123 Comments
Jun 22, 2023·edited Jun 22, 2023

RFK Jr is right about the one thing that matters a lot. The drug companies are corrupt. The politicians are corrupt. The media is corrupt. The FDA, CDC, media, journals, and many doctors have been captured by drug money. So exactly who is someone like me to believe? I have an IQ of 136, but I am utterly clueless about medicine. I'm just smart enough to see all the corruption. What about the average Joe who is just as clueless, can intuitively sense the corruption, but can't even attempt to understand the reality.

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Perhaps those individuals should read Dr. Offit ‘s Substack articles, listen to him on TWiV , and also listen to Dan Wilson for starters.

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I respectfully disagree with SD.

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Here’s an analogy from another industry, the aircraft industry.

If you develop a new aircraft it has to be declared airworthy.

This certification takes place in the country where the aircraft company is based. For the U.K. that is the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).

The aircraft manufacturer has to pay a fee for the initial airworthiness certificate.

There are annual fees as well.

The important thing to note is that the CAA has to obtain ALL of its funding from the services it offers by law. Does this mean the CAA is in the pockets of Big Aircraft and thus is corrupt the same way you are suggesting the FDA/MHRA are in the USA and U.K. respectively?

The CAA point out that all of the regulatory bodies in the U.K. are in a similar position.

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What your you say about the aircraft industry if 1/3 of its planes were recalled/crashed? If a manufacturer had the largest criminal fines in the history of your government? If manufacturers didn't have to share all data with CAA, just selective post marketing data?

If CAA never ran a study but just trusted studies given to them?

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"What your you say about the aircraft industry if 1/3 of its planes were recalled/crashed?'

First, 1/3 of drugs or vaccines are not recalled and secondly, one needs to understand why they are recalled.

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Jun 29, 2023·edited Jun 29, 2023

OK. I see 2 failures here. 2 unsupported claims about new drugs/products. Mine and yours. I got my data from some damn thing I read or heard an unspecified time ago. It would be hard for your source to be worse than mine. Do you have one?

https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/ires/index.cfm

This site shows 1321 drug recalls during 2022. 1038 in 2021. Oddly 1039 in 2020. Seems consistent.

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Thanks...but did you even read your link?

(1) Those aren't just drugs....it includes other things like medical devices, cosmetics, tobacco, food and human blood.

(2) Those are individual lots recalled, generally by the manufacturer due to manufacturing problems with one lot.

(3) the most recent drug recall listed, is for an alternative health homeopathic "drug"

Your link doesn't support your claim.

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Incorrect. Those ARE just drugs. NOT homeopathic. I did the search.

I missed your data. Please post it again.

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And, just like drug execs, aerospace execs will try to subvert that rule for maximum profit. Hence the 737-MAX crashes.

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So you have an IQ of 136 and yet offer zero facts or evidence or analysis or logic or argument....

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Or, more accurately, corporate leadership in the drug companies are corrupt. As is corporate leadership almost everywhere. There was a fascinating episode of Behind The Bastards on Jack Welch, who was instrumental in making that happen through promoting the doctrine that shareholder profits are the sole legal duty of corporate executives.

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Perfect. Dispassionate and full of reality, facts, and world class expertise. Unless our beliefs are truly calcified, and we are more interested in following cults of personality and charismatic iconoclasts who harness our general sense of discontent, this well constructed response to Rogan and RFK Jr pontificating outside their lanes is lights out. Thank you.

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Paul Offit has NEVER called for data transparency of the public health record level data so we all can see what is going on. He is not a friend of truth and transparency.

Paul Offit will never debate RFK Jr., e.g., on Rogan. Let's hear both sides of the story real-time. Offit will never agree to this because he'd be exposed.

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also, nothing in science is undebatable. The title is silly.

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Arguably, modern medicine has its own "ethics" that stand against purity of science. We cannot have a controlled trial of vaccinated vs unvaccinated children. Somehow this is immoral. Yet this same system aborted 37,740 American babies at 3-5 months in womb in 2019. Undebatable because highly conflicting. Who would dare to burst their own bubble?

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Wow...so Steve you think it is debatable that the Earth is banana shaped and that the Moon is made of cheese.

What is not debatable is that your "arguments" routinely fail middle-school science/reading/math!

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You could debate those things. They would be very short debates.

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Paul Allan Offit is an American pediatrician specializing in infectious diseases, vaccines, immunology, and virology. Robert Francis Kennedy Jr., also known by his initials RFK Jr., is an American environmental lawyer, politician, and writer who has promoted anti-vaccine propaganda and public health–related conspiracy theories. One is an experienced litigator and the other is a medical professional. Experienced litigators are about positioning "their truth" based on the interests of their clients. The other is about addressing science and medical issues. Different skill sets and then a debate on the Rogan show will simply deliver a victory to RFK because he is an experienced litigator not because it is true.

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Steve, you keep claiming fraud etc and you keep asserting that you have PROVED vaccines cause so many different major health problems.

So why are you NOT in Court, testifying with your proof...under oath....where perjury applies?

If what you are saying is true...you could save so many lives...but you don't do so.....

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Jun 22, 2023·edited Jun 26, 2023

I think the most unfortunate part is vaccines constantly gets grouped in with the historical corruption of pharmaceutical companies. There's a lot of distrust that no amount of scientific facts will change some peoples' mind because in their thinking: "Vaccines are manufactured by pharmaceutical companies. Pharmaceutical companies have a history of corruption and publication bias. Therefore, I don't trust getting a vaccine nor their funded studies which say they're safe."

If there's any appeal to RFK, he correctly points out there is hypocrisy and corruption in higher places of authority. If there's any reason he appeals to current voters, I think it's due to this and appealing to contrarians who feel cynical about the government's handling of COVID. It also doesn't help that Joe Rogan, one of the most listed-to podcasts on Spotify, introduced RFK to his millions of listeners on a silver platter without scrutiny: (paraphrasing) "I used to believe the narrative that vaccines were safe, but then I read your book..." I've listened to Joe before, and he has challenged guest's claims before (e.g. Jordan Peterson on climate change), but with RFK there was no pushback. The whole episode was pretty much an echo chamber; Joe was a convert.

My point is, people want to dismiss RFK as just some loony and ignore the fact he is appealing to voters for reasons that carry some legitimacy. Was there not a past presidential candidate that everyone dismissed because they thought he'd be the last person to become president?

If scientists are to debate people like RFK, I think they need to be great communicators as well. In an ideal world, people are convinced solely by the facts. But a lot of people are persuaded more by emotions (in this case cynicism) than reason. It wasn't Carl Sagan saying facts alone which made him talking about science so interesting.

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Jun 22, 2023·edited Jun 23, 2023

This article is expertly written and is a fantastic rebuttal of RFK's most ludicrous claims. Despite this, no article, however well-written it is, will have ample reach to the communities who need it the most. Most people don't go out of their way to find opinions that conflict with their own. You and other important virologists need to speak to the majority of America that is skeptical of the scientific community and pharma industry as a whole. Rather than aim for suppression of speech that leads to further division and exacerbates conspiracy theories, the scientific community needs to strengthen their knowledge surrounding the popular questionable theories and speak to the leaders of these communities (such as Joe Rogan and Fox News and Tucker Carlson) in front of their audiences. Regardless of political leanings, the absence of strong minds with experience in virology and related fields from shows like Joe Rogan will only exacerbate the problem we are seeing today. No matter how many intellectually sound rebuttals and refutations are put out, they don't address the core of the problem if the misguided groups aren't consuming that content. Just my opinion.

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Jun 25, 2023·edited Jun 25, 2023

Clinical Trial to License RotaTeq, Like Almost All Childhood Vaccines, Did Not Use a Placebo Control https://open.substack.com/pub/aaronsiri/p/clinical-trial-to-license-rotateq

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Shocking...an notorious anti-vacc non-science that couldn't read the words.

Great example of why the world rejects the anti-vacc nonsense.

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Especially in the context of the past few years with mRNA vaccines, this "anti-vax" label really just indicates that the person using it as a pejorative is either a simpleton or a shill. Why? There are a wide range of vaccine types for a wide array of virus types with a wide array of immune responses, durability, and safety profiles. So you have to evaluate each and every vaccine on its own merits (rRR, aRR, NNTV, risk to benefit ratio, etc).

In general, vaccines for slow mutating non-zoonotic viruses with long incubation times tend to be more effective and durable than vaccines for fast mutating zoonotic respiratory viruses with short incubation times like Sars-Cov-2. The more epitopes of multiple proteins from a virus that vaccines use, the broader the immune response with less likelihood of antigen escape. So an inactivated or attenuated vaccine using the whole virus with all of its proteins is going to provide a broader immune response that’s harder to evade than a vaccine that relies on only a few epitopes of a single protein of a virus. The Sars-Cov-2 mRNA vaccines rely on only a few epitopes of spike (S) protein’s receptor binding domain [RBD] and N-terminal domain [NTD] for its antigen. The NTD and RBD are the portions of this fast mutating single strand RNA virus that mutate the most.

We’ve aggrandized all the successful vaccines for viruses. Though we don’t even recognize all the failed attempts to make vaccines for a number of different viruses including Hep C, HiV, Epstein Barr, MERS, Sars-1, West Nile, Norovirus, Herpes HSV-1, etc. Vaccines are not always successful. More often they’re not.

Offit is a shill, you're obviously just a simpleton.

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"Offit is a shill, you're obviously just a simpleton."

I did the experiment: took a 4th grader ~10 seconds to find that placebos were used in the trials to license RotaTeq.

As usual, what anti-vaccs like you lack in basic literacy skills, you make up for with name-callling....apparently this the best you can do.

BTW: if you don't like being called an anti-vacc....there is a long history of Courts describing anti-vaccs as liars.

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It's helpful to go to a reliable and accurate source to get information about placebo controlled trials. See the bottom of page 4 under adverse reactions and there is a description that should help clarify.

https://www.fda.gov/media/75718/download

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Does the FDA publicly publish the Biologics License Application (BLA) that vaccine manufacturers submit to it when they try to put a vaccine on the market? No. But that information is critical in evaluating the pre-clinical and clinical studies and what product was in each control group. So above you have a group that FOIAd this information. If FDA is not transparent, if the Pharma company is not transparent, the argument of "reliable and accurate source" becomes grey area. Discernment is key.

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LOL. The FDA...a reliable source.... GOOD ONE!

Thanks for the laugh.

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See how the psychology works?

You literally have to refuse to read the words and see that placebos were used in RotaTeq trials.

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You actually didn't read the FOIA language since the placebo included polysorbate-80, sodium citrate, sodium phosphate, and sucrose. it wasn't inert. So try again.

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And you continue to refuse to learn the basic facts...no wonder Siri can fool you so easily.

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Sigh....you didn't bother to look up what the word placebo means in this context....and you have also missed the fact that scientists have literally spent decades explaining what placebos are and how to correctly use them.

The anti-vaccs just keep lying about placebos counting on folks like you to be too clueless to read.....oh look, they were right!

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+1 for more outreach from specialists like Paul and less suppression of speech

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If you want to be engaged with science communicators watch the many shows on microbe tv for their weekly presentations in which the scientists in a given field review and discuss scientific papers. In fact, Dr. Paul Offit has been a guest many times and now he and Dr. Vincent Rancaniello (a board certified viriologist) have their own weekly show entitled “Beyond the Noise” available on YouTube.

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"microbe tv" -- I love the name! Thank you Margaret for suggesting these resources!

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I know for a fact, as I've worked in big pharma, particularly on vaccine studies, that all vaccine studies are NOT placebo controlled.

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The AstraZeneca trial in the U.K. did not use saline as the placebo but a meningitis vaccine.

Phase 1 trials don’t have a control arm as they are specifically looking at toxicity and other pharmacological factors, which is why they are completed under strict medical supervision and have a small number of participants (max 100).

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Google still works....lots of phase 1 trials include placebos....also helps to know what placebos are.....

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In the U.K. AstraZeneca didn’t have a placebo arm as the control group were injected with another vaccine that is well established rather than an inert substance.

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https://www.healthline.com/health/clinical-trial-phases Defines four phases, with phase 3 having the placebo arm. Phase 4 being post marketing monitoring.

Other sources differ in this.

This is Johns and Johnson’s take on this https://www.jnj.com/innovation/the-5-stages-of-covid-19-vaccine-development-what-you-need-to-know-about-how-a-clinical-trial-works

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Thanks,

If you had done the search I suggested, you would have found this:

https://www.google.com/search?q=phase+1+placebo+trial&oq=phase+&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqBggBEEUYOzIGCAAQRRg5MgYIARBFGDsyBggCEEUYOzIJCAMQABhDGIoFMgkIBBAAGEMYigUyBggFEAAYAzIJCAYQABhDGIoFMgkIBxAAGEMYigUyCQgIEAAYQxiKBTINCAkQABiDARixAxiABNIBDjE4ODIzMDIwOGowajE1qAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Look at all those phase 1 trials with placebos!

"Phase 1 Randomized Double-blind Placebo Controlled Study to Evaluate Safety and PK of MEDI3902 in Healthy Adults"

"Phase 1 Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Study to Determine the Safety, Tolerability, and Pharmacokinetics of a Single Escalating Dose and Repeated Doses of CN-105 in Healthy Adult Subjects"

"A phase I randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study to evaluate the safety, tolerability, and immunogenicity of a live-attenuated quadrivalent dengue vaccine in flavivirus-naïve and flavivirus-experienced healthy adults"

Etc, etc...

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As I pointed out there is inconsistency in the naming of the phases. AstraZeneca referred to phase I/II which had a control group that were injected with meningococcal here in the U.K. but the equivalent trial in South Africa had saline in the control arm.

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Nope, not inconsistent. There are different trial designs.

And as demonstrated above, there are placebo phase 1 trials--when it is appropriate to use them.

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I know for a fact that the average 10-year-old can google vaccine placebo trial and find 1,000s for trials.....

Then there are folks like you....

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So are all vaccine studies supposed to be placebo controlled? If so or the studies you worked on were to be placebo controlled and were not, did you report that to Compliance ?

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Studies have to be okayed by the FDA before patients are enrolled.

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Not if the trial is done in other countries!

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Paul, wonderfully helpful as always. No scientist, vaccinologist, or clinician should *debate* RFKj as it only elevates him in a false equivalency. As you taught me years ago, these 3 person debates end in 3 roles: hero, victim and villain and the scientist in this crazy climate will always be the villain in these social media settings. Thanks for all you do.

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Will have to remember what you were taught about the 3 person debate. Very wise insight.

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And again, everything but a real live debate. If RFK, Jr is so ignorant & misinformed, debate him, crush him & get the truth out once and for all. Seems obvious.

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Essentially what I've been saying, but with more depth and from a stronger position of power by virtue of his long years of service. Thanks, Paul, for this commentary. For those who think Big Pharma is corrupt, realize we've seen society lurch toward embracing anything that looks like a free-market economy. They became Bib Pharma by increasing their shares and becoming essentially, well, rich. As for the government agencies, the likelihood they're captured by drug money is amazingly small.

People who've spent their lives doing the research, and the direct patient care have the authority to speak on these matters, unfortunately, so many of us are really poor communicators in a crunch like this that it's near impossible for us to speak out on a topic before someone with a well-conceived, but utterly wrong statement comes along and promotes something that sounds plausible but is devoid of fact.

"A lie can travel around the world while an honest man is putting on his pants." There's a lot more truth in that statement than we often accept.

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Kennedy said, “you get [hepatitis B] from sharing needles, going to a really seasoned prostitute. . .” That's enough Mr. Kennedy. You're not here to talk about your uncle.

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The mRNA vaccines injured my mother, m father, and my father in law. I was mistreated terribly as a healthy naturally immune person.

Now that I ask people, many of my friends have had a family member with a bad em reaction from flu or hpv or the 18 month shots all given at once.

I like what you have tried to do to be honest. I believe you. I also believe my observations and I believe my friends. Can’t fake seizures, paralysis, blood clots, heart arrhythmias. I just never knew so many people had vax injuries.

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Aluminium adjuvants are poorly studied regarding long term safety.

Angrand L, Masson JD, Rubio-Casillas A, Nosten-Bertrand M, Crépeaux G. Inflammation and Autophagy: A Convergent Point between Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)-Related Genetic and Environmental Factors: Focus on Aluminum Adjuvants. Toxics. 2022 Aug 31;10(9):518. doi: 10.3390/toxics10090518. Erratum in: Toxics. 2023 Jan 19;11(2): PMID: 36136483; PMCID: PMC9502677.

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Thanks, but did you even read it--it is clear that autism starts in utero--and It has some rather obvious problems.....

Anyway, the safety of the adjuvant is imperfectly understood...just like everything else....

"the toxicity and kinetics of Al and soluble Al compounds are well described"

And: "Vaccination is one of the greatest achievements in medical history, promoting prevention and sometimes the complete eradication of lethal infectious diseases ."

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I understand the most folks aren't scientists...but seriously, if you just look at JL-W's claims....his studies don't even try and measure inflammation.

He looks "sciencely" but he is an anti-vacc grifter.

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Viral now on All News Pipeline! 'Election Variant' Unveiled At The Perfect Time For Globalists To Steal Another Election - https://allnewspipeline.com/Election_Variant_Unveiled_At_The_Perfect_Time_For_Globalists_To_Steal_Another_Election.php

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Should scientists (or anyone) debate the undebatable? It depends on how much time they have to waste. Should an astronomer and/or a geologist debate a flat-earther? I'm going to say "no". In the world of the internet, a person has to know where to find valid information. That's the trick, finding the proper location. If a person does not have that knowledge, or perhaps the critical thinking skills to navigate and then identify the proper location, they may be a candidate for the Darwin Award.

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Do a true and honest placebo-controlled study of any vaccine currently on the market and the entire vaccine industry will crumble in 5 minutes.

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Use your middle-school reading/math/science skills and your argument by assertion is shown to be absurd.

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