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Comment by MisterKent | Hacker News Reader

Jesus Christ, this blog is absolute trash, peddling a massive number of conspiracy theories, from vaccines causing autism to FDA doing massive coverups. Even going as far as to blame the Biden administration for things going on during the COVID vaccine period (when Trump was in power).

Honestly, just _fuck_ off with this nonsense. "I have a treasure trove of data that shows vaccines cause autism, and it can be verified. But I won't release it, but trust me."

I'm sorry the world isn't more interesting and there's no shadow government in place pulling the strings. The simple fact is people have always been autistic, and just went undiagnosed. I could even see arguments for it being less apparent when those children didn't have the comfort of the Internet to avoid developing their social skills etc.

/Rant.

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The "natural medicines" subtitle should have given it up. The definition of "natural" is as diffuse as it gets; everything is technically natural, so obviously "natural" becomes a proxy for "whatever the author likes today". In fact, watch he apply the "natural" adjective to DMSO:

> DMSO was a naturally occurring supplement

Mentions of "natural" like this usually mean objectivity is not in the room.

I also find it funny that he perfectly exemplifies why the need for blind studies:

> It had a worse effect in the food when they knew it was in the food, because it became repugnant to them.

Then proceeds to bash against "RCT fundamentalists". Obviously, we should decide on natural medicines by their taste.

> Mentions of "natural" like this usually mean objectivity is not in the room.

That is a heuristic I like to use, but in this case the author appears to be using it in the sense of "shareholders aren't getting a cut" so in this particular article it isn't a problem. The benefit that the article is alluding to isn't that the substance is natural in the abstract but that it is easily available because it is naturally occurring and thus partially bypasses the US system of siphoning cash towards healthcare companies. In context being natural is a specific and fairly plausible benefit.

Yet “natural” is used to ambiguously promote many kinds of things in health and medicine. If you ask “how natural” a particular treatment is, you’ll quickly get outside the scope of the FDA and into corporate politics. If you ask “how effective”, the natural salesmen move onto someone else.

> but in this case the author appears to be using it in the sense of "shareholders aren't getting a cut" so in this particular article it isn't a problem

That would be exactly the same. "Healthcare companies" always get a cut, no matter how "natural" the substance is, for all definitions of natural that you can think of, because healthcare companies get a cut of everything that is even minimally active, FDA or not. In fact, there are big pharma companies that literally profit from selling water (Boiron, but plenty of others). Even if you define "natural" exactly as "something pharma companies don't currently profit from" (a very misleading definition), that definition is going to be uselessly ephemeral as pharma is sure to profit from it as soon as it becomes minimally popular.

Therefore, it is again a useless, diffuse definition that is often used simply to indicate whatever the author fancies today.

DMSO produces dimethyl sulfide in the body when it is metabolized. To say there is no effect of dimethyl sulfide is to not know human biology or health. Therefore DMSO could play a role as a medicine and it is currently still an area of research for cancer.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9801450/

http://bmrat.com/index.php/BMRAT/article/view/614

As well as an overall immunomodulary agent:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S017129851...

I am not, of course, suggesting that everyone take DMSO, but the fact is that this very cheap molecule is not studied for one reason; it cannot be patented. And since it is possible that the pharmaceutical companies might know this, banning it would give them time for drug discovery and a patent on a molecule that acts similarly to DMSO.

It is a fact that the FDA gets nearly half of its funding from corporations it regulates.

https://today.uconn.edu/2021/05/why-is-the-fda-funded-in-par...

You at least should have a skeptical eye when it come to the FDA banning a molecule like DMSO. I can understand regulating it, but banning it was an over reaction by the FDA.

https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/medical-critical-thinking-...

"These companies wanted to put DMSO through its paces and eventually market it as a drug."

Nitpick on the funding: the departments testing human drugs and biologics are 66 and 40% funded by fees, as opposed to taxpayers. They or Congress could decide to drop the fees for a high-priority submission.

I didn't read the article and I'm sure it's full of contentious claims, but it's undeniable that the FDA has repeatedly, especially during COVID and more generally in recent years, relied on a standard of research that is lesser than what would be considered a C+ lab report in any university chemistry lab in America. Relying solely on first person citation and abandoning peer review altogether by allowing the researchers themselves to be the reviewers has worked to distance scientists from politicians and from government. The political pull and profit seeking that plagues publication inevitably destroys the public view of government, science, and authority more generally. It should be no surprise that we'd see many writings critical of all three.

All of that can be true without conspiracy. Literally anyone can lie and do it for profit all alone or with a friend. No conspiring required. Just a bit of common greed, and the knowledge that the average consumer is likely not trained in how to identify real or falsified research, and not trained in chemistry or any science for that matter, is quite enough to deceive the public.

What we need is more scientists in politics, and fewer politicians in science.

Aren't you skipping over the part where thousands of people were dying every day? When you say "relied on a standard of research that is lesser than what would be considered a C+ lab report in any university chemistry lab" do you mean "under normal circumstances" -- which didn't apply at the time? Or do you mean "even given the circumstances," in which case I'm going to need cites for where they cut corners in ways that were inappropriate given that thousands were dying daily.

Not skipping. Acknowledged. And the fact remains that this erodes trust in science, and government. And that's especially true when the justification advertised isn't the one you've given.

Instead it was a media effort to demonize scientists who gave their expert opinions if they were not in line with a particular narrative. Agreeable or not, right or wrong, moral or immoral that's not science.

Disagreement and free speech are necessary for science. And when you remove that, whether your reasons are dire or not, breaks the scientific approach to information. And that works, as expected, to erode trust. For better or worse, that's the cost of attempting to control the conversation.

Okay so you’re going with even given the circumstances. That means you need to provide cites for how, at the time and given the information they had, their decision making was flawed.

Further, it means you can't just jump back to free-speech absolutism. Please explain how, at the time and given the circumstances, their actions were flawed to the point of deserving the criticism you're dishing out.

I'm not saying they were right or wrong. I'm saying, avoidable or not, trust in science and the government should be a factor in deciding what's best. Seems to me like, if it was, we'd have fewer articles like this one. Start by discrediting theories with results that adhere to scientific rigor.

You said "relied on a standard of research that is lesser than what would be considered a C+ lab report in any university chemistry lab in America"

Now you're refusing to back that up.

I did. The reviewers of the Pfizer vaccine were the researchers. Every one an employee of Pfizer. That's an F grade in any chem lab course. At least any paper I would grade.

Were thousands of the children for whom the FDA issued emergency use authorizations for COVID vaccines dying from COVID every day?

Okay so you’re going with even given the circumstances. That means you need to provide cites for how, at the time and given the information they had, their decision making was flawed.

Meaning, to your exact point, cite how they should have known at the time that the overall cost/benefit analysis for vaccinating children was negative.

The only trials that they ran, in very small numbers of around a few thousand children, did not even attempt to demonstrate a clinical benefit to children, because SARS-CoV-2 was already such a mild illness for them it would have been impossible to discern one. So they simply measured an increase in "antibody levels" and called it a day. I think risk-benefit calls should be pretty easy to make when "no discernable benefit" is what's been put on the table.

And yes, it was obviously a mistake at the time to issue an "emergency use authorization" for use of the vaccines in people for whom COVID was not even remotely an emergency.

You're not considering: - the risk of transmission by children to others. You can say that shouldn't be a factor, that (parents of) children should only have to consider the cost-benefit for their children directly. I'd reply that that's selfish. But we shouldn't have that debate since you didn't bother to bring it up in the first place. - the potential unknown long-term effects of covid on children who otherwise recovered.

But in the end it comes down to: thousands of children died of covid-19. How many died from the vaccine? Do you understand why, statistically, it might be difficult to demonstrate a clear clinical benefit, while still confident that such a result would occur?

Or put simply: are you substituting your judgement for that of medical researchers based on a full and clear understanding of the facts, which you simply interpret differently? Or are you speculating based on an armchair understanding of the situation?

> You can say that shouldn't be a factor, that (parents of) children should only have to consider the cost-benefit for their children directly. I'd reply that that's selfish.

Then you would demonstrate that your sense of morality is quite warped indeed. I would argue that no one is obligated to undergo a potentially hazardous medical procedure in order to mitigate potential threat to others, but this is especially the case with COVID, where we are talking about a disease that was primarily a threat to elderly people who had lived a long life already. Also, I'm not sure why you would bring up effects on transmission when it was clear by the time of the pediatric EUAs that the vaccines had almost none. I'm also not sure why you bring up "long-term unknown effects of COVID" when the vaccines did not prevent infection, so there was no benefit to be had there.

> But in the end it comes down to: thousands of children died of covid-19. How many died from the vaccine? Do you understand why, statistically, it might be difficult to demonstrate a clear clinical benefit, while still confident that such a result would occur?

This is a deeply unscientific process you are describing, fraught with exactly the sorts of biases and guesswork that objective and repeatable processes are meant to eliminate. With regard to the question "how many children were killed by the vaccine?" I would say it's completely impossible to know because the plain institutional imperatives of the FDA and medical community were to assiduously avoid acknowledging any such events. I would reference VAERS, but every time I do I'm told that's not a reliable system, and there's no other operational pharmacovigilance system I'm aware of, so we seem to just not have one at all. But the anecdotes from numerous people who experience severe AEs in close proximity to COVID vaccination, and experienced tremendous difficulty getting doctors to consider the link, and saw no follow-up from the FDA to their reports, does not give me confidence we have any real handle on such numbers at all.

I searched for the word autism and found no hits.

Well, the article does go on about vaccines and a search of the site does turn up references about vaccines affecting autism and gender identity (among other things).

Quite frankly, if someone has problems with how the FDA operates they would be better served by talking about its weak points and how to address them from a more neutral perspective. Even if their decision making process and the decisions they arrive at can be problematic at times, I have no doubt that the organization has made considerable contributions to safety.

I agree and that’s how a so-called “RCT fundamentalist” like me is going to talk about the differences between traditional medicine and evidence-based medicine. I’m a “fundamentalist” because I don’t see traditional and clinical as a spectrum.

Search the rest of the blog - you'll find the crackpottery on display.

There's another article linked on this site:

https://kirschsubstack.com/cp/151892950

This is one of the main other sites linked whenever something is underlined to prove that there are "sources" for claims.

Yeah, that's pretty bad.

Agree. These dangerous conspiracy theorists will soon be tearing our FDA apart. I just got my latest covid shot and pressured my doctor to get my 10 year old daughter's HPV vaccine a bit earlier than recommended to get it in before our vengeful extremist billionaire overlords take over. God save us all.

This COVID argument is weird to me. Go get your shot if you want. I have not gotten any boosters (only had the first two). I just do not need it. My roommate had COVID just last month and I did not get it.

The problem is not with the vaccine itself for most of us. It is about forcing it on us.

The people about to run the health agencies of the US government aren’t of the opinion that vaccines are great but shouldn’t be mandated. They’re of the opinion that vaccines are dangerous and should be banned.

Can you cite this please?

“ There’s no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective.” RFK Jr, Lex Fridman Podcast #388

"He says, if you give me the data, all I want is the data and I'll take on the data and show that it's not safe. And then if you pull the product liability, the companies will yank these vaccines right off of the market. So that's his point.” - Howard Lutnick, Trump transition team co-chair, CNN interview, October 30

“ There’s no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective.”

Safe does not mean 100% safe, nor does effective mean 100% effective. Take the flu vaccine fro example. While the risk is small, there are cases of GBS associated with it. And even with the flu vaccine, you can still get the flu even of the same strain.

So it always comes down to an individual assuming what risks they want to take.

You other quiote was tied to RFK Jr saying this:

https://www.newsnationnow.com/politics/2024-election/rfk-jr-...

“I’m not going to take away anybody’s vaccines,” Kennedy told NBC News when asked whether there were specific vaccines that Kennedy would want to remove from the market.

“If vaccines are working for somebody, I’m not going to take them away. People ought to have [a] choice, and that choice ought to be informed by the best information,” he said.

“So I’m going to make sure scientific safety studies and efficacy are out there, and people can make individual assessments about whether that product is going to be good for them,” Kennedy added.

So who do we believe? When people say they’re not going to do a bad thing, but also lay out their exact plan for doing it, I’m going to put more weight behind the latter.

I do not think what they are doing is bad. Being more open with the data is something all of us should advocate for to promote safer vaccines and stop the conspiracy theories.

They want all vaccines taken off the market. They outright stated their plan for doing it. And you either don’t believe them, or you think that’s good?

Can you cite this please?

Go up a few comments.

If all you have is that one quote you are not being serious.

I will come back to this in 4 years to show you how wrong you were.

Because you have so much more?

Everyone is saying he is going to "take vaccines away" yet he can say he is not and you will believe a news media funded by the pharmaceutical companies because they are afraid that some of these vaccines might not be safe?

I do not need a hundred sources, I need only one, from the person himself, right?

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/11/06/rfk-jr-vaccines-tru...

“We’re not going to take vaccines away from anybody,” he told NPR in an interview this morning after Trump’s overnight victory. He repeated the message a few hours later in an interview with MSNBC.

Instead, Kennedy said he wants to improve the science of vaccine safety, which he said “has huge deficits in it,” so Americans can have all the right information to choose whether to get vaccinated.

“I’m going to make sure scientific safety studies and efficacy are out there, and people can make individual assessments about whether that product is going to be good for them,” he told MSNBC.

I directly quoted two of the people involved. That’s not believing media.

> Go get your shot if you want

So it's optional to get it or not get it.

> It is about forcing it on us.

Oh. So you were forced to get it. We should fight against the law that forced you to get a vaccine. Can you help me track down the legislation so I can help you spread the word?

People were forced to get it. Force does not imply government force, but government not protecting us from people who do force people to get vaccinated.

https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/press-release/1-in-...

Federal workers were forced to get the vaccination as well.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...

A list of mandates here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_vaccination_mandates_...

Do you have some sort of mind blindness to what happened during COVID?

Vaccines have been forced for centuries. Somehow nobody cared, except for a tiny fringe of kooks, until 2021.

I think there is huge difference between past vaccines and the still experiment mRNA Vaccines. It is disingenuous of you to assume a similarity between the two situations.

There were vaccine related injuries that were not expected from the trials, as is usual in new vaccines.

I happen to think it’s disingenuous to assume the new vaccines are weird and different and therefore your reluctance is justified unlike other people in the past.

mRNA vaccines are absolutely weird and different -- their mechanism of prompting an immune response is fundamentally different as it involves prompting the vaccinee's own cells to manufacture antigens.

Even if they weren't weird and different, previous vaccine rollouts like Pandemrix show that caution is warranted in the early days of rollout for any vaccine. COVID vax fundamentalists couldn't accept that many people might reach a legitimately different assessment of the risks and benefits because in their absolutely hysterical worldview, SARS-CoV-2 was tantamount to a death sentence or lifelong disability.

Vaccine 1) Dead vaccine injected in person at defined amoungt.

Vaccine 2) Instruction to make Spike protein injected into body which makes a random amount of spike protein that they never quantified.

https://bpspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/prp...

" It was hoped that resident and circulating immune cells attracted to the injection site make copies of the spike protein while the injected mRNA degrades within a few days. It was also originally estimated that recombinant spike proteins generated by mRNA vaccines would persist in the body for a few weeks. In reality, clinical studies now report that modified SARS-CoV-2 mRNA routinely persist up to a month from injection and can be detected in cardiac and skeletal muscle at sites of inflammation and fibrosis, while the recombinant spike protein may persist a little over half a year in blood. "

The question is if i'll he able to get it. I wouldn't be surprised if all vaccine development is defunded. And HPV specifically since christians have a weird hate bonner against it.

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