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05/13/20

“I am not saying that China deliberately released this, shooting itself in the foot. But it was clear they were developing an extremely dangerous unknown biological weapon that had never been seen before, and it leaked out of the lab…

I personally believe that until our political leaders come clean with the American people, both at the White House and in Congress and our state government, and publicly admit that this is an extremely dangerous offensive biological warfare weapon that we are dealing with, I do not see that we will be able to confront it and to stop it, let alone defeat it.” ~ Dr. Francis Boyle, International Bioweapons Expert, April 15, 2020

According to Johns Hopkins University, as of April 29, 2020, COVID-19 has infected more than 3 million people and killed at least 210,000 worldwide. Those are big numbers, considering the fact that six short months ago, few members of the general public had ever heard of the coronavirus. Almost no one was harboring fears of a looming and deadly global pandemic.

But here we are. As our new reality sinks in, as we adjust to lockdowns and home schooling and long lines at grocery stores, as we look for ways to protect ourselves and our families — and as some grieve for lost loved ones — most of us are also seeking answers.

Why does this virus cause so many mysterious symptoms? Why are some cases mild, others deadly? How can we protect ourselves? Whose advice should we follow? But the biggest questions of all are these: Where did COVID-19 come from? And how can we prevent this from ever happening again?

The answers to these questions may be too disturbing to ponder, especially while we’re still grappling with the impact of the virus on nearly every aspect of our lives. But our failure to investigate, and directly address, the origins of SARS-CoV-2 almost certainly guarantees our failure to protect ourselves from future, possibly even more deadly, pandemics.

Science Most Foul

Thousands of dangerous viruses and other pathogens, such as the bat coronavirus and the avian flu, are being collected in the wild by Chinese, U.S. and international researchers. These viruses are then analyzed and weaponized (i.e. genetically engineered, manipulated, recombined) in secretive, accident-prone, labs like the Wuhan Virology Lab in China or the U.S. Army Lab in Fort Detrick, Maryland.

Coronaviruses typically have a narrow host range, infecting one or just a few species, such as bats. However, using targeted RNA recombination, gene engineers can manipulate viruses such as COVID-19 for “gain of function” to enable them to infect other species (i.e. human cells), interfere with immune system response and readily spread through the air.

A growing arsenal of synthetic viruses have been lab-engineered, despite U.S. and international laws banning biowarfare weapons and experimentation. A disturbing number of these so-called “dual use” Biowarfare/Biodefense labs have experienced leaks, accidents and thefts over the past three decades. As the well-respected Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists recently warned:

“A safety breach at a Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention lab is believed to have caused four suspected SARS cases, including one death, in Beijing in 2004.

A similar accident caused 65 lab workers of Lanzhou Veterinary Research Institute to be infected with brucellosis in December 2019 … In January 2020, a renowned Chinese scientist, Li Ning, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for selling experimental animals to local markets.”

Safety Failures Are Commonplace

China is hardly the only place to experience such accidents. A USA Today investigation in 2016, for instance, revealed an incident involving cascading equipment failures in a decontamination chamber as U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researchers tried to leave a biosafety level 4 lab. The lab likely stored samples of the viruses causing Ebola and smallpox, according to the report.

In 2014, the CDC revealed that staff had accidently sent live anthrax between laboratories, exposing 84 workers. In an investigation, officials found other mishaps that had occurred in the preceding decade. In 2019, the U.S. Army Fort Detrick, Maryland Biological Weapons Lab was temporarily shut down for improper disposal of dangerous pathogens, according to a New York Times report.

Officials refused to provide details about the pathogens or the leak, citing “national security” concerns. As Sam Husseini recently reported in Salon magazine, biowarfare engineers in labs such as Wuhan or Fort Detrick are deliberately and recklessly evading international law:

“Governments that participate in such biological weapon research generally distinguish between ‘biowarfare’ and ‘biodefense,’ as if to paint such ‘defense’ programs as necessary. But this is rhetorical sleight-of-hand; the two concepts are largely indistinguishable.

‘Biodefense’ implies tacit biowarfare, breeding more dangerous pathogens for the alleged purpose of finding a way to fight them. While this work appears to have succeeded in creating deadly and infectious agents, including deadlier flu strains, such ‘defense’ research is impotent in its ability to defend us from this pandemic.”

The Cover-Up of SARS-CoV-2 Origin

Activist critics of genetic engineering and biological warfare experiments, including myself, Dr. Mercola and GM Watch, joined now by independent voices in the mass media, are reporting, albeit in some cases reluctantly, that mounting evidence indicates that the deadly COVID-19 virus may have accidentally leaked out of one of the supposedly high-security biowarfare labs (the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Chinese Center for Disease Control) that were analyzing and manipulating bat coronaviruses in Wuhan, China.

In order to conceal their scientific malpractice and criminal negligence, to protect their “right” to carry out dangerous, unregulated research, and to safeguard billions of dollars in annual Biopharm and GMO industry profits (Monsanto/Bayer, among others, is now conducting its own biowarfare research), Chinese and U.S. officials, Big Pharma, Facebook, Google and an arrogant and unscrupulous network of global scientists are frantically trying to cover up the lab origins and diabolical machinations of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A widely-cited paper,1 published in the journal Nature on February 3, 2020, claims to establish that SARS-CoV-2 is a coronavirus of bat origin that naturally jumped the species barrier between bats and humans and was not synthetically constructed in a lab.

However, as Mercola.com reports one of the Chinese authors of this article, Dr. Shi Zhengli from the Wuhan Virology Lab, actually worked previously on weaponizing the SARS virus (the progenitor of COVID-19) and has published peer-reviewed articles on the procedures involved in this genetic manipulation.

There Are Many Ways to Enhance Viral Infectivity

Another oft-cited but problematic article in Nature Medicine (March 17, 2020), co-authored by a bio-entrepreneur industry scientist, has been repeatedly cited by the mass media as offering “proof” that the COVID-19 virus arose “naturally” as opposed to being lab-derived.

But recent critiques offered by independent scientists, including the London-based molecular geneticist Dr. Michael Antoniou, a long-time critic of genetic engineering, argue convincingly that the computer-modeling “proof” cited by Nature Medicine offers no proof at all. As GM Watch reports:

“Dr. Antoniou told us that while the authors [of the March 17 Nature Medicine article] did indeed show that SARS-CoV-2 was unlikely to have been built by deliberate genetic engineering from a previously used virus backbone, that’s not the only way of constructing a virus. There is another method by which an enhanced-infectivity virus can be engineered in the lab …”

Antoniou told GM Watch that this method, called “directed iterative evolutionary selection process,” involves using genetic engineering to generate “a large number of randomly mutated versions of the SARS-CoV spike protein receptor,” and then to select those protein receptors most effective at infecting human cells.

As Antoniou points out, the inventors of this technique received the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 2018, a fact the authors of the Nature Medicine article surely knew. Did the authors of the Nature Medicine article deliberately leave this more plausible hypothesis out, in order to bolster their questionable thesis that COVID-19 arose naturally — even though biowarfare labs in Wuhan were engineering bat viruses years before the fatal outbreak?

If lab technicians in the Wuhan lab did use the directed iterative evolutionary selection process to engineer a “gain of function” (weaponized) bat coronavirus, and the virus subsequently leaked, infected one or more lab technicians, then spread to people outside the lab, including people from the Wuhan Seafood Market, there would be no trace of the virus having been genetically engineered or manipulated.

Bat Coronaviruses Have Been Weaponized for Over a Decade

Peer-reviewed, published articles, going back more than a decade, indicate that researchers at the Wuhan Labs (Dr. Shi Zhengli and others) have been carrying out experiments to manipulate and weaponize deadly bat coronavirus so that they can readily infect human cells.

In a 2008 article in the Journal of Virology, Zengli and other scientists report on how they have genetically engineered SARS-like viruses from horseshoe bats to enable the viruses to gain entry into human cells.

The powers that be, in Beijing and Washington, like to reassure us that researchers in places like the Wuhan Virology Lab, the Wuhan Center for Disease Control, or the U.S. Army Biological Weapons Lab at Fort Detrick, Maryland are only “studying” (not manipulating or weaponizing) dangerous pathogens like bat coronaviruses, and that security in these government/WHO/NIH-monitored labs is so strict that accidents could never happen.

But a number of well-respected scientific critics of genetic engineering and biological warfare have been sounding the alarm for decades.

Critics including Francis Boyle (author of the 1989 U.S. Bioterrorism law banning bioweapons research) and Dr. Richard Ebright of Rutgers University’s Waksman Institute of Microbiology, have warned that experiments and manipulations of viruses and pathogens are inherently extremely dangerous, (not to mention that they violate international law), given human error and the fact that security has been dangerously lax in the world’s biowarfare/biodefense laboratories.

Almost too incredible to believe, funding for the reckless germ war experiments in Wuhan have included more than $3 million from Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a division of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), with apparent collaboration, according to Boyle, from scientists at the universities of North Carolina, Wisconsin, Harvard and other institutions.

Wakeup Call for Biosafety

In 2014, the Obama White House Office of Science and Technology Policy put a hold or “funding pause” on “gain of function” experimentation on dangerous viruses in U.S. labs due to “biosafety and biosecurity risks.” Yet experimentation apparently continued uninterrupted (with U.S. funding) in China at the Wuhan lab.

Then in 2017, the Trump Administration reversed this “funding pause,” essentially allowing illegal germ warfare research to continue. Longtime anti-GMO activists at GM Watch in the U.K. recently published an article entitled “COVID-19 Could Be a Wake-Up Call for Biosafety.”

The article explains how, below the public radar, secretive and reckless research on genetically engineering and weaponizing coronaviruses has been going on for decades:

“Stuart Newman, professor of cell biology and anatomy at New York Medical College in Valhalla, New York, editor-in-chief of the journal Biological Theory, and co-author of Biotech Juggernaut, adds crucial historical context that shows exploring whether COVID-19 could have been genetically engineered should not be dismissed as a subject fit only for conspiracy theorists.

[Newman] points out that the genetic engineering of coronaviruses has been going on for a long time. According to Newman, ‘Even most biologists are not aware that virologists have been experimentally recombining and genetically modifying coronaviruses for more than a decade to study their mechanisms of pathogenicity.’ Indeed, Newman points to papers on engineering coronaviruses that go back a full 20 years.”

US and China Collaborated on Coronavirus Research

Dr. Peter Breggin points out that in 2015, researchers from the U.S. and China's Wuhan Institute of Virology collaborated to transform an animal coronavirus into one that can attack humans. Breggin’s provocative essay includes a direct link to the original study which was published in the British journal, Nature.

Recent investigative reporting, including an explosive April 14 Washington Post article by Josh Rogin, followed by more muted coverage by CBS News, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek and others, have alerted millions of people to the fact that the official Chinese/Big Pharma/WHO/NIH “bat in the market” story about the origins of COVID-19 may no longer be credible.

As Rogin’s article points out, officials from the U.S. embassy in Beijing visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology numerous times in early 2018, and tried to warn the Trump Administration that there were serious safety violations in the lab’s handling of bat coronaviruses.

The officials were especially concerned that inadequately trained staff and lax security procedures at the lab, jointly funded by the Chinese and U.S., posed a serious risk of unleashing a “new SARS-like pandemic.”

In fact, in 2004, foreshadowing the current disaster, there were two serious accidents at the high-security Beijing Virology lab, infecting two researchers with the dangerous SARS virus. Ebright, who has been speaking out on lab safety since the early 2000s, said this about the dangerous security procedures at the Wuhan labs:

“… bat coronaviruses at Wuhan [Center for Disease Control] and Wuhan Institute of Virology routinely were collected and studied at BSL-2 (Biosecurity Level 2), which provides only minimal protections against infection of lab workers.

Virus collection, culture, isolation, or animal infection at BSL-2 with a virus having the transmission characteristics of the outbreak virus would pose substantial risk of infection of a lab worker, and from the lab worker, the public.”

Politics Most Foul

The Trump Administration did nothing about the repeated warnings from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing in 2018, concerning the dangerous practices at the Wuhan Lab. Nor scientists at the NIH and the World Health Organization who were supposedly monitoring the lab’s coronavirus experiments.

After the outbreak happened, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) silenced or “disappeared” scientists and journalists who had earlier published research or news articles indicating that the COVID-19 virus leaked from a government lab and infected researchers. As the Canadian journalist Andrew Nikiforuk wrote:

“Faced with the coronavirus threat, Chinese authorities, according to comprehensive reports by the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, suppressed whistleblowers, ignored critical evidence and responded so tardily to the outbreak that they moved to compensate for their failures with a draconian lockdown …”

Frantically covering their tracks, the CCP removed every scientific article and news report from the internet and public record which contradicted their official story.

Aiding and abetting the CCP/Biopharm cover-up were the gatekeepers at Facebook (now heavily invested in Big Pharma), who censored and removed an article by Steve Mosher, published by the NY Post on Feb. 22, 2020, which called the official story into question.

Facebook finally unblocked the NY Post article after it was revealed that Facebook’s objective “fact checker,” Danielle E. Anderson, was in fact previously a paid researcher at the same Wuhan lab whose lax security so alarmed State Department officials.

Trying hard to cover up the fact that they ignored the repeated warnings of the State Department and intelligence officials, the Trump Administration and the entire U.S. Biopharm and Vaccine Establishment are doing their utmost to uphold the official Chinese-scripted story.

Especially troubling to the powers that be is the fact that the criminally negligent Wuhan Lab bat experiments were being funded, at least in part, by Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, along with the Galveston National Laboratory at the University of Texas Medical Branch — even after these types of germ warfare experiments had been banned in the U.S.

Commander-in-Chief Trump himself goes back and forth on the “bat in the market” theory, torn between rousing his populist base by denouncing the “Chinese Virus,” and siding with his good friend, and Corporate America’s most important business partner, Xi Jinping, the Chinese Dictator, who just happens to control not only trillions of dollars in U.S. Treasury Bonds and exports, but the medical equipment, Pharma drugs and lab chemicals that are in such short supply in the U.S.

Congress Needs to Investigate NIAID Mischief

In an April 14, 2020 Instagram post, Robert Kennedy Jr. exposes the complicity of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the supposed “rational voice” of the Trump Administration on COVID-19, in the Wuhan disaster:

“The Daily Mail today reports that it has uncovered documents showing that Anthony Fauci’s NIAID gave $3.7 million to scientists at the Wuhan Lab at the center of Coronavirus leak scrutiny. According to the British paper, ‘the federal grant funded experiments on bats from the caves where the virus is believed to have originated.’

Background: following the 2002-2003 SARS coronavirus outbreak, NIH funded a collaboration by Chinese scientists, U.S. military virologists from the bioweapons lab at Ft. Detrick & NIH scientists from NIAID to prevent future coronavirus outbreaks by studying the evolution of virulent strains from bats in human tissues.

Those efforts included ‘gain of function’ research that used a process called ‘accelerated evolution’ to create COVID Pandemic superbugs: enhanced bat borne COVID mutants more lethal and more transmissible than wild COVID.

Fauci’s studies alarmed scientists around the globe who complained, according a Dec. 2017 NY Times article that ‘these researchers risk creating a monster germ that could escape the lab and seed a pandemic.’

Dr. Mark Lipsitch of the Harvard School of Public Health’s Communicable Disease Center told the Times that Dr. Fauci’s NIAID experiments ‘have given us some modest scientific knowledge and done almost nothing to improve our preparedness for pandemic, and yet risked creating an accidental pandemic.’

In October 2014, following a series of federal laboratory mishaps that narrowly missed releasing these deadly engineered viruses, President Obama ordered the halt to all federal funding for Fauci’s dangerous experiments. It now appears that Dr. Fauci may have dodged the federal restrictions by shifting the research to the military lab in Wuhan. Congress needs to launch an investigation of NIAD’s mischief in China.”

Coronavirus Response Experts Have Shady Backgrounds   

Kennedy also calls out two of the other supposed “health experts” on the Trump team, Robert Redfield and Deborah Birx:

Redfield, Birx & Fauci lead the White House #coronavirus task force. In 1992, two military investigators charged Redfield & Birx with engaging in ‘a systematic pattern of data manipulation, inappropriate statistical analyses & misleading data presentation in an apparent attempt to promote the usefulness of the GP160 AIDS vaccine.’

A subsequent Air Force tribunal on Scientific Fraud and Misconduct agreed that Redfield’s ‘misleading or, possibly, deceptive’ information ‘seriously threatens his credibility as a researcher and has the potential to negatively impact AIDS research funding for military institutions as a whole. His allegedly unethical behavior creates false hope and could result in premature deployment of the vaccine.’

The tribunal recommended investigation by a ‘fully independent outside investigative body.’ Dr. Redfield confessed to D.O.D. interrogators and to the tribunal, that his analyses were faulty and deceptive. He agreed to publicly correct them.

Afterward, he continued making his false claims at 3 subsequent international HIV conferences, & perjured himself in testimony before Congress, swearing that his vaccine cured HIV.

Their gambit worked. Based upon his testimony, Congress appropriated $20 million to the military to support Redfield/Birx’s research project. Public Citizen complained in a 1994 letter to the Congressional Committee’s Henry Waxman that the money caused the Army to kill the investigation & ‘whitewash’ Redfield’s crimes. The fraud propelled Birx & Redfield into stellar careers as health officials. Docs obtained via Tom Paine."

Although the Chinese government and most of the U.S. political establishment continue to support the official “bat in the market” story, the majority of Americans, do not. As reported in the UK’s Sunday Times:

“According to a Pew Research poll, only 43 percent think the virus came about naturally, while a sizeable 29 percent believe it was made in a laboratory.”

Journalism Most Foul

It is frustrating, and indeed alarming, that so few independent journalists, scientists, activists, and public officials have thus far been willing to question the “official story.”

For 30 years now, myself and others have warned about the dangers of genetically engineered foods and crops and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in general, including gene-altered bioweapons, gene drives, and the new CRISPR gene-editing technologies. Now it appears that our worst fears have materialized.

We need a global public inquiry, led by independent scientists, to gather the evidence on what really happened with COVID-19, followed by an International Biowarfare Crimes Tribunal, so that we can bring the Chinese, U.S. and other perpetrators of this pandemic to justice, and prevent this type of disaster from ever happening again.

It’s time to shut down every Biosafety/Biowar lab in the world (including Bayer and Monsanto’s lab) and implement a true global ban on weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), including all atomic, chemical and biological weapons and WMD experimentation. Until we do this, none of us will ever be safe again.

The so-called progressive media in America, with a few exceptions, have up until now failed to investigate the real causes of the COVID-19 pandemic, partly out of ignorance of the machinations and arrogant recklessness of the gene engineers and bio-warfare scientists, partly out of fear of appearing to agree with Trump’s racist rantings, or even worse, being branded a “conspiracy theorist” by Establishment Democrats and mass media outlets.

And speaking of conspiracies and murder most foul, almost everyone seems to have forgotten about the nationwide panic surrounding the post-9/11 2001 anthrax bioterrorist attacks — used to help justify the invasion of Iraq — against liberal members of the media and the U.S. Congress.

Then and now, it was clear that these attacks were carried out not by Arab terrorists, nor a single crazed individual, but by a yet unidentified cabal who engineered and deployed weaponized spores from the U.S. military biowarfare lab at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

But perhaps you think we shouldn’t worry so much, since a blockbuster lineup of anti-COVID vaccines are on the way, funded by the Chinese government, Big Pharma and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, likely including some of the same gene engineers who weaponized COVID-19?

Never mind that Bill Gates, Monsanto, the Gene Giants and Big Pharma appear quite willing to join up with Facebook and Google to implement a 24/7 totalitarian medical surveillance state, with everyone injected with a mandatory and expensive COVID-19 vaccine, while the world’s dictators, corporate criminals and billionaires hunker down in their underground mansions and bunkers.

Never mind that most flu vaccines up until now don’t work that well, especially against constantly mutating viruses like COVID-19, or that they’re routinely laced with aluminum adjuvants and mercury preservatives.

Never mind that perhaps our only real defense against biowarfare is to stop eating Big Ag and Big Food’s poison products, and instead strengthen our health and our immune systems, clean up the world’s air, water and environment, shut down factory farms, stop destroying wildlife habitat and pray that herd immunity eventually stops the spread of COVID-19, since so many of us have already been infected, but are asymptomatic.

In the meantime, please don’t believe everything you read in the corporate mass media, Facebook or even the progressive press. Stay in touch with and support those of us determined to seek and defend the truth, fight for freedom and justice, and organize for a regenerative future and climate.

Remember to eat healthy, organic, regenerative foods, take your immune-boosting supplements, get as much exercise, fresh air and sunshine as possible, wash your hands frequently, stay safe, and stay out of the way of those most vulnerable. Please sign our petition demanding an end to genetic engineering of viruses.



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With financial experts predicting the COVID-19 pandemic response will result in an economic crash worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s,1 it’s no wonder that depression and suicide statistics are ticking upward.

According to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll,2 between March 25 and March 30, 45% of respondents said the pandemic has disrupted their lives “a lot,” with women (49%) being disproportionally affected than men (40%); 27% say their lives have been impacted to “some” degree.

Most also say there’s “no end in sight,” and 74% of respondents believe “the worst is yet to come.” Only 13% believe the height of the pandemic has already passed.

Fifty-nine percent worry their investments will be negatively impacted for a long time, and 52% worry they will lose their job. A nearly identical number — 53% — worry they or a family member will contract COVID-19.

Already, 39% of adults report having either lost their job or lost income due to working fewer hours. A clear majority — 85% — worry local businesses will permanently close due to loss of revenue.

Compared to the week of March 11 through 15, a larger proportion of Americans also reported negative mental health impacts the week of March 25 through 30 — 45% compared to 32% the week before.

kff health tracking poll

Antidepressant Use Skyrockets

According to an April 16, 2020, report3,4,5 by Express Scripts, an employer-based pharmacy benefit management company, prescriptions for anti-anxiety rose 34.1% between mid-February and mid-March, by which time stay-at-home orders had been issued for many parts of the U.S.

Combined, drugs for anxiety, depression and insomnia rose by 21%. Mirroring poll results, far more women have turned to antidepressants than men, with women increasing use by 40% compared to men, who had a 22.7% rise in prescriptions.6 As reported by Newsweek:7

“Anxiety is the most common type of mental illnesses in the country, according to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, with over 40 million adults suffering from some form of disorder.

Although medication can be an effective treatment, some of the drugs used can come with serious side effects and a potential for abuse and addiction. Insomnia drugs share many of the same caveats.

[Senior vice president of Express Scripts, Dr. Glen] Stettin insisted that a majority of people experiencing anxiety or insomnia issues during the pandemic should first seek drug-free treatments like cognitive behavioral therapy or practicing good sleep. ‘If you think about anxiety and you think about sleep issues, for most people medicine is not the answer,’ said Stettin.”

Suicide Rates Are Starting to Spike

As one would expect, we are also starting to see a rise in suicides. Suicide statistics reliably follow economic trends, with financial downturns triggering higher rates of depression and despair. According to a March 25, 2020, report by The Sacramento Bee:8

“FirstLink, a company that answers both 211 helplines and the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline for North Dakota and parts of Minnesota said this week that call volume in some of its call centers is up 300%.”

According to a spokeswoman for the national Crisis Text Line, text conversations were double that of the normal volume during the week of March 15.9 It seems clear the current pandemic has delivered a perfect storm of challenges that is sure to bring many to a breaking point.

According to reports by The Federalist10 and Red State,11 suicides exceeded COVID-19 deaths in Tennessee the week of April 20. The Regional Forensic Center in Tennessee was investigating nine suicides as of March 27, eight of which took place in Knox County — one of the few areas in Tennessee where nonessential businesses were ordered to close.

The suicides, which occurred within a 48-hour period, account for 10% of the 2019 suicide rate for the region.12 Meanwhile, only six patients died from COVID-19 in the entire state that week. In a statement, Knoxville, Tennessee, Mayor Glenn Jacobs said:13

“That number is completely shocking and makes me wonder if what we are doing now is really the best approach. We have to determine how we can respond to COVID-19 in a way that keeps our economy intact, keeps people employed and empowers them with a feeling of hope and optimism — not desperation and despair.”

Similar warning signs are starting to be noted in other states as well, including Oregon. In a March 24 local news report,14 Portland police chief Jami Resch said suicide threats or attempts are 41% higher now than this time last year, and there’s been a 23% increase since the 10 days before a state of emergency was declared in Portland.

Carefully Evaluate Your Coping Strategy

The fact that so many are turning to antidepressants at this time is unfortunate, as these drugs have repeatedly been shown to be ineffective at best, and can actually make matters worse. Antidepressants come with a long list of potential side effects, which include but are not limited to:15,16

  • Worsening depression, self-harm, violence and suicide
  • Increased risk of developing Type 2 diabetes,17 even after adjusting for risk factors such as body mass index18
  • An increased risk for heart attack19 and stroke20
  • An increased risk of dementia21
  • Depletion of various nutrients, including coenzyme Q10 and vitamin B12 — in the case of tricyclic antidepressants — which are needed for proper mitochondrial function. SSRIs have been linked to iodine and folate depletion22

In a March 2019 Full Measure report (below), award-winning investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson interviewed psychiatrist and director of the International Center for Patient-Oriented Psychiatry, Dr. Peter Breggin. I interviewed Breggin earlier this year but have not yet released his fascinating video because of the pandemic.

He is known to many as “the conscience of psychiatry,” as he was instrumental in preventing the return of lobotomy as a psychiatric treatment in the early 1970s. Breggin is also the author of “Medication Madness,” in which he details the many hazards of psychiatric drugs.

When asked what he thinks people don’t know about psychiatric treatment, and ought to, Breggin responds, “They don’t know that all psychiatric drugs are neurotoxins. They don't know that they aren't correcting biochemical imbalances, they are causing biochemical imbalances.”

In Breggin’s view, “There is no promising medical treatment and probably there never can be,” for the simple reason that depression is primarily rooted in the complexity of human emotions and experiences.

He believes one needs to avoid numbing and escapist behaviors and implement strategies to support healthy brain function instead, in order to “be able to deal with your issues.”

As noted by Breggin, studies23,24,25,26,27,28 have repeatedly shown antidepressants work no better than placebo for mild to moderate depression. Two meta-analyses29,30 have also demonstrated that when both published and unpublished trials are included, the placebo response accounts for a whopping 82% of the beneficial response to antidepressants.

Most recently, a 2017 systematic review31 with meta-analysis and trial sequential analysis of 131 placebo-controlled studies found that “all trials were at high risk of bias and the clinical significance seems questionable. SSRIs significantly increase the risk of both serious and non-serious adverse events.

The potential small beneficial effects seem to be outweighed by harmful effects.” None of the trials, even when reporting a positive result, met the threshold for clinical significance of 3 points on the depression score.

Are You Just Scared or Living in Fear?

As explained in my recent article, “You Can Control Fear,” there’s a difference between being scared and being fearful. Right now, the whole world is holding its proverbial breath in anticipation for what might come next. It’s easy to feel fearful, considering the daily barrage of bad news.

However, understanding the difference between being scared and living in fear can be very helpful, as fear has a paralyzing effect while being scared primarily heightens alertness.

Novel threats raise a person's level of anxiety to a greater degree than familiar threats, even when they have the same or similar consequences. This is thought to be related to activity in your amygdala, which processes emotions.

The authors of a 2013 study32 found that activity in the amygdala increased when participants were shown images of unfamiliar flowers and snakes, while images of familiar natural objects did not. Ryan Holiday, author of 10 books, including “The Daily Stoic” and “The Obstacle Is the Way,” writes:33

“Being afraid? That’s not fight or flight. That’s paralysis. That only makes things worse. Especially right now. Especially in a world that requires solutions to the many problems we face. They’re certainly not going to solve themselves. And inaction (or the wrong action) may make them worse, it might put you in even more danger. An inability to learn, adapt, to embrace change will too.”

Knowledge and Preparation Boost Courage

While fleeting feelings of concern are expected when faced with new experiences, when such feelings are allowed to continuously dominate, paralysis can set in. To thrive in times of great uncertainty and fear, Holiday stresses the importance of training, education and preparation, which are the foundation of courage.34

The difference between being fearful and being scared is that fear paralyzes your ability to evaluate what's happening and make decisions. But preparation and information help you to make decisions and act, even when you're scared. This is the definition of courage — taking action despite being scared.

Preparation begins with understanding the long-term consequences of fear and panic to your health — and realizing these health conditions are neither inevitable nor necessary to your survival.

There are several strategies you can use to reduce fear and find your courage. It is important to begin with the understanding that feelings do not have a life of their own. In other words, feelings are generated. Your feelings change depending upon your circumstances and your thoughts.

Watching a funny movie may trigger laughter and feelings of happiness. Watching a sad movie brings many to tears. Reading the headlines during an epidemic or pandemic can trigger fear. There’s an unknown factor in the situation. You may not have control over the news media, but you do have control over your thoughts and your health. In other words, your thoughts engender feelings.

Consider a Media Diet While You Prepare for the Future

One of the strategies you can use to reduce fear is to change the way you think about things. Yes, we’re dealing with many unknowns right now, but focusing on planning and preparation rather than getting locked into panic mode can go a long way toward safeguarding your mental health. Take the safety precautions you can take, and limit your exposure to the news.

Psychology Today35 recommends reducing anxiety by consuming positive news stories while keeping up with what’s going in the world. Also do your best to apply some critical thinking when reading the news. It’s important to pay careful attention to “vague or loaded terms, cited statistics, and unstated assumptions.” In other words, don’t accept at face value what’s in the news but, rather, consider the information and ask questions about what you’re being told.

Other stress- and depression-reducing techniques include getting enough exercise, eating whole foods, limiting sugar and getting quality sleep. When you’re tired and your body doesn’t have adequate nutrition to function, you’re more apt to fall into the trap of fear-based thinking. Additional treatment strategies for depression can be found in “What Does the Best Evidence Say About Antidepressants?

The Emotional Freedom Techniques

A strategy that can provide more immediate results is the use of Emotional Freedom Techniques, or EFT. In the video above, Julie Schiffman demonstrates a tapping strategy to relieve anxiety and other challenging emotions brought on by news and uncertainty about this pandemic and/or self-quarantining.

If you aren’t familiar with EFT you’ll find a library of demonstrations at “Basic Steps to Your Emotional Freedom.”

The NET FAST Technique

Another alternative is the Neuro-Emotional Technique’s First Aid Stress Tool, or NET FAST, demonstrated in the video above. Firstaidstresstool.com also provides an excellent printable summary with visuals of the technique,36 which even a young child can do. Here is a summary of the FAST procedure:

  1. While thinking about an issue that is bothering you, place your right wrist, palm up, into your left hand. Place three fingers of your left hand onto the area of your right wrist where you can feel your pulse.
  2. Place your open right hand on your forehead. Gently breathe in and out several times while concentrating on feeling the issue that bothers you.
  3. Switch hands and repeat steps 1 and 2.

Suicide Prevention Resources

Last but not least, if you feel depressed, anxious or creeping despair, don’t hesitate to reach out to family, friends or any of the available suicide prevention services:

  • The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (U.S.) — Call 1-800-273-TALK (8255)
  • Crisis Text Line — Text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor
  • Lifeline Crisis Chat — Chat online with a specialist who can provide emotional support, crisis intervention and suicide prevention services at www.crisischat.org


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New images reveal the earliest impairments to nonhuman primate fetal brain development due to alcohol ingested by the mother, in a study involving rhesus macaques. Magnetic resonance imaging showed impairments to brain growth during the third trimester of pregnancy, even though the fetus was exposed to alcohol only during the first trimester.

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A recent six-year study, the longest study ever done on video game addiction, found that about 90% of gamers do not play in a way that is harmful or causes negative long-term consequences. A significant minority, though, can become truly addicted to video games and as a result can suffer mentally, socially and behaviorally.

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Cancer cells and leukocytes are able to move through tissue and organs quickly. However, it is not fully understood how these mobile cells manage to travel and survive far away from their place of origin. Scientists have now revealed a general biomechanical principle of cell migration that allows cells to move freely, especially in rough terrain.

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Fatty food may feel like a friend during these troubled times, but new research suggests that eating just one meal high in saturated fat can hinder our ability to concentrate -- not great news for people whose diets have gone south while they're working at home during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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One factor contributing to the development of pancreatitis lies in mutations within a cell membrane ion channel that is characterized by its specific permeability for calcium ions. These insights could lead to the development of new therapeutic agents for treating and preventing chronic pancreatitis.

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Psychopathy is widely recognized as a risk factor for violent behavior, but many psychopathic individuals refrain from antisocial or criminal acts. Understanding what leads these psychopaths to be 'successful' has been a mystery. A new study conducted by researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University sheds light on the mechanisms underlying the formation of this 'successful' phenotype.

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Scientists have identified a new key element of the multi-component machinery responsible for sorting out the nature and severity of the pathogen challenge. The new protein, named TASL, is indispensable for the signaling of so-called Toll-like receptors (TLR) in the endosomes leading to activation of the gene-activator IRF5 in certain immune cells.

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Newly discovered gene variant in Peruvian populations is powerfully linked with height. Five percent of Peruvians carry the variant, which originates exclusively from Native American populations. The variant occurs on a gene that, when mutated, causes Marfan syndrome, a condition marked by connective tissue abnormalities, including serious cardiovascular problems. The newly discovered variant is not associated with disease and may confer adaptive evolutionary advantage to populations that carry it.

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Scientists have demonstrated the promise of applying magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to predict the efficacy of using human neural stem cells to treat a brain injury -- a first-ever 'biomarker' for regenerative medicine that could help personalize stem cell treatments for neurological disorders and improve efficacy.

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It’s no accident that most people tend to sleep at night and are awake during the day. Our sleep-wake cycle is determined by our circadian rhythm, the body’s internal clock. Like old-time clocks, this internal clock needs to be reset every day, and is adjusted by first exposure to light in the morning.

How does circadian rhythm work?

Our circadian rhythms are controlled by multiple genes and are responsible for a variety of important functions, including daily fluctuations in wakefulness, body temperature, metabolism, digestion, and hunger. Circadian rhythm also controls memory consolidation (the formation of long-term memories occurs during sleep); the timing of hormone secretion (for example, the hormones controlling body growth work mostly at night); and body healing.

While the circadian sleep phase typically occurs at night, there are a range of times during which the sleep phase can occur, with some people programmed to sleep from early evening to early morning (known as morning larks), while others stay up late and sleep late (known as night owls). In addition to determining the timing of their sleep, a person’s circadian tendency can also affect their choice of emotional coping skills, such as assertiveness or rationalization, and their predisposition to psychological disorders.

How does your circadian rhythm impact your mood?

An irregular circadian rhythm can have a negative effect on a person’s ability to sleep and function properly, and can result in a number of health problems, including mood disorders such as depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, and seasonal affective disorder.

A recent study suggested that the night-owl type might have a greater predisposition to psychological disturbances. The authors found that the different circadian types were likely to have different coping styles to emotional stressors, and the ones adopted by the morning larks seemed to result in better outcomes and fewer psychological problems. This was a correlational study, so the reason for adopting different styles wasn’t explained, but this study emphasizes the great impact circadian rhythms have on health and functioning.

Depression and circadian rhythm

Most of the evidence on the relationship between mood problems and circadian rhythm comes from studies of shift workers, whose sleep periods are out of sync with their circadian rhythm. Multiple studies show an increased prevalence of depression in night-shift workers. One meta-analysis showed that night-shift workers are 40% more likely to develop depression than daytime workers. Conversely, circadian rhythm disturbances are common in people with depression, who often have changes in the pattern of their sleep, their hormone rhythms, and body temperature rhythms.

Symptoms of depression may also have a circadian rhythm, as some people experience more severe symptoms in the morning. The severity of a person’s depression correlates with the degree of misalignment of the circadian and sleep cycles.

Many successful treatments of depression, including bright light therapy, wake therapy, and interpersonal and social rhythm therapy, also directly affect circadian rhythms. (For the impact of circadian rhythm on the occurrence and treatment of depression related to bipolar disorder, please see this blog post on light therapy for bipolar disorder.)

Anxiety and circadian rhythm

Misalignment of the circadian rhythm may also provoke anxiety. Shift work results in a sleep disorder when your nighttime work shifts affect your ability to fall asleep and stay asleep, causing you to have excessive sleepiness during the day that in turn results in distress and affects your ability to function normally. Nurses with shift work disorder have increased anxiety scores on questionnaires. In a study on jet lag, in which travel changes the time of the external environment so that it is no longer synchronized with the internal clock and disrupts sleep, travelers had elevated anxiety and depression scores.

Seasonal affective disorder and circadian rhythm

In seasonal affective disorder, people feel down and depressed in the winter months. Researchers believe this is due to changes in circadian rhythms as a result of seasonal changes in the length of daylight. People with seasonal affective disorder feel better using artificial morning light to realign their circadian rhythm with their sleep-wake cycle.

What can I do to alter my circadian type?

There is no way to change your circadian type since it is genetically determined, though there is some natural change that occurs during your lifespan. For example, our circadian sleep phase tends to shift later during adolescence (more owls) and advances earlier as we age (more like the lark).

If you find that your circadian sleep phase is out of sync with your desired schedule, you can either shift your social life to match your circadian rhythm, or try to shift your circadian rhythm to match your social life. It may be easier to try to shift your work and social life to your circadian rhythm: an example would be a person who has a delayed circadian rhythm and likes to sleep late and wake up late switching from a job with a 7 AM start time to a job which allows him or her to start working later — around 10 AM. The other option would be talking to a sleep physician and doing ongoing work to try to shift your circadian rhythm to match your work and social life to an earlier wakeup time.

In general, the best way to improve your mood is to get a good night’s sleep by matching your circadian rhythm to your sleep-wake cycle. Exposure to light in the morning helps synchronize the clock. Exposure to bright light at night, including bright artificial lights and screen time on laptops, tablets, and phones, can cause disruption in circadian rhythm and may contribute to worsening mood and negative consequences for health.

Tips to improve your sleep and mood

  • Get a full night’s sleep. Most adults need at least seven to nine hours.
  • Get up at the same time each day, seven days a week. A regular wake time in the morning leads to regular times of sleep onset, and helps align your circadian rhythm with your sleep-wake cycle.
  • Avoid screen time and bright lights at least 60 to 90 minutes before bedtime. Try activities like reading a book in dim light, listening to audiobooks, guided meditation or mindfulness talks, and soothing music.

The post Why your sleep and wake cycles affect your mood appeared first on Harvard Health Blog.



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New research describes the structure and composition of supramolecular attack particles (SMAPs) and their role in killing targeted cells. Identified as having a core of cytotoxic proteins surrounded by a glycoprotein shell the SMAPs are released by killer T cells and can be left in the environment like a landmine to await and destroy infected and cancerous cells.

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A popular theory in neuroscience called predictive coding proposes that the brain produces all the time expectations that are compared with incoming information. Errors arising from differences between actual input and prediction are then iteratively minimized along a hierarchical processing scheme. It is assumed that such stepwise iteration leads to updating of brain predictions so that internal prediction errors are finally explained away.

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