Powerful forces are working to centralize healthcare decision-making in a small group of elites at the World Health Organization (WHO). We have to push back NOW to stop it. Action Alert!
The ability for you to make informed decisions about you and your family’s health is being threatened by proposed changes to international pandemic laws at the WHO. As became increasingly evident during the COVID-19 pandemic, there is an overall goal to centralize power and authority during pandemics, and this involves empowering a small group of typically un-elected, privately-funded individuals and bureaucrats to make important healthcare decisions for us, while censoring and repressing any information that goes against this established line. Americans need to be able to control their own destiny and not be subservient to such authorities in their ivory towers in Geneva. We need to ensure America doesn’t sign up to these WHO-controlled provisions and lose its ability to make its own decisions, for the people, by the people. More than that, America needs to become a loud voice helping to avert support for these amendments by two-thirds of the WHO member states (i.e. 131 of the 196 country members) at the next World Health Assembly meeting in May 2024, the quorum required to get them through.
The Two-Pronged Attack on Freedom
There are two separate processes going on at the international stage. First, the WHO is discussing over 300 changes proposed to the International Health Regulations(IHR). These amendments create a legally-binding framework that lays out countries’ responsibilities during public health emergencies, or even during a threat of such an emergency. Separately, yet interlinked, the 196 member states of the WHO are negotiating a treaty to “strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.” This has widely become known as the “Pandemic Treaty.”
Both documents, the IHR amendments and the Pandemic Treaty, are intended to work in tandem. The former states the ‘what’, while the latter, the ‘how.’ The amendments dramatically extend powers to the WHO, redefine important concepts, and broaden the context, while the Pandemic Treaty is concerned with the financing and governance required to support these amendments.
While both documents present very real concerns to civil rights and medical freedoms, the IHR amendments are generally viewed as a far greater threat to what we might call ‘health sovereignty,’ the right to medical autonomy, a long-standing pillar of medical ethics. We’ll summarize a few key takeaways here, but for a more in-depth and technical discussion of these issues we recommend perusing the work of Dr. David Bell, Dr. Silvia Behrendt (both of which were former WHO officials), and of course our colleagues at ANH International.
WHO Meets 1984
Broadly speaking, several of the IHR amendments would expand the situations in which the Director General of the WHO can declare a public health emergency. For example, “clusters of severe acute pneumonia of unknown cause” would trigger reporting requirements to the WHO, while terms like “severe” are not even defined. This opens the door to an endless parade of “public health emergencies” of questionable severity. Remember monkey pox? That was declared a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC). It is all eerily reminiscent of the “permanent war” in George Orwell’s 1984 that keeps citizens in a state of constant fear so that they are willing to give up their liberty to a totalitarian state. It is, unfortunately, a recurring theme throughout the IHR amendments.
Several proposed changes to the IHR would seemingly give the WHO binding powers to dictate health policy to member states, including the USA. For example, the WHO can currently issue “non-binding” temporary and standing recommendations on medical countermeasures to address a public health emergency; a proposed amendment would eliminate the word “non-binding” from the IHR, making these into binding recommendations.
Even more disturbing, a new proposed Article 13A would read: “States Parties recognize WHO as the guidance and coordinating authority of international public health response during public health Emergency of International Concern and undertake to follow WHO’s recommendations in their international public health response (emphasis added).” According to Dr. Bell, this new section requires states to follow WHO recommendations during a public health emergency. This is particularly important in how it affects other areas of the IHR and the amendments. For example, Article 18 stipulates what the WHO can recommend during a public health emergency, such as required medical examinations, required vaccination, quarantines, and placing individuals under public health observation. But with the new Article 13A mentioned above, states are required to follow WHO recommendations during a public health emergency. Technically, then, if these amendments go through, the WHO could require states to vaccinate, quarantine, or isolate individuals.
This is clearly outrageous —and completely un-American. Presumably the WHO has a limited ability to enforce its declarations; some observers have pointed out that non-compliance with IHR is an ongoing issue. But while the WHO can’t send a police force to make sure its recommendations are being followed, it does set the tone for international health policy, and many countries are likely to follow the WHO’s guidance on public health matters.
Who is the WHO?
All of this must also be understood in a wider context: who is the WHO? One of the biggest changes the WHO has seen, during the course of its 75-year history, a shift from funding by sovereign nations to funding from private parties. As of now, the bulk of the WHO’s funding comes from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and two closely aligned vaccine-based non-profits funded by vaccine and pharma companies, the vaccine alliance GAVI and the global Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, or CEPI.
What we’re seeing is a massive power-grab by an organization principally funded by special interests that stand to benefit from worldwide vaccination programs and centralized, global control of public health.
Citizens and some lawmakers are starting to wake up to these realities. Over 50 members of Congress support the proposed WHO Withdrawal Act that challenges the WHO’s authority. A recent government spending bill approved by the House of Representatives eliminates US funding to the WHO and stipulates that the Senate must ratify any treaties or proposals from the WHO for them to apply to the US.
Call to Action
While the IHR amendments and the Pandemic Treaty are currently just proposals, they can quickly become policy. As mentioned above, the World Health Assembly will meet in May 2024, at which point the WHO will aim to adopt both the IHR and the Pandemic Treaty and that requires a two-thirds quorum based on one country, one vote. Yes, size doesn’t matter; America’s vote is no more important than Vanuatu’s or Zimbabwe’s. We must voice our staunch opposition to this descent into totalitarianism NOW to prevent global public health overreach, overreach that is so all-encompassing it would override the very basis of the US Constitution on which America was built.
Action Alert! Write to Congress and tell them you oppose the IHR amendments and the Pandemic Treaty. Please send your message immediately.
