Remain Skeptical My Friend

In 2009, the largest health care fraud settlement in Department of Justice history was settled. This was the largest criminal fine of any kind imposed in the U.S and the largest ever civil fraud settlement against a pharmaceutical company. At the time. Who is this pharmaceutical company that so egregiously disregarded the laws of this country, regarding bribery and fraud? This campaign endangered patients. They advertised dosages of a drug that the FDA considered dangerous. That company that did all this is Pfizer.

So why is it, that when Pfizer executives tell our government now that another booster is needed, when they present an incomplete data set supporting the use of the mRNA vaccines in children - they are not questioned by the main stream media. Maybe because we now know that legacy media is essentially state sponsored media? The Blaze obtained documents by FOIA reveal that main stream media has essentially been paid off, when it comes to COVID-19.

Congress appropriated $1 billion in fiscal year 2021 for the secretary of health to spend on activities to "strengthen vaccine confidence in the United States." Federal law authorizes HHS to act through the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other agencies to award contracts to public and private entities to

"carry out a national, evidence-based campaign to increase awareness and knowledge of the safety and effectiveness of vaccines for the prevention and control of diseases, combat misinformation about vaccines, and disseminate scientific and evidence-based vaccine-related information, with the goal of increasing rates of vaccination across all ages ... to reduce and eliminate vaccine-preventable diseases."

Hundreds of news organizations were paid by the federal government to advertise for the vaccines as part of a "comprehensive media campaign," according to documents TheBlaze obtained from the Department of Health and Human Services. The Biden administration purchased ads on TV, radio, in print, and on social media to build vaccine confidence, timing this effort with the increasing availability of the vaccines. The government also relied on earned media featuring "influencers" from "communities hit hard by COVID-19" and "experts" like White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci and other academics to be interviewed and promote vaccination in the news.

Let’s fast forward to January, 2022. It was then that a jury convicted Elizabeth Holmes for major medical fraud.  During the trial, she admitted her much praised Theranos device was able to complete only 12 types of blood tests – not 200 as marketing and advertised.  She also admitted that her company conducted tests with the same old machines they tried to put out of business with a supposedly new technology.

Though people were given incorrect medical testing results, the media fawning over Holmes and Theranos kept the fraud alive for years, such that company was eventually valued at $9 billion.

This would not have been possible if we’d had a skeptical or even curious news media when it comes to medicine and science.  Perhaps the most effective part of the Theranos con was Elizabeth Holmes playing a character that corporate media wanted: a woman breaking into male-dominated Silicon Valley; a left-leaning, attractive, slender, blonde vegan who wore black turtlenecks reminiscent of Steve Jobs. But Theranos was smart, they hired an Academy Award-winning documentarian to produce slick ads -designed to fool not only you and me, but investors and the government.

As you scan these few examples of news media promotion, consider that Vioxx and opioids were similarly allowed to permeate our society without news media scrutiny or skepticism.  Also consider that 25% of drugs approved by the FDA are later pulled from the market.

USA Today (July 2014):

Elizabeth Holmes is tall, smart and single. Well, maybe not truly single. “I guess you should say I’m married to Theranos,” Holmes says with a laugh. Only she’s not kidding... while Holmes is a billionaire on paper, nothing seems to interest her less...  “We’re successful if person by person we help make a difference in their lives,” says Holmes, who dresses exclusively in black and has a soft yet commanding voice that makes a listener lean in as if waiting for marching orders.

New Yorker (December 2014):

Although she can quote Jane Austen by heart, she no longer devotes time to novels or friends, doesn’t date, doesn’t own a television, and hasn’t taken a vacation in ten years. Her refrigerator is all but empty, as she eats most of her meals at the office… “I have done something, and we have done something, that has changed people’s lives... I would much rather live a life of purpose than one in which I might have other things but not that.”

CNN (October 2014):

The company she founded has the potential to change health care for millions of Americans.

Forbes (July 2014):

Elizabeth Holmes, 30, is the youngest woman to become a self-made billionaire–and she’s done so four times over... “What we’re about is the belief that access to affordable and real-time health information is a basic human right, and it’s a civil right,” she says.

The ultimate exposure and undoing of Theranos didn’t happen because of the news media.  It began when Stanford professor John Ioannidis publicly stated that Theranos hadn’t published any peer-reviewed research about their products.

To bring this topic up to the present moment, this same Professor John Ioannidis was among the first and most vocal critics of lockdown policies related to Covid.  For that, he is criticized and cancelled by news media.

The news media’s lack of skepticism and curiosity has been on recent display in the constant promotion and parroting of Pharma claims related to vaccines, to the new Pfizer pill for treating Covid, the Covid tests, the ‘need’ to vaccinate children, the ‘need’ for boosters, and just about every claim by Pharma and government.  We are living the results of blind compliance with whatever a public health bureaucrat says, even if that data comes from the Pfizer CEO or another vaccine company, with the COI of profit.

Back to Theranos: After Professor Ioannidis wrote his medical journal article, the company attempted to boost its credibility by inviting then-Vice President Biden to tour their facility.  In order to conceal the lab’s true operating conditions, Holmes and her team created a fake lab for the Vice President’s tour.  (Here’s the first Wall Street Journal article about that, based upon information leaked to WSJ by a Theranos employee: https://www.wsj.com/articles/theranos-has-struggled-with-blood-tests-1444881901 and another more recent WSJ article https://www.wsj.com/articles/theranos-inc-s-partners-in-blood-1526662047).

The Pharma industry has not earned our trust, having been the subject of the largest criminal fines in America.  After the FDA approved Vioxx, for example, there were many litigations (27,000 of them, but who’s counting) related to the fact that the drug doubled the risk of heart attack.  Merck withdrew the drug, and was criminally fined almost a billion dollars for overstating the safety of the drug – as in the now familiar refrain, “safe and effective.”

Like today, while adverse cardiac events are reported to the CDC (myocarditis, etc), Merck told each jury that heart attack deaths had nothing to do with their wonder-drug.  And they fought like... well, like a Pharma company fights, accusing plaintiffs of falsifying data (pot/kettle).

Soon enough though, a jury awarded a widow $253 million.  (Merck appealed, and that award was overturned.)  A bunch of individual cases followed, with Merck winning some, losing some – until an Australian class-action lawsuit against Merck ruled that Vioxx doubled the risk of heart attacks, and that Merck had violated the law by selling a drug which was unfit for sale.  And then...

Merck agreed on a mass tort settlement of $4.85 billion to settle 27,000 individual lawsuits.  And then...

Merck announced a settlement with the US Attorney's Office over the fine of $950 million.

Did that end it?  Nope, litigation with seven states remains outstanding – but the real punchline is...

Vioxx is returning to market, under some new name we can assume.  Clinical trials are pending and we can look forward to exciting news media reports soon.

I’m encouraging us all to bring our own skepticism and curiosity to the present unprecedented moment, in which new Pharma products, such as mRNA vaccines are being consumed by the majority of people in our country, evermore including children. The approval for these products are based upon rushed clinical trials and authorized by an FDA that is now refusing to release the safety data from those clinical trials.  To be perfectly accurate, the FDA agreed to release the information, but wanted 55-years to do it.  (Google it: “FDA 55 years”).  To be even more accurate, the FDA then asked the Court for 75-years to release the information. Luckily, our courts have not agreed. So, Pfizer has a number of months to now release the data, with the first small bolus released earlier this month.

Unfortunately, the first batch of Pfizer documents released did not cause the state sponsored media to dig deep and do some actual reporting. Instead, those who did report on the contents then were labelled as dealing in MDM (the Homeland Security term for “mis/dis/mal information). It all comes full circle.

Curious?  Skeptical?  You should be. Because the news media isn’t going to do the job for you.

Submitted by: Marcus Cicero