Mike Ames-Sikora and Rob Verkerk PhD explain why honest markets would eliminate Big Pharma’s health market dominance and replace it with products that work and do not cause harm.

Listen to the audio version of this article

Drugs made by one of the largest and most profitable industries in the world—with 80 years of experience behind it—appear to have had little impact on curbing spiraling rates of chronic disease. Healthcare systems are at breaking point and most governments and politicians seem to studiously avoid pointing out what seems so obvious to so many of us.

Mainstream medical systems rely heavily on expensive, often dangerous, drugs to treat symptoms rather than targeting the underlying causes of disease. This pill-for-an ill, drug dominated model that’s driven by crony capitalism comes at a massive cost to both individuals and society.

At the Alliance for Natural Health (ANH), we’re dedicated to challenging this broken system and advocating for a healthcare approach based on sound principles and ethics, rooted in prevention, natural health options, and the freedom to make informed choices. It is our hope that a new political landscape that is supportive of natural health will unfold, at least in the US, when the Trump-Vance Administration takes the reins in 2025, with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in an influential role.

A rigged market in healthcare

While markets are often criticized for being profit-driven, they also provide a powerful regulatory mechanism. When markets are free, competition ensures that businesses, regardless of their motivations, must consider the needs of their customers and employees. Selfish business owners can’t thrive unless they deliver real value. In a truly free market, a company that ignores its customers’ needs or disregards safety concerns will ultimately fail. But for this self-regulating system to work, it must operate independently—without interference that protects bad actors.

The healthcare industry does not operate in a free market, but rather in one that is highly regulated, the regulations having been carefully tailored to Big Pharma’s interests, not those of citizens. The result is that Big Pharma enjoys a protected monopoly that it has built over decades through its revolving doors with government agencies, notably the FDA. In a system where the rules of the game are rigged in favor of FDA-approved drugs, it’s no wonder that natural health options—like dietary supplements, lifestyle changes, and preventive care—are marginalized. Instead of being held accountable by market forces, Big Pharma thrives on government interventions that limit competition and create massive profit margins.

Government Regulation vs. Market Regulation

Many assume that government regulation is necessary to protect public health and safety, but regulations often fall short. Ponder this: If drugs require regulation to ensure their safety, effectiveness and quality—these being the three pillars of drug regulation—how come properly prescribed drugs are the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer, and that most drugs don’t work in most people? With Big Pharma’s tentacles so deep into regulatory agencies, transparency so compromised that crucial data are routinely hidden from public view, and conflicts of interest rampant in ways that sway judgment, objectivity and the opportunity to work in patients’ best interests, should we really expect Big Pharma to be the trusted custodian of our health?  

Consider that nearly half of the FDA’s budget comes from the drug industry in the form of user fees—the money Big Pharma pays the FDA for drug approval. Then there’s the revolving door between Big Pharma and the FDA, where many FDA officials use their time at the agency as a stepping stone to more lucrative employment in the sector they are meant to oversee. Is it any wonder that the FDA has repeatedly attacked and undermined the natural health sector?

Clearly, Big Pharma’s monopoly power comes not from free-market success but from political protectionism. Without government intervention propping up its control, Big Pharma wouldn’t stand a chance against natural health alternatives. These alternatives include inexpensive nutrients and herbs delivered as supplements that build resilience and prevent disease, and changes to conventional dietary and lifestyle norms that are plunging huge numbers ever deeper into metabolic disease. A sick child is the most precious asset to Big Pharma which can then hope for a lifetime’s worth of income from that individual.

The industry profits when people are chronically ill, relying on drugs to manage conditions rather than resolving them. Statins and the  latest skinny jab, semaglutide (trade names Ozempic and Wegovy), are examples of long burn wins for Big Pharma.

In a true free market, these pharmaceutical monopolies would be exposed to competition from safer, preventive options, ultimately benefiting public health.

Big Pharma’s Monopoly and Its Costs

The cash flow made possible by monopolies allows pharmaceutical companies to influence politicians and medical societies, as well as steer the direction of medical research. The end result is a healthcare system where patients and practitioners alike are funneled into a drug-dependent approach, ignoring or actively discouraging preventive solutions that could improve quality of life and reduce healthcare costs.

Imagine a world where governments stopped propping up these monopolies. A natural health solution like diet, exercise, or a range of dietary supplements that could become the preferred choice over expensive, side-effect-laden drugs. Consumers could choose health solutions that are more in line with their personal values, budgets, and well-being goals. Commercial speech wouldn’t be constrained in ways that prevent companies from providing truthful information to the public. Big Pharma’s reliance on government regulation and monopoly pricing would collapse, and the market would then do what it does best: encourage quality and innovation by responding directly to consumers’ needs. Like nature, the fittest or best products would flourish in the marketplace, the ineffective ones would fail, and companies that sold products that were dangerous, if the risks were not adequately communicated, could be sued—rather than being protected by government or law (in the case of vaccines) as they are today.

A New Approach for True Health Freedom

ANH believes that natural health freedom is only possible in a system where government power doesn’t create or sustain monopolies. People deserve access to preventive healthcare options that aren’t crowded out by a system that prioritizes profit over wellness. A free market in healthcare would pave the way for greater transparency, accountability, and choice, empowering individuals to take charge of their health with natural and preventive options.

>>> Find out about our Regen Health Blueprint Project that shows how we can reset health systems designed to regenerate health.

Ending Big Pharma’s monopoly on our health isn’t a matter of simply “deregulating”; it’s about ending the crony capitalism that keeps monopolies alive. Removing these artificial supports would allow for real competition in healthcare, enabling natural health options to thrive, lowering healthcare costs, and improving outcomes.

The healthcare revolution we need isn’t a top-down, regulatory-heavy approach. It’s a move toward real freedom, with health freedom being central. That’s because our health—for most people anyway (even if it isn’t always recognized until it’s lost)—is our most important asset. With a free market, individuals and patients have access to the health solutions of their choice, free from interference by captured government agencies and the media.

At ANH, we’re fighting to protect this freedom and support for health systems where disease prevention, natural health choices and unalienable rights are not only respected, but facilitated and encouraged. The endgame? Human vitality and flourishing.

Please circulate this article widely and donate now to help support our work.

The post Loosening Big Pharma’s Grip on Our Health: Less or More Regulation? first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

Is the medical establishment too afraid to see natural, non-pharmacological medicine go head-to-head against Big Pharma’s ‘standard of care’?

Listen to the audio version of this article:

THE TOPLINE

• A promising study on the ketogenic diet for treating schizophrenia was halted by the Maryland Health Department, highlighting a bias in the health system that favors pharmaceutical treatments over natural ones.
• Government agencies like the FDA and FTC often restrict access to natural medicines, citing a lack of evidence. This bias makes it difficult to conduct and fund necessary research on natural treatments, which aren’t profitable because they can’t be patented.
• The federal government allocates minimal funding for natural medicine research. In 2021, the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health received only 0.3% of NIH’s budget, perpetuating a cycle where natural therapies are excluded from medical care despite their safety and effectiveness.

Recent controversy over a study on how ketogenic diets might help schizophrenic patients illustrates why medicine is so broken in this country. This study was halted by the Maryland Health Department with no reasonable justification given. In a health system that is heavily slanted toward pharmaceutical treatments for every disease under the sun, research on natural treatments is few and far between. Then, when it does happen against all odds, it gets blackballed and suppressed. What better way to keep natural treatments from competing with drugs!

The study, its promise, and the shutdown decision

The study in question, which was the only inpatient trial of its kind in the United States, aimed to explore innovative treatments for schizophrenia through metabolic psychiatry and compare it against the standard of care, the anti-psychotic medication clozapine. The study was led by Dr. Deanna Kelly at Spring Grove Hospital Center and was designed as a single-blind, randomized trial involving a ketogenic diet. This diet, known for its high-fat and low-carbohydrate content, has shown promise in treating various neurological disorders. This was a well-designed, rigorously conducted trial on a plausible natural treatment for schizophrenia.

By the time the study was cut, 12 participants had been enrolled on the trial, all being inpatients at the Spring Grove psychiatric hospital. This inpatient setting could have provided incredibly valuable data because it is a uniquely controlled setting: all participants would adhere to the same diet and exercise patterns, providing a controlled environment for observing the diet’s effects on schizophrenia.

So why was the study halted? According to a letter from Maryland’s Secretary of Health, the decision to stop the study was “due to a fresh look at the approval and consent process associated with privately funded studies taking place at Spring Grove Hospital Center with almost exclusively court-committed patients.”

For context: Most of the patients at Spring Grove were charged with minor crimes but deemed by a judge “incompetent to stand trial.” Because they are prisoners under federal research laws, these patients are afforded more protections than other study participants. Yet by all accounts these more stringent research protocols were being followed to a tee by Dr. Kelly and her team:

• There was a lengthy informed consent process in Dr. Kelly’s study—something the medical establishment cannot reasonably claim when it comes to routine vaccinations, much less COVID vaccination.
• Thorough examinations were conducted to determine if a patient had the capacity to consent to participate in the research. Patients were not recruited; they were either referred by a doctor or they volunteered.
• Several committees, including the hospital research committee and several institutional review boards, were closely monitoring the research.

Given these protocols, the justification given by the Health Department for halting the trial are more than strange.

It’s also telling that another study that was being conducted at Spring Grove was allowed to continue: a federally funded, multisite study looking at how clozapine, a powerful antipsychotic medication with many known nasty side effects, might reduce violent and aggressive behavior in schizophrenic patients.

Impact on research, patients, and beyond

The termination of this study has far-reaching implications. Schizophrenia affects approximately 2.8 million Americans, with about one-third of patients labeled treatment-resistant. Traditional antipsychotics often fail to provide relief and come with severe side effects. The ketogenic diet represents a novel approach that could offer hope to these patients. The Maryland Health Department’s decision not only stifles scientific progress but also directly affects the lives of millions of patients, including those who volunteered for the study, many of whom come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds and lack alternative treatment options.

This is also indicative of a much broader problem. We’ve long argued that the government has an inherent bias against natural medicines, as evidenced by the actions of agencies like the FDA and the FTC to ban or restrict access to products or information about them. These agencies often cite a lack of evidence backing natural medicines to justify restricting access: we see it with regard to compounded bioidentical hormones, homeopathy, peptides, and dietary supplements.

Funding research on natural products is already challenging since natural treatments like the ketogenic diet are not patentable and, therefore, not profitable. The medical establishment is now throwing further obstacles in front of this necessary research by targeting privately funded studies, as we’re seeing unfold in Maryland.

Adding insult to injury, federal funding for natural medicine research is pitifully small. The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) received only $154 million of NIH’s $43 billion budget in 2021, just 0.3 percent. Why would Big Pharma and their government cronies want to fund research on the competition?

This all creates a vicious cycle: natural therapies are shut out of medical care because conventional “experts” claim there isn’t high-caliber evidence to support their effectiveness, knowing full well it is nearly impossible for that research to be funded and conducted; drug companies can afford this research, and so become accepted as the “standard of care” for disease treatment. The irony is, of course, that drugs are still often quite ineffective and very dangerous, whereas food and supplements are both effective and extremely safe.

Despite all of these barriers and hostility from mainstream medicine, there has been a lot of quality research done on natural medicines. ANH’s Pulse of Natural Health newsletter has strived over the years to report on the important and impressive research demonstrating the therapeutic effects of humble vitamins and minerals—and we will continue to do so. 

The status quo that keeps us hooked on pharmaceutical drugs that treat the symptoms of preventable chronic illnesses must change. The proof of the failure of this paradigm is all around us.

Listen to Maryland Keto Kibosh podcast with ANH-USA and executive and scientific director, Rob Verkerk PhD, and board member, Meleni Aldridge, on Twitter Space ‘The Speaker Salon’, hosted by Alana Newman.

Please also support Christopher Palmer, MD’s petition to persuade Maryland’s Health Secretary to reconsider her stance and permit this promising study to move forward.

The post Keto Kibosh: The Keto Schizophrenia Study They Had to Shut Down first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

If you thought that the COVID-era attacks on free speech were bad, you better prepare yourself for what’s coming next. Action Alert!

Listen to the audio version of this article.

THE TOPLINE

• Government health authorities are considering how to censor information online combat “misinformation.”
• CDC scientists have published an article about tackling misinformation in The Lancet; both these entities have serious questions to answer with regard to their own dissemination of “misinformation.”
• The need for honest conversations about health topics was underscored by new data confirming the risks of side effects from COVID vaccines.

In many ways, things have returned back to normal after the tumultuous years of the pandemic. Kids are in school. Restaurants are open. Masking and social distancing have largely dissipated. But one aspect of the COVID-era shows no signs of disappearing: the attack on free speech represented by the crusade against so-called “misinformation.” Even though the COVID pandemic is over, public health authorities are brainstorming ways to more effectively censor ideas that they don’t like. We must stand against these overtures towards authoritarianism.

This is all happening quite openly. Just last month, several scientists from the CDC published a paper in The Lancet Public Health titled, “Beyond misinformation: developing a public health prevention framework for managing information ecosystems.”

And just how will the “information ecosystem” be “managed”? In this paper, CDC scientists propose “prebunking”—that is, exposing individuals to “common manipulation techniques to preemptively inform them of how they could be misinformed in the future.” This is the brainchild of Cambridge University-based scientist Sander van der Linden, about whom our founder Rob Verkerk PhD has written extensively this week. The authors also endorse “platform-based friction intervention” to prevent disfavored content from being viewed or shared too widely. This seems to be a euphemism for shadowbanning. Finally, “regulatory and legal interventions” are recommended in which legislators, medical boards, or professional associations are encouraged to take disciplinary measures against health professionals who spread “misinformation.”

There is a double layer of hypocrisy at work here. First, it’s interesting to be lectured to about misinformation in the pages of The Lancet. When there was a frenzy among the medical establishment to prove that hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) was ineffective for COVID, it was The Lancet that published two papers that were hailed at the time as the “nail in the coffin” of HCQ. It turned out these papers were based on fraudulent data from Surgisphere, leading to retractions.

Didn’t you know? It’s only “misinformation” when someone is questioning the diktats imposed by public health authorities. Just shut up and take your shots, we’re just following the science!

Which brings us to the CDC. How many times did their health authorities get it wrong during the pandemic? The CDC and the FDA bungled the pandemic response from the very beginning, blocking early and widespread testing with needless red tape. We were told that novel mRNA vaccines for COVID-19 were safe and effective—claims that were suspect then and, with the accumulation of more data, have been shown to be patently false (more on this below).

We were told that the vaccines offered better protection than natural immunity, despite substantial evidence to the contrary. We were told that masks prevented transmission. The list goes on.

Health authorities used every tool at their disposal to try to railroad people into getting the COVID vaccines, instigating witch hunts against those who dared to question the science, ethics, or wisdom of trying to vaccinate our way out of the pandemic. Not only did their propaganda mislead, it also harmed a great deal of people.  

This fact was driven home by a new study of COVID-19 vaccine safety using data from 99 million vaccinated individuals. After interrogating the data, the authors conclude that their analysis “confirmed pre-established safety signals for myocarditis, pericarditis, Guillain-Barré syndrome, and cerebral venous sinus thrombosis. Other potential safety signals that require further investigation were identified.” Experts who reviewed the study have commented that the truth is likely worse in terms of the rate of adverse events from COVID-19 vaccination.

An honest conversation rooted in the science would have meant communicating to large subsets of the population—like those who were already healthy, or younger—that the risks of certain serious adverse events outweigh the meager benefit they would derive from getting vaccinated, dramatically shifting the risk/benefit calculation. But to point out this simple yet vitally important truth is a sure-fire way to get yourself branded as a purveyor of “misinformation” worthy of censorship or, if you’re a practitioner, to lose your license. Is this the world we want to live in?

This is why our FreeSpeech4Health campaign is so critical. Big Tech platforms have wholly bought into the false notion that truthful health information solely emanates from major health authorities like the NIH or the WHO, mirroring YouTube’s medical misinformation policy.

Find out why signing our petition is crucial and learn how to amplify our campaign and resources through your networks. This is vital as we, alongside other advocates of alternative viewpoints, confront severe censorship and shadowbans.

Excitingly, we’ve already garnered support from 16 organizations, including Dr. Meryl Nass’ Door To Freedom and Robert F. Kennedy’s Children’s Health Defense (CHD) (view our founder’s recent interview on CHD.TV).

We cannot let the government and their lackeys silence dissent under the guise of controlling “misinformation.” If the COVID era taught us anything, it’s that we need to retain our ability to engage critically with the world around us—not blindly follow the one-size-fits-all commands of the medical establishment. Please sign our petition below if you haven’t already and share it widely in your networks!

The post Afraid of “Misinformation”? The Feds Are Here to Help first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

The significance of Murthy v Missouri and why you should sign the FreeSpeech4Health petition. Action Alert!

By Rob Verkerk PhD, executive & scientific director, Alliance for Natural Health International and USA

This article was adapted from ANH International’s piece. Read the original here.

Listen to the audio version of this article:

Just do it!

Free speech isn’t an option if you want to live in an open, creative, advanced, free-thinking society. It’s a necessity. That’s why we’re leading the charge in our FreeSpeech4Health campaign, along with our growing partnerships with other organizations including Dr. Meryl Nass’ Door To Freedom, to amass 1 million signatures on a petition that is the first step in bringing pressure to bear on YouTube to change its medical misinformation policy—a policy that is already denying us life-saving information, especially about non-drug, natural health approaches. 

If you haven’t signed and got the message out to your networks, please do so now!

>>> Why the petition matters, including access to videos, memes, a media pack (in multiple languages) and downloadable flyers that are ideal for sharing with your networks.

To help get the word out, the easiest thing to do is use one of our two campaign posters (available here and here) to drive people to the FreeSpeech4Health portal, that in turn takes you to the petition page. It will take you less than a minute. It’s a worldwide petition, so it doesn’t matter who you are or where you live. The only requirement is that you’re human.

If you haven’t decided if you want to sign or not—or you’re hungry for more information about what it’s all about—understanding more about the landmark Murthy vs Missouri case is an ideal primer.

Murthy v Missouri

Defendants’ conduct fundamentally transforms online discourse and renders entire viewpoints on great social and political questions virtually unspeakable on social media, “the modern public square.” Packingham v. North Carolina, 582 U.S. 98, 107 (2017)

— Extract from brief filed by Missouri et al on February 2, 2024

The US Supreme Court has heard oral arguments on the Murthy v Missouri case, and is expected to release a decision in the near future. This ruling will decide if the US government’s collusion with, or coercion of, social media giants in ways that limited the availability of health information to the public amounted to a violation of the First Amendment right to third party free speech. As stated by the petitioners (plaintiffs) in the case, the government engaged in “a broad pressure campaign designed to coerce social media companies into suppressing speakers, viewpoints, and content disfavored by the government.”

The case has been taken to the Supreme Court following a successful injunction granted by a District Court.

The cat is out of the bag

The parties bringing the original proceedings were the states of Missouri and Louisiana, along with 5 individual users of social media platforms, including ex-Harvard epidemiologist and biostatistician Martin Kulldorff, PhD and Stanford professor of medicine and health policy, Jay Bhattacharya, PhD.

>>> Read the petitioner’s brief filed December 19, 2023

>>> Read the brief of Missouri et al filed on behalf of Battacharya, Kulldorff filed on February 2, 2024

It’s hard to fully understand the significance of the case without reading the details of this coordinated censorship campaign contained in the court documents linked above. There is extensive first-hand evidence that the White House and US Surgeon General’s office pressured/forced/coerced social media platforms, threatening potential criminal prosecution for harboring communications that would lead to an “insurrection” or face “robust anti-trust program.” Social media owners were told they would be “held accountable” after the Biden administration stated publicly on July 16, 2021, that Facebook and other platforms were “killing people.” Read the evidence and it’s hard to not see it as pulpit bullying on steroids. 

The essence of the Biden Administration’s defense can be simplified as follows; ‘we were just trying to help the social media companies combat the plague of medical and scientific misinformation, especially about the COVID-19 vaccines.’ Government officials argue that ‘they only pointed out content that violated the platforms’ policies to reduce harmful effects of online misinformation.’ This defense sounds crass given the apparent weight of evidence of coercion and pressure.

>>> Read the amicus brief of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons

>>> Find links to all proceedings, in chronological order, in Murthy v Missouri via a dedicated page on SCOTUSblog.

Ideology, science and trust

The moderation as well as amplification and restriction of specific content reflects an ideological position, not a scientific one. It’s similar to what we’ve seen in the shadowbanning of high quality, expert content on keto diets and intermittent fasting that helped to inspire the FreeSpeech4Health campaign.

It’s also what we saw happening to any dissent on the official narrative relating to the origin of SARS-CoV-2, lockdowns, mask-wearing, or vaccine effectiveness or risks. These were all areas that were especially uncertain soon after their emergence, but as time, information and knowledge gathered, they became less uncertain. In all cases, the views that were immediately labelled as misinformation or conspiracy theory weathered the storm better than those that were consistent with the mainstream narrative.

There of course has been no mea culpa from the establishment. But what has happened instead is that the public has increasingly lost trust in the authorities who told them they were just ‘following the science.’ Critically, they won’t win back trust by clamping down ever harder on what they decide is misinformation or disinformation simply because it doesn’t reconcile with their positions.

What it’s all really about

Free expression is paramount when it comes to matters of scientific or medical controversy. Discourse is a prerequisite to ultimately resolving controversy and finding consensus that withstands dissent. It is only then we move towards an understanding of the world in which beliefs and ideologies converge with knowledge via a consistent logic structure, and we celebrate a united perspective over what we like to think of as scientific ‘truth’ (which is rarely, if ever, absolute) that we can declare peace and move on.

This freedom isn’t anarchical; we are advocating for true freedom —our own ability to exercise our free will and express ourselves in ways that don’t violate the freedom of others.

And that’s the very balance that needs to be sought in our campaign to pressure Big Social and others who moderate content on the public airwaves with a view to co-creating future-fit medical misinformation policies.

Ones we hope are informed by the learnings from Murthy v Missouri, regardless of the final ruling that we must recognize may be influenced more by the ideologies of the in-group, rather than by objective science or law.

The post Landmark US Lawsuit Exposes US Government Coercion of Big Social first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

The FDA has agreed to remove social media posts and webpages advising Americans not to take ivermectin for COVID. Action Alert!

THE TOPLINE

• The FDA has to take down social media posts and its webpage warning consumers not to take ivermectin for COVID.
• To us, the FDA’s previous stance against ivermectin was political rather than science-based because the goal was to get everyone to buy into the vaccines.
• The agency’s stance likely cost countless lives because many doctors refused to prescribe ivermectin for early treatments for fear of disciplinary hearings from medical boards or having their licenses revoked.
• We must oppose efforts to institutionalize the ability of public health authorities to control medical treatments and information during pandemics.

The FDA has settled a lawsuit heard in a southern Texas District Court brought by a group of doctors in 2022, alleging that the agency overstepped its authority and interfered with the doctor-patient relationship in its campaign against ivermectin. This is a tremendous victory for freedom-loving practitioners and members of the public. It’s also an acknowledgment of serious failures and cronyism within public health authorities during the pandemic—failures that undoubtedly cost many, many lives, but have yet to be acknowledged.

The settlement forces the FDA to remove several social media posts warning consumers not to use ivermectin, along with a webpage titled “Why you should not use ivermectin to treat or prevent COVID-19.”

The FDA’s stance on ivermectin made it extremely difficult for sick and dying patients to get the medicine either they wanted or their doctors wanted to prescribe “off-label”. Doctors and hospitals often needed to be sued in order to give patients ivermectin; pharmacists around the country refused to fill prescriptions.

It was our contention during the pandemic that the government health establishment was hostile toward medicines like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine because they were cheap, off-patent drugs that competed with the brand-new mRNA vaccines. It didn’t matter that frontline doctors were saving lives with the off-label use of these medicines. Anything that would threaten vaccine uptake had to be delegitimized and snuffed out.

The studies that public health authorities held up as proof that ivermectin was ineffective were designed to fail, as we noted in previous coverage. There is in fact a substantial amount of evidence supporting ivermectin’s effectiveness in treating and preventing COVID.

While this is an important victory, don’t be fooled into thinking the FDA has learned its lesson. In a statement to the Epoch Times, the FDA doubles down on its position against ivermectin:

“FDA has not admitted any violation of law or any wrongdoing, disagrees with the plaintiffs’ allegation that the agency exceeded its authority in issuing the statements challenged in the lawsuit, and stands by its authority to communicate with the public regarding the products it regulates.”

Translation: when push comes to shove, the FDA will do the exact same thing the next time such an issue arises.

This case underscores why we need to oppose censorship and medicine by diktat—the very measures being debated right now by governments around the world which could hand all responsibility to the World Health Organization in the event of another pandemic. They want to be able to better control public health responses during the next pandemic. They want you to shut up, take your vaccine, and be happy about it. No alternative treatments, and no “misinformation” that makes you doubt what the health overlords have planned for you. We have to prevent this grim future and fight for our health sovereignty!

Action Alert! Write to Congress and tell them you oppose the IHR amendments and the ‘pandemic treaty’ and because you value democracy, any changes that are proposed by the US must undergo Senate scrutiny and ratification. Please send your message immediately.

The post FDA Forced to U-Turn on Ivermectin first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

The public health response to the COVID pandemic, particularly at the outset, boiled down to: stay at home, wash your hands, and wait for the vaccines. Once the vaccines were sped through emergency approval, vaccine passports and mandates soon followed suit. If you didn’t get the vaccine, you were being selfish—so went the conventional wisdom. We were constantly told by public health representatives that we should all get vaccinated because the COVID shots were safe and effective at preventing infection, transmission, and death. Yet the data that has accumulated to date does not support these bold conclusions. Still, many Americans have been coerced into receiving these shots. We must follow the science and support Americans’ right to choose the medical procedures they receive. Help us support an important bill that dismantles vaccine mandates for many foreign travelers entering the US.

An important part of this story is the evolving nature of the virus, and the inability of vaccines to keep up. Early promises that the COVID shots reduced infection and transmission were shown to be overblown.  

Further, some experts have compared the efficacy of the updated COVID bivalent shots to flu shot efficacy, which has ranged from 19 percent to about 52 percent over the last ten years. According to a CDC study from December 2022, the updated boosters protect against symptomatic infection in the range of 40-60 percent. Other research from the CDC has found that the updated COVID boosters were less than 50 percent effective at preventing mild illness compared to people who are unvaccinated. Is it wise, or even ethical, to compel Americans to receive shots with such shaky effectiveness?

A study looked at the relationship between the percentage of the population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases across 68 countries, including the US. The authors found “no discernable relationship between percentage of population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases.” There was one “marginally positive” association: countries with higher percentages of fully vaccinated individuals had a higher number of COVID-19 cases.

The most recent data show that the immunity generated from a previous infection with COVID is at least as protective, if not more protective, than two doses of a COVID vaccine. About half of US adults have already been infected with COVID. Again, we ask the question: is it right to compel Americans with previous infection to risk the dangers of vaccination (see below) when their previous infection gives them just as much if not better protection than the shots?

The point is that the performance of the vaccine against an evolving virus must be weighed against the risks of receiving the shot, and that our right to make this choice should not be restricted by mandates or public pressure.

And make no mistake, the risks of COVID vaccination can be serious. In May of 2021, we launched a campaign with our colleagues at ANH-International calling attention to data showing that autoimmune patients were at an increased risk for adverse events following COVID vaccination. The most recent data from the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System contain 13,875 reports of death, along with 938,176 other adverse events. Several safety signals have emerged since the vaccine rollout, including an increased risk of myocarditis (an inflammatory condition of the heart) for adolescents and young men. The CDC has also said recently that a “safety signal” has been identified linking the bivalent shots with an increased risk of ischemic stroke in people 65 and older. Other safety issues include strokes and neurological problems. No vaccine in modern history has come with such a host of side effects.

There’s even data to show that mandates do not achieve their intended purposes. Some of the largest US cities—New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Philadelphia, and Boston—implemented COVID vaccine mandates with the goal of increasing vaccine uptake and thus reducing COVID cases and deaths. These were among the most restrictive and polarizing policies ever enacted in the US, preventing millions of people from entering restaurants, bars, gyms, theaters, or arenas without proof of vaccination. Researchers at George Mason University used a statistical analysis to assess the success of vaccine mandates to increase vaccine uptake and reduce COVID cases and deaths. Their findings:

“We find that indoor vaccine mandates had no significant impact on COVID-19 vaccine uptake, cases, or deaths across all nine cities that implemented the policy.”

This is quite an indictment of these policies given the level of economic harm they inflicted on cities. The paper cites several statistics from New York City that demonstrate this impact. New York City fired 1,430 city workers for failing to comply with the vaccine mandate; over 90 percent of restaurants in the city reported having customer-related challenges, like losing customers who objected to the mandate; 75 percent of restaurants reported having staffing challenges stemming from the mandate; the city’s mandate also reduced the healthcare workforce by 3 percent, or 34,000 workers. Nationwide, 5 percent of unvaccinated adults reported leaving a job due to a vaccine mandate.

Mandate proponents tried to argue at the time that these costs were outweighed by the public health benefits of a mandate in the form of reduced infections and deaths from COVID. It appears that these benefits were imaginary.

This all emphasizes why we need to be able to make medical decisions for ourselves and our families, not have state or city governments make these decisions for us. Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) is taking a significant step in dismantling ineffective and coercive vaccine mandates by introducing the Fair Removal of Existing and Enforced Bans on Immunization Relating to Destination (FREEBIRD) Act to end the COVID-19 vaccine mandate placed on international air visitors to the United States. Foreign travelers, including family members, friends, and business relations, are being kept off U.S. soil due to the air travel vaccine mandate, which remains for nonimmigrant, noncitizen foreign travelers. The United States is one of the only countries that still impose this mandate. It’s time for this and other vaccine mandates to disappear.

Action Alert! Write to Congress in support of the FREEBIRD Act. Please send your message immediately.

The post New Study Reveals Just How Badly Vaccine Mandates Failed first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

A new German study shows unusual toxic components in all Covid vaccine samples tested.

Moms Across America is committed to creating health and freedom. Our medical, family care, and self-care choices are best made when we are fully informed and choose different modalities. We encourage critical thinking, questioning the sources, and safe and natural remedies as much as possible. If any medical treatment, chemical, food, body care, or household product shows signs of being unsafe, we believe you have a right to know.

A new German study shows unusual toxic components in all Covid vaccine samples tested. Moms Across America calls the CDC to cease and desist the COVID vaccination program immediately. Hundreds of doctors have been effectively treating COVID with medications and supplements for over two years now; a dangerous and ineffective gene therapy injection containing unusual and toxic substances is unnecessary.

The Working Group for COVID Vaccine Analysis shows that some of the toxic elements found inside the AstraZeneca, Pfizer, and Moderna vaccine vials were not listed in the ingredient lists from the manufacturers.

“We have established that the COVID-19 vaccines consistently contain, in addition to contaminants, substances the purpose of which we are unable to determine,” their study says.

Read the full article.

The post Unusual Toxic Substances Found in COVID Vaccines “Without Exception” first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

The Wall Street Journal’s headline: “Ivermectin Didn’t Reduce Covid-19 Hospitalizations in Largest Trial to Date.” The New York Times’ headline: “A large study finds that ivermectin does not reduce risk of Covid-19 hospitalization.” Surely this is cased closed on ivermectin’s ability to help with COVID, right?

Not quite. Once again, the media fail to critically analyze the actual results of a study and instead jump right to the sensationalist headlines that “stick it” to those who dare to question their orthodoxy.

The study suffered from some of the same problems as other studies finding ivermectin to be ineffective. The dosage was too low, treatment was only for three days when it should continue for five days after symptoms subside, and the study population had to have at least one risk factor for severe disease, like a comorbidity or be 50 years or over, which is not representative of the wider population. Further, ivermectin treatment in the study started within seven days of first symptoms, but this is not early enough; ivermectin needs to be started immediately, ideally on day one of symptoms presenting. 

Even with the study designed to fail, those in the ivermectin group fared better than the placebo group, though the results were not statistically significant.

What explains the fervent desire among journalists at major institutions and some in the scientific community to show that ivermectin is a failure? Could it be that their sponsors in the drug industry don’t want an off-patent, cheaply available drug to serve as a viable alternative to vaccines or other expensive treatments for COVID like remdesivir? If ivermectin were widely hailed as a success for COVID, attention might start to turn to other off-patent treatments for other diseases, threatening Big Pharma’s ability to re-package their drugs to create new blockbusters that bankrupt our country but make them billions.

Action Alert! Write to the FDA and Congress, telling them to set the record straight on ivermectin! Please send your message immediately.

The post Does It Or Doesn’t It-the Ivermectin Saga Continues first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

A new report titled “Disinformation Doctors: Licensed to Mislead” calls on state medical boards across the country to take “proactive action” to stop medical doctors from spreading COVID “disinformation.” This is in line with other attempts at the federal level to gag free speech about natural treatments for COVID prevention and treatment. We cannot allow these attacks on free speech to succeed.

The main thrust of the report seems to be that vaccines are the only scientifically and medically viable way of addressing COVID-19, and any medical advice to the contrary constitutes “disinformation” that deserves punishment, including revoking doctors’ medical licenses.

The report authors claim that much of this “disinformation” relies on data from the government’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS)—which, as of this writing, lists 8,892 deaths from COVID vaccines. The report authors encourage us to ignore these numbers and other reports of serious side effects from vaccination because “a report to VAERS does not mean that the vaccine caused the adverse event, only that the adverse event occurred some time after vaccination.” Yet the CDC routinely uses VAERS data to conduct its own studies and post-market safety surveillance on vaccines, suggesting the data is not as useless as the authors would like us to believe.

The report further claims that there isn’t evidence to support any prescription drug (like ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine) or over-the-counter supplement to prevent or treat COVID-19. There are, in fact, compendiums of hundreds of studies showing the benefits of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin for COVID-19, particularly when used in early treatment.  One trial was recently published apparently showing ivermectin was ineffective for COVID, but there were a number of problems with the study: the dosage was too low, treatment was only for five days when it should continue for five days after symptoms subside, and the study population was older patients with comorbidities, which is not representative of the wider population. Further, ivermectin treatment in the study started within seven days of first symptoms, but this is not early enough; ivermectin needs to be started immediately, ideally on day one of symptoms presenting. We’ve reported on the impressive evidence for many natural treatments as well, including vitamin D, NAC, zinc, quercetin, and many others.

This report represents the kind of irresponsible thinking that led to many needless deaths. As we reported previously, front-line doctors were using combinations of drugs and supplements, including hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, and zinc, for the early treatment of COVID at the beginning of the pandemic with remarkable results. Studies that utilized these approaches showed an 85 percent reduction in mortality.

There seems to be a mistaken narrative, propagated by the mainstream media, that a group of rogue doctors are peddling unproven treatments like ivermectin on their patients. This is false. Front line doctors treated hundreds of patients each throughout the pandemic. In the absence of useable advice from the government, these doctors are using the medicines they have at their disposable to achieve the best outcomes for their patients. If ivermectin didn’t work in their experience, they wouldn’t use it.

Misguided attacks on disinformation are gaining steam. The Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) issued a rare public statement explaining that doctors spreading COVID-19 disinformation may be putting their licenses at risk. This organization has a history of opposition to natural medicine dating back to the mid-1990s, when it discussed altering the definition of health fraud to include alternative medical care! It would appear that FSMB considers innovative approaches to healthcare to be nothing more than exercises in “quackery” and would jump at an easy chance to revoke the licenses of doctors who do not adhere to conventional medical orthodoxy—the very orthodoxy that ensures the FSMB an annual revenue of $50 million, mostly from offering credentialing services and licensing exams.

This isn’t to say that there are not bad actors out there spreading patently false information. But there is a massive problem with encouraging state medical boards to initiate a campaign against “disinformation” because what constitutes “disinformation” is in the eye of the beholder; any definition will likely be vague enough to encapsulate any health information the government or state medical boards don’t like. Will you be censored if you discuss the side effects of the COVID vaccine? If you point out the potential limits of their efficacy? If you talk about the immune support that vitamin D offers? If you discuss anything that deviates from the guidelines of the CDC or the FDA? Judging from this report, the answer to all these questions is “Yes.”

As we’ve pointed out before, emerging data means that narratives—and what is considered “disinformation”—can change. What was dismissed by many in the mainstream media as a conspiracy theory—the idea that the COVID virus could have escaped from a virology lab in Wuhan—has now gained traction with leading virologists endorsing the theory and President Biden calling for further investigation into the origins of the pandemic.

Some state legislatures are pushing back against these ill-advised efforts with bills that protect doctors and other health practitioners from state medical board disciplinary actions based on their advice on COVID-19 or for prescribing ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19. There is also newly-introduced federal legislation, the Right to Treat Act, reaffirming that no federal agency has the right to regulate the practice of medicine or restrict the lawful prescribing of FDA-approved drugs. We must support these important initiatives.

Action Alert! Scroll down below and write to Congress, urging your representatives to support the Right to Treat Act. If you live in one of the listed states, click the corresponding link to take action on legislation in your state. Please send your message immediately.

States with bills protecting physicians and health care providers from disciplinary actions for treating COVID-19:

Florida

Idaho

Iowa

Kentucky

New Hampshire

Washington

The post COVID “Disinformation” Witch Hunt first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

During both the COVID pandemic and the AIDS epidemic, Dr. Fauci discredited medicines that are safe, cheap, and effective in favor of dangerous, expensive, and ineffective treatments that make billions for drug companies and enrich the government cronies that steer them through approval. In both cases, Dr. Fauci showed a dogged determination to ignore the experience of frontline doctors and patients in pursuit of Big Pharma windfalls, costing hundreds of thousands of lives.

Dr. Fauci has a unique role in shaping US policy toward pandemics. Since 1984 he has served as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID), a health department with over $6 billion in annual funding. Dr. Fauci wields incredible influence and power over NIAID, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and other agencies in the US Department of Health and Human Services. Yet the numbers paint a lamentable picture of our performance during pandemics with Dr. Fauci holding the reins.

From the very beginning of the current pandemic, Dr. Fauci led the way in denouncing hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), an off-patent malaria drug, and, later, ivermectin, a drug to treat river blindness. Both drugs exhibited great promise in fighting COVID, as we’ve discussed previously. But to Dr. Fauci, they represented a grave threat: any recognition by federal agencies that HCQ, ivermectin, or any other set of repurposed drugs and supplements could be effective against COVID endangered the emergency use authorizations (EUAs) for the COVID vaccines in which HHS had invested heavily, since EUA’s are only granted when there are no other viable therapeutics for a disease. So, whatever the evidence said, there was a vested interest on the part of the government to downplay and discredit HCQ and ivermectin.

As early as March 2020, a paper was published discussing the mechanism by which HCQ inhibits the SARS-CoV-2 virus; there was also a clinical report on the successful use of HCQ in COVID patients. Researchers had in fact been aware for years that HCQ was effective against viruses. By April 2020, doctors in the US widely prescribed HCQ. In May, a comprehensive study of HCQ and COVID was published, stating that the evidence for HCQ is “unequivocal.” In August 2020, Dr. Peter McCullough and his colleagues published their protocol for early outpatient treatment of COVID, which includes HCQ and ivermectin; studies that utilized this approach showed an 85 percent reduction in mortality. There was compelling evidence early on that treating non-severe COVID patients early with HCQ and other compounds like zinc could save lives.

What did the government do with this data? In March 2020, Dr. Fauci denounced HCQ, stating that there was only “anecdotal evidence” of its benefit and that it should only be used in clinical trials. That same month, Big Pharma donated, at the government’s request, 63 million doses of HCQ to the Strategic National Stockpile. Clinical trials testing HCQ’s effectiveness against COVID were designed to fail: they left out zinc, crucial for HCQ’s success, used it to treat severely ill COVID patients rather than for early treatment, and administered murderously high dosage levels of the drug. In May, Dr. Fauci hailed two papers as the “nail in the coffin” of HCQ—though it later came out that these papers were based on fraudulent data from Surgisphere, leading to retractions.

Nevertheless, in June 2020, the FDA revoked the EUA that allowed HCQ from the Strategic National Stockpile to be used on hospitalized COVID patients. In July 2020, the Henry Ford Health System in Michigan published a study showing positive effects for HCQ; Dr. Fauci said the results were “flawed” and that health officials should instead rely on evidence from randomized controlled trials. On the back of these actions, governors in 33 states moved to restrict prescribing or dispensing of HCQ. Pharmacists refused orders for HCQ from physicians. In June, the FDA blocked access to the 63 billion doses of HCQ in the strategic stockpile.

Ivermectin was similarly smeared and discredited by Dr. Fauci and medical authorities despite mountains of evidence showing it was an effective COVID medicine. In January of 2021, doctors from the Frontline COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), who were early champions of repurposed medicines in their protocols, testified before Congress, saying that the early use of HCQ and ivermectin could have saved 500,000 lives. FLCCC doctors were even able to convince the National Institutes of Health to change their recommendation on ivermectin from a negative to a neutral stance; Freedom of Information Act requests revealed that three members of the NIH’s drug review panel had relationships with Merck. Merck was in fact getting ready to bring a novel COVID antiviral pill, molnupiravir, to market that would cost $700. The drug is similar to ivermectin, but unlike ivermectin there were safety concerns expressed by the scientists who developed the molnupiravir.

Ivermectin was widely used across the world. One study showed that countries in which ivermectin was used widely to combat parasitic diseases experienced some of the world’s lowest case and mortality rates from COVID.

Once again, faced with overwhelming evidence of ivermectin’s benefit for COVID patients, Dr. Fauci and the government stonewalled. In March 2021, the FDA and the WHO issued statements advising against ivermectin’s use. In June 2021, the Health Department struck a deal with Merck to buy $1.2 billion worth of molnupiravir. Then the real campaign against ivermectin began in earnest. In August 2021, the CDC ordered doctors to stop prescribing ivermectin. In September, the American Medical Association and the American Pharmacists Association called on doctors to stop prescribing the drug. Molnupiravir received an EUA from the FDA at the end of November 2021. Note, again, that an EUA would not have been possible for this drug if it was acknowledged that ivermectin or HCQ were effective for the treatment of COVID.

Admitting the efficacy of HCQ and ivermectin would have also threatened the financial success of remdesivir, Dr. Fauci’s main pharmaceutical gambit for COVID. This is a drug that shows little to no clinical efficacy against COVID, yet was trumpeted by Dr. Fauci as the “new standard of care” for COVID. Importantly, remdesivir did not compete with vaccines, since the drug was for late-stage COVID disease and required hospitalization to administer. And again, admitting the clinical benefits of ivermectin and HCQ would make it impossible for remdesivir to get an EUA. It would also threaten the demand for the drug: if fewer patients are sick because they used HCQ and ivermectin early, then there is less of a need for a late-stage COVID drug.

The tragedy is that this scenario is eerily similar to the AIDS crisis that Dr. Fauci presided over. When the disease hit, there was only one drug that was ready to test, azidothymidine (AZT), a drug that was shelved because it was ineffective against cancer and was extremely toxic. In 1985, AZT was found to kill HIV in vitro, leading the Pharma company that owned it, Burroughs Wellcome (BW), to take it from the trash heap, patent it, and price it at $10,000 per year, the most expensive drug in the world at the time. Under Dr. Fauci’s watch, researchers connected to BW ran the trials meant to evaluate AZT and were on key selection committees which decided what priority to give to testing AZT’s competitors. Dr. Fauci waved the normal procedure of testing AZT in animals and allowed human trials to start (in fact, he did the same thing for the COVID vaccines and allowed remdesivir trials in which there was no real placebo). But development of AZT as an AIDS drug stalled due to its toxicity and the inability of researchers to design trials to make it look safe.

Meanwhile, doctors were achieving promising results with AIDS patients using mixtures of off-label drugs. With no other treatment options, even after millions of taxpayer dollars poured into AZT research, AIDS patients and doctors asked Dr. Fauci and the NIH to release treatment guidelines for how doctors can use off-label medicines to treat the disease and to release a statement announcing that protocol as the standard of care to help patients afford treatment, since insurance companies would have to cover it. Dr. Fauci declined, saying there were no RCTs supporting these treatments (see Bruce Nussbaum’s book, Good Intentions: How Big Business And the Medical Establishment Are Corrupting the Fight Against AIDS). Of course, NIAID could have sponsored these clinical trials, but that would have threatened the progress of AZT as a blockbuster treatment. Some estimate that Dr. Fauci’s refusal to stand behind repurposed drugs that were helping patients cost 17,000 lives; others estimate that, once the drug was finally approved, it was so toxic that it killed 330,000 between 1987 and 2019.

The similarities between these episodes are all too apparent. In both cases, the government used taxpayer dollars to develop drugs it handed off to Big Pharma. Government cronies like Dr. Fauci then rigged the game in favor of expensive, dangerous, ineffective treatments while simultaneously throttling access to natural medicines and off-patent drugs that are effective but limit profits.

These are issues we’ve discussed countless times over the years, and it is a system we strive to reform. A new book by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., The Real Anthony Fauci, stunningly recounts these episodes and more that paint a bleak picture of our crony medical system. It is a difficult but extremely important book to read, and we are making it available for free to our supporters.

We have an exciting offer. Those who donate $50 or more during our end-of-the-year fundraising campaign will receive a free copy of Kennedy’s book. Donate today and receive your free book!

The post AIDS, COVID Reveal Deep Corruption first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.