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August 19, 2022, The New York Times (NYT) published the documentary "Superspreader," featuring yours truly, on FX and Hulu (both of which are owned by Disney). I posted my initial response in "NYT Smears Me Again With Classic Orwellian Doublespeak" that same day.
The first episode of "The New York Times Presents" hit piece series featured Elon Musk,1 so it seems I'm in esteemed company.
The NYT clearly went through a lot of trouble, trying to dig up dirt from anyone they could find from my past — some going back 40 years, to my medical school days — who would be able to share some tidbit with which they could discredit me with. But, it seems they came up empty handed: After a year of investigation, they couldn't come up with anything.
And, consider for a moment, what kind of scandal would a team of reporters in one year be able to craft about you, after sifting through decades of your life, reaching out to hundreds of your former associates and classmates in search for any piece of negative feedback they could find?
Everyone has made mistakes in life, and I am no exception. That said, I'm proud to realize that, despite their best efforts, they ended up with a nothing-burger production. If you are not hypnotized by their propaganda, the production is actually quite complimentary. Surprisingly, they showed two people who claimed I saved their lives.
I can only guess at the NYT's budget and number of personnel dedicated over the past two years to inflict as much damage as possible, yet there was so little to reveal, the NYT producers and editors spent the vast majority of the show interviewing themselves about me!
All the other interviews were with people who don't actually know me. For example, one was with a Chicago journalist who interviewed me once — 13 years ago. Two classmates from med school, whom I haven't seen since, also described their impressions.
The takeaway from the program is that my integrity is in question because I run a successful supplement company. Here is the description from the show:
"Are you hesitant to get a COVID vaccine? This doctor opposes them. If you agree, he has some pet supplies he wants to sell you. Meet Dr. Mercola, perhaps the most influential spreader of COVID vaccine misinformation online."
So, if you have questions about the COVID shot (which I answer for free), you'll end up buying my pet supplies? This bizarre advertisement is a great example of the NYT's deranged thinking.
I haven't watched conventional television since I got rid of my cable nearly a decade ago, and this was a great reminder of why I avoid it. In the first commercial break, the funding for this program became quite clear. Hard Seltzer alcohol, Pop Tarts, Taco Bell — and to top it off, highly questionable SUPPLEMENTS!
The same networks so highly critical of how I fund my free information outreach is promoting Nutrafol hair growth formula and Nugenix Total T "for men's vitality." And if the Nugenix testosterone booster isn't enough, you can combine it with the Nugenix Thermal Fat Incinerator!
The irony of criticizing me for selling the highest quality nutritional supplements and biodynamic organic foods that address the foundational cause of disease rather than pander to cosmetic problems, while they themselves promote ultraprocessed junk food, booze, fast food and questionable supplements is hardly lost on anyone paying attention.
It's also worth noting that the top institutional owners of The NYT are The Vanguard Group and BlackRock Inc., which combined have ownership in nearly 90% of all S&P 500 firms, and through their investment holdings secretly wield monopoly control over all industries — including media.
I am a big believer in nutrition as you know. All primary efforts to improve your health begin with good food. Supplements, meanwhile, are just that — a supplement to a high-quality diet. Everyone's diet is different, and everyone's ability to access quality food is different.
Food has become less and less nutritious, and people supplement according to these fluctuations. I am no exception. Some things, like vitamin D, omega 3 and magnesium can be measured, and while doctors may have different ideas about what is optimal versus what is deficient, ultimately it's been proven that nutritional supplements clearly can improve deficiencies.
Not every supplement is right for every person, as people have different health goals. These individual needs create a wide breadth of supplementation choices, and I am proud to have spent over 20 years developing each and every product I carry.
I provide a source of income for hundreds of families, and we make every effort to provide our employees with a healthy and comfortable environment, and make the work enjoyable. While the NYT would like to shame me for this, I am proud of it, as it has taken a lifetime of work and collaboration with others to build what we have now.
No one can stay in business without income, and most media companies have but two options: Take on advertisers or sell something. Mainstream media make their money from advertisers. The ads for junk food, booze and fad supplements that ran during the "Superspreader" program helped pay for that critique.
The problem with advertisers is that they end up controlling your content. Even though media management and editors will deny it, if advertisers don't want you to speak about certain issues that might adversely impact their business, all they have to do is threaten to pull their ads. At that point, you have to make a decision: Ditch the truth, or ditch your income.
Early on, I decided I could not tolerate having anyone dictating what I could or could not report on, so I opted to develop high-quality branded products that I believe in, frequently use myself and stand behind.
The sale of these products allows us to independently fund research, publish free content, defend our rights and share the truth without external influence. My interviews with experts, which can run up to two hours, also have zero advertising breaks, which I believe makes for a better program.
In short, selling high-quality products has enabled me to be a true superspreader of health, truth and freedom, and I will never apologize for that. It has also allowed me to donate millions of dollars to nonprofit organizations that are working to make the world a healthier, less toxic place for everyone, whether you've ever heard of me or not.
Interestingly, one week before the "Superspreader" program aired, in which they're trying to portray me as a spreader of dangerous COVID misinformation, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reversed all of its COVID-19 guidelines, thereby proving my position on COVID correct.
The CDC's guidelines now correspond to what I've been saying all along. I (and many others who have been speaking out) were just way ahead of the CDC. So, who's really guilty of spreading COVID misinformation for the past two years? The ones who were telling the truth from the start, or the ones who, for years, got it wrong and only now, finally, admit it?
For example, the CDC is now suddenly advocating for taking personal responsibility and making decisions based on personal risk:2
"People can use information about the current level of COVID-19 impact on their community to decide which prevention behaviors to use and when (at all times or at specific times), based on their own risk for severe illness and that of members of their household, their risk tolerance, and setting-specific factors ..."
Individual risk assessment and risk-based countermeasures are both something we "misinformation spreaders" have called for from the beginning. The risk is not identical for all; hence, risk reduction strategies should not be uniformly applied. Finally, two and a half years late, the CDC agrees.
It now mirrors The Great Barrington Declaration and recommends focused protection, meaning protecting those "at particularly high risk ... because of older age, disability, moderate or severe immunocompromise, or other underlying medical conditions."3
A long list of doctors and scientists have been defamed for saying precisely what the CDC is now advocating.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and his former boss, Dr. Francis Collins, then-director of the National Institutes of Health, even went so far as to orchestrate a coordinated attack to discredit the previously well-respected authors of the Barrington declaration,4 which the CDC is now acknowledging as having presented the best route forward. The CDC is also giving up on discrimination based on COVID jab status:5
"CDC's COVID-19 prevention recommendations no longer differentiate based on a person's vaccination status because breakthrough infections occur ..."
They even admit that "persons who have had COVID-19 but are not vaccinated have some degree of protection against severe illness from their previous infection," and therefore are not to be treated any differently than someone who has received the COVID jab.
The old rules for testing and isolation are also out the window and now only apply to those who are symptomatic, which is what we've been saying is the only reasonable course of action all along.
The NYT, in its "Superspreader" video documentary, also accuses me of "paranoia about government." A few years ago, that probably would have resonated with most viewers, but after two-plus years of COVID tyranny, I believe people are starting to wake up to the reality that I've been warning about all these years.
Government and private corporations collude to suppress information about your health. The reason it's so difficult to find truthful health information is because regulatory agencies have been captured by the very industries they're supposed to regulate, and media is controlled by those same interests as well.
That includes Google, which controls over 95% of the internet searches in the world, colluding with the government and Big Pharma, and removing the vast majority of natural medicine truth tellers from their search results. This has radically limited your access to helpful health information.
If you believe those who collude to keep the truth from you, you'll believe vaccinations are safe and effective for everyone, synthetic food additives are harmless, electromagnetic field radiation (EMF) has no biological impact whatsoever, drugs are the sole treatment option if you're sick, nutrition has no impact on health and disease, unnatural environments are A-OK, pesticides in food are safe and all calories are created equal.
I could go on, but you get the gist. Who benefits from these faulty beliefs? The industries that make money from selling all those dangerous and health-destroying products, of course. And, if you believe all those lies and still don't feel well, what's the answer? There is none because, according to the powers that be, you're doing all the right things.
At the end of the day, what we have here is a classic case of accusing the opposition of what they themselves are doing. They're misleading you to eat and live in a way that will destroy your health, which makes them money, all while trying to destroy anyone who points out there are safe, simple and effective ways to avoid all those traps.
So, the reason why I venture into issues of politics and corruption in some of my articles is because this collusion between government and corporate entities ultimately have a severe impact on your health and your ability to stay healthy.
Before and during the production of "Superspreader," I had a series of correspondences with the NYT — some over planned hit pieces and some specifically for this documentary. I declined an on-camera interview, seeing no benefit in it.
But I did provide rebuttals to their inflammatory questions, none of which were included or addressed in their program, or in any of the NYT's other hit pieces, for that matter. This is why it is best to avoid interacting with media that have an obvious agenda as they will cut anything you say or write that does not fit into their preplanned story.
They are absolutely not on a quest to find the truth. Their only agenda is to discredit. So, in closing, here are those email exchanges.
Email Exchange 1
Email Exchange 2
Email Exchange 3
Email Exchange 4
This article was previously published January 17, 2019, and has been updated with new information.
Keeping a written record of the things you're thankful for is good for your health. That's the conclusion reached by an ever-growing number of published studies showing a wide range of physical benefits. According to Laurie Santos, a psychologist who teaches a science of well-being and happiness course at Yale, focusing on gratitude has become a growing trend in recent years,1 and for good reason.
There's an awful lot of stress and unhappiness in the world, and gratitude is an effective remedy that costs nothing. According to a 2020 report only 29% of Americans have ever called themselves very happy, and only 14% call themselves very happy.2 Other research suggests that nearly 1 in 4 experiences no life enjoyment at all.3
If your joy quotient could use a boost, commit to cultivating gratitude this year. A simple and proven way of doing this is to keep a gratitude journal, in which you document the things you're grateful for each day.
One 2015 study4 found participants who kept a gratitude diary and reflected on what they were grateful for four times a week for three weeks improved their depression, stress and happiness scores. In a more recent study,5 high school students asked to keep gratitude journals over the course of a month also exhibited healthier eating patterns.
According to Robert Emmons, one of the leading scientific experts on gratitude6 featured in the video above, gratitude has two key components.7 First of all, it's an "affirmation of goodness."
When you feel gratitude, you affirm that you live in a benevolent world. Second, it's a recognition that the source of benevolence comes from outside of yourself; that other people (or higher powers, if you so like) have provided you with "gifts." In Emmons' view, gratitude is "a relationship-strengthening emotion, because it requires us to see how we've been supported and affirmed by other people." If you've decided to keep a gratitude journal, keep the following guidelines in mind:
As noted by Dr. P. Murali Doraiswamy,8 an expert in brain and mind health, gratitude has "a health maintenance indication for every major organ system" in your body.9 For example, research shows that gratitude:10
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Alters your brain in a number of beneficial ways — Examples include triggering release of mood-regulating neurotransmitters11 such as dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine and oxytocin; inhibiting the stress hormone cortisol; and stimulating your hypothalamus (a brain area involved in the regulation of stress) and your ventral tegmental area (part of your brain's reward circuitry that produces pleasurable feelings)12 |
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Increases happiness and life satisfaction13,14 |
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Lowers stress and emotional distress |
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Improves emotional resiliency15 |
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Reduces symptoms of depression16 — According to one study,17 "Correlation analysis showed that gratitude, depression, peace of mind and rumination were interrelated … Results … suggested that gratitude may … counteract the symptoms of depression by enhancing a state of peace of mind and reducing ruminative thinking" |
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Reduces pain |
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Lowers inflammation by inhibiting inflammatory cytokines |
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Lowers blood sugar |
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Improves immune function18 |
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Lowers blood pressure |
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Improves heart health,19 reducing the likelihood of sudden death in patients with congestive heart failure and coronary artery disease |
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Lowers risk for heart disease20,21 — According to the authors, "Efforts to increase gratitude may be a treatment for improving well-being in heart failure patients' lives and may be of potential clinical value" |
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Improves general health by encouraging self-care — In one study,22 people who kept a gratitude journal reported exercising more and had fewer visits to the doctor |
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Improves sleep23 |
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Improves interpersonal relationships |
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Boosts productivity — In one study,24 managers who expressed gratitude saw a 50 percent increase in the employees' performance |
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Reduces materialism25 |
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Increases generosity26 |
In 2011, the Greater Good Science Center (GGSC) at the University of California, in collaboration with Emmons, launched a project called Expanding the Science and Practice of Gratitude. This project aims to:27
The organization has a number of resources you can peruse at your leisure, including The Science of Happiness blog and newsletter,28 and Thnx4, a digital gratitude journal29 where you can record and share the things you're grateful for year-round. There are also many other gratitude journal apps you can download. Last year, Positive Routines rated 11 of the best apps to track your happiness.30 Remember Emmons words:
"Neuroscientist Rick Hanson has said that the brain takes the shape the mind rests upon. Rest your mind upon worry, sadness, annoyance and irritability and it will begin to take the shape neurally of anxiety, depression and anger. Ask your brain to give thanks and it will get better at finding things to be grateful for, and begin to take the shape of gratitude.
Everything we do creates connections within networks of the brain, and the more you repeat something, the stronger those connections get. The mind can change the brain in lasting ways. In other words, what flows through the mind sculpts the brain."
Depending on circumstances, gratitude can sometimes be a struggle. However, according to Emmons and the GGSC, materialism is frequently the greatest stumbling block, and it really need not be. As noted in one of the GGSC's newsletters:31
"Seen through the lens of buying and selling, relationships as well as things are viewed as disposable, and gratitude cannot survive this materialistic onslaught … Research has proven that gratitude is essential for happiness, but modern times have regressed gratitude into a mere feeling instead of retaining its historic value, a virtue that leads to action …
[G]ratitude is an action of returning a favor and is not just a sentiment. By the same token, ingratitude is the failure to both acknowledge receiving a favor and refusing to return or repay the favor. Just as gratitude is the queen of the virtues, ingratitude is the king of the vices …
If we fail to choose [gratitude], by default we choose ingratitude. Millions make this choice every day. Why? Provision, whether supernatural or natural, becomes so commonplace that it is easily accepted for granted.
We believe the universe owes us a living. We do not want to be beholden. Losing sight of protection, favors, benefits and blessings renders a person spiritually and morally bankrupt … People who are ungrateful tend to be characterized by an excessive sense of self-importance, arrogance, vanity and an unquenchable need for admiration and approval.
Narcissists reject the ties that bind people into relationships of reciprocity. They expect special favors and feel no need to pay back or pay forward … Without empathy, they cannot appreciate an altruistic gift because they cannot identify with the mental state of the gift-giver."
If entitlement is the hallmark of narcissism, then humility is the antidote and the answer when you struggle with gratitude. As noted by Emmons, "The humble person says that life is a gift to be grateful for, not a right to be claimed. Humility ushers in a grateful response to life."32
So, gratitude isn't a response to receiving "your due," but rather the recognition that life owes you nothing, yet provided you with everything you have anyway — a place to live, family, friends, work, your eyesight, your breath, indeed your very life. When you start seeing everything as a gift, opposed to things you've deserved (for better or worse), your sense of gratitude will begin to swell.
Another way to flex your gratitude muscle when life events leave you uninspired is to identify and express gratitude for seemingly "useless" or insignificant things. It could be a certain smell in the air, the color of a flower, your child's freckles or the curvature of a stone. Over time, you'll find that doing this will really home your ability to identify "good" things in your life.
Aside from keeping a daily gratitude journal and being grateful for the simple, insignificant things around you, there are many other ways to practice gratitude. I've compiled 10 additional suggestions from various experts below. The key is to stay consistent. Find a way to incorporate your chosen method into each week, ideally each day, and stick with it.
Place a reminder note on your bathroom mirror if you need to, or schedule it into your calendar along with all of your other important to-do's.
1. Write thank-you notes33 — When thanking someone, be specific and acknowledge the effort and/or cost involved.
This year, make it a point to write thank-you notes or letters in response to each gift or kind act — or simply as a show of gratitude for someone being in your life. To get you started, consider practicing mindful thank yous for seven days straight.
2. Say grace at each meal — Adopting the ritual of saying grace at each meal is a great way to flex your gratitude muscle on a daily basis,34 and will also foster a deeper connection to your food.
While this can be a perfect opportunity to honor a spiritual connection with the divine, you don't have to turn it into a religious speech if you don't want to. You could simply say, "I am grateful for this food, and appreciate all the time and hard work that went into its production, transportation and preparation."
3. Let go of negativity by changing your perception — Disappointment can be a major source of stress, which is known to have far-reaching effects on your health and longevity. In fact, centenarians overwhelmingly cite stress as the most important thing to avoid if you want to live a long and healthy life. Since stress is virtually unavoidable, the key is to develop and strengthen your ability to manage your stress so that it doesn't wear you down over time.
Rather than dwelling on negative events, most centenarians figured out how to let things go, and you can do that too. It takes practice, though. It's a skill that must be honed daily, or however often you're triggered.
A foundational principle to let go of negativity is the realization that the way you feel has little to do with the event itself, and everything to do with your perception of it. Wisdom of the ancients dictate that events are neither good nor bad in and of themselves. It is your belief about the event that upsets you, not the fact that it happened.
As noted by Ryan Holiday, author of "The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living,"35 "The Stoics are saying, 'This happened to me,' is not the same as, 'This happened to me and that's bad.' They're saying if you stop at the first part, you will be much more resilient and much more able to make some good out of anything that happens." And, once you can see the good, you're more apt to feel gratitude.
4. Be mindful of your nonverbal actions — Smiling and hugging are both ways of expressing gratitude, encouragement, excitement, empathy and support. These physical actions also help strengthen your inner experience of positive emotions of all kinds.
5. Give praise — Research36 shows using "other-praising" phrases are far more effective than "self-beneficial" phrases. For example, praising a partner saying, "thank you for going out of your way to do this," is more powerful than a compliment framed in terms of how you benefited, such as "it makes me happy when you do that."
The former resulted in the partner feeling happier and more loving toward the person giving the praise. Also, be mindful of your delivery — say it like you mean it. Establishing eye contact is another tactic that helps you show your sincerity.
6. Prayer and/or mindfulness meditation — Expressing thanks during prayer or meditation is another way to cultivate gratitude. Practicing "mindfulness" means that you're actively paying attention to the moment you're in right now. A mantra is sometimes used to help maintain focus, but you can also focus on something that you're grateful for, such as a pleasant smell, a cool breeze or a lovely memory.
7. Create a nightly gratitude ritual — One suggestion is to create a gratitude jar,37 into which the entire family can add notes of gratitude on a daily basis. Any jar or container will do. Simply write a quick note on a small slip of paper and put it into the jar.
Some make an annual (or biannual or even monthly) event out of going through the whole jar, reading each slip out loud. If you have young children, a lovely ritual suggested by Dr. Alison Chen in a Huffington Post article38 is to create a bedtime routine that involves stating what you're grateful for out loud.
8. Spend money on activities instead of things — According to recent research,39 spending money on experiences not only generates more gratitude than material consumption, it also motivates greater generosity. As noted by co-author Amit Kumar, postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Chicago, "People feel fortunate, and because it's a diffuse, untargeted type of gratitude, they're motivated to give back to people in general."40
9. Embrace the idea of having "enough" — According to many who have embraced a more minimalist lifestyle, the key to happiness is learning to appreciate and be grateful for having "enough."
Financial hardship and work stress are two significant contributors to depression and anxiety. The answer is to buy less and appreciate more. Instead of trying to keep up with the Joneses, practice being grateful for the things you already have, and release yourself from the iron grip of advertising, which tells you there's lack in your life.
Many who have adopted the minimalist lifestyle claim they've been able to reduce the amount of time they have to work to pay their bills, freeing up time for volunteer work, creative pursuits and taking care of their personal health, thereby dramatically raising their happiness and life satisfaction. The key here is deciding what "enough" is. Consumption itself is not the problem; unchecked and unnecessary shopping is.
Many times, accumulation of material goods is a symptom that you may be trying to fill a void in your life, yet that void can never be filled by material things. More often than not, the void is silently asking for more love, personal connection, or experiences that bring purpose and passionate engagement. So, make an effort to identify your real, authentic emotional and spiritual needs, and then focus on fulfilling them in ways that does not involve shopping.
10. Try tapping — The Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) is a helpful tool for a number of emotional challenges, including lack of gratitude. EFT is a form of psychological acupressure based on the energy meridians used in acupuncture that can quickly restore inner balance and healing, and helps rid your mind of negative thoughts and emotions. In the video below, EFT practitioner Julie Schiffman demonstrates how to tap for gratitude.
According to the American Liver Foundation,1 approximately 100 million people in the U.S. have nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Research2 published by Duke-NUS Medical School3 revealed that two B vitamins may have a significant effect on an advanced form of the disease, for which there is no pharmaceutical treatment.4
Your liver weighs just over 3 pounds and is located on the right side of your abdomen, protected by your rib cage.5 It's the largest solid organ in your body and one of the largest glands, carrying out over 500 essential tasks to maintain optimal health.6
The liver has two main lobes and each of those has eight segments. Every segment is made up of approximately 1,000 lobules that are connected to small ducts. The liver filters your blood, regulates many chemical levels and excretes bile into your intestines to help break down fat. The liver also produces cholesterol, stores and releases glucose and regulates blood clotting.7 Each of these vital functions is impacted by the four stages of NAFLD.
NAFLD is a serious liver condition caused by excess fat in the liver, and not from being exposed to alcohol. The medical term is hepatic steatosis, and it is the most common chronic liver disease in developed countries.8 In one population-based study,9 18.9% of the participants had confirmed NAFLD, which was more prevalent in men than women.
Risk factors in this study were being over age 40, male, and being diagnosed with central obesity and elevated fasting blood sugar, aspartate transaminase (AST) and alanine transaminase (ALT). Dietary fructose is a significant link in the development of NAFLD,10,11,12 chronic hepatic inflammation and an increased risk of developing the next stage of liver disease, nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH).
The results of one study13 presented at the 2022 Endocrine Society annual meeting found a significant link between those whose diet contained the most fructose and the development of NAFLD. In a press release, one researcher on the study, Dr. Theodore Friedman from Charles R. Drew University, said:14
“We found that when adjusting for the demographics and behavioral factors (smoking, modest alcohol consumption, diet quality and physical activity), high fructose consumption was associated with a higher chance of NAFLD among the total population and Mexican Americans.”
The researchers in the featured study15 were studying the effect that vitamins B12 and B9 might have on NASH. After years of inflammation from NAFLD and fatty deposits on the liver, it is possible to develop NASH.16
Dr. Madhulika Tripathi, a senior research fellow with the Laboratory of Hormonal Regulation at Duke-NUS' Cardiovascular & Metabolic Program, said in a press release,17 "While fat deposition in the liver is reversible in its early stages, its progression to NASH causes liver dysfunction, cirrhosis and increases the risk for liver cancer."
The researchers were seeking to understand the relationship between hyperhomocysteinemia and NASH.18 Using an animal model, they administered vitamin B12 and folic acid, attempting to reverse the cellular features of NASH. While evaluating preclinical models,19 they discovered that homocysteine attaches to a protein called syntaxin 17 and blocks the protein. This in turn appears to induce the development and progression of NASH.
However, when mice were supplemented with vitamin B12 and folic acid, the levels of syntaxin 17 rose, which slowed the progression of NASH and reversed fibrosis. One of the scientists in the study, Dr. Brijesh Singh, said:20
"Our findings are both exciting and important because they suggest that a relatively inexpensive therapy, vitamin B12 and folic acid, could be used to prevent and/or delay the progression of NASH. Additionally, serum and hepatic homocysteine levels could serve as a biomarker for NASH severity."
The researchers were excited by the possibilities since the early stages of NAFLD often have no symptoms and don't usually cause any harm.21 Yet, without identification, the condition can progress to NASH or fibrosis. This can lead to extreme tiredness, unexplained weight loss and weakness.
There are four stages of NAFLD which begin with simple fatty liver steatosis.22 This can progress to NASH, then fibrosis and finally cirrhosis. In the latter stages, patients are also at higher risk for liver cancer.23 During all stages of NAFLD, a person has a higher risk of developing cardiovascular diseases.
One reason there is such a high prevalence of individuals with NAFLD and NASH may be a deficiency or insufficiency in Vitamin B12, folic acid and/or choline. According to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases,24 NAFLD is more common in individuals who are obese or have obesity-related conditions, such as Type 2 diabetes.
The National Institutes of Health25 reports that the rate of vitamin B12 deficiency is close to 20% in those who are older than 60. This data is from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) from 2015 to 2016. Data from another large, nationally representative sample26 demonstrated that serum levels of B12 are inversely associated with obesity.
In other words, people who are obese have a higher risk of NAFLD. A vitamin B12 deficiency may allow NASH to progress and the rate of vitamin B12 deficiency is close to 20% in those older than 60 and higher in those who are obese.
Vitamin B12 is also called cobalamin.27 It's found in animal food and is a key component in the function and development of the central nervous system. A second essential nutrient for human health that is also associated with central nervous system health and the risk of NAFLD is choline. Choline was identified in 186228 and officially recognized as an essential nutrient by the Institute of Medicine in 1998.29
Choline plays a significant role in human health, from neurotransmitter synthesis to cell structures and has a large impact on the development of NAFLD, atherosclerosis30 and neurological disorders.31 The body can produce some choline endogenously in the liver but not enough to meet human needs. There is an interrelationship between folic acid and choline deficiencies as both are methyl donors.32
When the diet is deficient in folic acid, choline becomes the primary methyl donor, creating greater insufficiency or deficiency of the nutrient. Nearly 12 years ago,33 Chris Masterjohn, who has a Ph.D. in nutritional science, wrote that choline insufficiency or deficiency may play a more significant role in the development of fatty liver disease than fructose.
According to Masterjohn,34 your body uses choline to rid itself of excess fat. Without enough choline, it can trigger fatty liver. Yet, the most significant culprit remains excessive fructose, as it must be metabolized by the liver and is primarily converted into body fat as opposed to being used for energy like glucose. Without enough choline, the fat is deposited in the liver.
Another factor that is associated with liver damage is iron overload. Iron may be one of the most common nutritional supplements that can be found as a single supplement or added to multivitamins and processed foods. However, damage from too much iron may be greater than that from iron deficiency anemia.35
Although it is necessary for biological functions, too much can do tremendous damage. Nearly all adult men and postmenopausal women are at risk for iron overload since there are no efficient means for the body to excrete excess iron. In other words, these populations do not lose blood on a regular basis.
Blood loss is a primary way to lower excess amounts of iron which, if left untreated, can contribute to neurodegenerative diseases, diabetes, heart disease and cancer. Additionally, high iron levels are found in individuals with alcoholic liver disease and NAFLD.36
Glyphosate, which is the active ingredient in the herbicide Roundup, is also linked to NAFLD and NASH. Researchers37 from the University of California San Diego School of Medicine38 found patients with NASH had higher residues of glyphosate in their urine, an association that held true regardless of other factors in liver health, such as body mass index, diabetes, age or race.
Exposure to glyphosate may lead to more severe forms of liver disease, and subsequently an increased risk of liver cirrhosis, liver cancer and higher mortality rates than the general population from liver-related and non-liver-related causes.39
In a UC San Diego news release, study researcher Paul J. Mills, Ph.D., explained, “There have been a handful of studies, all of which we cited in our paper, where animals either were or weren’t fed Roundup or glyphosate directly, and they all point to the same thing: the development of liver pathology. So, I naturally thought: ‘Well, could it be exposure to this same herbicide that is driving liver disease in the U.S.?’”40
Glyphosate is also known to trigger the production of reactive oxygen species, leading to oxidative stress. As noted in Scientific Reports, “Elevation in oxidative stress markers is detected in rat liver and kidney after subchronic exposure to GBH [glyphosate-based herbicides] at the United States’ permitted glyphosate concentration of 700 μg/L in drinking water.”41
Researchers from King’s College London also showed an “ultra-low dose” of glyphosate-based herbicides was damaging.42 The study involved glyphosate exposures of 4 nanograms per kilogram of body weight per day, which is 75,000 and 437,500 times below EU and U.S. permitted levels, respectively.43
After a two-year period, female rats showed signs of liver damage, specifically NAFLD and progression to NASH. The researchers noted44 that glyphosate may bring about toxic effects via different mechanisms, depending on the level of exposure, including possibly mimicking estrogen and interfering with mitochondrial function.
There are several steps you can take to protect your liver. Among those are eliminating high-fructose corn syrup from your diet, not using Roundup or other glyphosate-based herbicides in your garden, purchasing organic, non-GMO produce and foods, lowering your risk of iron overload and taking care to ensure you get enough B vitamins and choline.
However, we would need to live in a perfect world to ensure our liver is not inundated with a ubiquitous chemical assault commonly found in our industrialized world. As the featured research pointed out, even those with NASH, an advanced form of NAFLD, can benefit from supplementing with vitamins B12 and folic acid.
While the focus of the featured study was NAFLD, overconsumption of alcohol also drives liver damage, cirrhosis and death. Data45 gathered between 1999 and 2016 revealed a 65% increase in annual deaths from cirrhosis, with 25- to 34-year-olds experiencing the greatest relative increase in mortality driven entirely by alcohol-related disease.
Milk thistle is an herb that has been used for thousands of years to support liver, kidney and gallbladder health. In modern times, silymarin, the active ingredient in milk thistle, has been used to treat alcoholic liver disease and hepatitis.46 Silymarin may help suppress cellular inflammation47 and inhibit the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR), a pathway that, when overactivated, increases your risk of cancer.48
Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) is the third-most consumed supplement,49 yet many people don't realize how clinically effective it is, including the role it plays to protect your liver. In one study,50 44 patients were divided into two groups. One group was given 100 mg of CoQ10 each day, while the other was given a placebo.
After four weeks, the group taking CoQ10 dropped weight and had lower levels of serum AST, a blood marker that indicates liver disease and/or damage. The reduced version of CoQ10 is ubiquinol. As you age, the body’s ability to absorb and utilize CoQ10 drops, but it can still use ubiquinol.51 Ubiquinol is absorbed three to four times better than CoQ10.52
N-acetylcysteine (NAC) is a precursor needed to produce glutathione, also called the "master antioxidant."53 NAC helps support liver health in those with hepatitis C and other chronic liver diseases.54
An animal study showed NAC could effectively minimize damage associated with alcohol consumption55 and is used as an antidote for acetaminophen toxicity, which causes liver damage by depleting glutathione.56,57 Research published in Hepatitis Monthly58 has also shown NAC supplementation helps improve liver function in patients with NASH.
This article was previously published December 6, 2020, and has been updated with new information.
Sharyl Attkisson is an award-winning investigative journalist with uncompromising integrity. Her book, “Slanted: How the News Media Taught Us to Love Censorship and Hate Journalism,” was released in November 2020.
In this, her third book, she addresses one of the most pressing issues of our time: media bias and the deterioration of objective journalism — a topic on which she has first-hand experience.
A former anchor at CNN and CBS News, Attkisson now produces her own Sunday television news program, "Full Measure," as well as two podcasts: "Full Measure After Hours" and "The Sharyl Attkisson Podcast," in which she covers the kinds of stories that mainstream news no longer touches.
Propaganda through media certainly isn't a new thing. Starting in the late 1940s,1 the CIA ran a well-documented but at the time covert campaign called "Operation Mockingbird," in which they recruited journalists as assets to spread propaganda — news slanted in one way or another. While the program is always referred to in the past tense, as it is said to have been ended in the 1970s,2 evidence suggests it never really stopped.
"There are all kinds of ways the Intel community has, and can, manipulate the news," Attkisson says, "but we reached a new level in 2016, 2017, because they don't even have to whisper in our ear to get us to report stuff. We hired them. Meaning, Brennan, Clapper, Comey — all of them were hired as consultants. They were invited on the news directly.
You didn't have to put them through a filter and anonymous sources, although plenty of anonymous sources were also used. But daily putting forth their propaganda, much of which, obviously, was proven false, particularly on the Trump, Russia narrative.
But every day, we allowed them to plaster the airwaves, even after they were proven admittedly wrong … After two years of spewing this false information, they're still consulted by the media. They're still used. So, it's so easy for an Intel operation if they wish to use the media towards whatever goal they may have …
I firmly believe that there have been ongoing [propaganda] campaigns that continue today. Maybe separate operations by intelligence agencies and officials to manipulate the news, and certainly have things reported a certain way to try to push for certain outcomes in politics here at home and internationally."
Multinational industries, the drug industry in particular, also has a similar level of influence over content relating to their particular interests. In 1996, direct-to-consumer drug advertising was legalized, and as drug advertising became a major income stream for media companies, their reporting on health and medicine became increasingly biased.
The reason is simple. They cannot afford to "bite the hand that feeds them." If an advertiser doesn't want the public to know about a particular finding, all they have to do to influence the reporting is to threaten to withdraw its advertising, which will hurt the media company's bottom line.
Drug companies have also become major sponsors of medical education; thus, doctors are taught to prescribe drugs for all ills, but they're not taught about the side effects and drawbacks of those drugs.
Today, the drug industry also controls fact-checking organizations such as NewsGuard, as it is funded by Publicis, which is supported by drug companies. When feeding from the Big Pharma trough, how could they possibly be objective in their fact-checking? Reality shows us they can't because they aren't.
Big Tech companies, of course, are also masters of censoring anything that might hurt themselves or their technocratic allies. As just one of countless examples, you can no longer post a link to Mercola.com on Twitter.
First, they added a false warning that made it look like my site contained dangerous malware when readers would click on a posted link. After a while, they simply blocked the ability to post links to our site altogether.
"This started, and I traced this in my second book, 'The Smear,' to Media Matters … the left-wing propaganda group that supported Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and is a big smear organization," Attkisson says. "They acknowledged going to Facebook about the time when they were worried that Donald Trump was going to get elected.
They really felt that the only thing giving him a leg up, and they still believe this today, is his social media outreach. They tried to think of a way to control, with the kind of social media and news people could get, so Media Matters lobbied Facebook and tried to convince them — and did so successfully — to taking a fact-checking brand-new role that nobody had ever asked for.
We're not begging for our information to be curated. That was a pretend demand created by the propagandists who wanted to control the information. They had to make us think that we needed a third party to step in and tell us what to think and sort through the information … The fake news effort, the fact-checking, which is usually fake fact-checking, meaning it's not a genuine effort, is a propaganda effort …
We've seen it explode as we come into the 2020 election, for much the same reason, whereby, the social media companies, third parties, academic institutions and NewsGuard … they insert themselves. But of course, they're all backed by certain money and special interests. They're no more in a position to fact-check than an ordinary person walking on the street …
They have interests. They make sure certain things are not seen, even if true. And I think this is the most serious threat that I'm looking at right now to our media environment.
I'm afraid that our kids will be telling their kids of a time when you used to be able to go on the internet and find most, any, information you wanted, because we are increasingly being pointed only to that which they, people who control the information, wish for us to see."
In her book, Attkisson also spends an entire chapter dissecting the highly-biased treatment of President Trump, and how the media have, through their own admission, suspended traditional journalistic ethics simply because they consider him "uniquely dangerous."
"Therefore, you don't have to follow the normal rules and guidelines when it comes to fair and accurate reporting, which I think is one of the most absurd things I've ever heard in my life, from someone in our profession, because the standards exist precisely so that we report on everybody the same way," she says.
"In other words, using the same standards, whether we like them or not. Particularly, perhaps, if we don't like or agree with the candidate — that's when the standards become most important. But you need only look at Politico, for example, during the last election.
I interviewed them shortly afterwards. Someone in charge of some of their coverage … in almost every answer to a question, she brought up President Trump and something negative about him.
One of the things she said was how many lies he tells per minute. She said, 'We actually had a team that calculated the number of lies per minute that President Trump told.' And I asked the obvious question, 'Well, what was that compared to Hillary's supposed lies per minute?' And she actually said, 'Oh, we didn't have the staffing to do Hillary too.'
Can you imagine a national news organization that purports to cover something fairly and we'll fact-check the lies per minute of one candidate and not the opposing candidate and pretend that that qualifies as fair news?
I also interviewed some noted liberals who have noticed the same thing: That they look at things from a fair-minded viewpoint and are no fan of President Trump, yet are appalled at how the media has dishonestly treated certain topics and information, which should make everybody wonder, 'Are we getting the truth when it comes to things that don't have to do with President Trump?
If the media can report so many things out of context and incorrectly when it comes to somebody they don't like, what else are we getting that's not in context or that's not fully true?'"
Prior to President Trump, virtually no one in the media would accuse someone of lying. The standard was to question an individual's statement or point out a discrepancy to another source, but not call it an outright lie, because it's easy to get confused on specifics. A lie is a very specific allegation that implies an intent to deceive. Just because you misremember a fact doesn't mean you lied.
"[In the book] I talk about the fact that … I know I've probably been lied to many times, but I don't believe I've ever reported that somebody lied to me in a hard news report. Why? Well, a lie is a specific thing that requires you to know the mind of the person. And you as a journalist have to withhold, even if you think something is true without the evidence, you really can't say it's true.
I'll use the example I used in the book: Ford and Firestone tires. The executives consistently said there was no evidence that these tires were dangerous prior to the scandal around the 2000 time period where there were a lot of deaths. I had documents from a source that showed this very danger many years before.
It appeared that they were lying, but I didn't call it a lie because there are many other explanations someone could give. They could say, 'Well, these guys weren't there at the time. So, they didn't know that these discussions had been had. They didn't have access to the emails, their subordinates didn't tell them.' So, you don't know whether they're mistaken or lying.
And from a journalistic standpoint, we used to always take the objective road and say something like, 'Their testimony contradicts the documentary record.' That's good enough. People at home can make up their own mind.
But there was a turn taken, specifically, to target President Trump, whereby, the media started frequently calling things that he said, lies — even when there was simply something that was a matter of opinion, or could not be proven, or a mistake, none of which are lies.
The New York Times was proud of this when it did it. And I recount in the book the first time they made a headline where they talked about President Trump lying, and how that was cheered on by others in the media who then followed suit.
They were even cheered on by a journalism professor who wrote a big op-ed about how it was time to stop doing this objective reporting and that we needed to call out President Trump's lies frequently and often. It's just, again, from a journalistic standpoint, ridiculous … I think this is a new and dangerous tactic that has really destroyed our objectivity in the eyes of the public. And rightly so."
In terms of health, COVID-19 reporting has taken censorship and media manipulation to brand new heights, eclipsing just about all previous efforts. They don't even hide the bias anymore.
All social media platforms are openly censoring dissenting views about the virus, particularly its origin and treatment. Even well-respected doctors and scientists have been axed for speaking against the desired narrative dictated by the World Health Organization.
August 26, 2020, the CDC had released data3 showing 94% of people who had died during the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. died "with" the virus, not "from" it. Only 6% had COVID-19 listed as the sole cause of death on the death certificate. Hence, at that time the real death toll, those who unarguably died as a direct result of the infection, was only around 10,000.
"For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death," the CDC stated. This is an important distinction.
Yet mainstream media continued to report that nearly 200,000 had died "from" COVID-19 in the U.S, and have continued to add to the numbers, thereby increasing and ensuring national fear so they can continue to implement their lockdowns, face mask and vaccine mandates and other strategies to limit our personal freedoms and liberty.
"I think we need both numbers, in a separate sense, to have perspective and understanding of what's really happening," Attkisson says. "And it's something that very few people have shown interest in ... Early on, it was clear … that the primary victims were those with the comorbidities and the elderly population in nursing homes and so on.
But then we sort of lost track of that. And then there seemed to be a propaganda effort to convince people that, initially, after understanding young people were at very little risk of serious illness and death, there seemed to be an effort to convince people that the youth must be very careful. That more young people are dying and getting sick.
I can only guess as to why that's important to some interests, but I suspect it has something to do with the fact that when the vaccine comes out, the market needs to be aimed.
You can't rule out young people, you must make them believe they need it, or else you've ruled out a huge section of the vaccine market. And they certainly don't want to make a vaccine that's not used by a giant percentage of the population. I think they have to create a market. Why do I think this?
Well, I was actually told by a top immunization official for the government, when they learned flu shots are ineffective in the elderly … that the way around that was not to take flu shots away from the elderly — who would think that was dishonest because we've been telling it was necessary for so many years — but to convince parents to get their children and babies flu shots so that they wouldn't 'carry flu to the elderly.'
I remember him saying to me, 'The trick is going to be to convince parents to give a vaccine to their children who don't really need it themselves.' In other words, for a secondary supposed benefit for the elderly. And darn it, if you didn't see in the next season, they recommended flu shots for babies and children.
And they didn't tell anybody at the time that they were doing it because flu shots don't work in the elderly. They just started telling people that your kids need flu shots."
The media are also grossly misusing the term "case," in reference to the COVID-19 case load. A case is a medical term for a patient with a symptomatic type of infection. It's not someone who tests positive for antibodies or pieces of viral DNA. By referring to all positive tests as "cases," they're able to fan the flames of panic, making the situation sound far worse than it actually is.
Many still do not understand that most of those who test positive for SARS-CoV-2 are asymptomatic. They think these are sick people in the hospital and that rising "case" numbers are a reflection of a rise in deaths. Statistics reveal this simply isn't true, and that there's not a linear correlation between positive tests and deaths caused by COVID alone.
"There are just so many things that are misreported," Attkisson says. "But if you try to report them accurately and factually, you get called out by those in the media who either didn't understand, or are simply so blinded by the propaganda narrative.
The New York Times did this. They actually called me and several other people out as 'coronavirus doubters,' although I had never said or written anything that even remotely denies coronavirus or denies the risk of it. But they were working very hard to silence voices who are simply reporting more accurately and with context on what's really happening.
By the way, when I spoke to some scientists ... and I said, 'Why don't you speak out or correct what you think is the misconception?' Separately, several of them told me they feared speaking out publicly because they were afraid they would be labeled a coronavirus doubter, and for fear of contradicting Dr. Fauci.
So, I said, 'We're at a pretty scary time when scientists who are experts on these issues fear speaking what they believe is the scientific truth because they'll be controversialized.'"
The clear take-home message I got from reading, "Slanted: How the News Media Taught Us to Love Censorship and Hate Journalism," is that there's a profoundly serious problem with most mainstream conventional media.
The obvious question is: Where can you go to get the truth? We would like to be informed, but we also want the truth. We don't have time to waste to be brainwashed by propaganda. At the end of her book, Attkisson lists a variety of sources she's come to trust. It may be worth getting the book for those recommendations alone.
"I didn't make a comprehensive list," Attkisson says. "I'm sure I left many people out, but I tried to point to a few outlets and people, and I consulted some of my colleagues for their recommendations. It's not an easy answer. There isn't a place you can go. I can't say, 'Watch this news every day or read this publication.' It's more granular than that.
You have to find a reporter that you trust on a topic and then chase that reporter around … That's where I think you can find a segment of truth. And it's not always, sadly, going to be objective truth.
Some of the reporters I name are coming from the left viewpoint or coming from a right viewpoint, but they have proven themselves to be brave reporters of a particular topic or controversy that I think you can rely on. But it's just not so simple as it used to be where you could just point to a person or an outlet and say, 'Watch that, and you'll get your fair shake at the news' …
I would say, in closing, that I do think a new paradigm will develop when it comes to news reporting. There are people looking at how news and information can be reported in a way that it cannot be censored by big tech giants, political figures and nonprofits and so on …
I'm told there's a way to develop a social media platform where you can post freely and also not be subject to censorship. I think things will evolve because people are tired of what they're seeing. And I hope something really positive, being an optimist, develops out of all of this down the road."
In this video, John Leake, a true crime author, and Dr. Peter McCullough discuss their new book, "The Courage to Face COVID-19: Preventing Hospitalization and Death While Battling the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex." As noted by McCullough, the focus of the book is not really COVID; it's about crime. It's about the crimes perpetrated against patients, doctors and others.
"I have been stripped of virtually everything in my career because I've tried to help patients," McCullough says. "And most of the stripping occurred even before the vaccines came about.
This is astonishing. I'm the most published person in my field, in the world ... I have over 650 citations in the National Library of Medicine; over 1,000 publications on the interface between heart and kidney disease.
I've lectured at the New York Academy of Sciences, the FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration], the European Medicine Agency (EMA). I'm in the upper echelon of academic physicians in the world.
But because I innovated — I got an investigational new drug application, I got large grant funding, I devised ways of treating patients, I worked with others, I demonstrated that it works, I testified in the U.S. Senate, helped the White House the best I could when they reached out to me — because of that, I was stripped of my job as an academic physician.
Fortunately, I changed employers and kept my practice going. I've been stripped of two major editorships, two professorships. I've been stripped of every NIH committee, every Industry Clinical Trial Committee. And the unique thing about the stripping is, there's no courtesy call, there's no due process, no explanation.
Anything contractually that indicates due process is completely violated. No faculty senate, no board meetings or approvals. So, when it happens, it's simply, 'You're stripped off this activity that you've done, or position held in some cases, for decades.'"
As noted by Leake, what we've seen during these COVID years is a reversion back to a pre-scientific era of immutable orthodoxy, much like the counter reformation in Europe during the Inquisition of the late 1500s and early 1600s.
There was no due process then and there's no due process now. Someone accused you of being in league with the devil, and you were summarily declared guilty and/or tortured until you agreed.
Today, we have federal agencies and Washington bureaucrats, none of whom has ever treated a COVID patient, deciding what doctors can and cannot do for a COVID patient, and going outside those recommendations is a heresy punishable by excommunication.
"Fortunately, I'm not in the gallows somewhere, physically chained to a stake," McCullough says, "but I can tell you, what's going on is a form of cyber warfare, professional warfare."
May 26, 2022, McCullough received a letter, simultaneously sent to almost every doctor who has spoken out and tried to help COVID patients, including Drs. Pierre Kory, Paul Marik, Denise Sibley and others.
The letter was a notice of professional review. McCullough is board certified in both internal medicine and cardiology, and has maintained those licenses for four decades, with a perfect track record. The American Board of Internal Medicine is now threatening to revoke his certification. He goes on:
"They are attacking one of the top people in medicine, and in the attack, it says 'You have made public statements that may lead to someone not taking a vaccine.' That's actually what's stated in the letter. So, this is under the pretext that people should be taking vaccines, that there shouldn't be any fair balance or any discussion on risk and benefits.
And they picked out five statements that I made under oath in the Texas Senate. Let me tell you what, when you give Senate testimony ... you raise your hand and [promise to] say the whole truth, nothing but the truth. And you're going to answer the questions to the best of your ability, which is what I did.
I am now in a process of professional reprisal for sworn statements under oath. This should be a warning to every nurse, every engineer, every lawyer, everybody who now is trying to help America or [is] involved in some process where statements made under oath can lead to professional attack.
Of course, I've done a response letter. I have evidence to cite every single statement made. Sen. Johnson stepped up and he called out the American Board and said, 'Listen, let's just meet about this. Let's have a round table discussion on the issues at hand.'
The American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) has stonewalled him. The Association of American Physicians & Surgeons has filed a lawsuit against ABIM [for] this act of professional reprisal. I'm publicly damaged by the American Board of Internal Medicine.
As we sit here today, the American Board of Internal Medicine says they're going to do a closed review. They will not let me attend my own meeting or even understand the discussions that take place. To my knowledge, not a single person on this credentialing committee is an expert on COVID-19. They don't have the expertise that I have on the problem at hand."
At present, McCullough is in private practice in Dallas, Texas. However, in order to be able to be on call at the hospital, he must maintain staff privileges, and to do that, he must be board certified. Without board certification, he cannot work with insurance companies. So, being stripped of one or both certifications would have severe professional consequences.
Even if the ABIM doesn't go through with it, a certain amount of damage has already been done. "People's lives are in our hands and we must maintain the most forward-facing, beyond-reproach status with our boards," he says. "I've now been permanently tarnished, no matter what comes out of this review."
Leake has long been fascinated by the tragic story of Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis, which ended up serving as a foundation for the story in "The Courage to Face COVID-19."
Semmelweis was a Hungarian physician working in the Vienna General Hospital's first obstetrical clinic. For some reason, the maternal mortality was three times higher in the doctors' wards compared to the midwives' wards, and around 1847, Semmelweis intuited that the lethal puerperal fever (childbed fever) that was killing these women might be related to the fact that the doctors also worked in the morgue.
"He proposed that anatomy students wash their hands with chlorinated lime, and quickly, the incidence of fever in this maternity clinic dropped down to less than 1%," Leake says. "It was a staggering mortality rate prior to this procedure. I think it was up to 18% at one point ...
So, professor Semmelweis makes this observation — he actually does some pretty solid documentary statistical analysis of what he's observing — and how do the medical imminence of Europe react at this time?
They say, 'You're crazy. There's no basis for making this postulation for any of your conclusions. You're nuts.' And he loses his professorship and ultimately dies in an insane asylum. That always haunted me. He was later vindicated, as we know, but not without suffering a massive penalty.
I had this story in my head. I even thought about writing a screenplay about it. Fast forward, SARS-CoV-2 arrives, and I began to perceive that it's the same thing as the Semmelweis story. Our so-called purported authorities are imposing an orthodoxy, and anyone who questions the orthodoxy, like Dr. McCullough, is stripped [of their credentials].
So that's the basic drama of the story. Pioneering doctors who had the courage to actually treat COVID, to learn as fast as they could, as much as they could, and then to advocate for the treatment of COVID, and like Semmelweis were heavily persecuted. And so, it's a true crime story based on this medical drama. It's part true crime, part medical thriller."
Leake interviewed a range of people for the book, to get their first-hand accounts. And, again, as stressed by McCullough, these stories reveal a crime — perhaps the biggest crime of all time.
As noted by Leake, financial incentives clearly played a role in the hospital massacres that occurred:
"The Cares Act, signed into law, I believe on March 26, 2020, created all of this pandemic response money that was generated out of thin air by our government. Overnight, with the stroke of the keyboard, about $2 trillion were created for pandemic response.
And people who were admitted to hospital, even if they just had a positive PCR test but were admitted for other symptoms, injuries or other illnesses, were coded as COVID patients. And there was of a host of financial incentives to hospitals for doing that. That alone was rather disturbing.
But what I found extremely disturbing was that the hospitals received a 20% bonus on the entire hospital bill if the hospital used Remdesivir. So, a massive financial incentive, and this was the guideline:
If the patient required supplemental oxygen, the hospital received a 20% bonus on the full hospital bill for administering Remdesivir, which is an emergency use authorization product, a patented product that had grave safety concerns, particularly with respect to kidney and liver damage.
Even the WHO concluded it should not be used on patients. Nevertheless, this perverse incentive remained for U.S. hospitals. I spoke with many nurses who said it was like a well-conducted, trained schedule. About day six or seven, the urine output started to diminish. There were clear signs of kidney damage from the administration of Remdesivir. So that was extremely disturbing.
The other thing was, patients or their families who read the FLCCC protocol or the McCullough protocol, and started requesting things like ivermectin — even things that had been around forever, extra strength aspirin ... to reduce thrombosis — even these things were denied to the hospitalized patients.
The families would beg, would plead, 'Please administer ivermectin.' Nothing else is being offered by the hospital's own admission. The patient is headed for the ventilator and is probably going to die, yet the hospitals and their hired gun attorneys would fight tooth and nail, even in the face of a court order, [against administering] some of these McCullough protocol drugs, in some cases, going to the extent of flouting a court order.
A judge would say, 'You have to administer ivermectin, extra strength aspirin, whatever it is that the patients are asking for,' in the hearing. The patient's family would get a court order, but the hospitals would still refuse to administer it.
I heard numerous stories in different jurisdictions, some in New York, some in Texas, in which nothing was offered to the patients — on the contrary, denied, denied, denied until the end. And the outcome was death for the patient."
To date, no hospital has been held to account for ignoring a court order. There have been no legal ramifications whatsoever, even when it resulted in death.
"So, there's an element in this story that I think the American people need to awaken to. I'm down here in Mexico and people talk about Mexican corruption. If you get pulled over by a cop, you might have to grease his palm. In the United States, our corruption, I think, is multiple orders of magnitude higher, namely, it's not that we disobey the law, we just change the law.
There's this rule by pharmaceutical industry lobbyists, who have deployed an army on Capitol Hill. We see it in the Cures Act of 2005, and in the Cares Act of 2016 — there are all of these blanket immunity provisions in these massive emergency statutes where, should there be, by the judgment of federal health agencies, a pandemic ... if the Department of Health and Human Services declares an emergency, then two things happen.
An immense amount of money is generated out of thin air and distributed to the bio-pharmaceutical complex. That's the first thing. The second thing is, any medical professional who is the recipient of these funds is granted immunity for using these emergency use products. So, great work, if you can get it.
You get filthy rich receiving federal funds, if an emergency is declared, and if the patient is injured, then you're fully indemnified. So, it's a massive, organized complex that has resulted in what I think the reader can only conclude is crime. It's criminal conduct."
Right now, it appears we're in a lull. Few communities are in lockdown. Mask requirements are rare, and efforts to push for COVID jab mandates have stalled. The question is, what's next? McCullough weighs in:
"We have implicitly moved from a COVID zero aim, where we would get to zero cases, to a COVID inevitable situation where it's inevitable everyone's going to get it. The question is when. When the Spanish flu swept through the United States, there wasn't any of these things that we talk about, and it took about two years. It basically exhausted itself.
The goal of so many things was to slow the spread. And I think, probably the spread was slowed and we've actually prolonged the agony. COVID does appear to be inevitable. There may be a small fraction who are spared. When I do large public programs, thousands of people attend, and about 70% to 90% of people raise their hand and say they've had [COVID].
June 27, 2022, in the Texas Senate, the dean of the University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston presented data from a large sample using a high-grade research assay for exposure to SARS-CoV-2. The conclusion is 99% seroprevalence. Everyone's been exposed to this [virus].
Now it's just the issue of who's going to have, essentially, the manifestation of a common cold, or a little bit worse. The hospitals are empty. I can tell you at this point in time, the emergency is long gone. I think the emergency or any threat of overrunning the hospitals ended in January 2021.
Yet the administration has extended the emergency claim. There are still large employers that have not returned to the workplace ... What I predict will happen is, we will have multivalent COVID-19 vaccines in the fall, and then we're going to see a change in the messaging.
The messaging is going to be, 'Listen, the first-generation vaccines weren't so good, but now the new ones are so much better. Everybody has to take it' ... The claim will be made, 'You have to take the vaccine to prevent COVID from coming back.' Watch out for that."
As for COVID-19, McCullough predicts there will be additional variants, and that they'll become progressively milder over time, becoming indistinguishable from the common cold, which rarely needs prescription drug intervention. Viricidal nasal washes can help reduce viral load in the nose and throat, and nutraceuticals and supplements can help speed recovery. My favorite go-to is nebulized hydrogen peroxide.
If you've had COVID and are fretting about newer variants that have mutated to evade natural immunity — relax. If you haven't gotten the jab and get reinfected with the BA.5 or other variant, understand that this exposure essentially works like an "immunization booster" and will radically improve your immune response to future variants.
As noted by McCullough, we're now learning just how important it is to have an intact immune system to be able to respond to this virus and all its variants. What the gene therapy program has achieved is widespread immune imprinting, which basically directs the immune system to the wrong target once a new variant arises.
This is why most of the serious COVID infections are now occurring in those who have received one or more COVID jabs. In a nutshell, their immune systems have been compromised. The unvaccinated, on the other hand, their immune systems are well-equipped to handle variants, and if one slips through, it acts as a "booster" that reprograms the immune system to be alert to an even broader range of variants.
Without doubt, crimes have been committed. The question is, will anyone be held accountable for what they've done? Will anyone be held accountable for all the people killed and injured?
Leake points out that, historically, large-scale psyops such as this one typically leave the population in a confused and weary state where they're unable to hold leadership accountable. And, as long as new emergencies keep coming, everyone just forgets about the wrong that was done earlier.
"We know from the financial crisis in 2008, we know in the invasion of Iraq under false pretenses, in 2003, there wasn't really any accountability. What seems to happen is, there will be a certain critical mass of growing awareness of what happened, but then we lurch on to the next emergency. And the public's attention is then distracted ...
It seems the American people are constantly having our attention directed from one crisis to the next. So, I'm not particularly hopeful. We hope that people will read our book in its narrative form. I think it will enable people to understand what has happened for the last two and a half years, and we hope that with growing awareness, maybe there can be a reckoning."
While individuals within U.S. health agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention clearly need to be held to account for their reckless public health decisions, international players — the medical industrial complex — need to be held to account as well. That's the real power base behind these COVID crimes. Leake explains:
"The medical industrial complex is a group of international foundations, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation and the Wellcome Trust, working in close orchestration with the World Economic Forum in Switzerland.
These international foundations — and this is not a theory, this is well documented — have assiduously taken over and are now driving international health policy.
All you have to do is look at their own documents and you'll see that what they completely, 100%, favor as a response to any emerging infectious disease, whether it's real, perceived, exaggerated, made in a lab — it doesn't matter what it is and what the true threat posed by it is — it's always the same monolithic response: vaccine development and deployment.
And the thing that we have marveled at in our research is that this is completely out in the open. None of these principled players has tried to conceal their agenda. They openly speak about it. They do pandemic planning simulations that are videoed and released to the world.
They have business plans that they circulate on the internet to prospective investors and their vaccine development programs. This is all just plainly out in the open. We know who is driving this. We know they are immensely well-capitalized and connected to the media, the pharmaceutical industry and the pharmaceutical lobbying industry in Washington. They're the ones that are driving this policy."
The British National Health Service has already announced it's planning for the "biggest vaccination drive in history" come this fall.1 The nations of the world are working in lockstep, so be prepared for a massive vaccination campaign after the U.S. midterms.
If you suspect your employer might impose a vaccine mandate, start looking for a new job now, to insulate yourself from unnecessary stress. So many have lost their lives by giving in to coercion. So, situate yourself in such a way that you don't have to submit to it.
"I completely agree," McCullough says. "A method of staying healthy is to not take injections of the genetic code for the lethal Wuhan spike protein that was devised in a bio-security lab in China. Keep the foreign genetic material out of your body.
I think people should look at their vulnerabilities with respect to their investments, their civil liberties, their personal relationships. Things could get pretty rough this fall. There's no doubt about it. There seems to be no protection of civil liberties at this point in time. Freedom of speech is gone; due process is gone."
Also, take steps to improve your overall health. In July 2022, the Journal of the American College of Cardiology2 posted an update on the metabolic fitness or flexibility of the American population.
Previously, 88% were metabolically unfit. Now it's over 93%. Metabolic fitness includes things like blood glucose and blood sugar, blood pressure and weight. This means 14 out of 15 Americans could benefit from improving their metabolic health. Diet can also make a tremendous difference. McCullough comments:
"There's a very good paper that specifically analyzed diet and categorized diet in a continuum from very healthy to very unhealthy, and those who had the healthiest diets had the lowest frequency of SARS-CoV-2 and the lowest risk of hospitalization and death.
That's a prospective cohort, well-done study. So, it's about survival of the fittest. If there's anything we've learned with SARS-CoV-2, it's that there's an opportunity for health redemption. Now's the time to get on the healthy train."
In closing, be sure to pick up a copy of "The Courage to Face COVID-19: Preventing Hospitalization and Death While Battling the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex." It's a real page-turner. Leake has done a magnificent job of threading all the stories together, such that it reads like a novel while still being highly informative.
