One of the simplest and most enjoyable ways to up the health ante of your meals is by adding herbs and spices, and in the realm of spices, turmeric and its active ingredient curcumin may be king.
If you're a fan of curry, you're probably also a fan of turmeric, as this is the yellow-orange spice that makes the foundation of many curry dishes. It's a great addition to your diet, but to get the full benefits curcumin has to offer, look for a turmeric extract that contains 100 percent certified organic ingredients and at least 95 percent curcuminoids.
Research is emerging showing that this potent spice may play a beneficial role in preventing and treating numerous chronic diseases, and may offer promise in helping people deal with obesity and obesity-related metabolic diseases.
Does Curcumin Boost Weight Loss?
Research in the European Journal of Nutrition suggests that curcumin may be useful for the treatment and prevention of obesity-related chronic diseases, as the interactions of curcumin with several signal transduction pathways -- the process by which biological functions are recognized -- also reverse insulin resistance, hyperglycemia, hyperlipidemia, and other inflammatory symptoms associated with obesity and metabolic disorders.
Curcumin is known for its potent anti-inflammatory properties, and chronic inflammation is the hallmark of most chronic disease, including diabetes, arthritis, and heart disease. But many people are not aware that obesity contributes to a state of low-grade, chronic inflammation in your body that can trigger metabolic disorders such as insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. Curcumin appears to modulate several cellular transduction pathways that contribute to this damaging process.
"These findings might enable novel phytochemical treatment strategies as well as curcumin translation to the clinical practice for the treatment and prevention of obesity-related chronic diseases. Furthermore, the relatively low cost of curcumin, safety and proven efficacy make it advisable to include curcumin as part of a healthy diet."
Past research has revealed similar findings, including that curcumin reduces the formation of fat tissue by suppressing the blood vessels needed to form it. As the researchers stated:
"Our results clearly demonstrate that curcumin at cellular and whole organism levels displays remarkable potential health benefits for prevention of obesity and associated metabolic disorders."
Weight Loss is Just the Icing on the Cake
The benefits of curcumin go way beyond weight loss. The compound has been shown to influence more than 700 genes, and it can inhibit both the activity and the synthesis of cyclooxygenase-2 (COX2) and 5-lipooxygenase (5-LOX), as well as other enzymes that have been implicated in inflammation.
But that's not all. Curcumin currently has the most evidence-based literature supporting its use against cancer than any other nutrient. Interestingly this also includes the metabolite of curcumin and its derivatives, which are also anti-cancerous. Best of all, curcumin appears to be safe in the treatment of all cancers. Researchers have found that curcumin can affect more than 100 different pathways, once it gets into the cell.
More specifically, curcumin has been found to:
✓ Inhibit the proliferation of tumor cells
✓ Decrease inflammation
✓ Inhibit the transformation of cells from normal to tumor
✓ Inhibit the synthesis of a protein thought to be instrumental in tumor formation
✓ Help your body destroy mutated cancer cells so they cannot spread throughout your body
✓ Help prevent the development of additional blood supply necessary for cancer cell growth (angiogenesis)
However, much of curcumin's power seems to lie in its ability to modulate genetic activity and expression -- both by destroying cancer cells and by promoting healthy cell function. As such, evidence suggests curcumin may play a beneficial role in the following conditions:
You can use turmeric in your cooking (choose a pure turmeric powder, rather than a curry powder, as at least one study has found that curry powders tend to contain very little curcumin), but you may also want to consider taking it in supplement form. For many this is a more convenient method to obtain the potential health benefits, especially if it is from a high-quality organic source, and also if you don't particularly enjoy the taste of curry.
Unfortunately, at the present time there really are no formulations available for the use against cancer, as relatively high doses are required and curcumin is not absorbed that well.
According to Dr. William LaValley, one of the leading medicine cancer physicians I personally know, typical anticancer doses are up to three grams of good bioavailable curcumin extract, three to four times daily. One work-around is to use the curcumin powder and make a microemulsion of it by combining a tablespoon of the powder and mixing it into 1-2 egg yolks and a teaspoon or two of melted coconut oil. Then use a high-speed hand blender to emulsify the powder.
Another strategy that can help increase absorption is to put one tablespoon of the curcumin powder into a quart of boiling water. It must be boiling when you add the powder as it will not work as well if you put it in room temperature water and heat the water and curcumin. After boiling it for ten minutes you will have created a 12 percent solution that you can drink once it has cooled down. It will have a woody taste.
The curcumin will gradually fall out of solution however. In about six hours it will be a 6 percent solution, so it's best to drink the water within four hours. Be aware that curcumin is a very potent yellow pigment and can permanently discolor surfaces if you aren't careful.
Be Sure Your Weight Loss Strategy is Comprehensive
It can't hurt to add curcumin to your comprehensive weight loss program, but it should not be your only strategy for weight loss if you're currently overweight or obese.
You can read an in-depth explanation of the common factors that contribute to weight loss here, but the key is the quality of your calories and exercise. Typically you will need to replace grains and sugars, including fructose, with high-quality protein and fats AND add in high-intensity exercise training like Peak Fitness. I realize that this might conflict with your previous understanding of a healthy diet, but that is clearly what the bulk of the science and anecdotal evidence supports.
German-American supermodel and mother of four Heidi Klum gets real with Body+Soul about the modelling industry, body diversity and the long-awaited changes at Victoria’s Secret.
If you think your birth control pill is the best pregnancy prevention tool there is, you may be surprised by new research looking into its failure rates.
Compared to other forms of protection, the Pill failed miserably, which only adds to the myriad of reasons why you should heavily question its use.
The Pill Fails 20 Times More Often
About 99 percent of sexually active women use at least one method of birth control, the most common of which is the birth control pill (oral contraceptives). The Pill was used by nearly 11 million U.S. women from 2006-2008.i
Meanwhile, nearly half of all pregnancies in the United States are unintended.ii Certainly not all of these are due to a birth control failure, but some of them -- estimates suggest about half -- undoubtedly are. Which brings me to a recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.iii Out of the 7,500 women in the study, who used various forms of birth control including an intrauterine device (IUD), implant, birth control pills, patch, ring and contraceptive injection, 334 became pregnant, 156 of which were due to birth control failure.
The contraceptive failure rate among pills, patch or ring was 4.55 percent, compared to 0.27 percent among participants using reversible contraception such as intrauterine devices. The effectiveness—or non-effectiveness—was no different in adolescents or young women. The implications—that birth control pills are 20 times more likely to fail than IUDs—should give some women a pause to think about the method of contraception they want to use.
As for the varying degrees of effectiveness, the Pill must be taken daily, preferably around the same time for it to work its best. Study author Dr. Jeffrey Peipert, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, noted:iv
"This study is the best evidence we have that long-acting reversible methods are far superior to the birth control pill, patch and ring. IUDs and implants are more effective because women can forget about them after clinicians put the devices in place ... If there were a drug for cancer, heart disease or diabetes that was 20 times more effective, we would recommend it first."
Hormone-Based Contraceptives Have Steep Risks
Unintended pregnancy is clearly a big one, but artificially manipulating your hormones using oral contraceptives, the patch or ring, or an injection like Depo-Provera is also a very risky proposition. Most birth control pills are a combination of the derivatives of the hormones estrogen and a synthetic progesterone(progestin). They work by disrupting the hormones in your body, essentially fooling your intricate hormonal reproductive system into producing the following effects:
Preventing your ovaries from releasing eggs
Thickening your cervical mucus to help block sperm from fertilizing an egg
Thinning the lining of your uterus, which would make it difficult for an egg to implant, should it become fertilized
However, it is naive to believe that these are the only impacts the synthetic hormones are having. Your reproductive system does not exist in a bubble ... it is connected to all of your other bodily systems as well. The Pill, too, does not only influence your reproductive status; it's capable of altering much more.
Ten years ago, in 2002, one of the largest and best-designed federal studies of hormone replacement therapy was halted because women taking these synthetic hormones had a such a higher risk of breast cancer, heart attack, stroke and blood clots that continuing forward with the study would have been unethical. The news made headlines because millions of women were already taking these synthetic hormones, but fortunately it prompted many of them to quit. And what do you think happened a year after millions of women quit taking hormone replacement therapy? Incidents of breast cancer fell dramatically -- by 7 percent!
What does this have to do with the Pill? Birth control pills contain the SAME type of synthetic hormones -- estrogen and progestin -- that were used in the ill-fated study!
That's just one risk. Oral contraceptives have been linked to more than two dozen conditions, including heart disease, liver cancer, deep vein thrombosis and inflammatory bowel disease.v Research suggests they are not only carcinogenic (cancer-causing) but also cardiotoxic (toxic to your heart) and endocrine disrupting.
Why I Advise Most Women to Stop Hormonal Contraceptives
Birth control pills are rarely, if ever, necessary or beneficial. In exchange for the convenience of preventing pregnancy (which you can do naturally perhaps even more effectively, and I'll explain how below), you are putting yourself at risk of a myriad of health issues.
A new study in the New England Journal of Medicine revealed that several types of hormone-based birth control methods increased women's risk of heart attack and stroke.vi The link was found between oral contraceptives as well as contraceptive patches and the vaginal ring. Women using the ring were found to have a 2.5 times greater risk of stroke compared to those not using hormonal contraceptives, whereas the other methods increased the risk to varying degrees.
Other known health risks of hormone-based birth control include:
Fatal blood clots: All birth control pills increase your risk of blood clots and subsequent stroke.
Thinner bones: Women who take birth control pills have lower bone mineral density (BMD) than women who have never used oral contraceptives.
Impaired muscle gains: A study found that oral contraceptive use impairs muscle gains from resistance exercise training in women.vii
Long-term sexual dysfunction: The Pill may limit the availability and/or action of testosterone, leading to long-term sexual dysfunction, including decreased desire and arousal.
Heart disease: Long-term use of birth control pills may increase the buildup of arterial plaque, which may raise your risk of heart disease and cardiac mortality.viii
Migraines and nausea
Weight gain and mood changes
Irregular bleeding or spotting
Breast tenderness
Yeast overgrowth
Yeast infection
The other hormonal-based options are not much better. Birth control patches (Ortho Evra) have resulted in an avalanche of lawsuits over the past several years due to the overwhelming health problems women have experienced from using them. One of the reasons the patch is so risky is that you absorb up to 60 percent more synthetic estrogen than if you were taking an oral contraceptive. Side effects of the patch include:
Raised risk of heart attack and stroke
Irregular bleeding
Problems wearing contact lenses
Fluid retention or raised blood pressure
Nausea
Headache
Breast tenderness
Mood changes
Menstrual cramps
Abdominal pain
Skin irritation or rashes at site of patch
As far as injections like Depo-Provera, or depo medroxyprogesterone (DMPA), go, this synthetic analogue of natural progesterone known as a progestin interferes with hormone signaling to prevent your ovaries from releasing eggs. Progestins carry with them a vast array of negative side effects, including:
Side Effects of Depo-Provera
Weight gain
Headaches
Breast swelling and tenderness
Decreased sexual desire
Depression
Bloating
Swelling of the hands and feet
Nervousness
Abdominal cramps
Dizziness
Weakness of fatigue
Leg cramps
Nausea
Vaginal discharge or irritation
Backache
Insomnia
Acne
Pelvic pain
Lack of hair growth or excessive hair loss
Rashes
Hot flashes
Joint pain
Convulsions
Jaundice
Urinary tract infections
Allergic reactions
Fainting
Paralysis
Osteoporosis
Lack of return to fertility
Deep vein thrombosis
Pulmonary embolus
Breast and cervical cancers
Abnormal menstrual bleeding
Increased risk for STDs
Unexpected breast milk production
Changes in speech, coordination, or vision
Swelling of face, ankles or feet
Mood changes
Unusual fatigue
Is an IUD a Better Option?
Intrauterine devices are small, plastic, T-shaped sticks with a string attached to the end. The IUD is placed inside the uterus and prevents pregnancy by rendering the sperm unable to fertilize an egg, and by changing the lining of the uterus so that it is less supportive for an embryo. It also works by releasing hormones into your body, specifically a progestin hormone called levonorgestrel, which is often used in birth control pills.
One of its major advantages, and what contributes to its increased effectiveness rate, is that it essentially eliminates the compliance failure issue as all you do is insert it once. There is no daily task to remember to do. However, it, too, carries significant risks, including some that are unique to a foreign body being placed inside your uterus. Among them:
Pelvic infection: IUDs may lead to pelvic inflammatory disease, a serious infection
The device may attach to or go through the wall of the uterus
Pregnancy while using an IUD can be life threatening, and may result in loss of the pregnancy or fertility
Take Charge of Your Body Using Natural Birth Control Methods
You may not be aware that there are many effective and safe methods for preventing pregnancy. Some of the more common, barrier methods are:
Male condoms: Condoms have a 98 percent effectiveness rate when used correctly. A water-based lubricant will increase the effectiveness; do not use an oil-based lubricant, however, as they break the latex and usually are petrochemical in origin.
Female condoms: These thin, soft polyurethane pouches fitted inside the vagina before sex are 95 percent effective. Female condoms are less likely to tear than male condoms.
Diaphragm: Diaphragms, which must be fitted by a doctor, act as a barrier to sperm. When used correctly with spermicidal jellies, they are 92 to 98 percent effective.
Cervical cap: This heavy rubber cap fits tightly against the cervix and can be left in place for 48 hours. Like the diaphragm, a doctor must fit the cap. Proper fitting enhances the effectiveness above 91 percent.
Cervical sponges: The sponge, made of polyurethane foam, is moistened with water and inserted into the vagina prior to sex. It works as a barrier between sperm and the cervix, both trapping and absorbing sperm and releasing a spermicide to kill them. It can be left in for up to 24 hours at a time. When used correctly, the sponge is about 89-91 percent effective.
Many people are familiar with these barrier methods, and less familiar with natural family planning (NFP) tools, which a woman uses to track when she is ovulating, and then avoid sex during that time (or does so only using a back-up barrier method). Many women feel empowered by NFP because it allows them to get in touch with their fertility cycle.
Some of the most popular methods include:
Calendar Method: Abstention from sex during the week the woman is ovulating. This technique works best when a woman's menstrual cycle is very regular. The calendar method doesn't work very well for couples who use it by itself (about a 75 percent success rate), but it can be effective when combined with the temperature and mucus methods described below.
The Temperature Method: This is a way to pinpoint the day of ovulation so that sex can be avoided for a few days before and after. It involves taking your basal body temperature (your temperature upon first waking) each morning with an accurate "basal" thermometer, and noting the rise in temperature that occurs after ovulation.
Illness or lack of sleep can change your body temperature and make this method unreliable by itself, but when it is combined with the mucus method, it can be an accurate way of assessing fertility. The two methods combined can have a success rate as high as 98 percent.
The Mucus Method: This involves tracking changes in the amount and texture of vaginal discharge, which reflect rising levels of estrogen in your body. For the first few days after your period, there is often no discharge, but there will be a cloudy, tacky mucus as estrogen starts to rise. When the discharge starts to increase in volume and becomes clear and stringy, ovulation is near. A return to the tacky, cloudy mucus or no discharge means that ovulation has passed.
I encourage you to become actively involved in fertility awareness, and embrace natural family planning or barrier methods that will not interfere with your hormones and health. Some excellent reading to get you started on this path include:
The Ovulation Method: Natural Family Planning, by John J. Billings
Taking Charge of Your Fertility: The Definitive Guide to Natural Birth Control, Pregnancy Achievement, and Reproductive Health, by Toni Weschler
Honoring Our Cycles: A Natural Family Planning Workbook, by Katie Singer
More evidence has been uncovered that Alzheimer’s disease may actually be a third form of diabetes, according to researchers from Northwestern University.
Insulin and insulin receptors in your brain are crucial for learning and memory, and it’s known that these components are lower in people with Alzheimer’s disease. In your brain, insulin binds to an insulin receptor at a synapse, which triggers a mechanism that allows nerve cells to survive and memories to form.
The Northwestern University researchers have found that a toxic protein in the brain of Alzheimer’s patients -- called ADDL for “amyloid ß-derived diffusible ligand” -- removes insulin receptors from nerve cells, and renders those neurons insulin resistant.
The findings suggest that ADDLs accumulate at the beginning of Alzheimer’s disease and thereby block memory function.
The process is currently thought to be reversible.
The researchers speculated that drugs used to treat type 2 diabetes, which also causes insulin resistance, may “supercede currently available Alzheimer’s drugs.”
As much of Australia emerges from (or remains in) lockdown, Body+Soul considers whether the overnight revolution that COVID ushered in has been wholly welcomed by all.
In this interview, Dr. Peter McCullough discusses the importance of early treatment for COVID-19, and the potential motivations behind the suppression of safe and effective treatments.
McCullough has impeccable academic credentials. He's an internist, cardiologist, epidemiologist, a full professor of medicine at Texas A&M College of Medicine in Dallas. He also has a master's degree in public health and is known for being one of the top five most-published medical researchers in the United States and is the editor of two medical journals.
Early Outpatient Treatment Is Key for Positive Outcomes
McCullough has been an outspoken advocate for early treatment for COVID. In August 2020, McCullough's landmark paper "Pathophysiological Basis and Rationale for Early Outpatient Treatment of SARS-CoV-2 Infection"1 was published online in the American Journal of Medicine.
The follow-up paper is titled "Multifaceted Highly Targeted Sequential Multidrug Treatment of Early Ambulatory High-Risk SARS-CoV-2 Infection (COVID-19)"2 and was published in Reviews in Cardiovascular Medicine in December 2020.
Perhaps one of the greatest crimes in this whole pandemic is the refusal by reigning heath authorities to issue early treatment guidance. Instead, they've done everything possible to suppress remedies shown to work, whether it be corticosteroids, hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) with zinc, ivermectin, vitamin D or NAC.
Patients were simply told to stay home and do nothing. Once the infection had worsened to the point of near-death, patients were told to go to the hospital where most were routinely placed on mechanical ventilation — a practice that was quickly discovered to be lethal. Many doctors also seemingly panicked and refused to see patients with COVID symptoms.
"I'm glad that I personally always treated all my patients," he says. "I wasn't going to have the virus slaughter one of my senior citizens. And it is, I think, terrible that none of our major academic institutions innovated with a single protocol. To my knowledge, not a single major academic medical center, as an institution, attempted even to treat patients with COVID-19.
But I did use my publication power, and my editorial authority, and my position in internal medicine and some specialty medicine to publish the breakthrough paper called 'The Pathophysiological Basis and Rationale for Early Ambulatory Treatment of COVID-19' in the American Journal of Medicine.
It was an international effort, both community physicians and academic physicians. And to this day, that is the most frequently downloaded paper in the American Journal of Medicine."
Early Treatment Guidelines Have Saved Millions of Lives
In December 2020, McCullough published an updated protocol, co-written with 56 other authors who also had extensive experience with treating COVID-19 outpatients. The article, "Multifaceted Highly Targeted Sequential Multidrug Treatment of Early Ambulatory High-Risk SARS-CoV-2 Infection,"3 was published in the journal Reviews in Cardiovascular Medicine, of which McCullough is the editor-in-chief.
"That paper, today … is the most frequently downloaded paper from BET Journal," McCullough says. "It also is the basis for the American Association of Physician and Surgeons COVID early treatment guide.4
We have evidence that the treatment guide has been downloaded and utilized millions of times. And it was part of the early huge kick that we had in ambulatory treatment at home towards the end of December into January, which basically crushed the U.S. curve.
We were on schedule to have 1.7 to 2.1 million fatalities in the United States, as estimated by the CDC and others. We cut it off at about 600,000. That still is a tragedy. I've testified that 85% of that 600,000 could have been saved if we would have had … the protocols in place from the start.
But suffice it to say, the early treatment heroes, and you're part of that team Dr. Mercola, has really made the biggest impact. We have saved millions of lives, spared millions and millions of hospitalizations, and in a sense, have brought the pandemic now to a winnowing close."
While the World Health Organization and national health agencies have all rejected treatments suggested by doctors for lack of large-scale randomized controlled studies, McCullough and other doctors working the frontlines took an empiric approach. They looked for signals of benefit in the literature.
"We didn't demand large randomized trials because we knew they weren't going to be available for years in the future," McCullough says. "We didn't wait for a guidelines body to tell us what to do or some medical society, because we know they work in slow motion. We knew we had to take care of patients now."
A Global Collusion to Harm Patients
When you look at how comprehensive and intense the censoring and suppression of early treatments were, it's hard to come to any other conclusion than this was a strategy aimed at securing emergency use authorization (EUA) for COVID gene therapies.
To get an EUA, there cannot be any safe and effective alternatives, and since the COVID shots are using a brand-new, never before used technology, making sure there were no effective treatments available was crucial for the success of the roll-out of these shots. Prestigious medical journals like The Lancet were even caught colluding with the drug industry, publishing a completely fabricated study on HCQ, showing it was dangerous. As noted by McCullough:
"What's so interesting is how airtight the collusion was. It was extraordinary. Look at The Lancet paper [on HCQ]. You had a doctor from Harvard, a company called Surgisphere that had data, you had the reviewers at Lancet, the associate editor and the editor at Lancet. How could they all collude together to publish a falsified paper?
When that paper came out, we looked at it. I was checking the literature very carefully. [As editor-in-chief of two medical journals] I've reviewed more papers and analyzed more data, I think, than anybody in the game. And I can tell you, I looked at that paper and in two seconds, I knew it was fake. I mean, I do this every day.
I'm also the senior associate editor for the American Journal of Cardiology. That's the most venerated journal in our entire field. And I can tell you that a paper like that would never get past my editorial desk because it was so obviously fake. It was a huge sample size that we knew was not possible at that time. And it was people in their 40s hospitalized with astronomical mortality rates.
It was just no way that was legit. And The Lancet let that hang up there for two weeks, scaring the entire world against hydroxychloroquine — which turns out to be one of the safest and most effective widely utilized in people with COVID-19. And when they took it down, it was unapologetic.
My interpretation of this is that was very intentional. What happened with ivermectin's use in the ICU was also very intentional and a collusion ... Dr. J.J Rashtak had used it in hundreds and hundreds of patients in Florida and published in CHEST, one of the best pulmonary journals, that ivermectin reduced mortality.
Yet to this day, hospitals across the United States flat out refuse to use ivermectin. Desperate patients and families have to get court orders to order these doctors to use ivermectin. So, there's a mass mentality of almost intentionally harming patients.
There's absolutely no grounds for doctors and administrators … to deny patients ivermectin. There is a global collusion, specifically in U.S. hospitals, to cause as much harm and death as conceivable. It's beyond belief … These cases where the families had to get court orders to force the doctors and administrators to administer a simple generic drug, these are going to be case studies in medical ethics for decades to come."
The Goal = Mass Vaccination
As for why patient harm was a desirable thing, McCullough believes the end goal was to secure the rollout of a mass vaccination campaign. All the propaganda we've been fed over this past year and a half points in that direction.
"Propaganda is the dissemination of false or misleading information by people of authority in a collusional manner. And that's exactly what's going on. We have a propagandized campaign for mass vaccination. There's no doubt about it. It's actually very overt … And believe me, there are hundreds of millions of people under the propagandized spell that the COVID-19 vaccine is going to deliver us from this crisis."
What we do not know for sure is why the World Health Organization and governments around the world want a needle in every arm. Why are they so eager, so relentless in their push to inject everyone with this novel gene therapy that turns your body into a toxic spike protein factory?
The intent to vaccinate everyone is such that health authorities are not even acknowledging the fact that staggering numbers of injuries and deaths are occurring shortly after these injections. They're even letting children die from these shots without any hint of slowing down the rate of injections. Why?
Our Next Task: Dispelling Vaccine Propaganda
While we've made great strides in circumventing censorship and getting the information out about early treatment, we still face a tremendous challenge, and that is dispelling the misinformation and confusion that surrounds the COVID shots.
Very clearly, there's massive collusion to suppress the truth about these gene therapies as well. Dr. Robert Malone, the inventor of mRNA vaccines, recently spoke out about his concerns, and not only did YouTube ban the interview, but Wikipedia also erased his name from the historical section of the mRNA vaccine.
They clearly want everyone to believe that these shots are similar to, and even superior to, conventional vaccines. They absolutely do not want you to think of them as gene therapy, which is what they are. Even Malone himself has made this distinction.
Malone is more than a little concerned about the coercion going on to get people to take these injections. He's also pointed out that there's no comprehensive system in place to prospectively capture side effects, despite the fact that the manufacturers bypassed at least 10 to 15 years' worth of safety studies, including toxicological studies. This too appears entirely intentional. Again, the question is why?
"They had no system to catch the complications, but even worse, they had no plans for safety. They had none of the traditional mechanisms for risk mitigation … [such as] critical event committees, Data and Safety Monitoring Boards, IRBs or Human Ethics Committees.
The public should know these are the structures that we have in place in biomedical research. I've led two dozen Data Safety Monitoring Boards. The co-sponsors of the U.S. vaccine program are the FDA and the CDC.
It's their obligation to have in place, from the very beginning, a Clinical Event Committee, Data Safety Monitoring Board, and a Human Ethics Committee [and provide] regular updates, because these committees are supposed to be identifying signals of harm, and then make recommendations to the sponsors about how to make the program safer.
This was the fiduciary responsibility of the FDA and the NIH. Again, this is going to go down in regulatory history as one of the most colossal blunders of all time. How can you do the largest clinical investigation in the history of medicine and have no safeguards? You have no mechanisms to protect Americans from what could happen with the vaccine program?"
Why Were Standardized Safety Protocols Omitted?
As for the motivation or reason for ignoring virtually all standardized safety measures, McCullough says:
"There has been such a suppression of early treatment … and a complete propagandized campaign for social distancing, wearing masks, promoting fear, suffering, hospitalization and death. And to prepare the population for mass vaccination, the last thing they wanted to do is have anything that could potentially restrict the population that would be taking the vaccine.
And so, I don't think they actually wanted any safety safeguards. I thought their goal, from the very beginning, was to try to railroad every single individual with two legs [into getting the shot]. The most important moniker was a needle in every arm.
When those billboards went up in every city in the United States, the stakeholders — which are the CDC, the NIH, the FDA, and then Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson outside the United States, and AstraZeneca — they meant business.
When they say needle in every arm, that's not a joke. It's not a needle in every arm for whom it's appropriate, or a needle in every arm for medically indicated. No, it's a needle in every arm of every human being. They mean it, and I think Americans should be frightened."
A Crime Against Humanity
What we're experiencing is really a crime against humanity, and hopefully the responsible individuals will ultimately be held accountable and found guilty of such a charge. As noted by McCullough:
"How could one possibly have a large clinical investigation, ask individuals to sign consent, and then provide no safety mechanisms, really provide nothing with respect to safety of individuals? Everything about the vaccine is about safety. The reports that have accrued are so voluminous that if the stakeholders wanted to make the case that the vaccines are safe, they should make it with data.
They don't, they simply say the vaccines are safe. And the medical societies are just as complicit. If you go to the American Medical Association, the American College of Physicians, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, they say the same thing, "The vaccine is safe." Within those organizations also, there's a large swathe of individuals who are going to have to answer [for their actions]."
The Spike Protein Is Not a Cure; It's a Disease Agent
As of June 18, 2021, we have 387,087 adverse event reports filed with the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), including 6,113 deaths, a large portion of which occurred within days of injection, and 6,435 life threatening reactions.5
We also have very good evidence to suggest this is a gross undercount, in part due to general underreporting, and in part due to VAERS refusing to accept reports — particularly those involving deaths — and scrubbing reports that have already been filed. So, these already alarming numbers likely only represent the tip of the iceberg.
"We have red hot problems, like children and young adults developing myocarditis, inflammation of the heart. I just saw such a patient yesterday," McCullough says. "These are proven cases. This is not make believe. This is for real.
So, you may ask the question, how in the world could this happen? Well, the first element of this happening is the vaccines as they exist today, either messenger RNA, or adenoviral DNA, the mechanism of action is not safe. The mechanism of action poses a biologic danger.
These vaccines all trick the body into making the spike protein of the virus. The spike protein itself is pathogenic. It's actually what makes the virus dangerous. It was the object of gain-of-function research. So, it has a dangerous mechanism of action. Why? Because the spike protein is produced in an uncontrolled fashion. It's not like a tetanus shot where there's only a certain amount of protein that's injected.
This is an uncontrolled quantity of spike protein. Probably each person is different, so may have [lower] production of it. They have very little symptoms after the vaccine, they're fine.
Hopefully that's the majority of individuals, but there are unfortunate individuals that must have massive amount of spike protein, and that spike protein ravages the body wherever the spike protein is locally made, and we do know the messenger RNA and the adenoviral DNA gets distributed in all the organs.
So if messenger RNA is up in the brain and we start producing spike protein in the brain, we cause local brain injury. There are now well-described neurologic injury cases with the vaccine. Many of them. In the heart, it causes myocarditis and cardiac injury. In the liver, it causes liver injury, in the lung, lung injury, in the kidney, kidney injury.
And very importantly, the spike protein damages endothelial cells and causes blood clotting. So, blood clotting, the dreaded complication of the infection itself, is now caused by the vaccine. Everything we've found out about the vaccine since its release has been bad."
What Can We Expect to Happen in the Future?
Beyond the acute injury phase, there's the very real possibility of long term health hazards. If you make it past the first couple of months without significant problems, you're still not out of the woods. My main concern is the possibility of paradoxical immune enhancement (PIE), also known as pathogenic priming, or antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE), which essentially results in a cascade of immunological overreactions that wind up killing you.
The autumn and winter of 2021 will be our first "trial by fire." We'll just have to wait and see how many fully "vaccinated" people end up succumbing to the seasonal flu and other infections. That'll give us a benchmark for how prevalent PIE might be. When asked what he predicts for the future, McCullough says:
"We're so busy with the acute toxicity to the vaccine. We're just absolutely overwhelmed, so, it's hard to imagine in three to six months where we will be … There are hints right now that the messenger RNA doesn't break down in a few days, that the natural disposal systems that we have for the messenger RNA doesn't work [for the synthetic mRNA].
Now, we don't know about the adenoviral DNA. I have a more favorable view of the adenoviral DNA products in the sense that maybe the body … can fight that off and dispose of it. The Johnson & Johnson, per number of injections, has the fewest complications. And most Americans think just the opposite because of that misdirection activity.
I think the vaccine stakeholders intentionally picked on Johnson & Johnson in order to distract attention away from the terrible safety events we've seen with Pfizer and Moderna. The vast majority of all the devastation we've seen is with Pfizer and Moderna …
When you generate a really strong antibody response, it's actually more pathogenic. The belief is it's more pathogenic than the natural infection, because we're seeing syndromes in vaccine victims that are way worse than getting COVID-19 itself. I mean, the syndromes are actually horrendous.
I have seen neurologic blindness, cervical myelitis, cerebellar syndrome. It's absolutely awful. It's depends where the messenger RNA goes … and everything I can put together biologically, and what I see clinically, is that vaccines aren't going to work but for a few months …
After the first shot of mRNA, one is actually more susceptible to COVID-19. This has been shown time and time again. My first rash of patients with post-vaccination COVID-19 in my practice was always after the first injection. The theory here is that the body has been hit with the messenger RNA, the spike protein is generated, it's damaging some endothelial cells, and there's an immature library of antibodies that are being formed.
And those antibodies, instead of protecting against the next exposure to COVID-19, they actually facilitate entry. That's called antibody-dependent enhancement, and I think there is evidence for that … As for what we can expect long-term, that's anyone's guess."
Long Term Risks Are Unknown
Before COVID came along, the FDA required vaccine makers to provide 24 months' worth of data before they'd allow it. This was truncated down to two months for the COVID shots. So, anyone who says the shots are safe long term is lying because no such data exists to prove this.
"The consent form says, 'We don't know if this is going to work, we don't know if it's going to last, and we don't know if it's going to be safe.' They say that. So, anybody who takes the vaccine is going to have to think about this and understand that we don't know anything beyond two months.
Given all the short-term risks, if there are any long-term risks, it is absolutely compounding this unknown. What I know based on the literature right now is there could be a risk given the narrow spectrum of immunologic coverage ... There could be such a narrow immunity that more virulent strain could overwhelm it …
The most recent variant is the Delta variant. That's the weakest of all the variants and the most easily treatable. But if someone, let's say a nefarious entity created a more virulent virus, it could easily be designed to scoot past a very narrow immunity that hundreds of millions, if not billions of people, will be keyed to with narrow immunity."
DNA Changes, Cancer and Chronic Illness Are Possible Effects
McCullough also discusses the risk that these mRNA injections might become permanently incorporated into your DNA by way of reverse transcriptase.
"There now have been enough studies to suggest there is some reverse transcription — that in fact the RNA creates DNA and then DNA gets permanently put into the human genome," he explains.
"We know this from the natural infection. The T-Detect test actually checks the T-cells when it tracks the DNA. This is a commercial test you can get if you had COVID-19, and it looks for minor chromosomal re-arrangements that code for cell surface receptors on T-cells."
The question is, if the synthetic mRNA or adenoviral DNAs in fact create permanent changes to the genome, what effects will that have? Could it promote cancer, for example? McCullough cites a recent paper indicating the spike protein might in fact affect two important cancer suppressor genes.
"This is disturbing because we're using novel genetic material and it's possible that they're oncogenic. We know some other viruses are oncogenic, including Epstein-Barr virus. So, when that paper hit, we said, 'Oh no, are we setting up people for cancer risk of solid organ cancers, like breast cancer, colon cancer, lung cancer, et cetera.
It is a sick feeling what we've learned there. We do understand now that there must be cell damage that's occurring with this spike protein inside cells. And that if it's not turned off, that that spike protein generation could end up with some type of chronic disease.
There are elements of the spike protein that are similar to prions that occur in neurologic disease, for instance. There may be intracellular changes as the body keeps cranking the spike protein which you're not supposed to crank, that causes other problems in cells …
Future development of heart failure comes to mind, gastrointestinal illnesses, pulmonary fibrosis, neurodegenerative diseases. We could be on to the start of a whole new genre of chronic disease in America due to this mass experimentation of genetic products in the human body."
Impossible for Vaccination Program to Improve Disease Curve
In a sane and rational world not laboring under some hidden agenda to kill off a portion of the population, these shots would have only been rolled out to the highest-risk individuals. The rest of the population would have been excluded from the experiment.
Remember the COVID injection trials conflated absolute and relative risk. Pfizer claimed its mRNA shot was 95% effective, but that was the relative risk reduction — the absolute risk reduction was actually less than 1%.6 As noted by McCullough, healthy adults under 50, teens and children have a less than 1% chance of hospitalization and death from COVID-19, so they don't have a medical need for it.
"You can't make less than 1% smaller and have it be clinically meaningful. That's the reason why the vaccine program will never have an impact on the epidemiologic curves. Dr. [Ronald] Brown from Canada has done the analysis. It's impossible.
Someone sent me an email the other day [saying], 'Dr. McCullough, don't you think that the pandemic is being favorably impacted by the vaccination program?' The answer is no. We look at the clinical trials. There's less than 1% absolute risk reduction. It means that, mathematically, it's impossible for mass vaccination to have a favorable impact on the population."
COVID Shot May Raise Your Risk of COVID Death
What's worse, McCullough cites data showing that those who have gotten the shot and end up with COVID-19 anyway have far higher rates of hospitalization and death.
"The CDC was so overwhelmed [with adverse reports], they gave up. God knows how many tens or hundreds of thousands of Americans got vaccinated and got COVID-19 anyway. It looks just like regular COVID. In the data they had, it was a 9% risk of hospitalization and then a 3% risk of death."
What this means is that, by taking the injection, you trade in a 0.26%7 risk of death, should you contract COVID-19, for a 3% risk of death if you get infected. If you're younger than 40, you're trading a 0.01%8 risk of death for a 3% risk.
The Way Forward Demands We Just Say No
If you want to hear more of what McCullough has to say, you can find his podcast, The McCullough Report, on America Out Loud. Every week, he talks to medical experts from different countries to get a range of perspectives and innovative approaches. In closing, he notes:
"My personal view is that I think the vaccine program has been a disaster. We should have just treated COVID-19 as an illness. We should never have shut down the schools or anything else. None of this wearing masks. We should have just treated the acute problem, and we would have gotten ourselves out of the pandemic."
As for how we move forward, first of all, we need to stop the acute injury, and that means we need to stop taking these COVID shots. Beyond that, we'll need to experiment to determine the best ways to block the damage done by the spike protein, for however long that is produced and stays in circulation.
"If there's any mother who's concerned about their child developing myocarditis, the way to avoid it is just don't bring your child to a vaccination center," McCullough says.
"Everyone is just going to have to learn to say no. We cannot be harmed by the vaccine if we just decline it. And the vaccine is completely elective. The CDC, the NIH, FDA, they've all said it's elective. You don't have to take it. Those agencies, by the way, they're not taking it.
So, nobody has to take it. And everyone who is in a school or a university, or a workplace where they're saying you have to take it, or say you have to take it for travel, the answer is no you don't. You do not have to take it for travel. And yes, you can show up to work without the vaccine. And yes, you can show up to school without the vaccine.
These are forms of intimidation and almost every one of these institutions actually hasn't written a policy. And if they don't have a policy that's been vetted with fair exemptions, that's just intimidation. That's like saying you can't show up to work with a blue tie. If I want to wear a blue tie, I'm going to show up to work in a blue tie.
I think Americans are going to have to have that type of backbone in order to break this wave of propaganda, [this] ill intent that's levered on the American people. I know so many people who are cowering … The fear is extraordinary …
If we had a Data Safety Monitoring Report in place, they would have been having emergency meetings at the end of January 2021, and said, 'You know what? What we're seeing is not good.' We can actually calculate what's called the competence interval.
When we exceed a competence interval for risks above a certain risk limit, we call it, and that [competence interval was exceeded] on January 22, 2021. Yet here we are, five months later. This will go down in history as the biggest medical biological product safety catastrophe in human history, by far. There's nothing close … You can imagine how many heads are going to roll when this thing ultimately comes to its finality."
