Health & Fitness

Dr. Peter McCullough has an impressive list of credentials¹ — he’s an internist, cardiologist, epidemiologist and a full professor of medicine at Texas A&M College of Medicine in Dallas and is the editor of two medical journals and published hundreds of studies in the literature. He’s also among those brave and courageous persons speaking out about the dangers of COVID-19 jabs, and putting his medical license and future livelihood at risk by so doing.

“There’s a hunting that’s going on here that’s very disturbing,” McCullough said in an episode of Perspectives on the Pandemic.² He was referring to state medical boards hunting down doctors and their and threatening revocation of their licenses based on the spreading of unidentified “misinformation.”

“This is absolutely astonishing that this is happening over a fair exchange of ideas,” he said. What is Dr. McCullough sharing that the powers that be don’t want you to hear? It’s about COVID-19 injections and, to sum it up in a sentence, “It’s not working and it’s causing tremendous damage.”

COVID Jab Efficacy and Safety Overstated From the Start

In the U.S., Operation Warp Speed is the federal effort that fast-tracked COVID-19 jab candidates to market. Gene transfer technology platforms emerged as the frontrunners, including adenoviral DNA platforms or messenger RNA (mRNA) platforms designed to deliver genetic material to the human body.

Once the mRNA is injected, the body then takes up the genetic material and changes in some way. These technologies have been under study for years, in most cases being designed to replace a defective gene, which could potentially be used for cancer treatment, for example. Except historically, “all failed,” McCullough said.

In November 2020, however, Pfizer, in a joint venture with Germany-based BioNTech, announced that their mRNA-based injection was “more than 90% effective” in a Phase 3 trial.³ This does not mean that 90% of people who get injected will be protected from COVID-19, though, as it’s based on relative risk reduction (RRR).

The absolute risk reduction (ARR) for the jab is less than 1%. “Although the RRR considers only participants who could benefit from the jab, the absolute risk reduction (ARR), which is the difference between attack rates with and without a jab, considers the whole population. ARRs tend to be ignored because they give a much less impressive effect size than RRRs,” researchers wrote in The Lancet Microbe in April 2021.⁴

Nonetheless, the jabs received emergency use authorization. By giving the emergency authorization, not approval, the jab administration constituted a research trial, with the sponsors being the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration. According to McCullough:⁵

“We’ve never had two government bodies together be a sponsor of a major research program. Shockingly, they did not have, and to this day they’ve never put together, an external critical event committee, an external data safety monitoring board or a human ethics committee. They had these committees in the registrational trials … and these are standard.

Every large clinical investigation has these three committees … I chair many of these committees for pharmaceutical companies and the National Institutes of Health. Americans should have had at least weekly, if not monthly, reviews of safety to ensure Americans that the jabs are safe.”

By March 2021, McCullough Was Worried

Initially, McCullough said, it seemed like the experimental jabs might be safe, and about 70% of his patients had received one by December 2020. But by March 2021, he was uncomfortable with what he was seeing. From December 14, 2020, through March 8, 2021, more than 92 million doses of COVID-19 jabs were administered in the U.S.

He cited data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database, which showed that during that time, there were 1,637 reports of death in people who had received a COVID-19 jab. The CDC and FDA said none of them was related to the jab but, according to McCullough, by January 22, 2021, 186 deaths had been reported — more than enough to reach the mortality signal of concern to stop the program.

“With a program this size, anything over 150 deaths would be an alarm signal,” he said. The U.S. “hit 186 deaths with only 27 million Americans jabbed.” McCullough believes if the proper safety boards had been in place, the COVID-19 jab program would have been shut down in February based on safety and risk of death.

Such was the case in 1976, when a fast-tracked injection program against swine flu was halted after an estimated 25 to 32 deaths.⁶ Yet, despite a much larger death toll, COVID-19 jabs continues. As of August 6, 2021, VAERS COVID-19 data showed 12,791 deaths related to the jabs, according to McCullough, and tens of thousands of hospital and clinic visits.⁷

In an analysis of COVID-19 vaccine death reports from VAERS, researchers found that 86% of the time, nothing else could have caused the death, and it appears the vaccine was the cause.⁸

The researchers noted, “The sample contains only people jabbed early in the program, and hence is made up primarily of those who are elderly or with significant health conditions. Despite this, there were only 14% of the cases for which a COVID injection reaction could be ruled out as a contributing factor in their death.”⁹

Further research shows, McCullough stated, and this is a very important point that I want you to understand and remember: that 50% of the deaths occurred within 48 hours of getting the shot, while 80% occurred within a week. An informal survey on Twitter, to which 10,000 people responded, also asked whether respondents knew someone who died after a COVID-19 jab.

Twelve percent said they did. “When people see others in their circle dying, you can’t stop that type of organic COVID jab hesitancy,” McCullough said. Other confirmed adverse effects of the COVID jabs include myocarditis and blood clots.¹⁰

An Incredible Violation of Human Ethics

Your body recognizes the spike protein in COVID-19 jabs as foreign, so it begins to manufacture antibodies to protect you against COVID-19, or so the theory goes. But there’s a problem. The spike protein itself is dangerous and known to circulate in your body at least for weeks and more likely months¹¹ — perhaps much longer — after the COVID jab.

In your cells, the spike protein damages blood vessels and can lead to the development of blood clots.^12,13 It can go into your brain, adrenal glands, ovaries, heart, skeletal muscles and nerves, causing inflammation, scarring and damage in organs over time.

In his practice, McCullough is seeing an array of neurologic syndromes in people who’ve been injected, with symptoms including blindness, paralysis, difficulty swallowing, headaches, ringing in the ears, myocarditis and more. Other research suggests that the heart, brain, immunologic system and hematologic system may be most at risk from the jabs.¹⁴

Children, who are at extremely low risk from COVID-19, receive no benefit from the jab, nor do those who have already had COVID and have immunity, McCullough said, calling the situation “a catastrophe in real time” that’s violating human ethics:¹⁵

“We’ve seen an incredible violation of human ethics. No one, for an investigational product, under any circumstances, should receive any pressure, coercion or threat of reprisal for not participating in the research.”

The Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 jab received FDA approval on August 23, 2021, but prior to this, million-dollar raffles, free tuition, bonuses and other bribes like free beer and doughnuts were offered to entice people to get injected. When that didn’t work, mandates increased, including for many health care workers, and hundreds of U.S. colleges¹⁶ are also requiring students to get jabbed in order to attend.

Vaccinated People Are Getting COVID Anyway

Media reports keep referring to the pandemic as a crisis of the unvaccinated, which is simply inaccurate, since COVID-19 continues to affect and spread among those who have been vaccinated. July 30, 2021, the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) posted online details of an outbreak of COVID-19 that occurred in Barnstable County, Massachusetts — 74% of the cases occurred in fully vaccinated people.¹⁷

So-called “breakthrough infections,” which used to be known as vaccine failures, were reported by the CDC far earlier, though, including in their May 28, 2021, MMWR, which documented 10,262 breakthrough infections reported January 1 to April 23, 2021, across 46 states.¹⁸

This, they believed, was “likely a substantial undercount,” but rather than continuing to assess the situation, they stopped monitoring most COVID-9 infections among vaccinated people:¹⁹

“Beginning May 1, 2021, CDC transitioned from monitoring all reported COVID-19 vaccine breakthrough infections to investigating only those among patients who are hospitalized or die, thereby focusing on the cases of highest clinical and public health significance.”

McCullough also mentions antigenic, or immune, escape. If you put a living organism like bacteria or viruses under pressure, via antibiotics, antibodies or chemotherapeutics, for example, but don’t kill them off completely, you can inadvertently encourage their mutation into more virulent strains. Those that escape your immune system end up surviving and selecting mutations to ensure their further survival.

COVID-19 has a high capacity for mutation but, if the virus isn’t under pressure, it won’t necessarily see a need to select mutations to, for instance, become more infectious. But if you put it under pressure, as is occurring during the mass vaccination campaign, this may change. McCullough stated:²⁰

“If we keep this up with the injections, there is going to be one variant after another … We’re playing with fire here with this mass vaccination … My interpretation as an internist and cardiologist — I’m a trained epidemiologist, I’ve literally done a year of intense COVID research and training — I’m going to tell you, I think this Delta outbreak that we have right now is the product of mass vaccination.

If we didn’t have the jab, we would have been better off. We had already treated this down to a very acceptable level.”

How to Break Through the Trance

McCullough believes many health care providers and the U.S. public are in a vaccination trance. It defies logic and commonsense how public officials and hospital executives can see the vaccines failing to work, can see the rising cases of adverse effects and deaths, and yet increasingly issue vaccine mandates or recommend the vaccine to groups for which it clearly shouldn’t be, like pregnant women. McCullough likens it to a form of psychosis or a group neurosis.

The U.S. public, however, has seen so much fear, hospitalization and death during the pandemic that they may have been prepared to accept casualties associated with the vaccines. Still, a sizable number of Americans aren’t being fooled.

“We’re at this pressure point, and I think right now, in talking to American people in my circles, they’re ready to take a time out,” McCullough said. If it means taking a sabbatical from work or delaying school for a year, many Americans are willing to do it to avoid getting vaccinated. “The only way to stay healthy right now is to stay away from this vaccine. If you get COVID-19, get to one of these treatment networks and get immunity on the other side.”²¹

McCullough is a proponent of early treatment of COVID-19 and believes treatment options have been suppressed to allow for mass vaccination:²²

“I think we’ve completely suppressed any form of treatment or help to people in order to promote the vaccine. Now the vaccine doesn’t work completely and it’s, frankly, dangerous. We’re down to almost one message: Take the jab or else … It’s the scariest time to be an American, and thank goodness half of Americans didn’t take it.

We’re going to have to see what this is going to look like. I think the next month or so is going to be incredibly interesting and it’s going to be ominous.”

McCullough believes that eventually people will break out of the jab trance and realize that the answer isn’t these injections, while the handling of the pandemic, including mass jabs, will become a course in violation of human ethics and the Nuremberg code. With fear, isolation, hospitalizations and deaths still occurring, however, it may take years before the fog is lifted.

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Niacin is also called vitamin B3. It's a water-soluble vitamin that's found naturally in some foods. It can also be purchased as a supplement. Recent studies have shown that niacin plays a role in an active metabolism and may help prevent severe COVID-19.

Niacin is a precursor to nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+), which is used to catalyze more than 400 enzymatic reactions in the body.¹ NAD+ is necessary for genome stability and the control of genetic expression.

Once NAD+ has been formed, it can be altered to form other necessary compounds such as nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADP) and nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH). The vitamin also helps convert carbohydrates into glucose and is part of the process in making several steroid hormones.²

It's rare to develop an outright deficiency unless you suffer from an underlying medical condition that reduces your absorption in the gastrointestinal tract.³ Although it's available as a supplement, when taken in large doses there are several side effects that can be uncomfortable. One of those side effects is commonly known as a niacin flush.⁴

The side effect is so uncomfortable that many people use the niacinamide form as it does not produce the flushing side effect. However, when taken to affect cholesterol levels, niacinamide is not effective.⁵ Symptoms of the niacin flush include burning, itching or tingling sensation.

The reaction goes away as the body builds up a tolerance; however, drinking alcohol with niacin makes the flush reaction worse.⁶ While it is irritating, and sometimes alarming if you don't expect the effect, a niacin flush is nonetheless harmless.

Niacin and Melatonin Combination Improve Metabolism

Adiponectin is secreted by adipocytes (fat cells) and plays a role in obesity-related diseases such as Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.⁷ The peptide has a direct action on vasculature, liver and skeletal muscle. Data show that it has anti-inflammatory, anti-atherogenic and insulin sensitizing effects, which can help reduce body weight.

Data also show that adiponectin levels in people with coronary artery disease are lower and the peptide modulates endothelial function and inflammation.⁸ Data has also shown it helps ameliorate hyperglycemia and hyperinsulinemia without weight gain, which led to the peptide being tested in animal models for obesity.

One pilot study⁹ in 2002 evaluated the effects of niacin against abdominal fat and found after one year, 81% of those taking 3,000 mg a day reduce their intra-abdominal fat by an average of 27%. Animal studies¹⁰ demonstrated that the administration of niacin attenuates obesity by increasing adiponectin.

Animal models have also demonstrated that niacin can reduce proinflammatory cytokines expression and has an anti-inflammatory cytokines effect. A second animal study¹¹ published two years later found similar results that suggested niacin “exerts beneficial effect on adiposity, glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity, and plasma lipids, and that it specifically modulates the level of serum adiponectin under obese condition.”¹²

One animal study published in The FASEB Journal¹³ evaluated pathways niacin may use to maintain energy homeostasis. The researchers bred mice deficient in the niacin receptor GPR109A. A high-fat diet induced obesity, which they found did not occur in wild-type mice who were treated with niacin.

Additionally, they found that the niacin triggered thermogenic activity in brown and white fat tissue and the mice treated with niacin had a decrease in the absorption of fatty acids and sterols in their intestinal tract.

Data have also shown that melatonin deficiency appears to correlate with obesity¹⁴ and in a human study melatonin supplementation appeared to regulate adiponectin activity leading to significant weight loss in the treatment group.

When melatonin supplementation was evaluated in 56 postmenopausal women,¹⁵ the researchers found that melatonin supplementation contributed to a significant improvement in the quality of sleep and in body weight reduction. This led to a recent animal study¹⁶ in which researchers evaluated the combination of niacin and melatonin on obesity.

The results of the animal study were encouraging as they found the effects of melatonin and niacin supplementation, in addition to treadmill exercise, resulted in weight loss after just 10 days. Weight loss was greater in the melatonin and niacin group than in the niacin only group and these two groups experienced greater weight loss than the control group.

Potential Effect Niacin May Have on COVID Infection

The anti-inflammatory effects of niacin and the effects it has on cytokine have led to several papers postulating the role that niacin may play against COVID-19. Additionally, there are two more studies in clinical trials with anticipated completion dates of December 2021 and June 2022.

One study¹⁷ is evaluating the potential use of nicotinamide riboside in patients who have COVID-19 to protect kidney function and the second¹⁸ is using a form of vitamin B3 to determine if it reduces the severity of the disease. A third study is investigating niacin and COVID in the elderly.¹⁹ Since the start of 2020, three papers have been published evaluating the potential effectiveness of niacin against COVID-19.

One paper published in Maturitas was a collaboration between scientists in Australia and the United Arab Emirates. The scientists postulated that the effect B vitamins have on the immune system and immune competence may make it a useful adjunct as a treatment strategy and possible prevention. They wrote:²⁰

“Vitamin B assists in proper activation of both the innate and adaptive immune responses, reduces pro-inflammatory cytokine levels, improves respiratory function, maintains endothelial integrity, prevents hypercoagulability and can reduce the length of stay in hospital.

Therefore, vitamin B status should be assessed in COVID-19 patients and vitamin B could be used as a non-pharmaceutical adjunct to current treatments.”

The paper goes on to detail how each of the B vitamins may help manage some of the symptoms from COVID-19, including how niacin is a building block of NAD and NADP, which are vital to combating inflammation.²¹ One lab study²² published in late 2020 analyzed niacin as a potential treatment for patients with colorectal cancer who may have an increased susceptibility to COVID-19.

They demonstrated that niacin had molecular functions that could help treat patients with colorectal cancer who had COVID-19, but the results were not validated in humans, so the researchers recommended further investigation to confirm the potential use. Recently a paper²³ written by Dmitry Kats, Ph.D., focuses specifically on niacin and has raised the question about whether it may be a crucial player in the disease process.

A marked elevation of proinflammatory cytokines has been blamed for a chain of events that lead to multiple organ failure and death. Potentially controlling these cytokines could reduce the downstream damage. NAD+ plays an important role in controlling pro-inflammatory cytokines, and niacin is a building block of NAD. As Kats explains:²⁴

“NA [niacin] is in fact the only compound to readily produce NAADP if needed in acidic environments (as is characteristic to ensuing inflammatory disease pathology), which in turn provides a potential energy/H+ pump-out action of its inverse, downstream kinetic (heat) energy inflammation to ultimately restore NAD+ to normal, pre-inflammatory levels, as well as other inflammatorily-depleted cofactors and biochemical pathways towards a more thermodynamically homeostatic health status."

The Curious Case of Smokers Reduced Risk of COVID-19

In early 2020, data showed that there were a low number of daily smokers who went on to be symptomatic with COVID-19.²⁵ This is curious, since COVID-19 begins primarily as a respiratory condition, and smoking is well-known for its harmful effects on the lungs.

However, if this is considered in light of niacin, an insufficiency of niacin may increase the risk of severe disease. Interestingly, nicotine and niacin are analogues — meaning they have similar means by which they work.²⁶ In fact, successful nicotine addiction detoxification uses niacin to help replace nicotine in the body.²⁷

This relationship may also help explain how teenagers become addicted so quickly to smoking. One researcher postulated that if a teen’s diet is insufficient in niacin, it would increase the body's craving for tobacco.²⁸ According to the National Institutes of Health Office of Dietary Supplements²⁹ the recommended daily allowance for niacin is 16 mg for men and 14 mg for women who are not pregnant or lactating.

One serving of beef liver contains 14.9 mg, which meets a woman's requirement. Otherwise, to meet the daily requirement, a person would need to eat two servings of chicken, or two servings of salmon, or 3 servings of ground beef or 3 cups of brown rice. One medium potato contains just 2.3 mg, and one slice of whole wheat bread contains just 1.4 mg.³⁰

These may be sufficient amounts to avoid pellagra, which is a severe niacin deficiency that can cause neurological symptoms and progress to paranoid and suicidal behaviors with auditory and visual hallucinations.³¹ Left untreated, pellagra can lead to death. However, it is easy to see how dietary intake may lead to chronic insufficiency.

According to Kats, the downstream effect of niacin is appropriate calcium signaling, which is responsible for inhibiting SARS-CoV-2 from infecting a cell and for driving it out of an already infected cell.³² The process is regulated by nicotinic acid adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NAADP), which is generated from NADP.³³

Niacin is a precursor to NAD, which can be altered to NADP. So, without enough niacin, your body cannot make enough NAADP that affects calcium signaling and may therefore increase the risk of severe COVID-19.

Melatonin Helps Protect Brain Cells During COVID Infection

The combination of melatonin and niacin may also have added benefits if you’re sick with COVID-19. The Frontline COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC) also recommends the use of melatonin in their outpatient³⁴ and inpatient³⁵ treatment protocols.

In May 2020, a paper³⁶ written by a group of scientists from the U.S. and Spain strongly suggested that melatonin be considered for prophylaxis or treatment of SARS-CoV-2. Dr. Paul Marik was one of those scientists.

Marik had developed a treatment protocol for sepsis with outstanding results,³⁷ and later was part of the team of critical care doctors who developed the IMASK and MATH+ protocols.³⁸ Other groups of doctors were also questioning whether melatonin may be useful in treating COVID-19.

More specifically a group from Turkey³⁹ proposed using melatonin in the elderly as it influences circadian rhythm, cardiovascular function and the immune system. Researchers know that melatonin levels decline with age, which is also associated with age-related diseases. They postulated that for this reason melatonin supplementation may be beneficial in treating older adults.

In December 2020, a team of scientists from Buenos Aires and the University of Toronto, Canada, collaborated on a paper⁴⁰ suggesting that there was a significant therapeutic potential for melatonin to “counteract the consequences of COVID-19 infections.”⁴¹

The writers postulated that melatonin has unique and wide-ranging effects as an anti-inflammatory agent, antioxidants and immunomodulatory compound and could be the “silver bullet” in treating COVID-19 patients. Given at night, it could effectively reverse sleep disorders and help control delirium in some patients.

Melatonin is a known cytoprotector and has served in the past to combat several of the comorbidities associated with severe disease, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes and metabolic syndrome. Additionally, melatonin has neuroprotective properties that can potentially reduce the neurological sequelae documented in patients infected with COVID-19.⁴²

Another paper⁴³ published in February 2021 in the International Journal of Molecular Medicine also calls for melatonin to be used as an adjuvant treatment after they present a short review aimed at profiling melatonin from several recent clinical trials.

Can Melatonin Reduce a Niacin Flush?

Many people find a niacin flush challenging and uncomfortable. Yet, compliance with taking the supplement is necessary for it to be used at home for treatment or prevention. Interestingly, Kats has anecdotal evidence that taking melatonin with niacin helps to reduce, and in some cases eliminate, the symptoms of a niacin flush.

In a Twitter⁴⁴ thread — which is now deleted as Twitter has suspended his account — he described the combination protocol he has been using, which he calls “niatonin.” In it he said he finds a 50-to-1 ratio of niacin to melatonin the right amount for him.

However, he cautioned that if you are groggy in the morning then you have had too much melatonin and not enough niacin. Likewise, if you have a flush reaction, then you have had too much niacin and not enough melatonin to balance.

He also advices, from anecdotal evidence, that those with long-haul symptoms may find relief by supplementing with melatonin and those who have had an injury or reaction from the shot may find relief using the combination of niacin and melatonin.

Word of Caution

Just be careful, though, as using high-dose melatonin long term could be a prescription for disaster. This is because doses of over 5 to 10 mg are likely to draw out heavy metals like mercury and unless you are on a good detoxification program and using sauna regularly these heavy metals could cause biological damage.

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This article was previously published on April 9, 2021, and has been updated with new information.

While the mainstream media has, by and large, dismissed the theory that SARS-CoV-2 was created and leaked from a high-security biocontainment lab in Wuhan, China, a number of high-ranking U.S. officials are sticking to it, and there's probably good reason for this.

On the whole, if the virus was actually a natural occurrence, a series of improbable coincidences would have had to transpire. Meanwhile, a series of highly probable "coincidences" point to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) being the most likely source, and to dismiss them as a whole simply doesn't make sense.

Media Struggle to Prop Up Unproven Zoonotic Theory

I first mentioned that the outbreak had the hallmarks of a laboratory escape in an article we posted February 4, 2020. On the upside, some members of the media are now finally starting to inch toward more honest reporting on this — probably because U.S. officials keep leaning that way.

That doesn't mean some aren't still trying to defend the official narrative. Take The New York Times, for example. The original headline of its March 26, 2021, article about Dr. Robert Redfield, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, read: "Ex-CDC Director Favors Debunked Covid-19 Origin Theory."¹

Three days later, that headline was toned down to: "The CDC's Ex-Director Offers No Evidence in Favoring Speculation That the Coronavirus Originated in a Lab,"² with a correction notice noting that the earlier headline "referred incorrectly to a theory on the origins of the coronavirus. The theory is unproven, not debunked."

Well, the truth is, all other theories are equally unproven — and are riddled with far more holes. The theory that the virus arose through natural mutation, for example, looks like Swiss cheese in comparison to the lab-leak theory.

In a February 16, 2021, article³ in Independent Science News, molecular biologist and virologist Jonathan Latham, Ph.D., and Allison Wilson, Ph.D., a molecular biologist, reviewed the evidence for a laboratory origin and the reasons why a zoonotic origin "will never be found." I also summarized their review in March 2021 article, which explains that:

• The chance of a person from Wuhan being patient zero is approximately 1 in 630, based on calculations that take into account the population size of Wuhan, the global population and the fact that coronavirus-carrying animals are found virtually all over the world
• Taking into account that there are 28 Alpha- and Beta-coronavirus species with members that affect humans, the chance of Wuhan hosting a SARS-related coronavirus outbreak is 17,640 to 1
• No credible theory for natural zoonotic spillover has been presented, to date
• There are at least four distinct lab origin theories, including the serial passage theory (which proposes the virus was created by serial passaging through an animal host or cell culture). There's also a variety of evidence for genetic manipulation
• A third theory is that SARS-CoV-2 is the result of vaccine development, and the fourth is the Mojiang miners passage theory, which proposes a precursor to SARS-CoV-2 sickened the miners, and once inside these patients, it mutated into SARS-CoV-2

No matter which way you look at it, the half-baked idea brought forth by the World Health Organization's investigative team, that the virus somehow naturally evolved in some unknown part of the world and then piggy-backed into Wuhan on top of frozen food, is held together by even fewer facts.

Among the more compelling "coincidences" that hint at lab-origin are the facts that the WIV has admitted storing and working with bat coronaviruses collected significant distances away from the lab, and that it's the only biosafety lab in China that studies human coronaviruses. These viruses include RaTG13,⁴ the closest known ancestor to SARS-CoV-2, obtained from miners who fell ill with severe respiratory illness after working in a Mojiang mine in 2012.

WHO COVID Report 'Totally Flawed'

In a March 30, 2021, opinion piece in The Washington Post,⁵ Josh Rogin accurately points out that the WHO's report⁶ on the origin of SARS-CoV-2 is so flawed, "a real investigation has yet to take place." We simply cannot count that report as the result of a true investigative effort.

"Determining the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus should have nothing to do with politics," he writes.⁷ "It is a forensic question, one that requires thorough investigation of all possible theories, and one that should encompass both the scenario that the virus jumped from animals to humans in nature as well as one related to human error in a Wuhan lab.

But a fatally flawed investigation by the World Health Organization and Chinese officials and experts only muddies the waters, and it places the WHO further at odds with the U.S. government and the Biden administration."

As noted by Rogin and many others, the investigation was far from independent and transparent, as China was allowed to select its members, who then relied on their Chinese counterparts when it came to data collection. It's no surprise then that this team decided the natural origin theory is the most credible, while the lab-accident theory is summarily dismissed as unworthy of further consideration and study.

In a March 25, 2021, CNN interview,⁸ Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated, "We've got real concerns about the methodology and the process that went into that report, including the fact that the government in Beijing apparently helped to write it." Rogin adds:⁹

"Specifically, declassified U.S. intelligence, confirmed by Blinken's own State Department,¹⁰ alleges that the WIV was conducting undisclosed research on bat coronaviruses, had secret research projects with the Chinese military, and failed to disclose that several lab workers got sick with COVID-like symptoms in autumn 2019."

Someone's Not Telling the Truth

According to the WHO report, the labs "were well-managed, with a staff health monitoring program with no reporting of COVID-19 compatible respiratory illness during the weeks/months prior to December 2019." "In other words, the WHO is saying the U.S. intelligence is wrong," Rogin writes.¹¹

Not a word is mentioned in the report about U.S. government claims that the WIV engaged in the very research required to create a novel coronavirus with the specific affinity to infect human cells.

Recently, Shi Zhengli, who heads bat coronavirus research at the WIV, spoke at a Rutgers University seminar, calling the WIV's research "open" and "transparent." Former deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger disagrees. In an interview with Lesley Stahl on "60 Minutes," he said:¹²

"There was a direct order from Beijing to destroy all viral samples — and they didn't volunteer to share the genetic sequences. There is a body of research that's been taking place, conducted by the Chinese military in collaboration with the WIV, which has not been acknowledged by the Chinese government.

We've seen the data. I've personally seen the data. We don't know [why the military were in that lab]. It is a major lead that needs to be pursued by the press, certainly by the WHO."

As noted by Pottinger, Shi published studies showing how bat coronaviruses were manipulated to render them more infectious to humans, and the U.S. government has in the past received reports of safety concerns due to lax standards at the WIV.

"They were doing research specifically on coronaviruses that attach to the ACE2 receptors in human lungs just like the COVID-19 virus," Pottinger told Stahl.¹³ "It's circumstantial evidence. But it's a pretty potent bullet point when you consider that the place where this pandemic emerged was a few kilometers away from the WIV."

US State Department Suspects Lab Leak

In a March 21, 2021, interview with Sky News Australia,¹⁴ David Asher, former lead investigator for the U.S. State Department's task force that looked into the origins of COVID-19, also stated that the data they collected "made us feel the Wuhan Institute was highly probably the source of the COVID pandemic."

According to Asher, three workers at the WIV who worked with the RatG13 coronavirus — the closest relative to SARS-CoV-2 identified to date — appear to have actually been the first cluster of cases of COVID-19. They fell ill with symptoms consistent with COVID-19 as early as October 2019. At least one of the workers required hospitalization.

He also pointed out there is evidence in the genetic sequence of SARS-CoV-2 suggesting it's been synthetically altered. It has the backbone of a bat coronavirus, combined with a pangolin receptor and "some sort of humanized mice transceptor." "These things don't naturally make sense," Asher said, adding that experts around the world agree that the odds of this configuration occurring naturally are "very low."

Another troubling indicator that something was amiss at the WIV was the Chinese government's taking down of a WIV database in September 2019. According to the Chinese, this was done because of "thousands of hacking attempts."

However, Asher pointed out many other databases were taken offline around the same time as well.¹⁵ The Chinese even tried to remove data posted in a European database containing viral sequencing from patients exhibiting COVID-19-related symptoms. Interestingly, those sequences included adenovirus, which is a vaccine vector. This, Asher said, could indicate that SARS-CoV-2 is part of a vaccine developed in response to a biological weapon.

In an earlier article¹⁶ by The Sun, Asher is quoted saying the WIV "was operating a secret, classified program," and that "In my view … it was a biological weapons program." He stops short of accusing China of intentional release, however, which also would not make sense from a bioweapon point of view. Instead, he said he believes it was a weapon vector that, during development, "somehow leaked."¹⁷

A March 27, 2020, assessment report by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency also concluded SARS-CoV-2 was likely an accidental release from an infectious diseases laboratory, but stops short of calling it a biological weapon.¹⁸ Asher also told Sky News¹⁹ he's never seen a more systematic cover-up, and The Sun²⁰ quotes him as saying that "Motive, cover-up, conspiracy, all the hallmarks of guilt are associated with this."

Former FDA Commissioner Weighs in on Lab Origin

March 28, 2021, former FDA commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb, now a board member of Pfizer (producer of one of the COVID vaccines), weighed in on the origin of the pandemic in a "Face the Nation" interview, saying:²¹

"It looks like the WHO report was an attempt to try to support the Chinese narrative … You know, the lab leak theory doesn't seem like a plausible theory unless you aggregate the biggest collection of coronaviruses and put them in a lab, a minimum-security lab in the middle of a densely-populated center and experiment on animals, which is exactly what the Wuhan Institute of Virology did.

They were using these viruses in a BSL-2 lab and, we now know, infecting animals. So that creates the opportunity for a lab leak. It might not be the most likely scenario on how this virus got out, but it has to remain a scenario. And I think at the end of the day, we're never going to fully discharge that possibility. What we're going to have here is a battle of competing narratives."

WHO Enters Damage Control Mode

In response to growing critiques, WHO director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and 13 other world leaders have joined the U.S. government in expressing "frustration with the level of access China granted an international mission to Wuhan." As reported by The Washington Post, March 30, 2021:²²

"Ghebreyesus said in a briefing to member states … that he expected 'future collaborative studies to include more timely and comprehensive data sharing' — the most pointed comments to date from an agency that has been solicitous toward China through most of the pandemic.

He said there is a particular need for a 'full analysis' of the role of animal markets in Wuhan and that the report did not conduct an 'extensive enough' assessment of the possibility the virus was introduced to humans through a laboratory incident …

The United States, Britain, South Korea, Israel, Japan and others issued a joint statement²³ … expressing concern. 'Together, we support a transparent and independent analysis and evaluation, free from interference and undue influence,' it reads …

Tedros said²⁴ … that mission team members raised concerns to him about access to raw data needed for the report … 'The team reports that the first detected case had symptom onset on the 8th of December 2019. But to understand the earliest cases, scientists would benefit from full access to data, including biological samples from at least September 2019,' he said."

WHO Investigation Team Accused of Spreading Disinformation

In a March 2020 interview with Independent Science News,²⁵ molecular biologist Richard Ebright, Ph.D., laboratory director at the Waksman Institute of Microbiology and member of the Institutional Biosafety Committee of Rutgers University and the Working Group on Pathogen Security of the state of New Jersey, called out the members of the WHO-instigated investigative team as "participants in disinformation."

Ebright was one of 26 scientists who signed an open letter²⁶ demanding a full and unrestricted forensic investigation into the origins of the pandemic, published in the Wall Street Journal and French Le Monde, March 4, 2021. When asked to describe the shortcomings of the WHO-China team's investigation, he responded:

"A credible investigation would have had Terms of Reference that: 1) Acknowledged the possibility of laboratory origin, 2) Ensured access of investigators to records, samples, personnel, and facilities at the Wuhan laboratories that handle bat SARS-related coronaviruses,

3) Enabled collection of evidence, not mere meet-and-greet photo-ops, 4) Authorized an investigation of months, not mere days, and 5) A credible investigation also would have had conflict-of-interest-free investigators, not persons who were subjects of the research and/or closely associated with subjects of the investigation …

It is crucial that any team reviewing the issues include not only research scientists, but also biosafety, biosecurity, and science policy specialists."

Ebright, who has repeatedly called the WHO mission "a charade," stated that "its members were willing — and, in at least one case, enthusiastic — participants in disinformation." Importantly, the terms of reference for the investigation were prenegotiated, and did not include even the possibility of a laboratory origin. He's also highly critical of the inclusion of Peter Daszak, whose conflicts of interest alone are enough to invalidate the investigation.

"Daszak was the contractor who funded the laboratory at WIV that potentially was the source of the virus (with subcontracts from $200 million from the US Department of State and $7 million from the US National Institutes of Health), and he was a collaborator and co-author on research projects at the laboratory," Ebright noted.

What Do We Know?

While another signer of the open letter, Dr. Steven Quay, claims to have calculated²⁷ the lab-origin hypothesis as having a 99.8% probability of being correct, Ebright is unwilling to assign relative probabilities to either theory. Rather, he insists a truly thorough forensic investigation and analysis is what is required, as there is biological evidence going in both directions. He explains:

"The genome sequence of the outbreak virus indicates that its progenitor was either the horseshoe-bat coronavirus RaTG13, or a closely related bat coronavirus.

RaTG13 was collected by Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2013 from a horseshoe-bat colony in a mine in Yunnan province, where miners had died from a SARS-like pneumonia in 2012, was partly sequenced by WIV in 2013-2016, was fully sequenced by WIV in 2018-2019, and was published by WIV in 2020.

Bat coronaviruses are present in nature in multiple parts of China. Therefore, the first human infection could have occurred as a natural accident, with a virus passing from a bat to a human, possibly through another animal. There is clear precedent for this. The first entry of the SARS virus into the human population occurred as a natural accident in a rural part of Guangdong province in 2002.

But bat coronaviruses are also collected and studied by laboratories in multiple parts of China, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Therefore, the first human infection also could have occurred as a laboratory accident, with a virus accidentally infecting a field collection staffer, a field survey staffer, or a laboratory staffer, followed by transmission from the staffer to the public.

There also is clear precedent for this. The second, third, fourth and fifth entries of the SARS virus into human populations occurred as a laboratory accident in Singapore in 2003, a laboratory accident in Taipei in 2003, and two separate laboratory accidents in Beijing in 2004.

At this point in time, there is no secure basis to assign relative probabilities to the natural-accident hypothesis and the laboratory-accident hypothesis. Nevertheless, there are three lines of circumstantial evidence that are worth noting.

Who's Qualified to Opine on Viral Origin?

When asked "What would you say to the scientists who declined to comment on the open letter because it does not come from virologists?" Ebright responded:²⁸

"The claim is unsound. There were virologists among the signers of the Open Letter. There even were coronavirologists among the signers of the Open Letter. More important, COVID-19 affects every person on the planet. Not just virologists …

Microbiologists and molecular biologists are as qualified as virologists to assess the relevant science and science policies. Virology is a subset, not a superset, of microbiology and molecular biology. The sequencing, sequence analysis, cell culture, animal-infection studies and other laboratory procedures used by virologists are not materially different from the procedures used by other microbiologists and molecular biologists."

Is Gain-of-Function Research Ever Justifiable?

Clearly, getting to the bottom of the origin of SARS-CoV-2 is crucial if we are to prevent a similar pandemic from erupting in the future. If gain-of-function research was in fact involved, we need to know, so that steps can either be taken to prevent another leak (which is not likely possible) or to dismantle and ban such research altogether for the common good.

As long as we are creating the risk, the benefit will be secondary. Any scientific or medical gains made from this kind of research pales in comparison to the incredible risks involved if weaponized pathogens are released, and it doesn't matter if it's by accident or on purpose. This sentiment has been echoed by others in a variety of scientific publications.^29,30,31,32

Considering the potential for a massively lethal pandemic, I believe it's safe to say that BSL 3 and 4 laboratories pose a very real and serious existential threat to humanity.

Historical facts tell us accidental exposures and releases have already happened, and we only have our lucky stars to thank that none have turned into pandemics taking the lives of tens of millions, as was predicted at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Seeing how scientists have already figured out a way to mutate SARS-CoV-2 such that it evades human antibodies, having a frank, open discussion about the scientific merits of this kind of work is more pertinent than ever before.

If SARS-CoV-2 really was the result of zoonotic spillover, the easiest and most effective way to quash "conspiracy theories" about a lab origin would be to present compelling evidence for a plausible theory. So far, that hasn't happened, and as noted by Latham and Wilson, the most likely reason for that is because the virus does not have a natural zoonotic origin, and you cannot find that which does not exist.

Summary

Ideally, we need to reevaluate the usefulness of the WHO. Strong evidence indicates it is heavily influenced, if not outright controlled by Bill Gates. On the whole, it seems it would be far wiser to decentralize pandemic planning from the global and federal levels to the state and local levels. Both medicine and government work best when individualized and locally applied.

Sadly, even though this is clearly the best strategy for successfully addressing any truly serious infectious threat, the likelihood of this happening is very close to zero.

This is largely due to decades of careful planning by the technocrats that have carefully placed their surrogates in virtually every arena of global government, finances and media, which allows them to easily dictate their propaganda campaigns and censor or deplatform virtually anyone who disagrees and seeks to provide a balanced counter-narrative.

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By Dr. Mercola

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:

Cancer: Women who take birth control pills increase their risk of cervical and breast cancers, and possibly liver cancer as well.	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
• Ovarian cysts may occur
• Bleeding and spotting

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:

1. The Ovulation Method: Natural Family Planning, by John J. Billings
2. Taking Charge of Your Fertility: The Definitive Guide to Natural Birth Control, Pregnancy Achievement, and Reproductive Health, by Toni Weschler
3. Honoring Our Cycles: A Natural Family Planning Workbook, by Katie Singer

References:

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• ⁱ See All References

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Despite widespread publicity, the 2002 landmark study on the potential dangers of hormone therapy for postmenopausal women is completely unknown to most women. 

New research from the Stanford University School of Medicine discovered that only 29 percent of the women surveyed knew anything about the study two years later. Additionally, only 40 percent of the women were able to identify possible risks and benefits linked to hormone therapy. 

Hormone therapy is used to ease your symptoms of menopause, but has also been widely prescribed for preventive purposes, based in part on earlier observational studies that had suggested it could help protect women against heart disease, weak bones, and dementia. 

In July 2002, the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) abruptly ended its combination of estrogen and progestin therapy study, as their data discovered higher rates of breast cancer, heart attacks, strokes, and blood clots in the population taking the hormones, compared to those taking placebos. 

Later, in April 2004, WHI also halted the portion of the study for estrogen-only therapy, after finding the hormone did not offer any protective heart disease prevention, but rather increased your risk of stroke and blood clots. 

The WHI findings triggered enormous changes in the use of hormone therapy, and prescriptions had dropped 38 percent by 2003. 

Senior author Randall Stafford, MD, PhD, said their latest survey indicates there's a huge problem in communicating crucial health information to patients effectively, which in turn is indicative of an even larger problem – ensuring that people can make informed decisions about their medical care. 

Menopause April 10, 2007

Women's Health Initiative June 21, 2007

WHI March 2, 2007 (The Estrogen-Alone Study Links)

Women's Health Initiative (The Estrogen-Plus-Progestin Study Links)

Eurekalert September 18, 2007

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