to close the concerns he had raised with us about Dr Aseem Malhotra.
‘We considered Dr Kneale’s request under Rule 12 of our Fitness to Practise Rules, which set out the grounds that must be met for us to review a decision, and subsequently informed him that the grounds for a review hadn’t been met.
‘Later in 2023 Dr Kneale was granted permission to judicially review (JR) our decision. While preparing for the JR, we identified an error in the Rule 12 decision, which means that it needs to be re-taken.’
Rule 12 of the FTP rules stipulates the grounds on which a GMC decision can be reviewed, including if the decision may be ‘materially flawed’ or if new information comes to light.
A spokesperson for the regulator said the error was identified during ‘extensive further assessment’ of their evidence.
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‘We are sorry for this error; as soon as we realised it had been made, we took steps to inform all relevant parties and concede the Judicial Review,’ they added.
Dr Kneale said the GMC ‘has been forced to reconsider its flawed decision’ meaning he and his peers have ‘secured an important step forward’.
In a post on X, he said: ‘My complaint highlighted the danger of such misinformation. It’s troubling that the GMC initially dismissed it and defended their position, even after a court challenge. This undermines public trust in our medical regulator.’
Dr Kneale also claimed that the GMC has refused to cover any of his legal costs, but is ‘astonishingly’ paying towards Dr Malhotra’s costs.
The Good Law Project claimed that the GMC has ‘insisted’ on going back to court to decide how much of Dr Kneale’s costs it will pay, but has agreed to pay £4,000 plus VAT towards Malhotra’s costs. The legal campaign organisation described this move as ‘highly unusual’.
In response, the GMC told Pulse that since they ‘conceded’ the case brought by Dr Kneale, they will meet ‘reasonable costs’ incurred by both him and Dr Malhotra.
The regulator added: ‘A decision on the exact amount to be paid to Dr Kneale is yet to be confirmed – it will be no more than £15,000 due to a cap imposed by the Court as part of the judicial review.
‘The GMC has agreed to pay a portion of Dr Malhotra’s legal costs and an amount of £4,000 has been agreed.’
Dr Malhotra has said he hopes that in its ‘renewed look’ at concerns about him, the GMC will ‘realise’ he is a ‘long-standing champion of patient safety’.
In a post on X, he wrote: ‘I am disappointed that entirely due to an error in the GMC’s processes I have been unable to present my case at the High Court to stand up for the vaccine injured and to clear my name from the vexatious allegations that Dr Matt Kneale has made about me and my practice.
‘I have a track record of being a very strong advocate for ethical, evidence-based medical practice and speaking truth to power over a number of issues – such as the obesity epidemic, excess sugar and ultra-processed food impact on metabolic health and Covid vulnerability, low-carb diets for type 2 diabetes, lack of transparency in the prescription of statins, ambulance delays; and more recently the harms of the mRNA vaccine for Covid-19.’
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Coronavirus
Big Pharma—Organised Crime
Thursday, 15th February 2024
Cheryl Grainger, a self-employed training consultant to the pharmaceutical industry, returns to update our audience on what has been found in the latest Pfizer Documents Analysis reports. She also brings us exclusive and up-to-date news from across the pond at the Daily Clout and the latest updates from the UK Situation Room, exclusive to UK Column.
The Covid–19 ‘vaccine’ manufacturers always knew what the serious adverse reactions would be, but so did the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).
It is a litany of corrupt ‘regulation’, revolving doors, and ‘experts’ who are too busy turning a blind eye to notice the hundreds of thousands of serious adverse events and vaccine injuries and death. Fraudulent clinical trials are also exposed in this shocking revelation. This is organised crime in plain sight.
Reference: Cytomegalovirus (CMV)
Relevant protocol: Covid–19 Critical Care, FL
The ‘Heart’ of the matter – The Song
Pfizer Commercial – Here’s to Science – Extended Cut
https://youtu.be/jJkm2gxMRzU?si=oqGBYftJtD4bq8qz
Albert Bourla
@AlbertBourla
.
@Pfizer
is putting unprecedented resources into the fight against cancer, and today we got to share that inspirational and uplifting story with hundreds of millions of people by blending iconic science and a legendary song. This song has been stuck in my head, not just because it’s so catchy, but also because it perfectly captures the spirit of our work. Inspired by generations of scientists, our researchers are advancing the next scientific breakthroughs to conquer cancer. Beyond the lab, we’re teaming up with global partners to break down barriers to care like cancer screenings and access to treatments. We’re working to help ensure that everyone has access to the care they need. For the extra point: Watch and share our new video—and I invite you to join us in the fight against cancer at https://on.pfizer.com/3OIhDUb.
https://youtu.be/jJkm2gxMRzU?si=oqGBYftJtD4bq8qz
Brook Jackson
@IamBrookJackson
We now have 129 elected officials, 124 candidates and 1 Surgeon General from 39 states publicly stating the COVID shots must be pulled off the market and pledging not to take donations from Big Pharma. Over 17,000 physicians stand behind them.
https://twitter.com/IamBrookJackson/status/1759299794407673870
Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies.
https://twitter.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1758726612541997116
‘Stuck in my head’
The Song – The Music …