Relax for a few minutes, sit back, and pretend morals and business ethics are redundant. Then imagine an infallible, risk-free business scheme in which you get to create the market, decide the product, manage its regulation, then have the power …
Public Health & Natural Rights: A Tale of Two Cities
One cannot inject a healthy child from the day of birth and believe in the natural rights of the individual.
If the basic functioning of the nature we as humans are born with is so flawed that we need repeated …
Mechanisms of Harm: Introduction
[The following is the Introduction to Lori Weintz’s book, Mechanisms of Harm: Medicine in the Time of Covid-19.]
No one has the full story or complete knowledge about the Covid-19 pandemic and our response, but we should be able to …
The WHO Wants to Rule the World
The World Health Organisation (WHO) will present two new texts for adoption by its governing body, the World Health Assembly comprising delegates from 194 member states, in Geneva on 27 May–1 June. The new pandemic treaty needs a two-thirds majority …
Fear, shame and peer pressure to promote compliance with Covid-19 restrictions: Who were responsible for the communications?
What follows is an initial report of an ongoing research project investigating the UK Government’s use of behavioural science ‘nudges’ in their Covid communications strategy to promote compliance with restrictions and the subsequent vaccine rollout. (An academic journal article, drawing …
Mainstream Measles Mongers
If you’ve been following reporting from mainstream media outlets lately you could not have missed the flurry of stories about the resurgence of the measles in Canada or the US. Stern-looking public health officials with wrinkled brows are quoted as …
The Bat Dilemma
On 28 February 2024 an interesting article was published on the Substack channel The Sovereign Mind. The title of the article is, But, where’s the bat? [1] The author, Shiven Chabria, argues that the virus called SARS-CoV-2 could not have …
The Silent Shame of Health Institutions
For how much longer will health policy ignore multimorbidity, that looming, giant elephant in the room, that propagates and amplifies suffering? For how much longer will the ‘trend’ of increasing diagnoses of multiple health conditions, at younger and younger ages …
February 27, 2020: The Lockdown Plan Goes Public
I did not know it at the time. I was preparing for a trip to Utah with my husband. I was vaguely aware that there was a virus of concern in China, but I wasn’t too worried about it. I …
Health: Factors, Paradoxes, and Dark Matter
Sixty years ago, the first of a remarkable series of articles appeared in the medical literature describing the curious lack of cardiovascular deaths in Roseto, Pennsylvania in comparison to surrounding towns. Roseto, Pennsylvania had been settled predominantly by immigrants from …
Health Care: Right, Privilege, or Neither?
Much of the current debate surrounding health care – putting aside momentarily the catastrophic failure of the public health system during the pandemic – is whether or not it is a “right” or a “privilege.”
Critically, though, what should be …
The History of Public Health Colonialism
In a world where ‘equity’ is the catch-cry of corporatists accumulating unprecedented wealth, the return of colonialism should not surprise. Colonialism, after all, brings great benefits to those whom it disempowers and pillages. Success requires a highly centralized approach to …
WHO’s Guilty of Fake News, Now?
“A liar begins with making falsehood appear like truth, and ends with making truth itself appear like falsehood,” poet William Shenstone once wrote. These words are likely to strike a chord with those who have been following the World Health …
In Health Care, We Are Flying Blind
In the movie Paddington, a bear moves in with a London family. The father of the house is an insurance actuary. As the bear is bathing, he places a panicked call to his home insurer to add a provision in …
Australia to Face an Honest Inquiry
On 19 October, the Australian Senate agreed to hold an inquiry under the auspices of its Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee into proper terms of reference for a Covid Royal Commission to be established in 2024. An impressive alliance of …