A Window Is Finally Emerging to Reverse this Unstoppable Tide of Corruption

One of my major questions throughout life has been whether the bad things that happen around us are a result of a secretive group of bad actors (e.g., an organized conspiracy) or are simply a naturally emergent phenomenon that would occur regardless of which group was in power behind the scenes. The reason this is fundamentally a difficult question to answer is that in most cases, a compelling argument can be made for each, so ultimately, the interpretation you choose comes down to your own biases. In my own case, I still am not sure which is at play.

For instance, I frequently see policies be enacted in a coordinated fashion that lead to a clear outcome, and then watch as the years play out, that every institution works in unison to ensure that outcome comes to pass, and as such, when I see the opening moves, I tend to assume the ultimate outcome will follow (which, for example, is why I knew there would be vaccine mandates at the start of 2021).

Note: as it’s a bit of a tangent, I included a recent fairly impactful example of one of these coordinated campaigns at the end of the article.

Conversely, I often ask people directly connected to the government who is actually making the decisions that affect all of us, and one of the most informed people I know simply shared:

You can always point a finger at a specific agency or person, but the reality is that as the government gets bigger and bigger, more and more fiefdoms will emerge within it, and those groups will fight for their own interests at the expense of everyone else.

Note: many Federal agencies depend on obtaining congressional funding and, therefore, will engage in stunts to ensure that funding is allocated to them. For example, the CDC will routinely hype up inconsequential “pandemics” each year, as this nationwide drama allows them to obtain more funding.

The CDC’s Longstanding Corruption

Everyone has specific government agencies they dislike. One of mine has been the CDC because the CDC always promotes and protects vaccines (regardless of how egregious the vaccine is), criticizes integrative medical therapies, and promotes disease management strategies that are not very effective (e.g., masking for COVID).

It hence should not come as a surprise that the CDC has a longstanding history of corruption, did a variety of unscrupulous things to promote the COVID vaccines and in the present moment, has been the most resistant agency to the MAHA policies RFK Jr. has been working to enact (which in addition to being shown through news reports has been shared with me by people directly connected to the H.H.S.).

The CDC has enormous credibility among physicians, in no small part because the agency is generally thought to be free of industry bias. Financial dealings with bio-pharmaceutical companies threaten that reputation.—Marcia Angell MD, former editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine

In turn, if you browse their website, you will frequently encounter this CME disclaimer:

“CDC, our planners, content experts, and their spouses/partners wish to disclose they have no financial interests or other relationships with the manufacturers of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services, or commercial supporters. Planners have reviewed content to ensure there is no bias. CDC does not accept commercial support.”

One of the primary ways the CDC legally takes bribes is due to a 1983 law where Congress authorized the CDC to accept gifts “made unconditionally…for the benefit of the [Public Health] Service or for the carrying out of any of its functions.” Following this, in 1992, Congress established The National Foundation for the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, allowing the CDC to obtain additional funding for its work. Two years later, it was incorporated to “mobilize philanthropic and private-sector resources.”

Note: other Federal agencies, including the CIA and the NIH, have similar foundations (that are not subject to legal oversight such as Freedom of Information Act requests with many foundation directors later getting lucrative pharmaceutical employment).

Not surprisingly, the CDC Foundation has been accused of egregious conduct since its inception and has received nearly 1 billion dollars from corporate “donors” (criticisms include a scathing editorial in one of the world’s top medical journals). Some of the best examples of this corruption are documented in a 2019 letter to the CDC from a group of non-profit watchdog organizations. To quote part of it:

In 2011, Type Investigations reported that Exponent Inc, a firm that performs research for the pesticide industry, gave $60,000 to the CDC Foundation for a study to prove the safety of two pesticides. “We have a professional money-laundering facility at the Centers for Disease Control Foundation….They accept projects from anyone on the outside,” said James O'Callaghan, a researcher at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).

Between 2010 and 2015, Coca-Cola contributed more than $1 million to the CDC Foundation. It also received significant benefits from the CDC, including collaborative meetings and advice from a top CDC staffer on how to lobby the World Health Organization to curtail its efforts to reduce consumption of added sugars.

The BMJ also reported on contributions from Roche to the CDC Foundation in support of the CDC’s Take 3 flu campaign, which encourages people to “take antiviral medicine if a doctor prescribes it.” Roche manufactures Tamiflu, an antiviral medication for the flu [for reference, Roche was able to convince governments around the world to stockpile hundreds of millions of dollars of Tamiflu while refusing to release any of their clinical data—and it was eventually concluded that the benefits of the drug are negligible, while significant harms result from the medication].

These “donations” in turn often shape the “impartial” guidelines we are expected to follow:

“In 2010, the CDC, in conjunction with the CDC Foundation, formed the Viral Hepatitis Action Coalition, which supports research and promotes expanded testing and treatment of hepatitis C in the United States and globally. Industry has donated over $26 million to the coalition through the CDC Foundation since 2010. Corporate members of the coalition include Abbott Laboratories, AbbVie, Gilead, Janssen, Merck, OraSure Technologies, Quest Diagnostics, and Siemens—each of which produces products to test for or treat hepatitis C infection.”

Conflict of interest forms filed by the 34 members of the external working group that wrote and reviewed the new CDC recommendation in 2012 show that nine had financial ties to the manufacturers. A report by the Office of the Inspector General found that CDC’s external advisors played an influential role in decision-making for the federal government and that there was a systemic lack of oversight of the ethics program with 97% of disclosure forms filed by advisors found to be incomplete, and 13% of advisors who participated in meetings not filing any disclosure at all.

Note: key funders of the CDC foundation (detailed here) include Act Blue (a key Democratic political advocacy group), key vaccine organizations such as GAVI and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the major vaccine manufacturers (e.g., Pfizer, Moderna, Merck and J&J), and tech companies such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and PayPal.

Recognizing these concerning trends, employees of the CDC in 2016 anonymously complained to their leadership regarding the agency’s corruption:

It appears that our mission is being influenced and shaped by outside parties and rogue interests…What concerns us most, is that it is becoming the norm and not the rare exception. Some senior management officials at CDC are clearly aware and even condone these behaviors. Others see it and turn the other way. Some staff are intimidated and pressed to do things they know are not right. We have representatives across the agency that witness this unacceptable behavior. It occurs at all levels and in all of our respective units.

Recently, the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (NCCDPHP) has been implicated in a “cover up” of inaccurate screening data for the Wise Woman (WW) Program. There was a coordinated effort by that Center to “bury” the fact that screening numbers for the WW program were misrepresented in documents sent to Congress; screening numbers for 2014 and 2015 did not meet expectations despite a multi­million dollar investment; and definitions were changed and data “cooked” to make the results look better than they were. Data were clearly manipulated in irregular ways. An “internal review” that involved staff across CDC occurred and its findings were essentially suppressed so media and/or Congressional staff would not become aware of the problems.

Finally, most of the scientists at CDC operate with the utmost integrity and ethics. However, this “climate of disregard” puts many of us in difficult positions. We are often directed to do things we know are not right. For example, Congress has made it very clear that domestic funding for NCCDPHP (and other CIOs) should be used for domestic work and that the bulk of NCCDPHP funding should be allocated to program (not research).

Why in FY17 is NCCDPHP diverting money away from program priorities that directly benefit the public to support an expensive [global health] research that may not yield anything that benefits the [American] public?

Finally, the CDC’s dealings with corporate interests had drawn scrutiny and concern from Congress:

In February 2019, Congresswomen Chellie Pingree and Rosa DeLauro wrote the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services calling for an investigation of CDC’s interactions with Coca-Cola. They noted that the evidence shows “a troubling pattern of the company using access to high-level CDC officials to shape debates over public health policy directly involving the nutritional value of its products.” The congresswomen requested that the Inspector General “determine whether there is a broader pattern of inappropriate industry influence at the agency, and make recommendations to address this issue.”

Unfortunately, due to the politicization surrounding COVID, all of this was swept under the rug, the requested 2019 investigation was never conducted, and the (fairly recent) story was largely forgotten.

Ideology or Corruption?

Much in the same way, I always wonder to what degree events are “natural” vs. “orchestrated.” I also often wonder to what degree conduct I find reprehensible is due to corruption or simply ideological fixation, once again finding it’s ultimately hard to say, as such a strong case can be made for each conclusion.

For example, in the case of vaccines, while clear financial conflicts of interest can be shown in certain cases (e.g., what I showed above with the CDC), I find the zealous adherence to all vaccines being “safe and effective” tends to be ideological in nature, as believing in vaccines has been instilled as a core belief of anyone affiliated with “science” or “medicine.”

Initially this can be quite subtle, but in time, that ideological bias quickly adds up. This is because (as mentioned before) most things aren’t clear cut, so depending on what one is biased to notice, one can rapidly be left with a world view where all “the evidence” supports their position, even if a great deal of it does not.
Note: one of the major problems in human society is that human beings typically cannot be fully aware of all the information they are exposed to (as there is an overwhelming amount of it). As a result, they typically will filter their perception of reality to concentrate on the things that give “value” to them, which typically are what conforms to their existing biases. Because of this, people will often become absolutely certain their interpretation of reality is correct, even if many (with different biases from them) have diametrically opposed interpretations of reality.

In the case of vaccines, this is a critical concept to understand as evaluating the actual risks and benefits of a routine vaccine requires you to assess:

•What percent of the unvaccinated population is likely to get the infection.
•What percent of those infected will have a moderate or severe illness.
•How effectively the vaccine prevents those vaccinated from catching the illness or developing moderate or severe complications from it.
•How long the vaccine’s effectiveness lasts.
•How long does it take the infection to become resistant to the vaccine (making it useless).
•What are the consequences of the vaccine triggering a mutation in the infection.
•How likely the vaccine is to cause an acute moderate or acute severe reaction.
•How likely the vaccine is to cause a chronic moderate or chronic severe reaction.
•Who is at risk of having a more severe reaction to the vaccine?

Each of these is quite a task to figure out, and as a result most of the relevant points for each of the above simply are not taken into account when deciding upon a vaccine recommendation. Rather, a few points (typically highlighted by a pharmaceutical marketing division) are focused on, and the interpretation of the vaccine’s risks and benefits are seen through that lens (e.g., “cervical cancer is deadly” and “the HPV vaccine prevents cervical cancer), while pieces of evidence which challenge the predetermined conclusion (e.g., evidence of vaccine harm) are dismissed and filtered away.

As a result, many vaccines are on the market where their risks clearly and unambiguously outweigh their benefits, while in parallel, vaccines are viewed as a homogenous entity despite some (e.g., the HPV and COVID vaccines) being much more dangerous and unnecessary than many others.

Note: as many people have requested, I have provided a concise summary of the risks and benefits of each childhood vaccine here.