Author Archive

Broken Science Tonight 7:30pm ET & The Illusion of Evidence Based Medicine

https://www.theepochtimes.com/dr-martin-kulldorff-how-to-dismantle-the-cartel-of-public-health-funding-and-rekindle-open-scientific-inquiry  Go here for episode

Dr. Martin Kulldorff: How to Dismantle the ‘Cartel’ of Public Health Funding and Rekindle Open Scientific Inquiry

JAN JEKIELEK

This episode will premiere on Thurs. March 31, at 7:30 p.m. ET.     

“New ideas always come from the fringe in science. So we have to encourage new ideas to come up. We can’t have science become a religion where there are dogmas.”

In this episode, filmed at Hillsdale College’s Censorship of Science conference, we sit down with Dr. Martin Kulldorff, an epidemiologist, biostatistician, and former professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. He’s a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration that argued for “focused protection” of the vulnerable instead of lockdowns.

Kulldorff breaks down what he sees as the “power hubs” controlling policy, research funding, and career advancement in the scientific world.

“Dr. Fauci sort of sits on the biggest chunk of infectious disease research money in the world. So it takes a bit of guts to contradict his view on pandemic strategy.”

Kulldorff is the scientific director at the Brownstone Institute and a founding fellow at Hillsdale College’s Academy for Science and Freedom.

“I’m very concerned that 400 years of enlightenment or scientific progress may come to an end. And I think we have to work very hard to avoid that.”

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The Illusion of Evidence Based Medicine

Dr. John Campbell

March 26, 2022

Dr. Campbell goes through a paper that is in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) on how evidence based medicine has been corrupted by corporate interests, failed regulation, and commercialization of academia.

The Research Leader, child psychiatrist Adelaide Leemon B. McHenry, is professor emeritus Emeritus Professor at Cal State University. The research is not commissioned, but is externally peer reviewed & was published on March 16, 2022:  https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj.o702

Evidence based medicine has been corrupted by corporate interests, failed regulation, and commercialisation of academia, argue these authors

The advent of evidence based medicine was a paradigm shift intended to provide a solid scientific foundation for medicine. The validity of this new paradigm, however, depends on reliable data from clinical trials, most of which are conducted by the pharmaceutical industry and reported in the names of senior academics. The release into the public domain of previously confidential pharmaceutical industry documents has given the medical community valuable insight into the degree to which industry sponsored clinical trials are misrepresented.1234 Until this problem is corrected, evidence based medicine will remain an illusion.

The philosophy of critical rationalism, advanced by the philosopher Karl Popper, famously advocated for the integrity of science and its role in an open, democratic society. A science of real integrity would be one in which practitioners are careful not to cling to cherished hypotheses and take seriously the outcome of the most stringent experiments.5 This ideal is, however, threatened by corporations, in which financial interests trump the common good. Medicine is largely dominated by a small number of very large pharmaceutical companies that compete for market share, but are effectively united in their efforts to expanding that market. The short term stimulus to biomedical research because of privatisation has been celebrated by free market champions, but the unintended, long term consequences for medicine have been severe. Scientific progress is thwarted by the ownership of data and knowledge because industry suppresses negative trial results, fails to report adverse events, and does not share raw data with the academic research community. Patients die because of the adverse impact of commercial interests on the research agenda, universities, and regulators.

The pharmaceutical industry’s responsibility to its shareholders means that priority must be given to their hierarchical power structures, product loyalty, and public relations propaganda over scientific integrity. Although universities have always been elite institutions prone to influence through endowments, they have long laid claim to being guardians of truth and the moral conscience of society. But in the face of inadequate government funding, they have adopted a neo-liberal market approach, actively seeking pharmaceutical funding on commercial terms. As a result, university departments become instruments of industry: through company control of the research agenda and ghostwriting of medical journal articles and continuing medical education, academics become agents for the promotion of commercial products.6 When scandals involving industry-academe partnership are exposed in the mainstream media, trust in academic institutions is weakened and the vision of an open society is betrayed.

The corporate university also compromises the concept of academic leadership. Deans who reached their leadership positions by virtue of distinguished contributions to their disciplines have in places been replaced with fundraisers and academic managers, who are forced to demonstrate their profitability or show how they can attract corporate sponsors. In medicine, those who succeed in academia are likely to be key opinion leaders (KOLs in marketing parlance), whose careers can be advanced through the opportunities provided by industry. Potential KOLs are selected based on a complex array of profiling activities carried out by companies, for example, physicians are selected based on their influence on prescribing habits of other physicians.7 KOLs are sought out by industry for this influence and for the prestige that their university affiliation brings to the branding of the company’s products. As well paid members of pharmaceutical advisory boards and speakers’ bureaus, KOLs present results of industry trials at medical conferences and in continuing medical education. Instead of acting as independent, disinterested scientists and critically evaluating a drug’s performance, they become what marketing executives refer to as “product champions.”

Ironically, industry sponsored KOLs appear to enjoy many of the advantages of academic freedom, supported as they are by their universities, the industry, and journal editors for expressing their views, even when those views are incongruent with the real evidence. While universities fail to correct misrepresentations of the science from such collaborations, critics of industry face rejections from journals, legal threats, and the potential destruction of their careers.8 This uneven playing field is exactly what concerned Popper when he wrote about suppression and control of the means of science communication.9 The preservation of institutions designed to further scientific objectivity and impartiality (i.e., public laboratories, independent scientific periodicals and congresses) is entirely at the mercy of political and commercial power; vested interest will always override the rationality of evidence.10

Regulators receive funding from industry and use industry funded and performed trials to approve drugs, without in most cases seeing the raw data. What confidence do we have in a system in which drug companies are permitted to “mark their own homework” rather than having their products tested by independent experts as part of a public regulatory system? Unconcerned governments and captured regulators are unlikely to initiate necessary change to remove research from industry altogether and clean up publishing models that depend on reprint revenue, advertising, and sponsorship revenue.

Our proposals for reforms include: liberation of regulators from drug company funding; taxation imposed on pharmaceutical companies to allow public funding of independent trials; and, perhaps most importantly, anonymised individual patient level trial data posted, along with study protocols, on suitably accessible websites so that third parties, self-nominated or commissioned by health technology agencies, could rigorously evaluate the methodology and trial results. With the necessary changes to trial consent forms, participants could require trialists to make the data freely available. The open and transparent publication of data are in keeping with our moral obligation to trial participants—real people who have been involved in risky treatment and have a right to expect that the results of their participation will be used in keeping with principles of scientific rigor. Industry concerns about privacy and intellectual property rights should not hold sway.

Footnotes

  • Competing interests: McHenry and Jureidini are joint authors of The Illusion of Evidence-Based Medicine: Exposing the Crisis of Credibility in Clinical Research (Adelaide: Wakefield Press, 2020). Both authors have been remunerated by Los Angeles law firm, Baum, Hedlund, Aristei and Goldman for a fraction of the work they have done in analysing and critiquing GlaxoSmithKline’s paroxetine Study 329 and Forest Laboratories citalopram Study CIT-MD-18. They have no other competing interests to declare.

  • Provenance and peer review: Not commissioned, externally peer reviewed

References

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View Abstract

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**Comment**

Please also read “How Politics Corrupted Evidence-Based Medicine – and How to Fix it” by Dr. Robert Malone.

For more:

In short, science and public health is completely broken, and a powerful unelected ‘Cabal’ controls both scientific funding and health policy in America

Category:

Activism, research, Treatment, vaccines, Viruses

COVID ‘Most Likely’ Escaped From Wuhan Lab, State Dept. Memo Reveals

http://  Approx. 12 Min

Another revealing portion of the 2021 House Oversight and Reform Subcommittee on Select Coronavirus Crisis hearing, witnesses Dr. Steven Quay and Dr. Richard Muller said that within the COVID-19 virus were indications that it was created through gain-of-function research.  The portion explained in this video is about “Gain of Function” as well as revealing emails, and information on Dr. Fauci, and Dr. Collins.  P3 framework is an oversight board to decide if there will be funding for GOF.  Coronavirus research did NOT get under the P3 process, which means there was NO oversight on this work. The Chair of the P3 framework is Dr. Hassel who said very few proposals have come before the board. Further, doctors Fauci, Collins, and Hassell, although invited, did not show up to the hearing to discuss these issues.

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/covid-escaped-wuhan-lab/

COVID ‘Most Likely’ Escaped From Wuhan Lab, State Dept. Memo Reveals

State Department officials considered a lab accident to be the most likely cause of the COVID pandemic and worried that international virologists may help with a coverup, according to a 2020 memo obtained by U.S. Right to Know.

State Department officials considered a lab accident to be the most likely cause of COVID in the pandemic’s early months and worried that international virologists may help with a coverup, according to a 2020 memo obtained by U.S. Right to Know.

“Origin of the outbreak: The Wuhan labs remained the most likely but least probed,” reads the topline.

The memo is written as a BLUF — “bottom line up front” — a style of communication used in the military. The identity of the author or authors is unknown.

In response to questions from a reporter, a State Department spokesperson referred U.S. Right to Know to an inconclusive 90-day review by the intelligence community in 2021.

“BLUF: There is no direct, smoking-gun evidence to prove that a leak from Wuhan labs caused the pandemic, but there is circumstantial evidence to suggest such is the case,” the memo reads.

Apparently drafted in spring 2020, the memo details circumstantial evidence for the “lab leak” theory — the idea that COVID originated at one of the labs in Wuhan, China, the pandemic’s epicenter.

The memo raises concerns about the “massive amount” of research on novel coronaviruses apparently conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the nearby Wuhan Center for Disease Control lab.

“The central issue involves the WCDC and WIV’s obsession with collecting and testing a massive amount of virus-carrying bats,” the memo reads.

A progenitor of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is believed to have circulated in bats.

The memo also flags biosafety lapses at both labs, calling the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s “management of deadly viruses and virus-carrying lab animals … appallingly poor and negligent.”

The memo provides an extraordinary window into behind-the-scenes concerns about a lab accident among U.S. foreign policy leaders, even as this line of inquiry was deemed a conspiracy theory by international virologists, some of whom had undisclosed conflicts of interest.

The memo also calls into question these virologists’ impartiality.

Shi Zhengli, a Wuhan Institute of Virology coronavirus researcher nicknamed the “Bat Woman,” has forged wide-reaching international collaborations, including with prestigious Western virologists, the memo notes.

“Suspicion lingers that Shi holds an important and powerful position in the field in China and has extensive cooperation with many [international] virologists who might be doing her a favor,” it reads.

Though perhaps unknown to State Department officials at the time, one of the most influential scientists “debunking” the lab leak theory in the media, EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak, had undisclosed ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

China’s clampdown

The memo laments that “the most logical place to investigate the virus origin has been completely sealed off from inquiry by the [Chinese Communist Party].”

“A gag order to both places was issued on [January 1, 2020], and a Major General from the [People’s Liberation Army] took over the WIV since early January,” it states.

China has strictly controlled information about the pandemic’s origins, including barring access to the mine shaft where one of the viruses most closely related to SARS-CoV-2 was discovered and pressuring the investigators preparing a 2021 World Health Organization report.

The memo even suggests that other hypotheses may have served as a distraction from a probe of the city’s extensive research on novel coronaviruses.

“All other theories are likely to be a decoy to prevent an inquiry [into] the WCDC and WIV,” it states.

While certain portions of the memo were previously reported in the Washington Times, many details, including the depth of concern about a coverup, were not previously known. The memo has never been published in full.

The circumstantial evidence

The circumstantial evidence presented in the memo seems to draw from public sources.

Some of that evidence has been shored up over the last two years.

For example, it makes note of the so-called “gain-of-function” research Shi collaborated on that made coronaviruses more virulent and transmissible in the lab.

“[The Wuhan Institute of Virology]’s lead coronavirus scientist Shi Zhengli conducted genetic engineering of bat virus to make it easily transmissible to humans,” the memo states.

That has since been verified by media reports, in peer-reviewed papers and U.S. federal grant reports.

The memo cites a 2015 paper coauthored by Shi titled “A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence” that described creating a “chimera,” or engineered virus, with the spike protein of a coronavirus from a Chinese horseshoe bat.

Editors at Nature Medicine added a note in March 2020 cautioning that the article was “being used as the basis for unverified theories that the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19 was engineered.”

“There is no evidence that this is true; scientists believe that an animal is the most likely source of the coronavirus,” the disclaimer still reads.

But the memo shows that the State Department indeed considered the paper relevant to the pandemic’s origins.

The memo also describes lapses in safety monitoring at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and Wuhan’s Chinese CDC lab. U.S. Embassy cables describing poor safety monitoring at the Wuhan Institute of Virology have also been reported by the Washington Post.

And it has also been verified that some hypotheses were indeed meant to serve as a decoy, according to another State Department cable released by U.S. Right to Know last year.

A Nov. 2020 cable stated that the hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 could be related to imported seafood products was meant to “deflect PRC responsibility.”

Other bits of information cited in the memo have not been verified.

The memo describes online posts by a Chinese national with the username Wu Xiaohua who accused Wuhan’s scientists of “playing God,” making coronaviruses more dangerous through animal vectors in the lab and not properly cremating virus-carrying lab animals.

Wu even claimed that laboratory animals were sold as pets, and that laboratory eggs were eaten by lab staff.

“Wu’s charges … are specific and have not been convincingly rebutted by WIV,” the memo states.

The memo also raises concerns about Huang Yanlin, a former employee of the Wuhan Institute of Virology whose profile was scrubbed from its website, “fueling speculation of foul play,” it notes.

“WIV has failed to convince the world of the whereabouts of its former employee Huang Yanlin, rumored to be Patient Zero,” it reads. “Huang herself has never appeared in public and has since ‘disappeared.’”

Further evidence of a clampdown at the Wuhan Institute of Virology surfaced in a State Department cable first reported by U.S. Right to Know last year.

The cable stated that lab workers were instructed not to talk about COVID in January 2020, according to a Guangzhou-based blogger’s social media post, before it was censored.

The memo also cites a controversial study by Indian researchers drawing a comparison between the SARS-CoV-2 genome and HIV that was withdrawn from a preprint server after other researchers said it had serious flaws.

Chinese CDC

The memo also describes circumstantial evidence suggesting the possibility of an accident at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention lab located near the Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market where most early COVID cases are believed to have been clustered.

The lab houses as many as 10,000 virus-carrying bats, it alleges, citing Chinese state media.

The lab is a BSL-2 lab, lower than the BSL-4 lab required for the highest risk pathogens.

“The WCDC is a Level 2 virus safety facility which is low. The vast amount of experimental bats pose [a] serious safety issue,” it states.

The lab’s interest in viruses that circulate in bats is corroborated by a Chinese documentary in which leading virologist Tian Junhua tells filmmakers that bat caves “became our main battlefield.”

The memo alleges Tian once described being “rained on” by bat excrement and being quarantined for 14 days, and notes that 14 days is the same quarantine period first recommended for COVID exposure.

U.S. Right to Know obtained the memo on March 24 through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the State Department as part of an investigation into possible links between risky viral research and the COVID-19 pandemic.

All of the documents about the origins of COVID-19 that USRTK has obtained by public records requests are available here while the full tranche of State Department documents can be found here.

Originally published in U.S. Right to Know.

Emily Kopp is an investigative reporter with U.S. Right to Know.

© [3/30/22] Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.

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Category:

Activism, Viruses

“Super-Fast” Lone Star Ticks Showing up in New Places

https://www.lymedisease.org/lyme-sci-super-fast-lone-star-ticks-are-showing-up-in-new-places/

LYME SCI: “Super-fast” lone star ticks are showing up in new places

March 30, 2022

By Lonnie Marcum

The lone star tick (Amblyomma americanum) has been rapidly expanding its range, from the Southern United States into the Northeast and Midwest.

This tick is a major vector of several viral, bacterial, and protozoan pathogens affecting humans, pets, livestock, birds and other wild animals in the United States. In some Midwestern states, it is commonly known as the “turkey tick” due to its association with wild turkeys. (Childs and Paddock, 2003)

Currently, the lone star tick is known to transmit human ehrlichiosis, tularemia, Heartland virus, Bourbon virus, Southern tick-associated rash illness (STARI) and rarely Rocky Mountain spotted fever—one of the deadliest tick-borne diseases in the US.

People bitten by a lone star tick may also develop alpha-gal syndrome—a severe allergy to meat and meat-related products.

A recent crowdsourced science project has documented the largest increase of the lone star tick in decades. Researchers documented new tick encounters in over 300 counties—including six new counties in western states—where these ticks had not been documented before.

TickSpotters program evaluates photos

In a study published in the Journal of Medical Entomology, researchers at the University of Rhode Island (URI) evaluated over 9,500 photos submitted between 2014-2019 to the TickSpotters surveillance program.

To document the changes, researchers first identified the ticks in the submitted photos, then logged the county each was reported from. They used this method to plot the geographic ranges of three medically important U.S. tick species: Amblyomma americanum, Ixodes scapularis and Ixodes pacificus. The last two are the vectors for Lyme disease.

More than 5,000 photographs of the lone star tick were received from over 1,000 counties across the US. Of those, 341 counties had no previous record of lone star ticks. The largest expansion of the lone star tick was seen in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio.

In addition, the lone star tick was reported in several counties in the western US, a region not typically associated with these ticks. Notably, it was found in six new counties in California, four counties in Colorado and one new county each in Idaho, Oregon and Utah.

“The causative drivers of these upturns are complex, but have a lot to do with increased host availability, warming temperatures, and moisture availability,” researcher Heather L Kopsco, PhD, told Entomology Today,

Female lone star ticks are identifiable by a single silvery-white spot on the center of their back (scutum.) The male lone star tick is slightly smaller, with varied white streaks or spots around the margins of its body.

Finding Heartland virus in Georgia

Another recent study published in the CDC journal “Emerging Infectious Diseases” found lone star ticks infected by Heartland virus in Georgia. The article points out several major knowledge gaps and the complexity of diseases carried by the lone star tick. (Romer et al, 2022)

“Heartland is an emerging infectious disease that is not well understood,” says Emory University’s Gonzalo Vazquez-Prokopec PhD, senior author of the study.

Interestingly, the genetic analysis of the Heartland virus from Georgia shows that it is 2%-5% different from previous genetic sequences of the virus.

“These results suggest that the virus may be evolving very rapidly in different geographic locations, or that it may be circulating primarily in isolated areas and not dispersing quickly between those areas,” Vazquez-Prokopec says.

The Heartland virus wasn’t officially named until 2009. However, the CDC has since found evidence of it in wild animals in at least 13 states, including stored samples from deer dating back to 2001. (Clark et al, 2018)

Because the initial symptoms of these tick-borne viruses resemble the flu, and tests for it are not readily available, it is likely being undetected and underreported in humans.

Quick and aggressive

The lone star tick moves quickly and aggressively, says Thomas Mather, PhD, Director of the TickEncounter Resource Center and co-author of the URI study.

“It is super-fast. It can move from below your knees to the top of your head in a matter of seconds.” Mather says it is the tick most frequently found attached to humans in the South.

The greatest risk of being bitten by the adults exists in early spring through fall. Lone star ticks are found mostly in woodlands with dense undergrowth and around animal resting areas, where they will quest on tall grass and low hanging branches.

Nymphal ticks quest lower to the ground but also move fast. If you encounter a patch of larvae, you’ll find they may latch on by the hundreds. Tick Encounters recommends using sticky duct tape to remove these larvae as soon as possible.

Expanding range

The range of the lone star tick in North America has increased dramatically over the past 30 years. Large numbers have been recorded as far to the northeast as Maine, as far to the southeast as Florida, as far south as Mexico and as far west as Colorado. Recently, patchy encounters have also been noted in Canada and the West coast.

Diseases carried by lone star ticks

The following is a list of symptoms of diseases caused by the bite of the lone star tick per the CDC.

Alpha-gal Syndrome (AGS)

Reactions can include:

  • Rash
  • Hives
  • Nausea or vomiting
  • Heartburn or indigestion
  • Diarrhea
  • Cough, shortness of breath, or difficulty breathing
  • Drop in blood pressure
  • Swelling of the lips, throat, tongue, or eye lids
  • Dizziness or faintness
  • Severe stomach pain

Symptoms commonly appear 2-6 hours after eating meat or dairy products, or after exposure to products containing alpha-gal (for example, gelatin-coated medications). Personal products that use ingredients containing “hydrolyzed protein,” lanolin, glycerin, collagen, or tallow are particularly problematic.

AGS reactions can differ from person to person and range from mild to severe. Anaphylaxis (a potentially life-threatening allergic reaction involving multiple organ systems) may need urgent medical care.

People may not react after every alpha-gal exposure.

Seek immediate emergency care if you are having a severe allergic reaction.

Bourbon Virus

Scientists are still learning about possible symptoms caused by this virus.

People diagnosed with Bourbon virus disease had symptoms including:

  • fever
  • tiredness
  • rash
  • headache
  • other body aches
  • nausea, and

Patients with Bourbon virus will have low blood counts for cells that fight infection and help prevent bleeding.

There is no medicine to treat Bourbon virus disease. Doctors can only treat the symptoms. For example, some patients may need to be hospitalized and given intravenous fluids and treatment for pain and fever. Antibiotics don’t work against viruses.

Ehrlichiosis

Signs and symptoms of ehrlichiosis typically begin 1-2 weeks after the bite of an infected tick. Left untreated, ehrlichiosis can be fatal. Early treatment with doxycycline is highly effective.

Early signs and symptoms (the first 5 days of illness) are usually mild or moderate and may include:

  • Fever, chills
  • Severe headache
  • Muscle aches
  • Nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, loss of appetite
  • Confusion
  • Rash (more common in children)

About a third of people with ehrlichiosis report a rash, which can look like red splotches or pinpoint dots. This typically develops five days after the fever begins.

Early treatment can reduce your risk of developing severe illness, which can include:

  • Damage to the brain or nervous system (e.g. inflammation of the brain and surrounding tissue (called meningoencephalitis))
  • Respiratory failure
  • Uncontrolled bleeding
  • Organ failure
  • Death
Heartland Virus
  • Most people infected with Heartland virus experience fever, fatigue, decreased appetite, headache, nausea, diarrhea, and muscle or joint pain. Many require hospitalization.
  • Some people also have lower than normal counts of white blood cells (cells that help fight infections) and lower than normal counts of platelets (which help clot blood). Sometimes, liver enzymes are elevated.
  • It can take up to two weeks for symptoms to appear after an infected tick bite.
Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever

Early signs and symptoms are not specific to RMSF. However, the disease can rapidly progress to a life-threatening illness.

Signs and symptoms can include:

  • Fever
  • Headache
  • Rash
  • Nausea
  • Vomiting
  • Stomach pain
  • Muscle pain
  • Lack of appetite

While almost all patients with RMSF will develop a rash, it often does not appear early in illness, which can make RMSF difficult to diagnose. RMSF rash usually develops 2-4 days after fever begins. The appearance of the rash can vary widely. Some rashes look like red splotches and some look like pinpoint dots.

Some patients who survive severe RMSF may be left with permanent damage, including amputation of arms, legs, fingers, or toes (from damage to blood vessels in these areas); hearing loss; paralysis; or mental disability.

Southern tick-associated rash illness (STARI)

It is not known whether antibiotic treatment is necessary or beneficial for patients with STARI. Nevertheless, because STARI resembles early Lyme disease, physicians will often treat patients with oral antibiotics.

The rash of STARI is a red, expanding “bull’s-eye” lesion that develops around the site of a lone star tick bite. The rash usually appears within seven days of the tick bite and expands to a diameter of three inches or more. The rash should not be confused with much smaller areas of redness and discomfort that can occur commonly at the site of any tick bite.

Patients may also experience fatigue, headache, fever, and muscle pains. The saliva from lone star ticks can be irritating; redness and discomfort at a bite site does not necessarily indicate an infection.

Tularemia

The signs and symptoms of tularemia vary depending on how the bacteria enter the body. Illness ranges from mild to life-threatening. All forms are accompanied by fever, which can be as high as 104 °F.

“Ulceroglandular” is the most common form of tularemia and usually occurs following a tick or deer fly bite or after handing an infected animal. A skin ulcer appears at the site where the bacteria entered the body. The ulcer is accompanied by swelling lymph glands, usually in the armpit or groin.

LymeSci is written by Lonnie Marcum, a Licensed Physical Therapist and mother of a daughter with Lyme. She serves on a subcommittee of the federal Tick-Borne Disease Working Group. Follow her on Twitter: @LonnieRhea  Email her at: lmarcum@lymedisease.org.

References

Childs JE, Paddock CD. (2003) The ascendancy of Amblyomma americanum as a vector of pathogens affecting humans in the United States. Annu Rev Entomol. 48:307-37. doi: 10.1146/annurev.ento.48.091801.112728. Epub 2002 Jun 4. PMID: 12414740.

Clarke, L. L., Ruder, M. G., Mead, D. G., & Howerth, E. W. (2018). Heartland Virus Exposure in White-Tailed Deer in the Southeastern United States, 2001-2015. The American journal of tropical medicine and hygiene, 99(5), 1346–1349. https://doi.org/10.4269/ajtmh.18-0555

Guzmán-Cornejo C et al (2011) The Amblyomma (Acari: Ixodida: Ixodidae) of Mexico: identification keys, distribution and hosts. Zootaxa 2998:16–38

Kopsco HL, Duhaime RJ, Mather TN. (2021) Crowdsourced Tick Image-Informed Updates to U.S. County Records of Three Medically Important Tick Species. J Med Entomol.  11:tjab082. doi: 10.1093/jme/tjab082. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 33973636.

Monzón, J. D., Atkinson, E. G., Henn, B. M., & Benach, J. L. (2016). Population and Evolutionary Genomics of Amblyomma americanum, an Expanding Arthropod Disease Vector. Genome biology and evolution, 8(5), 1351–1360. https://doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evw080

Riemersma KK, Komar N. (2015) Heartland Virus Neutralizing Antibodies in Vertebrate Wildlife, United States, 2009-2014. Emerg Infect Dis. 21(10):1830-3. doi: 10.3201/eid2110.150380. PMID: 26401988; PMCID: PMC4593439.

Romer, Y., Adcock, K., Wei, Z., Mead, D. G., Kirstein, O., Bellman, S….Vazquez-Prokopec, G. M. (2022). Isolation of Heartland Virus from Lone Star Ticks, Georgia, USA, 2019. Emerging Infectious Diseases, 28(4), 786-792. https://doi.org/10.3201/eid2804.211540.

Springer YP, Eisen L, Beati L, James AM, Eisen RJ. (2014) Spatial distribution of counties in the continental United States with records of occurrence of Amblyomma americanum (Ixodida: Ixodidae). J Med Entomol. Mar;51(2):342-51. doi: 10.1603/me13115. PMID: 24724282; PMCID: PMC4623429.

Steinke J, Platts-Mills T, Commins, S. (2015) The alpha-gal story: lessons learned from connecting the dots. J Allergy Clin Immunol. 135(3): 589-96.

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**Comment**

Great, informative article.  I disagree with the notion that the climate is causing tick movement and proliferation of disease – here’s why:

Ticks will be the last species on the planet besides the IRS.

Category:

Alpha Gal Meat Allergy, Ehrlichiosis, Lyme, research, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, Ticks, Transmission, Tularemia, Viruses

Pennsylvanians Urged to Protect Themselves Against Rising Tick-borne Diseases

http://  Approx. 8 Min

Pennsylvanians Urged to Protect Themselves Against Rising Tick-Borne Diseases

WGAL

March 16, 2022

Category:

Activism, Lyme, Ticks

FDA Authorizes 2nd Booster for Ages 50 & Up Without Consulting Its Vax Panel & The Fact There’s a 22,000% Increase in Deaths After Shots

https://thenewamerican.com/fda-authorized-second-booster-for-americans-50-without-consulting-with-its-vax-panel

FDA Authorized Second Booster for Americans 50+ Without Consulting With Its Vax Panel

by Veronika Kyrylenko
FDA Authorized Second Booster for Americans 50+ Without Consulting With Its Vax Panel
Plyushkin/iStock/Getty Images Plus

On Tuesday, the FDA authorized Americans who are 50 years of age and older to receive a second booster of the Covid shot from either Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna. The move comes after the Biden administration, disregarding the most basic “scientific” decorum and procedures, was reported to offer older Americans a fourth dose of the Covid vaccine. By fall, younger Americans will likely be able to get their second booster, too.

The news of the administration’s planning to make yet another dose available to the public was first reported by The New York Times over the weekend.  (See link for article)

Important excerpt:

There’s a troubling caveat in that decision: it seems to have been made by the administration without discussion with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) “independent” panels. Meaning, the Biden administration is releasing the fourth vaccine booster without any public deliberation on the matter.

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SUMMARY:

  • Federal public health agencies have been operating under regulatory capture
  • There is no “science” behind the move
  • Vinay Prasad of the Brownstown Institute argues that the advisory committees’ meetings are skipped “because many smart people will disagree with them, and consider their plan reckless and lacking data.
  • August 2021 – two senior FDA regulators resigned from their positions over disagreement with the White House’s pressure to move forward with COVID booster shots without FDA approval, as well as with the CDC’s involvement in the approval process.
  • VRBPAC decided that it was too early to throw its support behind a blanket authorization for booster doses of Pfizer’s COVID shot for people 16 and older and voted against recommending it to the general public.
  • Prasad states that due to it being an election year, Biden’s desire to “keep COVID numbers low” reaffirms the assumption that public health is acting as a political organization not a health organization.
  • COVID shot efficacy is dire: breakthrough infections even about the triple vaxxed has prompted the Pfizer CEO to announce that the immune protection offered by the third dose “is not very good against infections” and “doesn’t last very long,” yet maintains the necessity of taking yet another dose.

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https://healthimpactnews.com/2022/22000-increase-in-deaths-following-covid-vaccines-for-adults-over-50-as-fda-authorizes-2nd-booster-for-this-age-group/

22,000% Increase in Deaths following COVID “Vaccines” for Adults Over 50 as FDA Authorizes 2nd Booster for this Age Group

by Brian Shilhavy
Editor, Health Impact News

March 29, 2022

A sampling of the stories we have covered over the past 15 months on thousands of older adults dying after the COVID Vaccines.

by Brian Shilhavy
Editor, Health Impact News

The FDA announced today that it has issued another emergency use authorization (EUA) for a second COVID booster vaccine for adults over the age of 50, and as young as 12 years old if they are “immune compromised.”

Pfizer had made the request for a second booster shot two weeks ago, but their request was for adults over the age of 65. The FDA, however, lowered that to age 50, and issued the EUA for both the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines.

Fierce Pharma reports:

Amid the ongoing debate over the need for another round of COVID-19 boosters, the FDA has acted quickly on the matter.

Only two weeks after Pfizer and its partner BioNTech asked the agency for an emergency use authorization (EUA) for a second round of COVID-19 boosters in people 65 and older, the FDA has granted the nod. The new FDA authorization covers those who have already been boosted with any COVID vaccine and are either 50 and older or 12 and older if they are immunocompromised.

At around the same time on Tuesday morning, Moderna said the FDA had granted its application for a second booster. The Moderna nod covers adults over 50 who have been boosted once, plus immunocompromised adults over 18. Moderna applied for a second booster on March 17. (Full article.)

Do you think the FDA looked at the data in their Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) regarding COVID-19 vaccines for this age group to see if there were any concerns before authorizing a second booster shot for this age group?

Not likely.

As we have previously reported, the FDA does no safety oversight on these vaccines, but simply takes the drug manufacturers’ word for it, allowing them to police themselves. See:

Just Released Documents by Pfizer Show BioNTech Paid FDA $2,875,842.00 “Drug User Fee” for COVID-19 Vaccine Approval

So we will review the data on this age group in VAERS as a service to the public.

Here is what VAERS is reporting for people over the age of 50 following COVID-19 vaccines. (Source

There are currently 14,752 deaths recorded in VAERS for people over the age of 50 following a COVID-19 vaccine, covering a period of 15 months. That’s an average of 983 deaths a month for this age group.

Here are the results for this age group for the previous 30 years following ALL vaccines in VAERS. (Source.)

There were 1,590 deaths recorded following ALL vaccines for the previous 30 years for people older than 50. So if we divide that number by 360 months we get a monthly average of 4.4 deaths.

So we have seen a 22,000% increase in deaths for people over the age of 50 following COVID-19 vaccines, and the FDA just authorized another booster for those who are left in this age group.

But who cares? The corporate media owned by Big Pharma wants everyone to worry about Russia instead right now, while the FDA’s crimes go unpunished and they continue to produce and distribute more deadly shots.

Here is a video I put together last September when the FDA approved the first booster for seniors, which includes whistleblower testimonies from those who saw people die after taking the COVID-19 vaccines.  This is on our Bitchute Channel. (Approx. 20 Min)

This is simply euthanasia and mass murder, and they are getting away with it.

For more:  https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2020/12/21/warning-3150-injuries-in-1st-week-of-covid-vaccines-among-american-healthcare-workers-pregnant-women-included/

Category:

Activism, vaccines, Viruses