From 1973 to 2011, men experienced a 50% to 60% decline in sperm counts, according to a 2017 study by Shanna Swan, Ph.D., an environmental and reproductive epidemiologist at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, and colleagues.1
For more than two decades, Swan has been warning of an impending fertility crisis, one that’s often blamed on lifestyle or the choice to delay childbearing but which she says is being driven by environmental chemicals.
“I am not saying other factors aren’t involved. But I am saying chemicals play a major causal role,” she told The Guardian.2
Her book, “Count Down: How Our Modern World Is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male and Female Reproductive Development, and Imperiling the Future of the Human Race,” goes into detail about how the modern world is not only threatening sperm counts but also altering reproductive development in males and females,3 and in so doing “imperiling the future of the human race.”4
Infertile World: By 2045, Sperm Counts Could Be Zero
According to Swan, if the curve of declining sperm counts from the 2017 study continues, by 2045 the median sperm count will be zero. “It is speculative to extrapolate, but there is also no evidence that it is tapering off. This means that most couples may have to use assisted reproduction,” she said.5
One reason why Swan believes environmental chemicals are to blame is that her research has shown younger women have experienced greater declines in the ability to have children than older women.6,7 This suggests that it’s not only aging or choosing to put off starting a family until later in life that’s involved. Miscarriage rates have also been on the rise, increasing at a relative rate of 2% per year from 1990 to 2011.8
“Count Down” brings some disturbing findings into the spotlight, like the fact that a significant part of the global population may not be able to reproduce without technological assistance come 2050.9 And, the book suggests, men today have about half the number of sperm compared to their grandfathers.
“In some parts of the world, the average twenty-something woman today is less fertile than her grandmother was at 35,” Swan wrote in her book. “The current state of reproductive affairs can’t continue much longer without threatening human survival … It’s a global existential crisis.”10
Environmental Chemicals Wreaking Havoc With Hormones
Environmental chemicals that interfere with hormones — known as hormone disrupters — are at the crux of the problem. The worst chemicals, Swan told The Guardian, are “those that can interfere with or mimic the body’s sex hormones – such as testosterone and estrogen – because these make reproduction possible. They can make the body think it has enough of a particular hormone and it doesn’t need to make any more, so production goes down.”11
Chemical exposure during pregnancy has been found to affect both masculinization and long-term fertility in males. In the wild, fish, frogs and reptiles are also increasingly being born with both ovaries and testes.12
Research published in PLOS Genetics13 also found that exposing male mice to ethinyl estradiol, a synthetic sex hormone found in birth control pills, causes developmental problems in the reproductive tract, thereby lowering sperm counts (men may be exposed to birth control pills through contaminated water and other sources).
Part of the problem is that hormone-disrupting chemicals are ubiquitous and are found in everything from food, drinking water and household goods to personal care products, cleaning products, nonstick cookware and plastics.
Much of the damage occurs in early pregnancy during crucial developmental windows, when the fetus is first forming and cells are rapidly dividing. Exposure then continues with accumulating exposures throughout life, and, worse still, the damage that occurs can be passed on to future generations.
“A female fetus, in utero,” Swan explained, “is growing the eggs that she will use to have her own children. These chemicals can make their way to those germ cells, too.”14 The PLOS Genetics study also demonstrated generational effects of hormone-disrupting chemicals, with effects worsening with each subsequent generation until, by the third generations, some of the animals could not produce any sperm.15
The 1% Effect
An alarming synergy is occurring as well, which “Count Down” dubs “the 1% effect,” because sperm count, testosterone and fertility are dropping, and testicular cancer and miscarriage are rising, all at about 1% per year.16 Erectile dysfunction and the rate of gestational surrogacy are also increasing by about 1% a year, while the global total fertility rate dropped by close to 1% from 1960 to 2018.17
All of these concerning reproductive changes occurring in unison are not a coincidence, according to Swan. “They’re just too synchronous for that to be possible,” she wrote in Scientific American.18 Male babies may be particularly vulnerable to toxic exposures that occur during the reproductive programing window in early pregnancy.
Phthalates, chemicals used to make plastic soft, are known to lower testosterone and women’s exposure to phthalates during pregnancy is linked to male babies’ anogenital distance (AGD) — the distance from the anus to the base of the penis — with higher exposure associated with shortened AGD.19 Later in life, shorter AGD is linked with a smaller penis20 and poorer semen quality, such that Swan believes AGD at birth is predictive of adult reproductive function.21
Exposure to hormone-disrupting chemicals in utero also increases the risk that male babies will be born with undescended testicles or a malformed penis, both of which increase the risk of low sperm count and testicular cancer in later life.22
Along with the dropping sperm counts, changes in sexual development pose a threat to human survival, according to Swan, who also notes that human beings already meet three of the five criteria for what makes a species endangered.23
Phthalates Among the Worst Hormone-Disrupting Chemicals
Swan cites phthalates, bisphenol A (BPA) and flame retardants as among the worst chemicals for reproductive health. Regarding phthalates, she told The Guardian:24
“They are in everybody and we are probably primarily exposed through food as we use soft plastic in food manufacture, processing and packaging. They lower testosterone and so have the strongest influences on the male side, for example diminishing sperm count, though they are bad for women, too, shown to decrease libido and increase risk of early puberty, premature ovarian failure, miscarriage and premature birth.”
An estimated 8.4 million metric tons of plasticizers, including phthalates, are used worldwide each year,25 with phthalate production amounting to about 4.9 million metric tons annually.26 The Norwegian Institute of Public Health found that 90% of those tested from 2016 to 2017 had eight different plasticizers in their urine.27
Aside from their risks to reproductive health, phthalates can also impair brain development, increasing children’s risk of learning, attention and behavioral disorders. In one example, children born to mothers that were in the highest quintile of urinary phthalate levels (specifically, DEHP metabolites) during the second trimester of pregnancy were nearly three times more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD compared to children born to mothers in the lowest quintile.28
Prenatal exposure to phthalates, especially metabolites of DBP and DEHP, has also been linked to a range of additional problem behaviors such as an increased likelihood of delinquent behaviors and more aggressive behaviors,29 along with reductions in child perceptual reasoning, lowered IQ by seven points, anxiety and poorer working memory.30
The widespread use of face masks could be accelerating the problem, as research accumulates that microplastics in masks, which may contain phthalates, are ending up discarded in the environment31 and may be inhaled by the wearer.32
BPA, Atrazine and Flame Retardants Also Problematic
BPA is another prevalent hormone-disrupting chemical used to harden plastics, line metal cans and make receipts. This toxic chemical has been found to change the timing of puberty, reduce fertility, increase body fat and affect the nervous and immune systems.33
“It is estrogen mimicking and so is a particularly bad actor on the female side, increasing risks of fertility challenges,” Swan told The Guardian, “but likewise it can affect men. Men occupationally exposed to BPA have shown decreased sperm quality, reduced libido and higher rates of erectile dysfunction.”34
The pesticide atrazine is another culprit. Early research by Tyrone Hayes, Ph.D., an integrative biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, hypothesized that atrazine turned on an enzyme (aromatase) that caused testosterone to be converted into estrogen.35 If you’re a male, this means that you won’t make sperm, but you will make estrogen, even though you shouldn’t.
Flame retardants are also notorious and ubiquitous toxins that have been linked to hormone-disrupting effects36 with serious repercussions for fertility, reproductive health and brain development.
Animals Grown in Mechanical Womb
Scientists are already working on how to grow life outside of a human womb and, for the first time, grew a mouse embryo in a mechanical womb for about half of a typical gestational term — a time period equal to a human embryo at 5 weeks.37
Growing mouse embryos “ex utero,” the researchers said, is a valuable tool to investigate embryonic development in detail,38 but it comes with serious ethical questions, including might humans be next?39
The answer is yes, as lead researcher Jacob Hanna, a developmental biologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science, already told MIT Technology Review, “This sets the stage for other species. I hope that it will allow scientists to grow human embryos until Week 5.”40
For those interested in protecting their own fertility — and that of future generations — as much as possible, avoiding hormone-disrupting chemicals is essential. Toward this end, Swan recommends some simple solutions, like eating unprocessed foods that you cook yourself as much as possible, as this will reduce your exposure to plastic food packaging. She also advises:41
“[W]hen cooking, don’t use Teflon or anything coated and don’t microwave in plastic. For personal care and household products use a minimum of simple products and try to avoid those that are scented; phthalates are added to hold scent.”
In a March 28, 2021, interview with Fox News’ Steve Hilton, former Clinton adviser and author Naomi Wolf warned that mandatory COVID-19 passports will spell the “end of human liberty in the West”:1,2
“‘Vaccine passport’ sounds like a fine thing if you don’t understand what those platforms can do,” she said. “I’m [the] CEO of a tech company, I understand what these platforms can do. It is not about the vaccine, it’s not about the virus, it’s about your data.
Once this rolls out, you don’t have a choice about being part of the system. What people have to understand is that any other functionality can be loaded onto that platform with no problem at all. It can be merged with your Paypal account, with your digital currency.
Microsoft is already talking about merging it with payment plans. Your network can be sucked up. It geolocates you everywhere you go. Your credit history can be included. All of your medical and health history can be included.
This has already happened in Israel, and six months later, we’re hearing from activists that it’s a two-tiered society and that basically, activists are ostracized and surveilled continually. It is the end of civil society, and they are trying to roll it out around the world.
It is absolutely so much more than a vaccine pass … I cannot stress enough that it has the power to turn off your life, or to turn on your life, to let you engage in society or be marginalized.”
The Forgotten History of IBM
Wolf also points out the horrific history of IBM,3 whose Digital Health Pass will tie our biometric IDs to our health data through its smartphone app. This “health pass” will then grant or deny us access to public spaces and events, based on our vaccination status.
This is essentially the modern-day version of the punch card system — the forerunner to digital entry on computers — that IBM developed for the Nazi regime, which allowed them to create a census of Jews and other undesirables, who could then be identified, tracked and sorted into groups slated for incarceration or extermination.
In no uncertain terms, IBM’s technology facilitated the Third Reich’s genocide of the Jewish nation, and IBM leadership aided and abetted the Nazi’s reign of terror with full knowledge of what it was doing.
While it’s hard to understand how a company playing such an integral role in genocide was allowed to survive past the end of the war, it’s even harder to fathom why it would be entrusted to create the same kind of system decades later.
You don’t need a tinfoil hat to wonder whether IBM might have been purposely chosen for the task of creating a “health pass” system, for the simple reason that the purpose of the system itself is near-identical to that deployed in Nazi Germany. IBM also has a relationship with the CIA,4 which has a history of mind control abuses and assassination programs.5
IBM Played Strategic Role in the Holocaust
IBM’s connection to the Third Reich is no secret, and IBM has never denied even the most incriminating details of its involvement in the holocaust. In 2001, Edwin Black, a historian and investigative author, published the book “IBM and the Holocaust,”6 in which he detailed the company’s pivotal role in this criminal tragedy.
The book was based on documentation obtained from archives in seven different countries. In 2012, Black obtained another cache of correspondence that revealed just how much IBM knew about what was going on in the Nazi concentration camps. In a February 2012 article in HuffPost, Black wrote:7
“Newly-released documents expose more explicitly the details of IBM’s pivotal role in the Holocaust — all six phases: identification, expulsion from society, confiscation, ghettoization, deportation, and even extermination.
Moreover, the documents portray with crystal clarity the personal involvement and micro-management of IBM president Thomas J. Watson in the company’s co-planning and co-organizing of Hitler’s campaign to destroy the Jews …”
The fact that Watson received a 1% commission on all business profits made from the company’s business with the Nazis may help explain his eagerness to take on such a hands-on role in this gruesome business. Black continues:
“The new ‘expanded edition’ [of ‘IBM and the Holocaust’] contains 32 pages of never-before-published internal IBM correspondence, State Department and Justice Department memos, and concentration camp documents that graphically chronicle IBM’s actions and what they knew during the 12-year Hitler regime …
Among the newly-released documents and archival materials are secret 1941 correspondence setting up the Dutch subsidiary of IBM to work in tandem with the Nazis, company President Thomas Watson’s personal approval for the 1939 release of special IBM alphabetizing machines to help organize … the deportation of Polish Jews, as well as the IBM Concentration Camp Codes including IBM’s code for death by Gas Chamber.
Among the newly published photos of the punch cards is the one developed for the statistician who reported directly to Himmler and Eichmann.”
IBM Guilty of Genocide
As explained by Black, the population census and identification of Jews were managed by IBM directly, first at its New York headquarter, and later through subsidiaries in Germany, Poland, Holland, France, Switzerland and other European countries. IBM headquarters also directed the activities of a Dutch subsidiary charged with identifying and liquidating Jews in Holland.
“Particularly powerful are the newly-released copies of the IBM concentration camp codes,” Black writes.8“IBM maintained a customer site … in virtually every concentration camp to sort or process punch cards and track prisoners. The codes show IBM’s numerical designation for various camps …
Various prisoner types were reduced to IBM numbers, with 3 signifying homosexual, 9 for anti-social, and 12 for Gypsy. The IBM number 8 designated a Jew. Inmate death was also reduced to an IBM digit: 3 represented death by natural causes, 4 by execution, 5 by suicide, and code 6 designated ‘special treatment’ in gas chambers.
IBM engineers had to create Hollerith codes to differentiate between a Jew who had been worked to death and one who had been gassed, then print the cards, configure the machines, train the staff, and continuously maintain the fragile systems every two weeks on site in the concentration camps.”
A particularly noteworthy memo came from the U.S. Justice Department, which post-war launched a federal investigation into IBM’s relationship with the Hitler regime. The memo, written by Howard J. Carter, the chief investigator of the Economic Warfare Section to his superiors, read:
“What Hitler has done to us through his economic warfare, one of our own American corporations has also done ... Hence IBM is in a class with the Nazis … The entire world citizenry is hampered by an international monster.”
Black adds:9
“It is important to remember that Thomas Watson and his corporate behemoth were guilty of genocide. The Treaty on Genocide, Article 2, defines genocide as ‘acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group.’
In Article 3, the treaty states that among the ‘acts [that] shall be punishable,’ are the ones in subsection (e), that is ‘complicity in genocide.’
As for who shall be punished, the Treaty specifies the perpetrators in Article 4: ‘Persons committing genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in Article 3 shall be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials, or private individuals.’ International Business Machines, and its president Thomas J. Watson, committed genocide by any standard.”
Massively Organized Information as a Means of Social Control
As noted in Black’s introduction to his book, “IBM and the Holocaust,”10 at the time of Hitler’s rise to power, the world was unaware that “massively organized information” had “emerged to become a means of social control, a weapon of war, and a roadmap for group destruction.” Today, we cannot be accused of not understanding that massive data collection can be and is being used to manipulate societies across the globe.
Therefore, it would be insanely naïve to think that digital vaccine certificates, tied to our biometric IDs, banking, credit histories and health data would not end up being used as a tool for social control and a weapon for group destruction.
As Black points out, were it not for IBM and its information technology, Hitler, like other tyrants before him, would not have been nearly as successful in his plan to eradicate the Jews. Hitler also received help from other unexpected quarters:
“In the upside-down world of the Holocaust, dignified professionals were Hitler's advance troops. Police officials disregarded their duty in favor of protecting villains and persecuting victims.
Lawyers perverted concepts of justice to create anti-Jewish laws. Doctors defiled the art of medicine to perpetrate ghastly experiments and even choose who was healthy enough to be worked to death — and who could be cost-effectively sent to the gas chamber,” Black writes.11
“Scientists and engineers debased their higher calling to devise the instruments and rationales of destruction. And statisticians used their little known but powerful discipline to identify the victims, project and rationalize the benefits of their destruction, organize their persecution, and even audit the efficiency of genocide.”
Will You Allow Yourself To Be Turned Into a Monster?
Edmund Burke once said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”12 Put another way, good people need to gather their wherewithal and refuse to follow instructions they suspect to be harmful or know will lead to evil ends.
Unfortunately, as demonstrated in the 1962 Milgram Experiment, featured in “Will You Obey the Criminal Authoritarians?” most people simply follow orders when given by a perceived authority. “I was just following orders” was indeed a hallmark excuse during the Nuremberg Trials that followed the end of World War II.
That excuse won’t suffice this time around, so just about everyone, at this point, probably need to engage in some preemptive internal reflection to orient their ethical compass in preparation for what might come next.
I have no doubt that the months and years ahead will test your ethics and humanity, and having a clear picture of recent history — how the greatest genocide in modern history was actually implemented and carried out using information technology — can be a valuable guide that can help you sidestep serious mistakes in judgment.
The Central Role of Information Technology in the Holocaust
In his book introduction, Black summarizes the key role of IBM’s information technology in the holocaust:13
“When Hitler came to power, a central Nazi goal was to identify and destroy Germany's 600,000 Jews. To Nazis, Jews were not just those who practiced Judaism, but those of Jewish blood, regardless of their assimilation, intermarriage, religious activity, or even conversion to Christianity.
Only after Jews were identified could they be targeted for asset confiscation, ghettoization, deportation, and ultimately extermination. To search generations of communal, church, and governmental records all across Germany — and later throughout Europe — was a cross-indexing task so monumental, it called for a computer. But in 1933, no computer existed.
When the Reich needed to mount a systematic campaign of Jewish economic disenfranchisement and later began the massive movement of European Jews out of their homes and into ghettos, once again, the task was so prodigious it called for a computer. But in 1933, no computer existed.
When the Final Solution sought to efficiently transport Jews out of European ghettos along railroad lines and into death camps, with timing so precise the victims were able to walk right out of the boxcar and into a waiting gas chamber, the coordination was so complex a task, this too called for a computer. But in 1933, no computer existed.
However, another invention did exist: the IBM punch card and card sorting system — a precursor to the computer. IBM, primarily through its German subsidiary, made Hitler's program of Jewish destruction a technologic mission the company pursued with chilling success.
IBM Germany, using its own staff and equipment, designed, executed, and supplied the indispensable technologic assistance Hitler's Third Reich needed to accomplish what had never been done before — the automation of human destruction …
I was haunted by a question whose answer has long eluded historians. The Germans always had the lists of Jewish names. Suddenly, a squadron of grim-faced SS would burst into a city square and post a notice demanding those listed assemble the next day at the train station for deportation to the East. But how did the Nazis get the lists? For decades, no one has known. Few have asked.
The answer: IBM Germany's census operations and similar advanced people counting and registration technologies. IBM was founded in 1898 by German inventor Herman Hollerith as a census tabulating company. Census was its business. But when IBM Germany formed its philosophical and technologic alliance with Nazi Germany, census and registration took on a new mission.
IBM Germany invented the racial census — listing not just religious affiliation, but bloodline going back generations. This was the Nazi data lust. Not just to count the Jews — but to identify them.
People and asset registration was only one of the many uses Nazi Germany found for high-speed data sorters. Food allocation was organized around databases, allowing Germany to starve the Jews.
Slave labor was identified, tracked, and managed largely through punch cards. Punch cards even made the trains run on time and cataloged their human cargo. German Railway … dealt directly with senior management in Berlin. Dehomag maintained punch card installations at train depots across Germany, and eventually across all Europe.”
Using a mere 2,000 precomputer automatic tabulators, the Third Reich was able to efficiently identify, sort, track and catch Jews of every stripe in multiple countries. Now fast-forward to today, where virtually every person on the planet has had their personal data siphoned off, hour by hour, day by day, year by year.
Decades’ worth of data are catalogued and cross-tabulated in ways we probably cannot even imagine. How efficient do you reckon a modern-day holocaust by would-be dictators might be, using the technologies of today? I’ll leave that for you to ponder.
IG Farben, Another Genocide Enabler
So far, no Big Tech company has vowed to ban their technologies from being used in an attempt to repeat the Holocaust, and that includes IBM, which played a central role in it.
In a 2002 Village Voice article,14 Black addressed this shortcoming, pointing out that while IBM has refused to discuss its role in Hitler’s regime, other companies, such as the German media conglomerate Bertelsmann and Ford Motor have at least had the couth to correct their company histories, admitting to (and apologizing for) sponsoring Hitler.
While technology played a determining role in the Holocaust, leaders in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry were also working with Hitler. One of the most prominent ones was the German chemical and drug company IG Farben, which had a factory complex near Monowitz (the slave labor camp at Auschwitz) and actually housed the IBM facilities there.
IG Farben used slave labor from the Monowitz camp and IBM’s technology to keep track of them. “The Monowitz systems were customized for the specific coding Farben needed to process the thousands of slave workers who labored and died there,” Black explains.15 Auschwitz archivist Piotr Setkiewicz further told Black:16
“The Hollerith office at IG Farben in Monowitz used the IBM machines as a system of computerization of civil and slave labor resources. This gave Farben the opportunity to identify people with certain skills, primarily skills needed for the construction of certain buildings in Monowitz.”
Of course, IG Farben was also in the business of pharmaceuticals, and prisoners from Auschwitz were used for horrific medical experiments at the company’s facility.17
While IG Farben executives were put on trial after the war, their sentences were light. As just one example, Fritz Ter Meer, a high-ranking executive charged with slavery and mass medical murder served just three of his seven-year sentence, and after release became chairman of Bayer’s advisory board.
Some have speculated18 that the reason they got off so lightly was because of their connections to other powerful figures, such as John Rockefeller, founder of Standard Oil and one of the masterminds behind the creation of Big Pharma.19 (There was actually a Standard Oil IG Farben company. Without the fossil fuels of Standard Oil, IG Farben couldn't have made synthetic fertilizers or fuels.) As noted by Jon Rappoport:20
“You could say that, after the War, the emerging global pharmaceutical colossus was a reincarnation of the Farben pattern: Profit before safety; lethal medical experimentation beyond any legal limit; the use of drugs/vaccines as a means of control.”
IBM Partners With Moderna
IBM has now partnered with COVID-19 vaccine maker Moderna, and together, they are producing digital COVID-19 vaccine passes to track vaccinated individuals in real time. A pilot program has already been rolled out in state of New York.21,22,23,24
IBM and Moderna will “explore technologies, including artificial intelligence, blockchain and hybrid cloud” to “support smarter COVID-19 vaccine management,” according to a press release.25 In short, the partnership is aimed at facilitating data sharing between “governments, health care providers, life science organizations and individuals,” but this data is not restricted to health data.
As reported by Raul Diego in a March 10, 2021, Mint Press News article,26 other “multiple blockchain ledger applications” being leveraged include IBM’s Blockchain Transparent Supply and Food Trust services, which shares food sourcing and supply-chain data, and its Blockchain World Wire cross-border payment processing service.
Considering how similar kinds of data (but far less voluminous) was used to carry out Hitler’s genocide, we really need to start thinking about how all of this data collecting and sharing might be misused. While not discussed much, the collection of genetic data is part and parcel of this program as well,27,28 which opens all sorts of unpleasant possibilities.
IBM Is a Powerful Presence in Law Enforcement as Well
Already, in Israel, the requirement of vaccine certificates has resulted in the creation of a two-tier society where unvaccinated individuals are ostracized and forbidden from entering certain public venues such as bars, restaurants, hotels and public exercise facilities.
Right now in the U.S., vaccine passports are voluntary, but IBM is already looking at its health pass as a model for what it predicts will be mandatory in the future. According to IBM’s U.S. public and federal market leader, Steve LaFleche, the passes will cease to be voluntary “once government guidelines and regulations force the private sector to enforce their implementation.”29 As noted by Diego:30
“Conveniently, IBM’s strong presence in the law enforcement space, as one of the largest providers of digital profiling technologies and AIpolicing systems in the world, may also help with any obstacles Moderna may face among vaccine-hesitant populations.”
When you look at the big picture, IBM is the best and worst candidate for the job of creating vaccine passports. It has a history of enabling genocide by misusing census data (which was its original business) and creating technologies to identify, track and capture individuals based on specific parameters such as bloodlines and religious affiliation.
They also used their technology to identify areas of food production where Jews lived in order to starve them, and now they’re planning to leverage their Blockchain Transparent Supply and Food Trust services that shares food sourcing and supply-chain data, and its Blockchain World Wire cross-border payment processing service. How might all of that be misused?
To get an idea, simply look at the services they rendered Nazi Germany. When you dissect IBM’s history and compare it to its current role in the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s virtually impossible to not reach the conclusion that they’re perfectly equipped to carry out a flawless repeat of the Holocaust, but at an unimaginable scale, and with unfathomable efficiency.
The only difference is they would not be helping to hunt a specific national, religious or racial profile. To start, they’ll hunt down vaccine dissenters. After that, there’s no telling what the target group might be. But whatever it is, they’ll be able to identify and track them down with near-effortless ease.
As noted by Black in the introduction to his book, “Only through exposing and examining what really occurred can the world of technology finally adopt the well-worn motto: Never Again.”31 We need to do that, and come to a global consensus that we’re simply not going to allow a repeat of history.
One small bright-spot amid all this darkness is Gov. Ron DeSantis, who March 29, 2021, announced32 he will issue an executive order forbidding local governments and businesses from requiring vaccine certificates.
“It’s completely unacceptable for either the government or the private sector to impose upon you the requirement that you show proof of vaccine to just simply participate in normal society,” he said.
He’s further calling on the state legislature to create a measure that will allow him to sign it into law. Hopefully, such laws will be put into place, and other states will follow suit.
IBM and Bill Gates
In case you are unaware, Bill Gates in the early ‘80s was responsible for providing IBM with the DOS operating system for its then-new personal computers, which heralded in the massive explosion of computer technology. I remember it quite well. I got my first IBM clone PC around 1985.
The reason why this is important is that eventually, computer hardware became a commodity and computer software became the source of most of the technology revenues. Gates’ nefarious strategies eventually led him to become the richest man in the world. That mantle now shifts between Bezos and Musk.
However, the current market cap of IBM is $110 billion while the market cap of Microsoft is 10 times that at over $1 trillion. So, while IBM has a clearly sordid history going back to World War II, the likely more serious threat is Gates himself, who is largely responsible for engineering and profiting from this entire COVID wealth transfer play through his strategic partnering with the World Health Organization, as we have carefully articulated in previous articles.
It is interesting that IBM is repeating its egregious contribution to the extermination of millions of Jews in Germany, but that may pale to the likely unintended consequences of Gates’ plans, which will probably far exceed the lives lost in Nazi Germany. We need to do everything we can to make sure he doesn’t succeed.
Too harsh? Then I suggest you review Gary Barnett’s recent article on Lew Rockwell, where he states:33
“The extermination of societies through genocide and democide is achieved in many ways, from war, forced starvation, psychological destruction, mass imprisonment, and sterilization; from chemical agents, bombs, nuclear weapons, and now the killing will be due to ‘vaccination.’
Surely I jest you say, but I do not, as the indiscriminate killing of hundreds of millions or billions of people around the world at the hands of the powerful is sought.
Some call it population control, some call it depopulation, but it is simply planned mass murder to benefit the agendas of the few. The tool being used to accomplish this goal is the untested, experimental, mind-altering, gene-changing, toxic poison called the Covid-19 ‘vaccine,’ and it is the newest weapon of mass destruction.
Many are having horrible effects due to these injections, and many others are dying. Some are dying immediately after taking this shot, some are dying after a few hours or days, others after a few weeks, and the long-term effects at this point are virtually unknown. (In nearly every case the media denies the association.)
It is as if people are deaf, dumb, and blind when it comes to logic, as this falsely claimed affliction called COVID that supposedly has a survival rate of 99.98%, is being treated as a deadly pandemic, and the ‘cure’ recommended is a ‘vaccine’ that kills many more than the purposely created fake virus scam.”
On a scale of one to 10, how much pain are you in? According to a new study, how pain is perceived when it’s experienced by a man versus a woman is different and it could be the reason so many women’s medical conditions are overlooked.
Sutures are used to close wounds and speed up the natural healing process, but they can also complicate matters by causing damage to soft tissues with their stiff fibers. To remedy the problem, researchers have developed innovative tough gel sheathed (TGS) sutures inspired by the human tendon.
from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/3wxa0W9
Social distancing and lockdowns may have affected clinical researchers' ability to finish trials, researchers report. Study completion rates dropped worldwide between 13 percent and 23 percent, depending on the type of research sponsor and geographic location, between April and October 2020.
from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/3fXhEDn
Scientists detail new work on NLRP3, an intracellular complex that has been found to participate in melanoma-mediated inflammation, leading to tumor growth and progression. By inhibiting NLRP3, the researchers found, they can reduce inflammation and the resultant tumor expansion.
from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/39UxpXA
Researchers have developed fluorescent polymers whose color can be easily tuned. Depending on their length, the polymers emit a different color. Potential applications include biomedicine, security printing and solar energy.
from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/3rZOYvu
Hydrogels are often used as drug delivery systems, but to be effective carriers for anti-cancer drugs, they need to be responsive to varied stimuli in the tumor microenvironment. Now, scientists have developed novel hydrogels to effectively deliver drugs to tumor sites in response to temperature and pH changes in the tumor microenvironment. These multi-stimuli-responsive hydrogels can eliminate remnant cancer cells following tumor excision through controlled drug release, offering hope for effective cancer treatment.
from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/2PN5stX
More than a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of remote workers are still struggling to find an efficient work-life balance. Timothy D. Golden, a professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, offers research-based solutions and best practices for addressing and managing common issues that impede success while working from home.
from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/3wymPiO
Tracking carbon dioxide levels indoors is an inexpensive and powerful way to monitor the risk of people getting COVID-19, according to new research. In any given indoor environment, when excess carbon dioxide levels double, the risk of transmission also roughly doubles, scientists report.
from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/3fSgVmS
Ants react to social isolation in a similar way as do humans and other social mammals. A study has revealed alterations to the social and hygienic behavior of ants that had been isolated from their group. The research team was particularly surprised by the fact that immune and stress genes were downregulated in the brains of the isolated ants.
from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/3fQoDh3
After looking at a database of 850 patients diagnosed with lymphatic and bone marrow cancers between 1972 and 1980, researchers from the University of Tasmania and Britain‘s Bristol University found that living near high-voltage power lines might increase the risk of leukemia, lymphoma, and related conditions later in life.
People who lived within 328 yards of a power line up to the age of five were five times more likely to develop cancer. Those who lived within the same range to a power line at any point during their first 15 years were three times more likely to develop cancer as an adult.
Worldwide 39 percent of the adults were overweight in 2016, according to statistics of the World Health Organization. Concurrently millions of people want to lose weight. One way to do this is exercising. But what influence does sport have on (direct) eating habits?
from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/3wAvAJ4
New research has for the first time compared images of the protein spikes that develop on the surface of cells exposed to the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine to the protein spike of the SARS-CoV-19 coronavirus. The images show that the spikes are highly similar to those of the virus and support the modified adenovirus used in the vaccine as a leading platform to combat COVID-19.
from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/39QQ3Q2
Low back pain in the elderly is the result of poor 'proprioception,' or the body's ability to perceive its own position in space, caused by a deterioration of sensory receptors in their muscles called proprioceptors. In a new study, researchers demonstrate a protocol for the management of low back pain by diagnosing and activating impaired proprioceptors with localized vibratory stimulations, crowning an approach that can enable elderly people to lead better lives.
from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/31Qidqe
On the surface, Parkinson's disease and melanoma do not appear to have much in common. However, for nearly 50 years, doctors have recognized that Parkinson's disease patients are more likely to develop melanoma than the general population. Now, scientists report a molecular link between the two diseases in the form of protein aggregates known as amyloids.
from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/3uvJpGZ
A new scientific review has found there are significant gaps in our knowledge of how mammal populations are responding to climate change, particularly in regions most sensitive to climate change.
from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/3wCl4RC
School-based interventions that target students with, or at risk of, academic difficulties in kindergarten to grade 6 have positive effects on reading and mathematics, according to a new article.
from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/3uIwcLh
It was about one year ago, in spring 2020, when the jokes about the “quarantine 15” weight gain began making the rounds.1 But, one year later, one study2 shows that this estimation may be slightly lower than reality.
According to the Trust for America's Health State of Obesity 2020 report,3 42.4% of U.S. adults are obese, which is the first time the national rate has topped 40%. The data also showed there were 12 states with a rate above 35%.
To put this into perspective, the overall rate has increased 26% from a mere 13 years ago (2008) and in 2012, there was no state with a rate above 35%. Childhood obesity is also growing, with the latest information showing 19.3% of young people ages 2 to 19 are obese, as compared to 5.5% in the mid-1970s.
Yet, these are only the obesity statistics and do not include the percentage of the population that is also overweight. Data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) showed that there is another 30.7% of adults who are overweight and 9.2% who were severely obese (BMI over 40).4 This means that 73.1% of the population is overweight, obese or severely obese.
New data gathered during 2020, reveals these rates may be even higher in the next NHANES survey, increasing the number of people who experience higher risks of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, sleep apnea, mental illness and all-cause mortality.5
Americans Gained Weight Steadily During 2020
The results of a small longitudinal cohort study6 found participants experienced a consistent weight gain of 0.27 kg (0.59 pounds) every 10 days. The results were gathered from 269 participants in the Health eHeart Study.
They volunteered to report their weight using their Fitbit or iHealth smart scale. The cohort was not fully representative of the general public as they resided in 37 states and the District of Columbia, 48.3% were men, 77% were white, and their mean age was 51.9. At the end of the study, the researchers had 7,444 separate weight measurements spanning February 1, 2020, to June 1, 2020.
This offered data before lockdowns were in place, as well as after. Dr. Gregory Marcus, senior author of the study, expressed concern the trending weight gain, which totaled 1.5 pounds per month, may extend after the lockdown restrictions had ended.7
Over the course of one year, this would have totaled 20 pounds. He noted that many of those being tracked had been losing weight prior to the lockdown orders. Speaking to The New York Times, he said:
“It’s reasonable to assume these individuals are more engaged with their health in general, and more disciplined and on top of things. That suggests we could be underestimating — that this is the tip of the iceberg.
We know that weight gain is a public health problem in the U.S. already, so anything making it worse is definitely concerning, and shelter-in-place orders are so ubiquitous that the sheer number of people affected by this makes it extremely relevant.”
Marcus went on to hypothesize that the weight gain was likely related to a lack of physical activity and greater accessibility to food while working at home. Since working remotely may become the new norm after the pandemic is behind us, he suggests a focus on mitigating “work-from-home-related adverse health effects.”8
A second survey by the American Psychological Association (APA)9 was conducted by the Harris poll, providing data for this year's Stress in America survey. Information was gathered from February 19, 2021, to February 24, 2021, among 3,013 adults over 18 who lived in the U.S.
The data revealed that 61% of the adults surveyed reported experiencing an undesired weight change, either weight gain or loss, since the start of the pandemic. Overall, 42% told the surveyor they had gained more weight than intended, and the average gain was 29 pounds.
When the information was broken out by generation,10 the results revealed that of those surveyed who reported an undesired weight change, 48% of Millennials had an average gain of 41 pounds. Baby Boomers had reported the least amount gained, 16 pounds, and there wasn't enough sample size of adults over age 76 to report the average amount of unwanted weight gain or loss.
Focus on Health Not Shame
Many health experts are concerned this growing waistline trend will contribute to the rising rates of obesity and health conditions associated with it — including poor outcomes from a COVID-19 infection. Yet others — including health websites such as Healthline — are encouraging people to accept their new weight and the health risks that go along with it with rationalizations such as:11,12
Dieting is not without risk as it can lead to eating disorders or nutritional deficiencies
Your body image struggles are a brain issue, not a body issue
We need a war on weight stigma, not “obesity”
You deserve to experience joy at every size — and you can
You shouldn’t be ashamed of those extra pounds
Weight is a sensitive topic and shame should never be a part of the conversation but, still, while you can’t control the opinion of others and the unreasonable body image promoted by the modeling industry, it’s important instead to focus on your health and wellness.
Dr. Mark Hyman, author and head of strategy and innovation at the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine, spoke with ABC News in August 2020, saying:13
"There needs to be a massive public health initiative to educate people about the need for improved nutrition in the midst of the pandemic. I think that this is such a critical moment and it's central for us to double down on our nutritional quality in our diet, people are completely neglectful that it is a way of preventing COVID-19."
Unfortunately, there haven’t been governmental initiatives or a focus on nutrition and exercise, both foundational to health and wellness. Instead, the media and agencies have been focused on COVID-19 “cases,” mask mandates, social distancing and lockdowns in preparation for massive vaccination programs.
Health and wellness have taken a back seat to living through chemistry. The researchers from the study published in JAMA concluded:14
"It is important to recognize the unintended health consequences SIP [shelter-in-place] can have on a population level. The detrimental health outcomes suggested by these data demonstrate a need to identify concurrent strategies to mitigate weight gain, such as encouraging healthy diets and exploring ways to enhance physical activity, as local governments consider new constraints in response to SARS-CoV-2 and potential future pandemics."
Strategies to Mitigate Weight Gain Also Help COVID Illness
There are specific health conditions that increase your risk of severe COVID-19.15 Heart disease, obesity, severe obesity, Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and cerebrovascular disease all make the list of health conditions that increase your risk of severe illness from the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
Many of these are ameliorated by improving your metabolic inflexibility, which British cardiologist and author Dr. Aseem Malhotra believes is another factor that significantly increases your risk of severe illness. Malhotra recognized a clear link between metabolic inflexibility and worse outcomes from the virus when data were first coming in from China and Italy.
He talked about the link between insulin resistance and cytokines storms in our interview in October 2020. According to Malhotra, the good news is that these lifestyle factors can be modified in as little as 21 days by simply changing your diet.
This focus has been sorely missed from messaging during the pandemic. The central thesis of his book is we had a pandemic of metabolic inflexibility or metabolic ill-health. There are five primary parameters of metabolic ill health, which include having:
A large waist circumference
Prediabetes or Type 2 diabetes
Prehypertension or hypertension (high blood pressure)
High blood triglycerides
Low HDL cholesterol
As we discussed in the interview in the link above, Malhotra has found from the data that metabolic syndrome can as much as triple the risk of fatality from COVID-19. The knowledge that weight gain and the health conditions associated with it are dangerous and increase the risk of severe COVID has made mainstream media news.
Yet, it is obvious that much of the focus is on surveillance and behavioral control. In response to the overwhelming attention on vaccinations instead of healthy lifestyle choices, Russian lawyer Jenia Finegan commented on Twitter in March:16
"If this is the case, should we not have mandatory weight passports? Mandatory exercise and compulsory weight management programmes? Close all fast food outlets? No job for those refusing to lose weight? What else?"
Weight Gain Is Only One Consequence of Lockdown Orders
The global lockdown was reportedly initiated to protect the general public, and yet experts agree that this policy may well have been one of the biggest public health mistakes ever made.17 Thousands of doctors, concerned citizens and scientists have grave concerns over the damaging mental health and physical health impacts from mask mandates and lockdowns.18
Many are calling for focused protection, as communicated in the Great Berrington Declaration. As of March 26, 2021, 42,059 medical practitioners and 767,577 concerned citizens have signed the declaration.19
The authors note worse cardiovascular disease outcomes, deteriorating mental health and fewer cancer screenings20 as some of the health concerns arising from lockdown policies that are producing devastating effects on public health.
Lockdowns in New Zealand have cost the country at least $10 billion without reducing the number of deaths.21 An analysis22 of nonpharmaceutical interventions, including business closures and mandatory stay-at-home orders in 10 countries, revealed there was no clear significant beneficial effect in countries where more restrictive policies were used as compared to those with less restrictive policies.
Another consequence of the pandemic has been a loss of personal freedom. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention inflated the mortality statistics by 1,670%,23,24 which has likely contributed to the growing fear and increasing compliance of society to accept less personal freedom and more surveillance as the “new normal.”
Lockdowns have even taken a toll on pet eating habits and activity levels, which in turn has resulted in a higher number of overweight and obese dogs and cats. According to one study,25 “more than 71% of pet professionals say the pandemic has impacted the way pets eat.”
The survey also showed that 33% of pet owners said their pet became overweight during 2020. Most likely, the weight gain was a result of pet parents spoiling their pets, giving treats more often as a form of love. Pictures of morbidly obese dogs have also made the news.26 One commenter said:27
"I managed to avoid weight gain, but my pets did not. Instead of reaching for a snack every time I went into the kitchen, apparently, I was always reaching for a cat treat ... Ever try to put 3 20-pound cats on a diet?"
Consider These Tips to Eat Healthy and Start Moving
The pandemic and subsequent lockdown changed many people's activity levels. While it may not have seemed like much, walking up and down the stairs, going to meetings and grabbing coffee with a friend all meant being slightly more active than sitting in front of a computer at home all day.
Even those small steps can add up to big results. Added to a lack of activity, is a rising level of anxiety, greater access to food just steps away in the kitchen and increasing boredom.
If you need to lose weight, I recommend adopting a cyclical ketogenic diet, which involves radically limiting carbs (replacing them with healthy fats and moderate amounts of protein) until you’re close to or at your ideal weight, ultimately allowing your body to burn fat — not carbohydrates — as its primary fuel.
This includes avoiding all ultraprocessed foods and also limiting added sugars to a maximum of 25 grams per day (15 grams a day If you're insulin resistant or diabetic). KetoFasting, the program I developed and detail in my book, "KetoFast: A Step-By-Step Guide to Timing Your Ketogenic Meals," combines a cyclical ketogenic diet and intermittent fasting with cyclical partial fasting to optimize weight, health and longevity.
In addition, each of the factors below can contribute to eating just a little bit more and moving just a little bit less. Consider using the accompanying tips to begin making healthier choices.
•Create a daily routine — It’s important to get up at the same time each morning, and work to get seven to nine hours of quality sleep each night. Plan your meals for the day, including the timing of your meals and any healthy snacks, and get dressed every day.
Loose fitting sweats or shorts make it easier to ignore weight gain. Include exercise in your daily routine and avoid sitting for long periods. If you work at a computer, stand instead of sitting for the majority of your day. If your favorite gym is closed, consider other forms of activity like walking, hiking, biking, dancing or an exercise tape.
Incorporate the Nitric Oxide Dump two to three times a day to raise your activity level and take advantage of the extra nitric oxide released during the short routine.
•Manage your stress — Unfortunately, many use food as comfort during times of stress. This only increases the difficulty in maintaining a healthy weight. Instead, consider exercise, yoga, meditation, connecting with friends or Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT). You’ll find a library of demonstrations at this link, including EFT for stress and anxiety.
•Be mindful — It’s easy to overeat and over snack when you’re watching television or visiting with friends. Avoid eating or grabbing a snack while you’re driving, watching television or working. When you’re busy, it’s also easy to underestimate how much you’re eating each day.
•Change your routine — Steer clear of settings or situations you associate with overeating. After a stress-filled day, avoid the gallon of ice cream in the freezer or the six-pack in the refrigerator. Instead, consider meditating, a soak in a hot tub or a walk with the dog.
The planet may be facing a new plastic crisis, similar to the one brought on by bottled water, but this time involving discarded face masks. “Mass masking” continues to be recommended by most public health groups during the COVID-19 pandemic, despite research showing masks do not significantly reduce the incidence of infection.1
As a result, it’s estimated that 129 billion face masks are used worldwide each month, which works out to about 3 million masks a minute. Most of these are the disposable variety, made from plastic microfibers.2
Ranging in size from five millimeters (mm) to microscopic lengths, microplastics, which include microfibers, are being ingested by fish, plankton and other marine life, as well as the creatures on land that consume them (including humans3).
More than 300 million tons of plastic are produced globally annually — and that was before mask-wearing became a daily habit. Most of it ends up as waste in the environment, leading researchers from the University of Southern Denmark and Princeton University to warn that masks could quickly become “the next plastic problem.”4
Why Disposable Masks May Be Even Worse Than Plastic Bottles
The bottled water crisis is now well-known as a leading source of environmental plastic pollution, but it’s slated to be outpaced by a new mask crisis. While about 25% of plastic bottles are recycled, “there is no official guidance on mask recycle, making it more likely to be disposed of as solid waste,” the researchers stated. “With increasing reports on inappropriate disposal of masks, it is urgent to recognize this potential environmental threat.”5
Not only are masks not being recycled, but their materials make them likely to persist and accumulate in the environment. Most disposable face masks contain three layers — a polyester outer layer, a polypropylene or polystyrene middle layer and an inner layer made of absorbent material such as cotton.
Polypropylene is already one of the most problematic plastics, as it’s widely produced and responsible for large waste accumulation in the environment, as well as being a known asthma trigger.6 Further, the researchers noted:7
“Once in the environment, the mask is subjected to solar radiation and heat, but the degradation of polypropylene is retarded due to its high hydrophobicity, high molecular weight, lacking an active functional group, and continuous chain of repetitive methylene units. These recalcitrant properties lead to the persistence and accumulation in the environment.”
They also stated that when the masks become weathered in the environment, they can generate a large number of microsized polypropylene particles in a matter of weeks, then break down further into nanoplastics that are less than 1 mm in size.
Because masks may be directly made from microsized plastic fibers with a thickness of 1 mm to 10 mm, they may release microsized particles into the environment more readily — and faster — than larger plastic items, like plastic bags.
Further, “Such impacts can be worsened by a new-generation mask, nanomasks, which directly use nanosized plastic fibers (e.g., diameter <1 mm) and add a new source of nanoplastic pollution.”8 A report by OceansAsia further estimated that 1.56 billion face masks may have entered the world’s oceans in 2020, based on a global production estimate of 52 billion masks manufactured that year, and a loss rate of 3%, which is conservative.
Based on this data, and an average weight of 3 to 4 grams for a single-use polypropylene surgical mask, the masks would add 4,680 to 6,240 additional metric tons of plastic pollution to the marine environment, which, they note, “will take as long as 450 years to break down, slowly turning into microplastics while negatively impacting marine wildlife and ecosystems.”9
Plastic particles are known to travel great distances, posing immense risks to virtually every part of the globe. Small, weathered pieces of plastic — suggesting they’d been on a long journey — have been found at the top of the Pyrénées mountains in southern France10 and “in the northernmost and easternmost areas of the Greenland and Barents seas.”11
Calling the Greenland and Barents seas area a “dead end” for the plastic debris, researchers hypothesized that the seafloor below would be a catch-all for accumulating plastic debris.12 In separate research, it was also revealed that plastic pollution has reached the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica — an area believed to be mostly free of contamination.13 According to the featured study:14
“When not properly collected and managed, masks can be transported from land into freshwater and marine environments by surface run-off, river flows, oceanic currents, wind, and animals (via entanglement or ingestion). The occurrence of waste masks has been increasingly reported in different environments and social media have shared of wildlife tangled in elastic straps of masks.”
Such plastics also contain contaminants, such as polycyclic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which may be genotoxic (i.e., causing DNA damage that could lead to cancer), along with dyes, plasticizers and other additives linked to additional toxic effects, including reproductive toxicity, carcinogenicity and mutagenicity.15
Aside from the chemical toxicity, ingestion of microplastics from degraded masks and other plastic waste is also toxic due to the particles themselves as well as the potential that they could carry pathogenic microorganisms.
Another issue that’s rarely talked about is the fact that when you wear a mask, tiny microfibers are released, which can cause health problems when inhaled. The risk is increased when masks are reused. This hazard was highlighted in a performance study to be published in the June 2021 issue of Journal of Hazardous Materials.16
Researchers from Xi’an Jiaotong University also said scientists, manufacturers and regulators need to assess the inhalation of microplastic and nanoplastic debris shed from masks — both disposable and cloth — noting:17
“… [C]omplaints of throat irritation or discomfort in the respiratory tract by children, the elderly, or other sensitive individuals after wearing these may be alerting signs of excessive amounts of respirable debris inhaled from self-made masks and respirators.”
In the featured study researchers also called on the environmental research community to “move fast to understand and mitigate these risks,” suggesting that reusable cloth masks be promoted in lieu of disposable options and that mask-only trash cans be set up to assist in proper disposal.18 However, another option would be to loosen or eliminate mask mandates, which may turn out to cause more harm than good.
Mask Use May Pose a Risk for Advanced Stage Lung Cancer
While it’s well-known that gut microbiota affect your immune system and risk of chronic diseases, it was long thought that lungs were sterile. Now it’s known that microbes from your mouth, known as oral commensals, frequently enter your lungs.19 Not only that, but researchers from New York University (NYU) Grossman School of Medicine revealed that when these oral commensals are “enriched” in the lungs, it’s associated with cancer.20
Specifically, in a study of 83 adults with lung cancer, those with advanced-stage cancer had more oral commensals in their lungs than those with early-stage cancer. Those with an enrichment of oral commensals in their lungs also had decreased survival and worsened tumor progression.
While the study didn’t look into how mask usage could affect oral commensals in your lungs, they did note, “The lower airway microbiota, whether in health or disease state, are mostly affected by aspiration of oral secretions, and the lower airway microbial products are in constant interaction with the host immune system.”21
It seems highly likely that wearing a mask would accelerate the accumulation of oral microbes in your lungs, thereby raising the question of whether mask usage could be linked to advanced stage lung cancer. The National Institutes of Health even conducted a study22 that confirmed when you wear a mask most of the water vapor you would normally exhale remains in the mask, becomes condensed and is re-inhaled.23
They went so far as to suggest that wearing a moist mask and inhaling the humid air of your own breath was a good thing, because it would hydrate your respiratory tract. But given the finding that inhaling the microbes from your mouth may increase advanced cancer risk, this hardly sounds like a benefit.
Not to mention, the humidity inside the mask will allow pathogenic bacteria to rapidly grow and multiply and, since the mask makes it more difficult to breathe, you’re likely to breathe heavier, thereby risking inhaling the microbes even deeper inside your lungs.
Masks Are Harming Children and Adults
The “new normal” of widespread masking is affecting not only the environment but also the mental and physical health of humans, including children. It’s largely assumed that face masks are “safe” for children to wear for long periods, such as during school, but no risk assessment has been carried out.24 Further, as evidenced by Germany's first registry recording the experience children are having wearing masks.25
Using data on 25,930 children, 24 health issues were reported that were associated with wearing masks that fell into the categories of physical, psychological and behavioral issues.26 They recorded symptoms that:27
“… included irritability (60%), headache (53%), difficulty concentrating (50%), less happiness (49%), reluctance to go to school/kindergarten (44%), malaise (42%), impaired learning (38%) and drowsiness or fatigue (37%).”
They also found 29.7% reported feeling short of breath, 26.4% being dizzy and 17.9% were unwilling to move or play.28 Hundreds more experienced “accelerated respiration, tightness in chest, weakness and short-term impairment of consciousness.”
It’s also known that microplastics exist in human placentas,29 and animal studies show that inhaled plastic particles pass through the placenta and into the heart and brains of fetuses.30 The fetuses exposed to the microplastics also gained less weight in the later part of the pregnancy.31
“We found the plastic nanoparticles everywhere we looked — in the maternal tissues, in the placenta and in the fetal tissues. We found them in the fetal heart, brain, lungs, liver and kidney,” lead research Phoebe Stapleton of Rutgers University told The Guardian.32
Dr. Jim Meehan, an ophthalmologist and preventive medicine specialist who has performed more than 10,000 surgical procedures and is also a former editor of the medical journal Ocular Immunology and Inflammation, also conducted an evidence-based scientific analysis on masks, which shows that not only should healthy people not be wearing masks but they could be harmed as a result.33
Meehan suggests that the notion of mask-wearing defies common sense and reason, considering that most of the population is at very low or almost no risk of becoming severely ill from COVID-19. He also compiled 17 ways that masks can cause harm:34
Medical masks adversely affect respiratory physiology and function
Medical masks lower oxygen levels in the blood
Medical masks raise carbon dioxide levels in the blood
SAR-CoV-2 has a “furin cleavage” site that makes it more pathogenic, and the virus enters cells more easily when arterial oxygen levels decline, which means wearing a mask could increase COVID-19 severity
Medical masks trap exhaled virus in the mouth/mask, increasing viral/infectious load and increasing disease severity
SARS-CoV-2 becomes more dangerous when blood oxygen levels decline
The furin cleavage site of SARS-CoV-2 increases cellular invasion, especially during low blood oxygen levels
Wearing a face mask may give a false sense of security
Masks compromise communications and reduce social distancing
Untrained and inappropriate management of face masks is common
Masks worn imperfectly are dangerous
Masks collect and colonize viruses, bacteria and mold
Wearing a face mask makes the exhaled air go into the eyes
Contact tracing studies show that asymptomatic carrier transmission is very rare
Face masks and stay at home orders prevent the development of herd immunity
Face masks are dangerous and contraindicated for a large number of people with pre-existing medical conditions and disabilities
Adding insult to injury, the first randomized controlled trial of more than 6,000 individuals to assess the effectiveness of surgical face masks against SARS-CoV-2 infection found masks did not statistically significantly reduce the incidence of infection.35
Considering the lack of evidence for their use, and the potential harms to human health and the environment, it’s no wonder that calls for peaceful civil disobedience against mandatory masking are growing. The U.S. nonprofit Stand for Health Freedom has a widget you can use to contact your government representatives to let them know wearing a mask must be a personal choice.
After looking at a database of 850 patients diagnosed with lymphatic and bone marrow cancers between 1972 and 1980, researchers from the University of Tasmania and Britain‘s Bristol University found that living near high-voltage power lines might increase the risk of leukemia, lymphoma, and related conditions later in life.
