Cognitive Filters in the Age of Information Overload

How they shape the practice of medicine and the flow of society Recently, I published a series illustrating our attempts to untangle the shedding phenomenon. This has been quite a challenging task because we’ve had to sift through a lot body of incomplete information in order to infer what the consistent rules are governing how shedding happens. When I looked at the initial dataset, a variety of patterns jumped out to me which compelled me to write an article describing what I believed typically occurred with shedding and a follow up piece explaining what appears to be causing this and what you can do about it. After I had put forward an initial model to explain this confusing phenomenon (so people would be able to recognize if some of the perplexing symptoms they’d experienced in the last three years since the vaccines hit the market), I put out a call for others to share their stories, and we have now received over 1000 testimonials of shedding experiences. From reviewing those testimonies, I’ve observed that they all generally are in accordance with the initial framework of how shedding works and how it affects you. This indicates that the method I used to filter the initial dataset was on point. I share this because one of the greatest tasks in the modern age is being able to make out the signals and patterns in a vast body of data—something we are not trained within our education to do, and often one of the most vital skills for succeeding in the modern era. For that reason, I am revising an article I wrote here a year ago in the hope it can benefit you. Note: I personally know a few of the prominent COVID dissidents. One of the things I realized we all shared in common was the ability to infer critical patterns from incomplete datasets and then apply them to one’s current situation (e.g., two previously used this skillset to be immensely successful in the financial markets). This is why each of us immediately realized there was something very wrong with the vaccines, whereas most of our peers wanted the safety of the crowd and took much longer to be convinced a signal was indeed there. Put differently, our “filters” allowed us to see what was right in front of us—something which seems obvious in hindsight, but nonetheless the majority of the population was unable to do. Information Overload One of my colleagues has advanced a compelling theory to explain why a palpable madness seems to be gripping our society and more and more people seem to be going off the rails. So much information is available now we are constantly bombarded with, that it has exceeded the processing capacity of the human mind. That is making a lot of people destabilize inside, and as the information glut increases, this problem will continue to worsen. Recently I wrote an article describing my thought process on navigating controversial topics with a high degree of ambiguity. It specifically focused on how critical it is to avoid getting attached to any specific interpretation you have of what is occurring. This is both because, due to the ambiguity present, it is challenging to be sure of any interpretation (so becoming attached to a specific one becomes a barrier to seeing the truth) and because it is not healthy for your mind or spirit to covet and treasure some rare idea it has become in possession of. Since this has been a common issue I’ve observed with many of the more contentious issues in this community (e.g., if COVID existed or if there is robotic nanotech in the vaccines), I chose to use it to illustrate the point, but this same thing applies to countless other subjects too. When I reviewed that article, I realized there was a critical point I forgot to mention—how do we, as human beings, effectively deal with an overwhelming volume of information? This issue is a variant of a common issue meditation schools have dealt with throughout history, and they can provide some insights on both the topic at hand and the practice of medicine in general. The Forgotten Side of Medicine is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Upgrade to paid Note: henceforth, I will use the term “subconsciousness.” Arguments can also be made that “unconsciousness” is more correct. I thought this over for a while, and I am not ultimately not sure which should be used here. Focusing on Value In many environments you are in, a massive amount of data is present that the conscious mind cannot keep track of. However, to a large extent, the subconsciousness does and directs your focus to what in the environment has "value" for your conscious mind to be aware of. One classic example is the "Cocktail party effect," where you can be in a room where many people are having conversations that blur together. Still, for some reason, you can immediately zero in on the one conversation where your name was mentioned. Most of you have probably experienced this numerous times, and the same principle holds in many other instances as well. I have seen various explanations put forward to explain why the "Cocktail party effect" occurs, and from all of them, it's clear some part of the brain is evolved to make this possible. One region that has been put forward as being responsible for this is the "reticular activating system." At this point, I don't know if the RAS is the region of the brain ultimately responsible for this effect, but going forward, I will state that it is to help convey the central points of this essay. The filtering function of the RAS has been hypothesized to have evolved so that early humans (and likely the primates we came from) could rapidly detect sources of food (e.g., berries) and danger (e.g., predators) in their environment. Since so much existed in their environment, and the stakes were high for missing many of them (e.g., a brief delay in spotting a predator could equate to death), the RAS was necessary. There needed to be an effective mechanism to rapidly draw attention to essential things while simultaneously not failing to observe any part of the environment. Note: frequently when individuals have had strokes or some other severe illness, part of their ensuing cognitive impairment (the ability to focus on things or recall information) results from the RAS being disabled, and if some type of protocol is done to restart it (e.g., stimulating the associated cranial nerve) this can often play a critical role in their recovery process. We no longer have to deal with those high stakes in modern times, but the RAS persists. In turn, the "value" it seeks are things our culture has habituated us to value, such as an opportunity for money, a product we want, or a potential mate. In human interactions, recognizing the importance of the RAS is immensely valuable. This is because your words and actions are often far less important than what the other party has been primed to look for. Put differently, if someone's initial impression of you is positive (or they assess you as having value to them), their RAS will filter for things that show value in you. Conversely, if someone's initial impression of you is negative, their RAS will filter for signs you have no value and should be disregarded. This is why people can repeatedly try to do everything right and make a positive impression on someone, but they are only seen negatively, and regardless of how hard they try, they keep looking worse and worse. Conversely, sometimes when you talk to individuals trapped in clearly abusive relationships (to the point outside observers can tell the abuse is happening), the abused party does not register most of the abuse and cites a couple of semi-decent things the abuser did as proof they are a good person, and sometimes will even try to defend the abuser once outside parties get involved. This might seem hard to believe, but I've seen it numerous times in the ER, and many of my colleagues have also seen it in their respective fields. Note: the concept I am describing here is often described as "confirmation bias" (where you only see things that conform to your pre-existing beliefs). Filters Create Your Reality One point Scott Adams helped bring general public recognition to is that we all hold filters (often arising from subconscious biases). Much of the reality we believe to be true is not because it is the objective reality. Instead, our notion of reality appears because our RAS makes us aware of things in our environment that affirm the reality we filter for. As a result, people come to believe their filtered world is reality because it’s what they see around them all day long. Scott Adams, in turn, refers to this phenomenon as two people watching the same film but seeing a completely different movie. One of the things I hate about the media is how good it is at priming people to have a specific filter and then continually selectively feeding people only information that affirms that filter. I think my dislike of this comes not from the media’s behavior but the fact that so many people continuously fall prey to it, even when they are fully aware of it being done to them previously. Three of the most noteworthy recent examples we have seen of this priming were: •Trump is Hitler. •The sky is falling (because of COVID-19). •The COVID-19 vaccines are 100% safe, 95% effective, and essential for returning to normal. Although none of these were objectively true, because of how effectively the media primed much of the population’s RAS, many were left with a deep conviction these filters were true and that the evidence for it was so overwhelming anyone who could not “see” it was unforgivable. This, in turn, led to something I had not seen before with the American propaganda apparatus—families and long-term friendships were broken apart simply due to people having divergent viewpoints on these issues and not ascribing to the media’s narrative. Note: One of the things I found the most surprising was just how effective this propaganda push was. The best example I can think of is how most medical professionals I met fell for all three. For instance, as James Miller (the honest doc I covered here) has highlighted in a national television interview after that article was published, many doctors and government leaders who directed the COVID-19 response established many of their beliefs on these narratives based on what CNN told them rather than reviewing the medical evidence themselves. One of the things that gives me a great deal of joy in life is realizing that something I’d observed many, many times in my life had a quality I’d never recognized before, either because an existing filter removed it or because the complexity was beyond my present ability to grasp. This can hold for both very simple things (e.g., a blade of grass) and fairly complex ones. For example, as the years went by, I began to gain a greater and greater appreciation for the fact most of human communication has nothing to do with the specific information being conveyed but rather is predominantly about what is going on in the body, mind, and spirit of each participant. Most of this is rarely overtly expressed but heavily influences both what each participant conveys and how they interpret what is said to them. This is important because (unless you are very good with hypnosis) it is the realm where you have to focus to reach people who will not listen to what you say and the evidence you present. Furthermore, this broader spectrum of what’s contained within communication holds for every one of its mediums, including (as discussed in the previous article) within writing. For that reason, the primary thing I aim for here is to address those other areas of communication (e.g., I try to write in a heart-centered manner), as I feel it is ultimately much more important than the specific information of the subject at hand. Another example can be seen in the practice of medicine. Since I was young, I loved puzzles, but as time passed, I realized all artificial systems have a predefined limit to the complexity they can reach. Conversely, with human beings, there is an almost unlimited degree of complexity present, and one of the key things that brings me joy in practicing medicine is realizing something is present in the human system I had never recognized before despite having it staring me in the face with every preceding patient. It’s specifically for this reason that I ask colleagues to send me complex patients they can’t figure out (provided they are mentally balanced and thus comfortable with navigating the uncertainty of the disease). In this regard, the COVID-19 vaccine disaster has been a remarkable educational experience. This is because I’ve seen so many things go wrong in the body with these patients I never previously appreciated could go wrong in the first place. So really looking into those problems opened my eyes to a variety of physiologic and subconscious mechanisms in the body I had never registered the importance of addressing before (and in some cases didn’t even realize existed in the first place). Filters and Medicine One of the subjects I’ve tried to bring attention to with the Substack is medical gaslighting, the phenomenon where the medical system injures someone and then is told the injury is all in their head and had nothing to do with what the medical system did to them. On the surface, that sounds pretty bad, but unless you’ve directly experienced this, it’s hard even to begin to describe how awful it is to go through. Since this has happened to quite a few people close to me, I feel strongly about raising awareness on this issue. From researching it, I’ve been able to establish medical gaslighting has been a mainstay of Western medicine for at least 140 years (from the complications of mercury poisoning—which Western medicine used to give out like candy for everything), and I suspect but cannot prove it has a far longer history. Because of how long medical gaslighting has existed, I don’t think it is an issue specific to an individual doctor or the current medical industry’s monopolistic business model. Instead, I think it’s either a reflection of a malignant collective consciousness within the medical field or something intrinsic to human nature that becomes problematic once dangerous pharmaceuticals are involved. So I feel to end it, what is inside each of us is where the focus must lie. The aspect of human nature most commonly cited to explain why doctors gaslight is that they understandably do not want to acknowledge medical injuries. This can either be for selfish reasons to avoid a lawsuit (although this is hugely misguided as patients are much more likely to sue when they feel they are being gaslighted) or because of how difficult it is for anyone to acknowledge they hurt someone else they wanted to help. This cognitive dissonance (the psychological defense mechanism that causes people to do this) is much greater for doctors as their entire identity (you have to give up a lot to become a doctor) is based around being bestowed with the ability to heal the sick, and society does everything to inflate that pedestal doctors are placed upon. However, I do not believe cognitive dissonance is the primary issue. Instead, I would argue it’s an issue of filters. In a recent article on the overlap between the predatory behavior of the statin industry and the COVID-19 industry, I discussed how many unquestioned assumptions we all carry to navigate the world. As the complexity of your field increases, the number of assumptions you need to make increases as well. In medicine, it is virtually impossible to practice medicine without regularly utilizing a massive number of unquestioned assumptions. For example, as I shared in there, despite the fact I’ve prioritized identifying erroneous assumptions throughout my career, I still frequently discover new ones. Because many of the assumptions taught during your medical training conveniently lead to concluding “pharmaceuticals (and other medical interventions) are not harmful” or “patients who believe they were injured by medicine are ill for a different reason,” it is inevitable gaslighting will occur. While the numerous unquestioned assumptions of medicine are certainly an issue, I believe they are a symptom of a much broader issue and the theme of this article. It is immensely difficult to be fully aware of a complex system, so as a result, people typically “see” what their existing filters and all those unquestioned assumptions have been programmed to see. When patients come in, typically, a lot is going on, and the most common response any physician will have during the brief visit is to cycle quickly through each filter they have been trained in for evaluating patients and see if any of those filters detect a disease the doctor knows to recognize. Since almost none of (pharmaceutically funded) medical training teaches you the filters for identifying pharmaceutical injuries (but it does say teach the filters for recognizing signs of a psychiatric illness), doctors often can’t see the clear signs their patient has a pharmaceutical injury. I have essentially found three ways to get around this issue, which I must acknowledge were adopted partially due to my personal history with medical gaslighting. •Seek out and be trained in filters that identify complex medical conditions (e.g., mold toxicity or fluoroquinolone poisoning). This is doable, but there are a lot of filters to learn, and none of the standard educational pathways doctors go through expose them to the existence of these filters. •View everything you see in the patient as a manifestation of some underlying process within their body and focus on identifying the underlying process rather than any specific symptom. This, in many ways, is the exact opposite of how we are trained to think in medical school, and particularly challenging because one particular underlying process can have a variety of different manifestations depending on the patient, which makes it very difficult to recognize what the unifying thread between all those symptoms is. Since I have spent most of my life using surface manifestations to guide me to the root of something, it was straightforward to apply that to medicine. However, this background is relatively rare. Note: I also recently discussed how I use a similar approach in my writing to explain complex issues as I try to boil things down to the core principles at work everything else is emerging from. •Have a perceptual framework that both provides the sensitivity to perceive the subtle signs a patient is providing to you and the ability to maintain an awareness of the entire patient rather than seeing them filtered diagnoses. Perceiving Without Filters In ancient China (which had an enormous amount of warfare), there was a common saying—it is easier to raise an army of 10,000 men than to find a general to lead them. Note: 10,000 was an idiom of the time that meant “a lot” rather than being a specific value. I believe (although despite my best efforts, I cannot say with certainty) this quote gets at the fact that on a battlefield, there are so many different things occurring that if a general loses sight of one of them, that can be enough to crush their army and potentially decide the outcome of the war. For example, here are two lines from the Chinese classic The Art of War reflecting this idea: To see victory only when it is within the ken* of the common herd is not the acme** of excellence. Amid the turmoil and tumult of battle, there may be seeming disorder and yet no real disorder at all; amid confusion and chaos, your array may be without head or tail, yet it will be proof against defeat. *ken means “knowledge, understanding, or range of sight or vision." **acme means the point at which someone or something is best, perfect, or most successful. Note: fictional works such as this also depict the view through which a general of that era saw the battlefield. One of the significant differences between the modern era and many previous ones humans grew up in is that the world is much safer now, so there is much less pressure on individuals to have a continual awareness of their environment (e.g., leaders like CEOs often have very cushy jobs and far fewer people now have the basic survival skills necessary for if a war were to break out). As a result, much of this skillset has been lost, and people in turn, cannot apply it to the other areas of life it is often essential for. “If you could be fully present to an ant for the time it took to walk down your nose, you would be enlightened.” and “If you could be fully present for the time it took a leaf to fall from a tree to the ground, you would be enlightened.” are two common phrases in the Eastern spiritual systems that reflect this same concept. Each of these phrases serves to illustrate the fact that there is so much going on around you at any given moment that your mind filters out that (while providing one with the illusion they perceive a continuous reality) that it is extraordinarily challenging to be fully aware of much of what is right in front of you. Note: this issue is especially apparent in traumatized individuals who regularly disassociate. In turn, innumerable practices were designed to gradually increase your awareness within each aspect of your being and each person and thing around you. These practices, in turn, all share many similarities since they reflect the same process. This ability to be more aware of what’s around you comes more naturally to some. In medicine, those with this skill set tend to be the doctors who most able to fully connect with the patient and recognize something they were never trained to look for. Conversely, this capacity greatly decreases as people become more disconnected from their bodies and predominantly live in their minds (which sadly characterizes the modern digital age). This I believe, is one of the key factors explaining why older doctors who were not raised in the digital age tend to be better at connecting with their patients and seeing things their colleagues cannot recognize. Unfortunately, the entire push within medicine has been to have everything become automated (e.g., lots of tests and imaging or treatment algorithms doctors must follow) in place of the doctor creating a human connection with their patient and using that awareness to discern what their issue is. I believe this transition has happened because it makes it much easier to sell billable medical services repeatedly. I also think it’s a shame it’s happened because a lot of conditions cannot be treated with the automated model, and I have lost count of how many people I and colleagues have seen who we felt had a relatively straightforward issue dozens of respected physicians utilizing automated medicine were stumped on. Filters and Information When I was younger, I was a competitive debater, which often required arguing a point I believed was utterly incorrect. From doing this, I came to appreciate how it was possible to effectively argue almost anything if you correctly framed the debate and rearranged the available information to support your narrative. This gave me a deep appreciation for how illusory "certainty" or "truth" was and how often things we were sure were true was simply the result of a selective presentation of reality. This is also why I've been so driven throughout my life to establish what is objectively true and not simply a subjective representation of reality…which is very challenging when you dive into it. Similarly, this is why when I write articles, before publication, I catch and address counterarguments that would be raised to them as my past training in debate made me able to take the role of someone who seriously disagrees with everything published here and is searching for ways to discredit the article. I would now like to tie all the themes of this article together. Whenever humans are exposed to an excessive amount of information (which can often be a surprisingly low threshold), they lose the ability to be present to all of it. Instead, their RAS uses a pre-existing filter that detects the parts of that information which has value to them. In politics, this is often depicted through the concept of "nuanced ideas and simplistic truths." In the case of nuanced ideas, a few different premises need to be put together to understand the broader point the speaker is hinting at. In the case of simplistic truths, a single and simple premise (the audience most likely already agrees with) is instead stated. The advantage of simplistic truths is that most audiences will understand them, and if they conform to the audience's pre-existing biases, they will emotionally support the speaker. The major disadvantage of simplistic truths is that they cannot address complex subjects. For many complex issues, was their nuance fully understood, most people on both sides of the political spectrum would likely reach a shared position they could agree upon. Instead, however, since only simplistic truths are utilized, things remain indefinitely polarized. Sadly, when a nuanced idea is presented, many people can't put the individual premises together into a larger picture because they cannot be present to that much information at one time (or have emotional barriers to doing so). When this occurs, they often get angry, and search for an individual premise they can attack for challenging one of their simplistic truths. Note: if you watch the evolution of American media over the decades, the time between transitions to new scenes has continually decreased which both causes and is reflective of a profound loss in the attention span of each American. Many of the qualities I argued are necessary to be able to perceive become much harder to perceive with a shortened attention span and part of why they can’t follow nuanced ideas (and instead need simplistic truths to latch onto. Additionally, a good case that this loss of process capacity (e.g., ADHD, is a result of vaccine injuries), which in turn has caused the condition to become more and more common as the vaccination schedule proliferates throughout society. Because of the need for nuance to address many of the polarizing and dividing subjects we face in this era, I decided to adopt that approach with this Substack. By virtue of being anonymous, I can do that here as it doesn't matter if people get angry at me, and even if they do, there is nothing for them to latch onto (this is also a big part of why I’ve never specified my gender as this society unfortunately causes many people to have negative projections to one gender or another—something I’ve personally experienced be directed towards me more times than I can count). This greatly helps my mission because it makes audiences much more likely to try and appreciate the nuanced thought I present, rather than having the simplistic interpretation of "AMD is bad, therefore that idea is bad" (which would happen far more frequently if they knew who I was—for example consider how Ryan Cole, an upstanding individual, has been treated). In most (but not all) cases, when someone's awareness expands to a broader reality than it is accustomed to within the body, mind, or spirit, there will be a natural strain created by it and a tendency to want to tense up and withdraw from that expansion. One of the best metaphors I have seen for this is the human response to pain, which people often cope with by tensing some part of themselves in response—even though the most effective way to mitigate pain is typically to relax into it. Note: this is a foundational concept within Chinese medicine, as they believe blocked energy creates pain, and tension restricts the flow of the body's energy. The process I am describing also regularly occurs with mental ideas. In turn, I would argue that this is what happens when someone has a response to a nuanced idea where they contract something inside themselves not to have to experience the strain of it being opened to a broader reality (e.g., by shutting their mind down and attacking the messenger). Although most commenters here are quite open to nuanced thoughts, I notice a common theme in their responses whenever I encounter a hostile party. They will not be able to see most of what I am saying, let alone appreciate the nuanced point being conveyed. Instead, they focus on a few statements within the response they can attack for violating their simplistic truths. Note: I am not sure if it's the best use of my time to engage these people (since it prevents me from having the time to write things that benefit everyone), but I try to at least initially because I feel I should be able to defend what I put forward—and in many cases, a very positive discourse emerges, or they inform me of a mistake I need to correct. My general rule is to give it a few tries and then stop once I feel the other party is not acting in good faith and is primarily concerned with eating up as much of my time as possible. I’ve gradually stopped doing that however because I don’t have enough time to engage with all my genuinely interested subscribers, so I feel it’s unethical to prioritize a troll over them). Because we live in an overwhelming sea of information, being fully present to all of it is nearly impossible. This forces everyone to utilize their own filters or filters provided by nefarious entities like Google. Since I have used the internet since its early days, I gradually acclimated to the ever-increasing flow of information and taught myself how to evade the increasingly sophisticated censorship—and to be honest, I am not sure what to suggest here for people who were not gradually habituated to our current reality. The major challenge we all run into when we see a large pool of information is being present to it and knowing how to filter for its key points. Because there is no formal training or guidance for this, people typically focus on what their RAS is already primed to spot in a sea of information and whatever elicits a strong emotional trigger for them (hence why much of the internet is inane clickbait). Neither of these is very helpful if one's goal is to determine what is actually true. Instead, they frequently lead one to simply pick out (and often selectively interpret) the "facts" (which may be incorrect) from the broad sea of information that conform to their pre-existing biases. The ways I have found to get around these issues are as follows: •I have some type of intuition that tells me which thing (e.g., a data point, article, or book) I need to focus on in a broad set of data. Often I don't know why I felt pulled to it, but typically I discover very useful things from this process. Many people I've talked to who are successful analysts have told me they have a similar intuitive capacity. Note: this is difficult to explain, but this process is not the same as having a bias to look for things that affirm your pre-existing viewpoints. •I have gotten a natural sense of the biases behind different sources of information. I don't believe biases are intrinsically bad; we are human, so every source will have them (e.g., I am biased against the COVID-19 vaccines and upfront about it). However, it's important to consider what information a biased source puts forward due its bias cannot be trusted and which can. This is a large part arose because I could “feel” the mind of many of the writers I read, and hence have an intuitive grasp of their bias. For example, Wikipedia is a wonderful resource for non-controversial topics (e.g., summarizing medical or scientific concepts) no one would be particularly motivated to lie about. In contrast, on any commonly censored or controversial subject (including unorthodox perspectives on the previously mentioned scientific and medical concepts), Wikipedia's only value is learning the existing narrative. Similarly, I will often read a source I know is heavily biased against a subject I believe in so I can rapidly identify if there are any valid concerns presented by those skeptics (e.g., fact-checkers) I need to address or in some cases, cannot address and effectively disprove my belief (conversely if all the “arguments” they cite are ridiculous, I know I stand on strong ground with my point). •You need to recognize when you have reached the point of diminishing returns with a source; if it is telling you things you already know, there is no value in reading it other than to confirm your existing beliefs. In the previous article, I mentioned that I spent a lot of time reading conspiracy literature. Still, I eventually stopped because I realized it was getting repetitive, and it reached the point where I would know most of an article's content shortly after I began to read it. •Whenever possible, try to drill to the core of what the topic you are reading about actually is, and then search for the things that tell you what you need to know about that core as opposed to the countless superficial expressions of the subject (which can be almost endless to read through to). This is essentially the same process I use in many other facets of life, including working with patients (and as discussed recently, when writing). •You need to consider if what is being presented can justify the claim. For example, a common way people who challenge the system are attacked is to make a variety of allegations against them which are based on assumptions, unproven allegations, inferences about the individual's state of mind, or hypothetical scenarios about the individual the author emotionally puts forward as fact, even though there is no way to know if any of that is true. Similarly, many pieces of evidence I've seen put forward that "prove" graphene oxide is in the vaccines at best potentially suggest it (e.g., there are a variety of patents for using graphene oxide—but most patents never make it to the marketplace). Conversely, many others have no relation to the subject at hand (e.g., leaked Pfizer documents that said it was in the vaccines actually said it was used as part of the testing process on the vaccine during its production process—which has nothing to do with it being in the vaccine itself). On these points, I want to be very clear that I have no love for Pfizer, but at the same time, I won’t level accusations against them that I know cannot be defended. When all of these suggestive points are woven together, they can create a compelling narrative (especially if they are being read with a filter seeking to confirm a pre-existing belief). Still, when you cut through them, you often find nothing to substantiate them. Similarly, one of the things I realized over time with conspiracy theories is that while many of them were provable beyond a shadow of a doubt, many others were a collection of speculative inferences and partial evidence woven together to argue for something you couldn't prove. Many believe the two being blurred together under the same label ("conspiracy theories") was a deliberate tactic by industry (or the CIA). This was done so that whenever evidence was put forward showing industry did something very bad, rather than address it, industry could simply emotionally associate that evidence with the highly speculative conspiracies and thereby have the public emotionally dismiss the corporation's crimes. Note: Writing here truthfully makes me very nervous because I am constantly worried something I put forward will either be incorrect or harm a significant number of people, and this has forced me to fact-check and question a lot of what I had previously thought I could just say (and had previously done so in numerous conversations). •Allow your mind to expand so it can become fully conscious of a large amount of information without wanting to withdraw from it. I believe this skill is fundamentally the most important skill for navigating this entire issue. At the same time, it is also the hardest to develop, and I owe much of my ability to do it to having trained the skill in areas unrelated to medicine or writing. However, if this is your goal, you can gradually move towards tolerating an increasing amount of ambiguity and excessive information without getting overloaded. Oddly enough, I have also found if you avoid substances, have healthy sleep cycles, use blue light filters on screens (e.g., f.lux) and stay away from unhealthy lighting (e.g., fluorescent tubes), your ability to be aware of larger volumes of information also increases. Whenever I write here, I often have the idea of the article form in my mind, and what allows me to put it into text is if my mind can expand enough to be present to the entire piece. Frequently after this process begins, I will notice there are certain parts of the picture my mind does not want to look at and feel darker or as though they have shut down. This typically means that there is a contradiction or error in that part of my thesis I am trying to run away from and ignore. In turn, I find it is only once I get to the point I no longer feel that anywhere in my mental construct of the article that it is ready for publication. It took me a bit to realize this, but that process is very similar to what I had gone through previously with meditation practices, and that is likely where my approach to writing came from. Note: one of the debates I always have with editors in writing is whether or not I should break up longer sentences. The argument for doing this is that it makes it easier to follow what I am saying. In contrast, the argument against doing so is that it breaks the continuity of the point I am making, and some of the meaning gets lost when the statement is fragmented. I am still not sure which is correct, but I currently default to the longer sentences. Conclusion One of the most common political debates is if the Constitution is good or bad. The essential argument is that since the Constitution was written over 200 years ago, it is not suited for the modern world and needs to be replaced. The counterargument to this is that because the political system is so corrupt, anything that replaced the Constitution would be far, far worse than the current one (which has many positive things going for it). Many spiritual leaders I have spoken to have shared a common concern with the modern era; that most existing religions are in the same situation as the Constitution. When they were developed, the world was very different (it was a simple agrarian society). The modern era has many unique needs and challenges, such as the insane overload of information and our over-identification with intellectual ideas. These changes are particularly concerning because they have replaced some of the most important things in life, such as our connections to ourselves (e.g., the digital age has made many lose the ability to feel) and those around us. As a result, the current reality we face was never explicitly addressed within these texts. The world is so different now, no one could have predicted how things are at the time these were written. For the same reasons, I do not support rewriting the Constitution, I also do not support revising the classic religious texts. However, there is also an alternative solution to this dilemma. Teach people to focus on grasping the timeless essence of those teachings by allowing their minds to expand enough to see the nuances within those texts rather than having a superficial reading that fixates on specific simplistic phrases and then rearranges them to support whatever the agenda is of the reader. The second is that a good argument can be made one of the primary causes of attention deficit disorder are vaccine injuries. The Forgotten Side of Medicine is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Upgrade to paid Thank you for reading The Forgotten Side of Medicine. This post is public so feel free to share it.

The Perils of Vaccinating When You Are Infected

What the forgotten HPV vaccine tragedy can teach us about the dangers of COVID vaccination Story at a Glance: •The HPV and COVID-19 vaccines are two of the most dangerous pharmaceutical products that were ever pushed onto the market. However, regardless of how much evidence of harm emerged, authorities always insisted they were “safe and effective.” •Many of the issues with both vaccines were a result of those vaccines hyperstimulating the immune system, which in turn created a variety of debilitating autoimmune disorders. •One of the less appreciated consequences of this hyperstimulation is that if it occurs while someone is infected with the disease, it can make the existing infection become more severe. •Despite this being clearly shown within the HPV vaccine trials, since testing before vaccination would reduce vaccine sales, it was never recommended within the prescribing guidelines (some groups even said to not test before receiving the vaccine). Likewise, with the COVID vaccines, despite everyone being continuously tested for COVID-19, testing was never advised prior to a vaccination appointment, nor were members of the public informed of the dangers of vaccinating while infected. Recently, Dr. Kory and I decided to begin tackling one of the most challenging topics with the COVID-19 fiasco—does something about these vaccines cause them to harm those around the vaccinated individual? In theory, this should not be possible, yet over and over again we are coming across cases where it is happening (the evidence of which has been extensively documented here). Since “shedding” is used to describe the phenomenon where individuals injected with a replicating organism (e.g., the oral polio vaccine) can then make others become sick with the illness the vaccine is supposed to prevent, everyone has settled on referring to this curious side effect of the spike protein vaccine as “shedding.” Because this is quite a perplexing situation, we’ve spent the last few years trying to come up with a mechanism that could explain how this “shedding” is possible. Recently, I published an article explaining the hypotheses we’ve developed, and presently we believe certain vaccinated individuals exhaling large amounts of spike protein coated exosomes is the most likely mechanism at work. One of the alternative hypothesis I put forward was that the vaccine is impairing the normal immune response and causing injected individuals to become chronic silent shedders of COVID-19. After publishing the article, I received a lot of questions about a few points I highlighted, particularly readers wanting to know more about receiving an HPV vaccine in the presence of a pre-existing HPV infection. This article in turn will address what can go wrong if you vaccinate while already infected. The Forgotten Side of Medicine is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Upgrade to paid The Last Frontier of Medicine Immunology is frequently referred to as the last frontier of medicine since the immune system is so incredibly complex and at this point, much still remains unknown about it. I personally believe this is because most of the research on it has revolved around trying to find immunological pharmaceutical products (e.g., vaccines or immune suppressing agents) rather than trying to understand the systemic processes that cause the immune system to go awry in the first place (as these are much harder to produce profitable therapies for). Note: some of the existing immune suppressing agents are incredibly helpful for patients (and relatively safe), but many of the other ones we use in practice are quite dangerous and much harder to justify using. Throughout this publication, I’ve tried to illustrate how much of medicine only makes sense if you understand foundational business and marketing practices and then see the existing way medicine is practiced through that lens (e.g., much of what constitutes the “standard of care” is only there because it makes money for the industry). In the case of vaccines I would argue each the following are true: •A central mythology the credibility of modern medicine is based upon is that vaccines rescued us from the dark ages of infectious disease. As a result, the medical field will almost always have faith each promise of a vaccine is indeed true and simultaneously be astonishingly resistant to the idea any vaccine (and by extension the medical profession) could be bad. Note: a good case can be made that most of the benefits attributed to vaccination were actually due to the benefits of modern sanitation, as almost all of the decline in disease attributed to vaccination predated the vaccines actually coming into use. Conversely, the forgotten history of many of the early vaccines showed they worsened the diseases they were supposed to prevent and simultaneously injured many. •Since you can in theory make a vaccine against anything by mixing a target protein with an adjuvant (e.g., aluminum), vaccine development is a very popular area of research—especially because the resulting product (due to the 1986 Vaccine Injury Act) has no liability for injuring people and is often mandated upon most of the country. This for example is why individuals, like Peter Hotez have received over 100 million dollars in research grants—much of which has gone to “developing” a vaccine for a human hookworm infection, despite still not having anything to show for it after decades of work. •Vaccine research in turn rarely considers the possibility that their target protein or adjuvant might cause problems. For example, one of the longstanding issues with vaccines is that the proteins they try to train the immune system to attack partially match normal proteins within the body, and as a result, autoimmunity is a frequent complication of vaccination (there is even a textbook about this). Note: one of the major issues with the COVID vaccine is how many different human tissues match the (spike) protein it mass produces within the body, which many suspect is a key reason why the vaccine has such an extraordinarily high rate of causing autoimmunity. For those wishing to learn more, the subject of vaccines and autoimmunity is discussed in more detail here. •When it comes to vaccines, the same people who constantly espouse the “safe and effective mantra” with an absolute conviction rarely take the time to actually understand exactly what’s going on with the injections and familiarize themselves with the science behind them. Note: the vaguely defined phrase “safe and effective” is a relatively meaningless marketing slogan which has been repeated over and over for decades because it has proven itself to be a very effective way to sell vaccines. For example, there had been a longstanding challenge in producing a “safe and effective” live polio vaccine as making the vaccine “safe” required using formaldehyde to deactivate the polio virus, but doing so also destroyed many of its antigens which were necessary for developing an immune response. To address this issue, Salk put forward a theoretical argument for why his vaccine was “safe” that was accepted by the authorities despite Salk failing to provide the evidence for his contention. When his vaccine hit the market (with the dishonest blessings of the government), many were then paralyzed by it. One honest academic, Paul Meier, professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health, who critiqued the fiasco, provides some important context on the longstanding use of this marketing slogan: When the Salk poliomyelitis vaccine was released for widespread use in April 1955, and despite assurances of safety, a number of vaccinated children developed poliomyelitis. No public acknowledgment of the manufacturing difficulties was made at this time [a lot of Polio contaminated vaccine lots were found], but the Vaccine Advisory Committee released a public statement which was concurred in by the Public Health Service, and which, in effect, gave assurances that the vaccine was safe. [The VAC is the same group which has green-lighted every possible use of the COVID vaccines]. All manufacturers had rejected some lots because live virus had been found in them: and therefore Salk's theory that safety was guaranteed by the method of preparation obviously did not apply Perhaps the most disturbing element of the entire program, has been the disparity between the risks that were known to be involved and the repeated assurances of safety. The National Foundation, in a memo sent to doctors, also stated emphatically that the [polio] vaccine was completely safe and that the risk of ensuing paralysis was “zero”. The best way to push forward a new program is to decide on what you think the best decision is and not question it thereafter, and further, not to raise questions before the public or expose the public to open discussion of the issue. [This statement was overview of what happened which was meant to be sarcastic]. Hyperpriming the Immune System There are a variety of designs for vaccines. Some work by containing only a small number of proteins (antigens) which match the target disease, while others contain a large number of them. Typically, the former are created by mass synthesizing the protein antigen and mixing it with something that provokes a strong immune response (an adjuvant) as this significantly reduces how much of the most expensive ingredient (the antigen) needs to be administered to solicit the desired immune response. Conversely, the latter are created by taking the existing pathogen you want to develop a vaccine against, somehow making it less dangerous, and then injecting that whole pathogen (which thus has dramatically more antigens to vaccinate the person against). My general impression with vaccines is that the latter (weakened or attenuated forms of the original pathogen) tend to be much more effective than the former at preventing disease and sometimes also have other nonspecific benefits (as they improve the immune system’s ability to fight off other things). Conversely, since these vaccines are a living organism which can replicate, they have the risk of both making the individual become ill and spreading (shedding) the disease into the community (which commonly happens with oral polio vaccine and to a lesser extent happens with the measles vaccine). For this reason, it is always advised that the “live” vaccines are only given to people who are not immune suppressed and that immune suppressed individuals avoid individuals who were recently vaccinated with live vaccines. Presently, I know of the following benefits (beyond preventing the target infection) which are seen with live vaccines: •The rabies vaccine being able to treat an existing rabies infection before it becomes fatal. •The shingles vaccine being able to prevent future shingles episodes in someone who is chronically afflicted by them. •The imunostimulatory effect of the tuberculosis and measles vaccine reducing the risk of dying from other infectious diseases (which in areas like Subsaharan Africa noticeably lowers the death rate since infectious diseases are such a common killer there). •The tuberculosis vaccine functioning as a therapeutic for certain cancers (e.g., bladder) and is also currently being tested as a treatment for fibromyalgia. Note: there are also a lot of problems with live vaccines; I am primarily sharing the above to provide the context for what follows. When a single antigen is used instead (along with the adjuvant which makes the immune system have a disproportionate response to that antigen), an unnatural immune response is created. Some of the common consequences of that include: •It rapidly triggers the pathogen to mutate so that it no longer has the antigen sequence in question. This effect is known as “strain replacement” and is a longstanding issue with vaccines (e.g., this is why they keep on having to add new antigens to the pneumococcal vaccine). Likewise, this is why many individuals were able to correctly predict that once the COVID vaccine was released, many COVID variants would emerge which had a different spike protein the vaccine didn’t work on (which is why boosters to each new strain “needed” to be made). •The immune system becomes permanently locked onto antigen it has been primed to respond to. This becomes problematic since the immune system has a finite ability to respond to things, and as a result, if it locks onto the wrong strain (e.g., one the vaccine had already made become extinct) it loses the ability to respond to respond to the current threat (which is known as Original Antigen Sin or OAS). Note: one of the strongest arguments against the COVID-19 vaccines is that they still contain the spike protein sequence of the original SARS-CoV-2 virus even though that variant is now extinct. For example, consider the author (mentioned above) who discovered that in areas where people frequently die from a variety of infectious diseases, the live measles vaccine reduced children’s overall risk of death by 38-86%, and the live tuberculosis vaccine reduced the overall risk of death by 37-48% because of a non-specific strengthening of the immune system. That same author also found that the pertussis vaccine (one which hyper-primes the body to respond to a few specific antigens) instead increased the overall risk of death by 293% in boys and 898% in girls as they became more susceptible to dying from a variety of other infections. Prior to the COVID vaccines, OAS (and negative vaccine efficacy) had been most frequently seen with the influenza vaccine (e.g., see this review, this study, this study, and this study). However, the most tragic (and well documented) results have been seen with the spike protein vaccines, best shown by this study: Note: there are other mechanisms besides OAS which may also explain why individuals who got the COVID vaccine keep on getting COVID. •For certain diseases, the harm of the disease is a result not of the infectious organism but rather an overactive immune response damaging the body as it tries to eliminate the disease (e.g., rheumatic fever arises from the immune system attacking a critical valve of the heart as it attempts to eliminate a streptococcal infection). One of the major issues with adjuvants is that they don’t just provoke the immune system to attack the target antigen—they also provoke it to do a lot of other things you don’t necessarily want it doing. For example, one study showed that exposing mice to a pertussis vaccine (and its adjuvant) will cause them to also develop allergies to the currently circulating pollen. Let’s now look at how these principles come into play with the two most dangerous vaccines on the market. Note: the anthrax vaccine and the smallpox vaccine are also extremely dangerous but neither is currently given to the general population. The HPV Vaccine Note this section and much of what follows were sourced from the excellent book The HPV Vaccine on Trial which I have quoted with the author’s permission. Prior to the COVID vaccines, I believe the most aggressive vaccine marketing campaign I’d ever seen was for Merck’s Gardasil and I was astonished to see how many girls quickly became deathly afraid of a cancer which had already been mostly eliminated with routine pap-smears (which were first introduced in the 1940s). This campaign was motivated by Merck’s realization being able to sell a vaccine for cancer (given how much fear exists around cancer) could be incredibly lucrative since that would allow a massive markup and the vaccine could be sold to almost everyone. Since so much money was on the line, this in turn necessitated ensuring everyone believed their product was safe and effective. To create this mythology, Merck essentially had to do the following: •Cover up the unprecedented number of severe injuries which occurred in the clinical trials. •Get the CDC and FDA to bend over backwards to protect the vaccine once the vaccine hit the market and a deluge of injuries were reported to them. •Convince the world that the primary cause of cervical cancer was a chronic HPV infection (when in reality a variety of factors like smoking played a key role in it) and that producing an antibody response to an HPV antigen would prevent HPV and in turn would prevent cervical cancer. Note: it’s hard to put into words how awful the trials for Merck’s HPV vaccine were. Since they represent the closest case precedent to what happened in the similarly atrocious COVID-19 vaccine trials, I wrote an article describing exactly what happened to the HPV vaccine trials. One of the major problems with developing the HPV vaccine was that it was quite difficult to provoke the body into developing an immune response to its HPV antigen (which I suspect was because that HPV antigen had too much of an overlap with human tissue—something which was also the case for the COVID-19 vaccine). In turn to solve this (e.g., to overcome the body’s resistance to attacking antigens which resembled its own tissue), Merck had to use a very powerful adjuvant, which in turn led to a very high level of autoimmune complications from the vaccine. For example, in Merck’s trial data, they disclosed to the FDA that 49.6% of vaccine participants developed a “New Medical Condition,” (many of which were likely quite severe) and 2.3% of which Merck admitted were autoimmune disorders. Additionally, the participants died at 2-5 times the normal death rate typically seen in the age group. For reference, this is what is stated in Merck’s package insert for the vaccine, which discussed all the (reported) autoimmune disorders which developed throughout its clinical trials. In turn, some of the autoimmune disorders which have been linked to Gardasil since it hit the market include Guillain – Barré syndrome, other demyelinating neuropathies (multiple sclerosis, MS; acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, ADEM; transverse myelitis, TM), postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), pri- mary ovarian failure (POF), pancreatitis, vasculitis, thrombocytopenic purpura, and autoimmune hepatitis. Note: one of the most common side effects of Gardasil was POTS (severe lightheadedness when standing up, a debilitating disorder which can sometimes trigger fatal car accidents—and which coincidentally were a common cause of death in the Gardasil trials). Many have since concluded this disease was in part an autoimmune disorder as Gardasil victims have been found to have antibodies to the autonomic receptors which are supposed to bring blood to the head (see this article, this case study and this case study), As you might have noticed, POTS never appeared in Merck’s list of reported autoimmune disorders. I will also note that I believe to some degree, POTS appears to be due to an impaired zeta potential (something Gardasil was also notorious for doing), as restoring the physiologic zeta potential often significantly improves POTS. Negative HPV Vaccine Efficacy One of the most remarkable effects of the HPV vaccine was that its own trials showed it caused cervical cancer if someone was already infected with a vaccine covered HPV strain at the time of vaccination (specifically it increased the risk by 44.6%—something which is known as “negative vaccine efficacy”). Since HPV “causes” cervical cancer by creating chronic inflammation within the cervical tissue, my best guess is that this was a result of the immune system being provoked into creating more inflammation at the site of an existing HPV infection. Note: alternatively, it may have been a result of the immune system losing its ability to keep the chronic HPV infection under control because it was diverted to addressing the vaccine antigen. Let’s look at exactly what Gardasil’s trials found: Note: PCR positive means the virus is currently present in the system and can be detected. Seropositive means that antibodies to the virus are present in the blood, which can either indicate a current infection or that there was a previous infection the immune system eliminated (which commonly happens with HPV). Since that was a bit concerning, Merck looked for a way to lower this negative efficacy, which was accomplished by changing the criteria from “and” to “and/or:” This in turn lowered the negative efficacy by about 25%, but nonetheless still was a fairly concerning amount. What appears to have been missed by the regulators was that this second data set strengthened the case that the HPV vaccine causes cervical cancer (in the context of a pre-existing infection) since being “PCR positive and/or seropositive” signifies a less active (inflammatory) immune response against an active HPV infection than being “PCR positive and seropositive” and in turn the negative efficacy was observed but to a smaller degree. This ties into the well known fact that a dose-response relationship is a classic criteria for determining causality. Note: I also uploaded the full copy of this report in case the above link stops working. Gardasil™ HPV Quadrivalent Vaccine May 1... 395KB ∙ PDF file Download To further support this link between HPV vaccination and cervical cancer, the identical link was also found with the competing HPV vaccine, GlaxoSmithKline’s Cervarix (which was ultimately taken off the market for “low demand,” which I believe was a result of Merck doing a much better job marketing their vaccine): Note: I also uploaded a full copy of this report in case the above link stops working. FDA Clinical Review Memo Cervarix Octobe... 16.9MB ∙ PDF file Download If you take a step back, it’s extraordinary that Merck (and GSK) able to sell the world on the idea their vaccine “would prevent cancer” because it did something which might do something which might prevent cervical cancer. What’s even more extraordinary was that their data showed for many the exact opposite for many of the vaccine’s intended recipients. For example, to quote Minnesota’s Department of Health: Human Papillomavirus (HPV) is a common sexually transmitted infection. More than 90 percent of sexually active men and 80 percent of sexually active women will be infected with HPV in their lifetime. Around 50 percent of HPV infections involve certain high-risk types of HPV, which can cause cancer. Most of the time, the body clears these infections and they do not lead to cancer. However, persistent infections can cause changes that lead to cancer. Note: I have multiple patients who had an existing HPV infection get much worse after HPV vaccination or developed HPV shortly after vaccination despite never having had sexual contact prior to the vaccine. Because of these observations, I am inclined to believe this data has real world consequences. An Inconvenient Datapoint Given that the HPV vaccine clearly increased rather than reduced the risk of cervical cancer for those already infected, this suggested the most appropriate thing to do would have been to have potential recipients first be tested for HPV prior to receiving the HPV vaccine. However, since that was at odds with the goal of having a blockbuster that was given every women in the world (along with many men), that didn’t cut it since: •You couldn’t do mass HPV vaccination clinics if you have to wait for test results (as hard as this is to believe, there are numerous cases where groups of children at school were pressured to vaccinate so they wouldn’t die of cervical cancer, after which, many were injured due to the high rate of adverse events following the HPV vaccine). •You would miss the sales opportunity to pressure a patient on a medical visit to vaccinate if you had to wait for a negative test to come back. •Since many people had already had HPV, you would lose all of those potential customers. •The general public learning the vaccine should not be given to those who had already a HPV infection would cast doubt on the 100% “safe and effective and necessary” mantra being used to sell the vaccine. Note: it goes without saying that all of the above also applies to the COVID-19 vaccines, to the point that even when data emerged showed natural immunity provided better protection than the vaccine and people sued for natural immunity to exempt them from vaccine mandates, the mandates were still enforced. See if you can guess what was done to get around this sales problem. To quote the HPV Vaccine on Trial: Merck and GSK state that the vaccine may not protect women who have been exposed to HPV before. What they do not say, however, is that women who have been exposed to HPV before may have enhanced risk for cervical disease. The clinical trial results show this risk, which should have prompted Merck and GSK to strongly consider screening before vaccination, or ...

What We've Learned from Hundreds of Vaccine Shedding Reports

Please share yours as well so we can unravel this mystery A MIDWESTERN DOCTOR JAN 20 Story at a Glance: •After the COVID-19 vaccines hit the market, stories began emerging of unvaccinated individuals becoming ill after being in proximity to recently vaccinated individuals. This confused many, as the mRNA technology in theory should not be able to “shed.” •At this point, we believe this is a real phenomenon as we have seen numerous patient cases which can only be explained by mRNA shedding. •Some of the most frequent questions about shedding include: “how much do I need to consider mRNA shedding when dating?” “is vaccinated blood safe?” “how do I protect myself from shedding?” and “what are the potential mechanisms that could explain how shedding is possible?” •In this article, we will present everything we currently know about shedding (e.g., the evidence for it, who tends to shed, who is affected by shedding, what symptoms are typically observed after shedding). Much of this has been made possible by the hundreds of individuals who have shared their shedding experiences—if you can, please share your story too. Note: after publishing the original article, it received a lot of feedback (e.g., a tweet about it received over 500,000 views). This is a significantly revised version of the previous article which takes into account what has been learned since then. When doctors in this movement speak at events about the vaccines, by far the most common question they receive is “is vaccine shedding real?” This is understandable as COVID vaccine shedding (becoming ill from vaccinated individuals) represents the one way the unvaccinated are also at risk from the vaccines and hence still need to be directly concerned about them. Simultaneously, this is a difficult question to answer for a few key reasons. First and foremost, we believe it is critical to not publicly espouse divisive ideas (e.g., “PureBloods” vs. those who were vaccinated) that prevent the public from coming together and helping everyone. The vaccines were marketed on the basis of division (e.g., by encouraging immense discrimination against the unvaccinated), and many unvaccinated individuals thus understandably hold a lot of resentment for how the vaccinated treated them. We do not want to perpetuate anything similar (e.g., discrimination in the other direction). Likewise, we don’t want to create any more unnecessary fear—which is an inevitable consequence of opening up a conversation about shedding. Finally, in theory, shedding with the mRNA vaccines should be “impossible.” Because of this, stating it’s real puts anyone who does so in a very awkward position. That being said, from having looked into this extensively, I am relatively sure of the following: 1. Shedding is very real. 2. People’s sensitivity to it greatly varies. 3. Most of the people who are highly sensitive to shedding have already figured it out, so if you do not already believe it is an issue for you, you probably don’t need to worry about it. 4. There is still no agreed upon mechanism to explain why it happens. For all of these reasons, we would greatly appreciated if you could share your shedding experiences (hundreds already have). Those stories are being collected in the comments section of this article. The Forgotten Side of Medicine is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. The Mechanistic Trap In the previous article (which provides important context for the ideas laid forth in this one) I discussed the habitual tendency of science to reject observations which have no mechanism that could explain how they are happening. In turn, I argued this was problematic as it results in many critically important observations being dismissed since their “mechanism” lies outside the existing scientific paradigm. One of the most common ways this happens is for logical arguments to be put together which assert the observation cannot be real. In some cases, the argument is quite compelling, while in others (provided you understand the subject) it’s actually ridiculous. For example, since the mRNA vaccines were an experimental gene therapy, one of the immediate fears people had about them (myself included) was that they would permanently alter your DNA. To address this, countless articles were written which ridiculed that notion. This was done by repeating a few logical arguments which sounded nice and were deemed to be “true” because the “experts” had espoused them (e.g. consider these frequently cited pronouncements by Paul Offit and Anthony Fauci). Those arguments were as follows: 1. The vaccines cannot enter the nucleus of the cell 2. mRNA from the vaccines breaks down rapidly in the cell, so it does not have time to enter the nucleus and change your DNA. 3. mRNA is not DNA, and hence believing mRNA can change DNA represents a fundamental lack of knowledge of biology. On the surface, that train of logic effectively “refutes” the DNA alteration hypothesis. However, in reality, each of the above premises was false or highly misleading (e.g., the mRNA was designed to resist being broken down so it could remain active for a prolonged period). Note: a more detailed explanation of why those premises were wrong can be found in my contribution to this article which discussed how mRNA spike protein vaccines alters DNA. Additionally, Robert Malone recently wrote a more detailed critique of Offit doubling down on a related claim (that DNA contaminants in the vaccines cannot affect our DNA). Conversely, I felt that since assessing genetic toxicity was both a pivotal requirement for new pharmaceutical products and it was easy to predict genetic toxicity would be one of the top concerns with the mRNA vaccines, there was no possible way it wasn’t tested for by Pfizer and Moderna at the very start. Yet, in all the articles refuting the DNA alternation hypothesis, none of that data was ever shared and instead we simply received logical arguments with no data behind them. Note: leaked EMA documents likewise revealed that for some reason, the drug regulators were not provided with any genotoxicity data by Pfizer. In my eyes, this suggested DNA alteration had been found, and that Pfizer decided its best option was to simply avoid mentioning that data while simultaneously claiming there was “no evidence of DNA alteration” (which is a common tactic industry uses to bury science which threatens its bottom line). In turn, I can’t say I was particularly surprised when independent research conducted long after the vaccine hit the market discovered the vaccine indeed can change the DNA of a cell. Note: in a recent article, I discussed how no one has been willing to make the raw data of the health outcomes in those who were vaccinated become available. While a lot of excuses have been made for why this hasn’t happened, like many, I believe the actual reason is because that data shows the vaccines are very dangerous and were it to be made available, it would make it clear the vaccines were very dangerous and create a lot of problems for the officials who pushed the vaccine. Likewise, it is a longstanding practice in the pharmaceutical industry to not disclose clinical trial data that makes their product look bad but simultaneously to parade anything which makes it looks good. After the original shedding article went viral, one of the most ardent defenders of the scientific orthodoxy (a cancer doctor named David Gorski) was compelled to write a blog post debunking it. Gorski’s post in turn “debunked” the shedding article by asserting Gorski’s belief that the “mechanistic trap” was a good thing, and that my theory had no validity since there was not a credible mechanism to support it (even though the proposed mechanisms were listed later in the article). I share this to illustrate how committed people are to the mechanistic trap, as even when you clearly point it out to them, they often still can’t stop themselves from falling into it. Note: I think it’s good practice to review critiques of your positions from hostile parties, as while not necessarily nice, they are often extremely helpful for quickly cluing you into mistakes or oversights you made that need to be corrected. Is Shedding Impossible? In the case of shedding, a few major points argued against it being possible. •The design of the mRNA vaccines was that lipid nanoparticles containing mRNA were injected in the body, after which they made their way into cells and causes cells to begin producing vaccine spike protein for an unspecified amount of time. •Because of this, there were relatively few options of what could be shed. For instance, while it is unlikely the lipid nanoparticles or the mRNA it contained could be transmitted from the vaccinated individuals to their environment, if it could be, there was very little to transmit, so it was simply not possible a single injection could contain enough vaccine material to perpetually sicken those around the vaccinated individual. Note: some people in the movement believe consequential unlisted contaminants may also be present in the vaccines. •The only remaining option was that the spike protein being produced by the vaccine was the agent that “shed” (e.g., because the mRNA didn’t break down and hence produced spike indefinitely or because the mRNA had integrated into the cell genome and hence the body was producing spike indefinitely). •Spike “shedding” didn’t make sense either because the concentration of spike protein (which is rapidly broken down in the environment) would have to be orders of magnitude higher within the vaccinated individual than in the area around them. In turn, this argues against the shedding being able to affect others if an infinitely higher concentration did not affect the vaccinated individual. Typically, shedding occurs (e.g., from a live viral vaccine like MMR or polio) because an individual “sheds” a self replicating form of the disease. This results in the low concentration of the pathogen which the shedder expels into their environment then amplifying within the recipient and eventually reaching a comparable concentration to what was found in the “shedder.” Since I was nonetheless seeing numerous clear cut cases of shedding occurring, this suggested to me that I was missing a huge piece of the puzzle which once known invalidated much of the above logic. Conversely, I could not help but notice that Pfizer’s protocol for testing their vaccine: Prohibited pregnant women or those breast feeding from receiving the vaccine (or future doses if they had already received one). Note: due to the thalidomide disaster, a foundational rule in medical ethics is that you do not experiment on pregnant women due to the potential danger this exposes the fetus to. Stated it needed to be reported if a pregnant women (e.g., a healthcare worker in the trials) was exposed to the intervention by inhalation or skin contact from someone who had been vaccinated. •Stated it needed to be reported if someone in the previous category (not vaccinated but exposed to someone who was) then was in close proximity to their wife and their wife was pregnant. This suggested either that Pfizer knew shedding was a real problem, or that they were following the existing standards—the FDA stipulates that gene therapies need to be evaluated for shedding before being given to humans (and furthermore be subsequently tested for shedding in humans). For context, both the FDA and the EMA classify the mRNA vaccines as a gene therapy. Note: the first approved gene therapy, Luxturna, (which works like the J&J vaccine by using a modified virus to produce a target protein in the patient), is an eye medication which treats a rare form of genetic vision loss. Its prescribing information specifies that Luxturna can be found in a patient’s tears after injection and it hence for the first seven days after injection, care must be taken to avoid anyone else coming in contact with those tears to prevent unintended shedding of the product. Another similar gene therapy, Roctavian also was found to shed (e.g., into semen), and the FDA advises those who receive it to not donate semen or impregnate someone for at least 6 months after administration. Finally, Zolgensma, a gene therapy, utilizing a different virus was also found to shed for a month, and its package insert advises that during this time, to be careful of how feces from the patients are disposed of (so no one else is exposed to it). Additionally, there is one other gene therapy on the market, but due to its design, shedding was unlikely (and hence undetected) so the FDA does not advise special precautions for its recipients. Curiously, the package insert for Pfizer’s vaccine does not mention shedding at all (despite the fact it has long since been proven), and likewise J&J’s vaccine (which is very similar to the currently approved viral gene therapies) does not have shedding mentioned in its inserts either. In short, like the cancer issue, I suspect Pfizer had concerning data on the shedding issue but opted not to disclose it so it could be claimed there was “no evidence” of shedding. Note: in my eyes, the most unacceptable side effect of a pharmaceutical is if it harms individuals beyond those who received it. This for instance is why the federal government eventually cracked down on opioid prescriptions, as the opioid epidemic has been devastating for the communities affected by it. Similarly, this is why I recently focused on the decades of evidence linking SSRI antidepressants to triggering psychotic violence (e.g., mass shootings). What is Known About Shedding? While I have seen many anecdotal cases suggesting "shedding is real, in my eyes, the strongest proof for shedding comes from the observations by Pierre Kory and Scott Marsland at their clinical practice which is dedicated to treating vaccine injuries (which places them in a unique position to observe and evaluate this phenomenon). They have: •Seen more than twenty patients develop similar symptoms after a shedding exposure, particularly after a “strong” shedding exposure. •Found that those symptoms resemble what is seen in other spike protein pathologies (e.g., long COVID or a mRNA vaccine injury). •Found those symptoms often respond to the same treatments used for treating other spike protein pathologies (e.g., ivermectin which binds the spike protein). •Found many patients will repeatedly have shedding symptoms emerge after the same exposure (e.g., always feeling ill when a vaccinated husband returns from a long trip away, when going to church each week, when singing with their choir, or when taking a crowded route to work). •Been able to determine that those they suspect are a shedder (e.g., the husband) test positive (through an antibody test) for a high spike protein levels. •Found that eliminating the shedder from the patient’s life or treating the (asymptomatic) shedder with a vaccine injury protocol significantly helps their patient get well. Note: much of the above has also been repeatedly noted within the hundreds of comments I received. Since mRNA shedding is such a mysterious phenomenon, a good place to start with unlocking this mystery is to see what’s currently known about it and try to discern what underlying principles could account for those observations. Lastly, I want to note that a 2023 peer-reviewed study found that unvaccinated individuals who were around COVID-19 vaccinated individuals developed an immune response to the spike protein (which the authors hypothesized was due to antibodies being directly transferred through the breath). This in turn demonstrates that something is indeed being transferred from the vaccinated to the unvaccinated (e.g., the spike protein). Note: henceforth, I will not discuss the J&J (or Astrazeneca, Sputnik or Sinovac) COVID vaccines, as these are viruses vector vaccines and hence operate under different principles than the mRNA vaccines. I believe this is appropriate to do here as the majority of those vaccinated received an mRNA vaccine and I want to keep this article as short as possible. Susceptibility to Exposure Note: since I will reference a lot of reader reports throughout this series to corroborate the patterns I am referencing, to save space, they will simply be designated with numbers which link to each comment (e.g., [1, 2, 3] ). Sensitivity to shedding varies immensely. At this point, I believe the majority of people who are being affected by shedding either already know it and if they don’t, they will by the time they complete this article. This is important because one of the major fears everyone who is unvaccinated has if they are “at risk” from shedders. In general, there seem to be three categories of people who are susceptible to shedding. Note: often they belong to more than one of these categories. The first are the sensitive patients [e.g., 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11]. I wrote a much longer article about this archetype, but briefly, these patients tend to: •Be highly sensitive to toxins in their environment (hence leading to them frequently being injured by pharmaceutical products). •Very empathetic and perceptive of subtle qualities others do not notice. •Have an ectomorph or Sattvic constitution. •Frequently have ligamentous laxity (e.g., Ehlers-Danlos has been correlated with being predisposed to HPV vaccine injuries and many are now reporting EDS predisposes one to a COVID vaccine injury). Note: I recently published an article explaining why EDS patients (and other hypermobile individuals) why this happens and our approaches to treating these patients. Many readers here (after reading either that article or the earlier version of this one on shedding) remarked that the articles perfectly described their situation (e.g., they had EDS, were very sensitive and had had either a vaccine injury or mRNA shedding injury). Due to these susceptibilities, those patients frequently have chronic illnesses such as mast cell degranulation disorder, multiple chemical sensitivities, EMF sensitivities, Lyme disease, mold toxicity and fibromyalgia. These patients were more likely to avoid the COVID vaccine (due to their previous bad experiences with pharmaceuticals) and more likely to be chronically debilitated by the COVID vaccine (or a COVID-19 infection). Tragically, we’ve also seen many people develop these sensitivities after a COVID-19 vaccine injury, and a few people have shared spike shedding caused them to develop environmental sensitivities (e.g., this reader lost the ability to eat meat unless they addressed their shedding—something I had previously only seen after tick borne diseases). Additionally, and received a report from someone who noticed environmental EMFs worsened their sensitivities to shedding. Note: I believe that many of these sensitivities result from the Cell Danger Response (CDR) being activated and then failing to turn off (while conversely, treating the CDR is often very beneficial to these patients). The sensitive patients tend to be the most susceptible to shedding, and I’ve seen numerous reports of individuals (e.g., consider this report from one of Pierre Kory’s patients) who can immediately tell if they are around individuals who have been vaccinated (e.g., because they immediately feel a “toxic” presence or feel a shedder injure them). Likewise, these patients tend to become ill from “weaker” shedding exposures. Note: I consider myself to be a sensitive individual but I have not had any issue being in close proximity to people (e.g., patients) who were recently vaccinated. Conversely, many of my sensitive female friends (who are less sensitive than me) have experienced notable effects from shedding (e.g., menstrual abnormalities), which suggests to be there is more to this picture than just having a “sensitive” constitution. The second are patients who have been sensitized to the spike protein due to a previous vaccine injury or having long COVID. These patients in turn frequently find their symptoms worsen when they are around individuals who were vaccinated and many have reported that their sensitivity to shedding increases with time. Note: I believe the Cell Danger Response (discussed here) provides one of the best models to explain what happens to the patients in the first two categories (as treating the CDR often greatly helps these patients). Likewise, I also find a pre-existing impairment in zeta potential (discussed in the previous article) frequently predisposes patients to these issues, while restoring the physiologic zeta potential often greatly benefits them. Finally, since the spike protein is an allergen that is highly effective at creating autoimmunity in the body, that also can explain why successive exposures to it increase one’s sensitivity to it. The third are the people who cannot effectively produce antibodies to the spike protein. I was initially clued into this after I saw a study of vaccinated patients who developed myocarditis which discovered that (unlike controls) their ability to develop a neutralizing antibody for the spike protein was impaired, leading to a large amount of free spike protein circulating in their blood (whereas normally it would be bound to an antibody). Because of this, the spike protein being produced in their body is thus able to create havoc throughout it and those patients become symptomatic after being exposed to a much lower concentration of the spike protein. It is important to note that while reactive to shedding, these patients are nowhere near as sensitive to shedding as the previously described “sensitive patients.” Note: at the time of the disastrous smallpox campaign, many clinicians believed that those with a weakened immune system could not mount a response to the vaccine, and in turn were both more likely to be injured by it and to catch smallpox (both before and after vaccination). This led them to argue the vaccine’s “efficacy” was an artifact of it being a proxy for a functioning immune system, and I believe the myocarditis study suggests something similar is occurring for the spike protein vaccines. Additionally, while very rare, I have received a few compelling cases which suggest pets (cats or dogs) can also be susceptible to shedding events [e.g., 1, 2, 3, 4]. If shedding did indeed happen there, it suggests (as a few readers have shared) that certain human beings are much greater shedders than others, and that the shedding agent has a mechanism of harm which is not dependent upon a human receptor (e.g., it adversely affects the physiologic zeta potential). Characteristics of Shedders There are two forms of shedding: primary (where someone gets ill from being around a vaccinated person—e.g., vaccinated parents making their unvaccinated children ill) and secondary (where someone gets ill from being around an unvaccinated person who was recently around vaccinated people). Primary shedding is much more common, but secondary is also sometimes reported (particularly for sensitive patients). Secondary shedding can happen with both individuals who became ill from a shedder (more common) or from someone who was not affected by a shedder (e.g., children shedding and affecting parents after coming back home from school). Secondary shedding is one of the most confusing aspects of this phenomenon as I don’t feel many of the mechanisms I’ve proposed to explain why shedding is happening can account for secondary shedding. Note: Pfizer’s trial protocol (mentioned above) also addressed the possibility of both primary and secondary shedding. The most common observation with shedders is that they are dramatically more likely to shed soon after vaccination (depending on who you ask, this window ranges from three days to four weeks). However, more, sensitive patients find they are affected by a shedder indefinitely and strongly disagree with a 2-4 week cutoff. I believe this essentially matches what has been found in numerous studies—that following vaccination, spike protein production in the blood spikes and then declines but never reaches zero and appears to continue for months afterwards (presently we don’t know how long the effect lasts for as it simply hasn’t been monitored long enough). Additionally, quite a few people have noticed that shedding events (in the same location) are the most frequent and severe immediately following a new booster rollout, after which they gradually diminish until the next booster campaign. It has also been observed that young and healthy people tend to shed more frequently (presumably since their body has a greater capacity to manufacture the spike), children shed the most, and that the elderly shed the least frequently. Additionally, quite a few people have observed that shedding greatly varies by the individual (e.g., “I react to specific people I see at church”). Repeatedly boosting appears to worsen shedding for three reasons: •It causes patients to resume having high spike protein levels in their body as typically after vaccination or boosting, there is a spike and then decline of spike protein which persists at a low level for months (again, no study has yet assessed if it lasts for years). •Successive boosting appears to increase the degree of shedding which occurs when compared to the previous injections the patient experienced. •Quite a few holistic healers have shared that they believe the most recent boosters are more potent and hence cause greater shedding than the earlier ones (which might be explained by the boosters now containing multiple strains of mRNA to cover the new variants). The Shedding Odor One of the odd things quite a few people have reported is a distinct smell which emerged around them after the vaccines entered the market. For example, consider this comment from a reader: In terms of crowds... I too have experienced this many times. I feel unwell with flu like symptoms and can smell a unique ordour around people. After feeling this way and smelling the same ordour several times in company with family and friends, I confirmed the correlation with the covid vaccination. As it transpired each has been vaccinated within the previous week. I am very sensitive to meds and in general and I swear I can smell something so now I ask and yep the link is there! Note: I have received a variety of similar descriptions of the smell itself [e.g., 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, ... [Message clipped] View entire message