The Gary Null Show

Medical Skepticism:  Today’s Scientific Cultural Disease Richard Gale and Gary Null PhD Progressive Radio Network, August 5, 2019 Modern day Skepticism is one of those annoying contagions that won't go away. It is rather like a persistent Candida yeast infection. It is painful to common sense. Worse, Skepticism flares up when you least expect it. On the internet, primarily on Wikipedia, its ideology and propaganda go largely unnoticed, camouflaged by sharp criticism serving as a non-appointed jury rather than an objective voice of logic. Therefore, we have no reservations in stating that the extreme scientific reductionism represented by Skepticism, especially biological and medical skepticism, is a serious threat to medical innovation, scientific discovery and in the long term public health. Although Skepticism has been a worldview dating back to the nineteenth century, today's Skepticism is far more radicalized. Because Skeptics believe they represent the pinnacle of scientific materialism, many of the movement's celebrity gurus feel they are the entitled saviors to redeem modern civilization from thousands of years of past history when human societies utilized medicinal plants and ancient mind-body practices to treat illnesses and the role of religion, spiritual practices, faith and belief to promote a sense of well being and psychological wholeness. As with so much of our dysfunctional postmodern world, Skepticism is therefore a natural outgrowth of white-dominant, patriarchal entitlement that continues to plague postmodern society. It is another perversion of identity politics however disguised under the banner of science. Within the larger Skeptic movement is a faction that goes under the name of Science Based Medicine (SBM). For the past 25 years, modern medicine has been steered by what is commonly known as Evidence Based Medicine (EBM), a widely accepted theory that sound clinical decision making for treating diseases should rely upon reliable evidence from randomized clinical trials and high quality published papers and meta-analyses. In principle, Science Based Medicine largely supports Evidence Based Medicine. And to their credit, SBM’s foremost spokespersons Steven Novella and David Gorski opening criticize EBM’s shortcomings, including the now epidemic of erroneous research being published in medical journals, the increasing trends in professional bias in order to reach positive results, and journals' financial incentives to publish junk studies. However, considering EBM's flaws and failures, SBM perceives itself as the next great leap for modern medicine in order to establish scientific consensus on medical discovery and therapeutic practices by including the plausibility principle. Repeatedly, without any sound understanding for why a certain alternative health therapy either succeeds or fails, Skeptics invoke plausibility as the only necessary criteria to discard outright non-conventional practices and therefore to advocate against funding research to investigate any promises they may hold. Yet relying upon the plausibility argument is simply a lazy-person’s way to lie to oneself.  And Skeptics are easily outraged whenever accused of entertaining subjective biases that taint their evaluation of medical therapies outside their cherishing-held belief system.  Whenever Skeptics are confronted with a scientific or medical narrative that is contrary to their own subjective biases, and in the absence of a scientifically valid argument based upon strong evidence to support Skepticism's counter-narrative, the Skeptic mind simply fills in the blank with the “plausibility” argument.  Plausibility thereby is conflated with reality. In one of his many screeds against homeopathy, Gorski undertakes his typical long-winded attempt to discredit the evidence that defines “plausibility bias,” also known as “belief bias.” It is not surprising therefore that SBM's most militant voices convey a brutally amateurish understanding of human psychology. Researchers at the University of British Columbia and Yale reported in their paper “The Curse of Knowledge in Reasoning About False Beliefs” that there can be a “curse of knowledge bias” that contributes to false beliefs used by young children. That is, the researchers report, “adults’ own knowledge of an event’s outcome can compromise their ability to reason about another person’s beliefs about that event. The curse of false beliefs as contingent upon the plausibility argument goes to the heart of the "science wars" between Skeptical materialist views of medical science and advocates of non-conventional medical practices, including nutrition, naturopathy, Chinese and Ayurveda medicine, etc., whose world view is less narrowly linear and more akin to modern systems theory and the physics of cause and effect. What some psychologists call the "plausibility fallacy" is nothing other than being convinced about an irrational assumption that a plausible explanation is final proof. Aside from exaggerating its belief in the power and value of science, Skepticism in the biological sciences can more accurately be described as nihilistic skepticism, a trenchant to assert impossibility a priori and to convert reasonable doubts into unreasonable incredulity. When understood in this manner, SBM can be viewed as a kind of skeptical medical imperialism, an excess of science that muddles its own subjective and biased values with being scientifically factual. Do not schizophrenics also apply their twisted reasoning and logic in order to convince themselves about the truth in their hallucinations?  From the standpoint of quantum physics, perhaps the gold standard of the modern hard sciences, implausibility is never a certainty, and not a yardstick to banish and ignore something that might only have a slight possibility of being true. In physics, it is always worth pursuing further. But rules of proof in Skepticism do not follow sound scientific inquiry. It is not surprising therefore to find that most militant skeptics, aside from Cal Tech astrophysicist Sean Carroll, hold professions in the life sciences. Richard Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist; Sam Harris is a neuroscientist; Jerry Coyne and PZ Meyer are biologists; Daniel Dennett and Steven Pinker are cognitive scientists and philosophers; Paul Offit, Ben Goldacre, Stephen Barrett and most of the active members of the SBM cult are practicing medical physicians. We can review a case of applying the Skeptics own “plausibility” criteria to a medical legal decision that they have fervently disapproved of.  It is an excellent example of how Skeptics' irrational beliefs in fact trump rational plausibility. Skeptics and pro-vaccine advocates alike were appalled at the US Court of Federal Claims’ August 2007 decision to award damages for vaccine-induced autism to the family of Hannah Poling, a 19 month old toddler who received five vaccines during a single pediatrician visit.  Prior to the case, the Court's rulings under the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program relied solely on the “preponderance of evidence” (EBM’s criteria) for assessing causation for vaccine-injuries. In other words, subjective testimonies, for example by the parents of vaccine-injured children, were excluded from the evidence. However, the Court changed its rules to include “plausibility,” and this is what led to the Court’s conclusion that it is biologically “plausible” that vaccines and their toxic ingredients can trigger adverse conditions leading to autism. This was the Court's ruling regarding Hannah Poling.    READ MORE

Alan Wallace, a world-renowned author and Buddhist scholar trained by the Dalai Lama, and Sean Carroll, a world-renowned theoretical physicist and best-selling author, discuss the nature of reality from spiritual and scientific viewpoints. Their dialogue is mediated by theoretical physicist and author Marcelo Gleiser, director of Dartmouth’s Institute for Cross-Disciplinary Engagement.

Rob Kall is an American journalist and founder of the progressive, liberal news site Oped News, which was launched in 2003. In addition to being a long time anti-war and social activist.  He was ranked by Mediate  as one of the top 200 print/online columnists and OpedNews received the first Pillar Human Rights Reward for International Persons of Conscience awarded to the media for his support of whistleblowers. He is the author of several books, most recently the important "The Bottom Up Revolution: Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity," which provides a blue print for an ethical change in the dominant paradigm that has been recognized by people familiar to this audience, such as Henry Giroux, David Korten, Paul Craig Roberts and John Kiriakou.  Rob also hosts the Rob Kall Bottom Up News Hour every Wednesday at 8 pm on the Progressive Radio Network. His website is opednews.com

The Gary Null Show is here to inform you on the best news in health, healing, the environment. Tickle' therapy could help slow ageing, Antioxidant compound from soybeans may prevent marijuana-induced blood vessel damage, High dietary total antioxidant capacity is associated with a reduced risk of hypertension in French women, Change in Plant-Based Diet Quality Is Associated with Changes in Plasma Adiposity-Associated Biomarker Concentrations in Women, Soy Isoflavone Improved Female Sexual Dysfunction Via Endothelial Nitric Oxide Synthase Pathway, Study shows mango consumption has positive impact on inflammatory bowel disease, Energy Drinks Induce Acute Cardiovascular and Metabolic Changes Pointing to Potential Risks for Young Adults: A Randomized Controlled Trial, Artificial light from digital devices lessens sleep quality.   

The Gary Null Show is here to inform you on the best news in health, healing, the environment. Voicemail Line 862-800-6805 This new feature will allow listeners to call in and leave a voicemail question to all their favorite shows. All you have to do is call the number, Say your name, what show and what your question is. This will allow your voice to be heard on your favorite PRN shows and will allow a better host/listener connection. In this episode Gary breaks down the Muller report hearings and what to look for moving forward.         

Wikipedia Skeptics' Crucifixion of Deepak Chopra Every day tens of millions of Americans are ill, from cancer to dementia, cardiovascular disease, obesity and diabetes, mental disorders, etc. As bad as this massive human suffering is, Americans are also faced with uncertainty of any given treatment. This creates additional anxiety. Will I live or die? Will I ever get off these medications?  However, the large majority of sick Americans have something in common. Their first course of action is to visit their primary care physicians or go to the hospital with the belief that conventional modern medical science is the only answer. The medical establishment and all of our federal health agencies confirm medical science has tried and perfected protocols. But none of these treatments involve the patients' beliefs, mental attitudes and personal worldviews. In effect, a patient is perceived as a damaged car going into the shop for a mechanical repair. The medical regime that dominates conventional medical practice is unable to take into account that a person's own mind might have a critical role in the healing process.  Evidence-based medicine claims there must be reproducible results, ideally founded upon placebo-controlled studies, and a meta-analysis of peer-reviewed literature from respected institutions to conclude that a pharmaceutical treatment might be effective. Aside from the numerous failures of medicine to meet these criteria, herein also lies modern medicine's cognitive disconnect. There are thousands of studies that give credence to the benefits of body-mind medicine. Back in the 1970s, Dr. Herbert Benson at Harvard discovered the power of positive thinking on physical and mental health. But Benson was not alone. There have been dozens of other physicians and scientists who have shown that negative emotions adversely affect our DNA and can turn off genetic expressions that trigger a disease.  Conversely, directed positive thoughts can have an impact on DNA and facilitate healing.      When American scientists visit foreign countries to study meditation or yoga, breathing, chanting or drumming, and investigate whether there are measurable metrics to support therapeutic effects, they can be overwhelmed that there are multiple realities and therefore many roads to health and healing.  Then Wikipedia and Google come along to tell us it is all nonsense. We are told not to believe our own experiences, intuition or the power of prayers or mental concentration. Instead, separate yourself. Become an atheist. Only believe in reductionist Scientism and place faith in the paradigm that only what has been manufactured into a pill can heal you.     Clearly, as more Americans become distrustful of standard pharmaceutical-based treatments and turn to alternative medical treatments, there is a clash of medical worldviews. This paper describes one its victims.    Modern day Skeptics who dominate Wikipedia’s content on non-conventional medicine, body-mind science and parapsychology have zero tolerance for theories that suggest the mind can directly influence health and treat certain diseases. In fact, theories that human consciousness, which underlies our subjective experiences of the world, may be non-localized, or independent and not contingent on brain chemistry is anathema according Skeptic's scientific materialist view of reality. Although the religion of Scientism is less than a hundred years old and is now being fueled by the emergence of New Atheism during the past couple decades, what we today call mind-body medicine goes back to at least the first millennium BC if not earlier.  In the East, meditative techniques to explore the nature of consciousness has been a 3,000-year scientific experiment. Its results have been reproduced innumerable times among its practitioners over the centuries and the results are almost always the same for those who are the most accomplished in these psycho-somatic and psycho-spiritual practices. The simple fact is that modern science knows far more about atoms, electrons and the Big Bang than it does about the human mind and consciousness. Every new discovery in the neurosciences opens up new questions. The reductionist opinion, fully embraced by Skeptics and Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales, suggests the mind and consciousness are nothing more than the firings of neurons and secretions of neurotransmitters all taking place in the brain; yet neuroscience has no means to explain subjective experience itself. In fact, Skepticism, and the new secular religion of Scientism in general, has been so habituated to only observing and measuring objective reality, that subjective experience, which gives rise to intuition, precognition, discernment, insight into phenomenon to discover meaning, and the capacity of the conscious mind to direct and focus in upon itself in order to affect the body's biological processes are disregarded as delusions and nonsense.     Any successful treatment due to non-conventional and body-mind protocols and therapies that Skepticism cannot explain scientifically -- which is practically everything -- is simply attributed to the placebo effect. It does not require much thought to realize such an explanation is blatantly unscientific.   The belief that the mind can cure the body's ailments, whether by the intervention of a god or as a natural quality of the mind, albeit largely not understood, continues to be held by a large majority of Americans. Sixty-six percent of American adults believe God supernaturally heals. Clearly, there is no scientific doubt any longer that emotional stress can hinder the body's immune system. And there are over 5,000 studies listed in the NIH's database of peer-reviewed medical papers that have studied meditation's and yoga's effects on health. Today, the fact that the mind can reduce stress, thereby affecting the body's biochemistry, and relieve adverse emotional conditions, is scientifically acceptable.  Even Skeptics, notably Sam Harris, accept this. But if this is true, then why not explore this mind-body relationship further and deeper in order to discover other mechanisms by which the mind can heal illnesses rather than just taking a pill?     One of the pioneers for bringing mind-body science to the larger public's awareness is Dr. Deepak Chopra. Regardless of how he may be perceived as a leading popularizer of the now overly commercialized New Age movement, in his role as a highly accomplished medical doctor, with a remarkable resume, Chopra has been instrumental in awakening Americans to the value of alternative and natural medicine, as well as the importance of incorporating meditative or contemplative practices into our life regimen for physical and mental well-being. Clearly, among the millions of people who have been influenced by Chopra and who have benefited from his books and lectures, he is an important pioneer in the advancement of a future medicine that will not solely rely upon the pharmaceutical industry.    Among all of the pioneers of non-conventional medicine, including Nobel laureates such as Linus Pauling and British physicist Brian Josephson, Skeptic Wikipedia editors have been least kind to Chopra.  If there is any question regarding Skepticism's enormous influence over Wikipedia, reading Chopra's Wiki biography will dispel any doubts. Although Chopra is a highly trained medical physician in internal medicine, who has taught at the medical schools at Boston University, Harvard and Tufts, and later served as the Chief-of-Staff at New England Memorial Hospital, you would not learn this from Wikipedia's introductory paragraphs about him. Nor, aside from his being a celebrity spiritual personality, would you learn on his biography that he continues to be a medical researcher conducting clinical trials and publishing in peer-reviewed medical journals. Rather he is simply introduced as an "Indian-born American author, public speaker, alternative medicine advocate, and a prominent figure in the New Age movement." His original Wikipedia biography entered back in 2003 was only two sentences, "Deepak Chopra (born 1947) is one of the most popular contemporary writers on alternative medicine and Ayurveda. A physician, he started off in the TM movement but later branched off on his own."  A year later, it would appear that the Skeptics moved into his page, the anonymous editor CSTAR, a now retired Wikipedian and one of the earlier Skeptic editors sabotaging non-conventional health pages, quoted Quackwatch founder Stephen Barrett, a national public relations voice speaking on behalf of toxic corporate products such as tobacco, oil, pesticides, junk food and of course pharmaceutical drugs as an authoritative source for criticizing Chopra. Barrett has been a scientific consultant for Skepticism's largest organization, the Center for Inquiry and a co-Chairman of its Health Claims Subcommittee since 1980.    Today Chopra's entry is the equivalent of a small pamphlet with 148 end-noted references. The references include many of the most prominent names in the Who's Who directory of the radical Skeptic and New Atheism movements such as Stephen Barrett, Robert Carroll, Jerry Coyne, Richard Dawkins, David Gorski, Paul Kurtz and Paul Offit. Aside from Dawkins, none of these individuals are common household names outside of Skepticism's cults.  However, for Wikipedia editors, they are the authors of Skepticism's gospels, which are repeatedly referenced as authoritative sources on the encyclopedia's pages to discredit non-conventional and mind-body medicine, and to promulgate Skepticism's doctrine. Each of these ideologues is highly biased and prejudiced against everything outside the purview of pharmaceutical-based medical practice.    Unlike Skeptics, Chopra and other investigators into the mind-body relationship are not afraid of scientific exploration and discovery. In 2014, Chopra sponsored and led the Self-Directed Biological Transformation Study Initiative, a scientific trial that would measure the effects of meditation, yoga, emotional modification, lifestyle changes, microbiome health and diet on genetic changes in the body. This included regular testing of the participants RNA expression, telomerase activity associated with cellular aging, circulating protease activity, and a variety of metabolites, peptides and neurohormones associated with brain-body messaging. To Chopra's credit, this is the kind of research that should have been conducted decades ago, but the influence of Skeptical thought throughout the medical establishment has prevented these kinds of trials from being funded and undertaken.    Here is a description of Chopra's Initiative:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXrtxSogfT8   It is interesting to note that compared to Chopra's main critics in the scientific community, he has published more peer-reviewed studies that investigate medicine beyond the limits of scientific materialism. Among the more recent studies published during the past 12 months,    Prebiotic Potential of Culinary Spices Used to Support Digestion and Bio absorption (Evid Based Complement Alternat Med, 2019) Psychosocial Effects of a Holistic Ayurvedic Approach to Well-being in Health and Wellness Courses (Global Adv Health Med., 2019) 16S rRNA gene profiling and genome reconstruction reveal community metabolic interactions and prebiotic potential of medicinal herbs used in neurodegenerative disease and as nootropics  (PLOS One, 2019) The Effects of Grounding (Earthing) on Bodyworkers' Pain and Overall Quality of Life: A Randomized Controlled Trial. (Explore, 2019) Effects of Turmeric and Curcumin Dietary Supplementation on Human Gut Microbiota: A Double-Blind, Randomized, Placebo-Controlled Pilot Study (J Evid Based Integr Med, 2019) Prebiotic Potential of Herbal Medicines Used in Digestive Health and Disease (J Altern Complemnt Med, July 2018) The Effects of Stress and Meditation on the Immune System, Human Microbiota, and Epigenetics (Adv Mind Body Med)   Yet, nowhere on Chopra's Wikipedia page is their any mention of his on-going scientific research that has been published in the scientific literature.   One of Wikipedia's strongest attacks against Chopra concerns his analogies drawn from modern quantum physics to explain mind-body relationships that may influence a healthy change in our body's biology and even genetic expression. To discredit this theory, Wikipedia Skeptics write that Chopra's views "seem to fall into the pattern of general confusion in the popular press regarding quantum measurement, decoherence and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle."  Clearly this is a subjective opinion of the editor. Rather than simply stating Chopra's theory, he or she employs the very common Skeptic editing strategy to qualify opposing views in derogatory terms. This kind of personalized qualification is found repeatedly throughout Wikipedia articles controlled by Skeptics.    However, one of the most disturbing paragraphs in Chopra's entry, perhaps the only one of its kind on Wikipedia, is Skepticism's direct assault against Chopra's own personal views about "Skepticism." The paragraph is a fragrant example of Skepticism's influence on Wikipedia as well as its irrational means to conduct debate or to handle controversy,    "In 2013, Chopra published an article on what he saw as "skepticism" at work in Wikipedia, arguing that a "stubborn band of militant skeptics" were editing articles to prevent what he believes would be a fair representation of the views of such figures as Rupert Sheldrake, an author, lecturer, and researcher in parapsychology. The result, Chopra argued, was that the encyclopedia's readers were denied the opportunity to read of attempts to "expand science beyond its conventional boundaries". The biologist Jerry Coyne responded, saying that it was instead Chopra who was losing out as his views were being "exposed as a lot of scientifically-sounding psychobabble."   The first question might be, why is this paragraph worth printing on a Wikipedia page for a living person?  The entry is solely included to conduct a character assassination against Chopra and those who might share his views with the intent to marginalize their theories.  This entry is also evident of another quality that is very recognizable among Wikipedia Skeptics and many of its leading spokespersons, notably Stephen Barrett, Jerry Coyne, David Gorski and Stephen Novella; that is the extraordinary depth their apparent acrimony and bitterness compels them to spend inordinate amounts of their time ridiculing and damning others. Gorski's and Novella's Science Based Medicine blog, a frequent reference for Wikipedia Skeptics, is nothing more than a personal directory of criticism and sarcasm spewed against non-conventional medical systems and their practitioners. In our opinion these are mean spirited people.  And Skepticism expounds a very mean agenda.   Skeptics tend to deny biophysics and dismiss energy medicine. Mind-Body Medicine attempts to follow physical properties of bioelectrical and magnetic activity. But Wikipedia states under its "Energy Medicine" entry, "Physicists and skeptics roundly criticize these explanations as pseudophysics -- a branch of pseudoscience which explains magical thinking by using irrelevant jargon from modern physics to exploit scientific illiteracy and to impress the unsophisticated."  But this unfounded claim can only be made by ignoring and denying an enormous body of published research indicating that biofields and biophysics likely play a huge role both in the onset and regression of diseases and for maintaining a healthy body.    Finally, we need to realize that Jimmy Wales' gang of Wikipedia Skeptics, under the pretense of not being compromised volunteers motivated by a sincere desire to bring knowledge to the world, have taken control of much of Wikipedia's subject matter for a single purpose; that is, to proselytize the pseudo-scientific religion of Skepticism. Thus, we have come first circle, back to Skepticism’s cognitive dissonance from reality. However, there are persons, both intellectually astute as well as illiterate, who believe there is much more to reality than what scientific instrumentation can measure. There remain many mysteries yet to be identified and understood. It is foolish to think like Skeptic Sean Carroll, that science has essentially discovered everything in the universe that there needs to be known.  So while Deepak Chopra and numerous others in the fields of medicine and other disciplines are helping us to expand our innate mental capabilities, and assisting people in their healing journeys to restore health with meditation and yoga, adopting plant-based diets and other alternative health regimens, Jimmy Wales and his Skeptics continue to espouse a depressing and nihilistic view of reality. It is perfectly fine to hold such views. But when they become an ideology underlying what purports to be a factual encyclopedia it is nothing less than a new incarnation of the Inquisition.    

The Gary Null Show is here to inform you on the best news in health, healing, the environment. 

The Gary Null Show is here to inform you on the best news in health, healing, the environment. 

The Gary Null Show is here to inform you on the best news in health, healing, the environment.  Voicemail Line 862-800-6805   This new feature will allow listeners to call in and leave a voicemail question to all their favorite shows. All you have to do is call the number, Say your name, what show and what your question is. This will allow your voice to be heard on your favorite PRN shows and will allow a better host/listener connection.

Be Skeptical of Wikipedia Skeptics Richard Gale and Gary Null PhDProgressive Radio Network, July 23, 2019As we have stated on many occasions in previous investigative reports, often it is not what Skeptics include on Wikipedia pages that raise concerns for alarm; equally important are the solid facts that are omitted, removed and/or censored. This is clearly the case for Wikipedia's entries covering genetically modified crops (GMOs), pesticides such glyphosate or Roundup, and the biographies of prominent public advocates for the agro-chemical industry. Starting in late 2017, Bayer-Monsanto's Titanic for its crown-jewel product, the chemical herbicide, glyphosate, has been sorely punctured. Gaping holes are rapidly sinking profits and stock value as lawsuits mount over the herbicide's carcinogenic effects. Investors are fleeing. After a California court awarded a former school groundskeeper, Dewayne Johnson, $289 million in damages for Roundup-caused non-Hodgkin lymphoma, as of last April over 13,000 lawsuits have been filed. Consequently, without seeming like another bogus website of fabricated and fake news, Wikipedia can’t ignore the world headlines about glyphosate's deadly health risks. Nevertheless, a visit to Wikipedia's "Roundup" and "Glyphosate" pages requires scrolling down many pages before any truth comes to light. The entries' introductory paragraphs continue to tout outdated, compromised and false regulatory agency studies, favorable to the neoliberal corporate regime, declaring glyphosate is safe and poses no serious dangers to human health. The latter entry quickly offers the false impression that "consensus among national pesticide regulatory agencies and scientific organizations is that labeled uses of glyphosate have demonstrated no evidence of human carcinogenicity."   Read More

July 23, 2019   Office of United States Senate Washington, DC 20510   Dear Senator: It is time for Congress take action and remove immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act ("CDA"). The immunity has allowed the big tech companies—the companies that control the information received by the American public—to shield themselves from liability while they abuse their power to censor viewpoints they disagree with. The immunity has left big tech companies no motivation to follow their policies or have a neutral point of view, no motivation to protect the First Amendment right to free speech, no motivation to protect a person’s right not to be defamed. Congress has a responsibility to the American public to remove an immunity that hinders rather than protects their First Amendment right to free speech, to protect them from defamation. And for decades Congress has neglected that responsibility. I. History The CDA was passed in 1996 to address problems surrounding the regulation of obscene speech on the internet, primarily minors' access to pornography. Surely it was not Congress’s intention to shield “internet computer servicers” from liability and interpretating the law as if it was has yielded devastating consequences. In an article published in Berkeley Technology Law Journal in 2002, Paul Ehrlich discusses the legislative record. He notes that the plain text of the immunity provision does not "expressly preclude distributor liability" and that the law was a response to confusion among the courts. (409)  Ehrlich also discusses the impact that immunity will have on defamation law, writing, "While immunity is a good solution to the problem of obscenity generally, the problem of defamation can only be solved either through a return to distributor liability (costly to free speech) or, more preferably, the weakening of anonymity for defamatory posters.” (408) That was 2002. And the same issues that Ehrlich addressed then, are present today, 2019, seventeen (17) years later, and have magnified, and will continue to magnify if Congress does not take action. II. Ending Support for Internet Censorship Act Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) recently introduced a Bill that would remove automatic immunity for big tech companies with respect to political viewpoints. Senator Hawley recognized that “There’s a growing list of evidence that shows big tech companies making editorial decisions to censor viewpoints they disagree with. Even worse, the entire process is shrouded in secrecy because these companies refuse to make their protocols public.”  Hawley’s bill would require big tech companies to prove “by clear and convincing evidence that their algorithms and content-removal practices are politically neutral.” Requiring big tech companies to prove “their algorithms and content-removal practices are politically neutral” hardly seems unreasonable in exchange for an immunity that they have enjoyed for decades, an immunity that is not offered to other media organizations, an immunity that stifles public debate. And as Justice William Brennan wrote in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan in 1964, the First Amendment provides that “debate on public issues … [should be] … uninhibited, robust, and wide-open.”   In the wake of Josh Hawley’s bill, lobbying on behalf of big tech companies is only increasing. According to NBC, “the fervor over Hawley’s bill has revealed just how well powerful companies have laid the foundation in Washington to fight efforts to rein them in.” The same article discusses the “think tanks and other Washington influencers, who help shape discussion about policies that affect those companies.” It is time Congress stop allowing big tech companies shape that discussion about policies because those policies do not only affect those companies, they affect the American public, an American public that is forgotten in the process.   III. Big Tech Companies, Wikipedia   In U.S. Code Section 230(a)(5), Congress found that “Increasingly Americans are relying on interactive media for a variety of political, educational, cultural, and entertainment services.” While immunity should be withdrawn for all big tech companies, Google, Facebook, etc. so that they are no longer to abuse their power to censor viewpoints they disagree with, Wikipedia, and big tech companies that recommend it, may be among the most dangerous.   Today, Wikipedia, is the fifth most popular site in the world. A search in Google, the most popular site in the world, will often return Wikipedia as one of the top results for a search conducted in its engine. And the American public relies on Wikipedia for facts. Why shouldn’t they? It is, after all, an encyclopedia. Even Wikipedia’s own entry for “Wikipedia” refers to itself as such. And the website’s entry for “Encyclopedia” states that “encyclopedia articles focus on factual information concerning the subject named in the article’s title.” If you don’t want to take Wikipedia’s word for it (totally reasonable under the circumstances), the court in Pitale v. Holstine writes, “Wikipedia is an open-source encyclopedia, primarily serving (or at least intending to serve) as a source of factual information rather than as a forum for expressing opinion. Wikipedia strives to be a repository of facts, not opinions.” In a footnote, the court acknowledges Wikipedia’s “neutral point of view” as one of its “three core content policies.” But is Wikipedia following its stated policies? Does it have a neutral point of view? Do any of the big tech companies? Josh Hawley is aware of evidence that big tech companies “censor viewpoints they disagree with.” And where such censorship exists, there can be no neutrality.   IV. Immunity and Motivation Shielded by immunity, big tech companies have no motivation to follow their policies or have a neutral point of view. In the case of Wikipedia, editors are free to remove good faith corrections by other users and then “protect” a page so only a handful of editors are able to make edits. The editors may not even be experts on the subjects of the pages they are editing. They have free rein to target individuals, professions, with whom/which, they disagree. They are able to choose sources that are not objective, take quotes from objective sources out of context, use only negative quotes from objective sources, mischaracterize sources to the point that the information leaves a false impression on a massive audience—a massive audience that is relying on the website for factual information. And so on, and so on, and so on, forever… Such editorial decisions render the big tech companies active, not passive, in their role. Shielded by immunity, big tech companies have no motivation to give an individual harmed by such biased editorial decisions the opportunity to make a correction. They have no motivation to reveal the identities of their anonymous editors. They have no motivation to consider the American public, their right to free speech, their right not to be defamed. These companies are corporations, so are not held to First Amendment standards, and when editorial decisions render the information biased, these companies are hindering, rather than furthering speech.  Shielded by immunity, big tech companies are denying the American public the opportunity to make informed decisions about a subject. Imagine a person exercising his or her right to vote after relying on biased biographies of candidates that hold themselves out to be factual. Imagine a person making a medical decision after relying on an entry that mentions one peer-reviewed point of view, but not a peer-reviewed point of view that contradicts it because the editors, qualified or unqualified, disagreed with the latter study. If the big tech companies could be sued, perhaps they would find the motivation to consider the rights of the American public. Perhaps they would follow their policies and have a neutral point of view, perhaps they would protect the First Amendment right to free speech, a person’s right not to be defamed. V. Immunity v. Defamation   Many individuals who have ideas that do not align with the views of a particular big tech company community are suffering irreparable harm to their reputations and financially as a result of this immunity. They are being defamed with no avenue to repair their reputations and recover their losses. The “internet computer services” can hide behind the automatic immunity, anonymous editors, and a lack of transparency as to their role in the publication and republication of the information. And while there are obstacles to defamation claims such as a statute of limitations and what constitutes republication, there is no such limitation to the amount of time libelous material will spread through big tech companies to their worldwide audience. The harm goes on indefinitely. In essence, the law as interpreted sentences individuals to an electronic gulag in perpituity.  In addition to removing immunity under Section 230 of the CDA, Congress might reconsider insufficient long-arm statutes and statutes of limitations for defamation claims when statements published and republished on the internet are involved. VI. Conclusion Perhaps Congress did not understand the issue in 1996, or read Ehrlich’s article in 2002, but in 2019 there is no excuse for elected representatives to be unfamiliar with this issue. With the introduction of his bill, Hawley has informed you. With this letter, we have informed you. It is time for Congress to acknowledge the injustice that has occurred and continues to occur and take action to remove immunity under Section 230. The American public does not want “think tanks and other Washington influencers” shaping policy. They want their elected representatives shaping policy. They want Congress to finally do what it should have done years ago—remove an immunity that does not protect their First Amendment right to free speech, their right not to be defamed. It is time. Who will Congress protect—the big tech companies or the American public?

The "Unscientific" Scientific American Richard Gale and Gary Null PhDProgressive Radio Network, July 19, 2019"A democracy depends on the individuals making an intelligent and rational choice in what he regards as enlightened self-interest in any given circumstance. But...  the purposes of selling goods and the dictatorial propaganda is to try to bypass the rational side of man and to appeal directly to the unconscious forces below the surface so that you are in a way making nonsense of the whole democratic procedure which is based on a conscious choice on rational grounds."- Aldous Huxley (Interviewed by Mike Wallace, 1958)Many professionals and well-educated people read publications such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Forbes, Mother Jones, and leading newspapers such as the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, with the assumption that their chief editors hold a high standard of journalistic integrity and objectivity. We assume these publications are not compromised by conflicts of interest and institutional indoctrination. It was in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq that New York Times writer Judith Miller promoted the falsehood of Sadaam Hussein's possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Readers believed that if such a story appeared in the Times, it must be credible. In effect, Miller became a principal opinion leader for the Washington establishment and the neocons to push forward with regime change. The media would play the role in convincing the public in the righteousness of this effort. Although the lie about Iraq's WMDs was fabricated by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and other leading neocons behind closed doors and subsequently leaked to the Times, the Bush administration was able to viably state, "see, even the New York Times has reported on Hussein's nuclear capabilities. Believe us, we are correct."But there were many credible and independent voices, such as former New York Times bureau chief in Cairo Chris Hedges, Robert Parry, Sy Hersh, Professors Michel Chossudovsky in Canada and Noam Chomsky, and many more who had conducted in depth and unbiased research to question the White House's and Miller's WMD claims. But their voices could never reach the mainstream media which was at least in principle "commissioned" to promulgate the government's lies. This is how circular self-serving propaganda operates between official authorities and the media. Today we are witnessing this same strategy being used  on a national scale for the roll out of 5G wireless technology, genetically modified foods, and the push for national and state vaccination mandates.  In every case the message is highly biased, compromised by ulterior motives, and intentionally ignores volumes of sound scientific literature and analysis that undermine their falsehoods. With respect to advancing vaccination mandates, the mainstream magazines and newspapers use similar talking points to reinterpret and/or misrepresent facts to strengthen the agendas of private interests at the expense of bolstering public knowledge that might make society more immune to propaganda serving private commercial interests. Lie repeatedly enough to readers and you will win their allegiance. The circular reasoning of vaccination policy begins with the government health agencies announcing there is no connection whatsoever between vaccines and autism or other neurological disorders.  The science we are told is conclusive. All vaccines are thereby rubber stamped as safe and this is the fundamental message in the CDC's educational campaign to journalists and health reporters.  Anyone who questions this commandment is mistaken; and anyone who actively disseminates information to the contrary is an enemy to public health.  Dutifully, the media chants the CDC's screed.  Health officials and private vaccine makers' public relations efforts then reference the media to further validate their disinformation campaign.   The CDC and FDA decide who are the acceptable spokespersons, such as Paul Offit and law professor Dorit Reiss, to be invited onto the mainstream media to warn the public about the dangers of vaccine opponents. There is no debate. Overarching ambiguous pronouncements are made about so-called "scientific consensus" about vaccine safety, and rarely is any substantial scientific research referenced.  We are not told that over $4 billion dollars have been awarded to victims of vaccine injuries and deaths, including neurological disorders such as autism. This reveals the influential power that the federal health agencies have in collusion with the pharmaceutical industry's financial interests to silence opposition. This is the same strategy that got us into war with Iraq.The most common repeated mantra is that vaccines are safe and do not cause harm.  In 2000, the CDC's Verstraetan study concluded a relationship between the mercury preservative thimerosal used in most vaccines at the time with the onset of autistic disorders. CDC officials along with pharmaceutical executives and representatives from the World Health Organization and British health ministry secretly convened at the Simpsonwood retreat center near CDC headquarters in Atlanta to devise a scheme to respond to Verstraetan's disturbing findings. It was only after civil rights attorney Robert Kennedy Jr made public the Simpsonwood transcripts after filing a Freedom of Information request that we can now acknowledge the CDC acted with criminal intent. Years later, a senior scientist at the CDC, Dr. William Thompson, admitted to an independent biology professor with a vaccine-injured son, Prof. Brian Hooker, that the federal agency had been engaging in an egregious cover-up of medical evidence that the measles-mumps-rubella or MMR vaccine contributed to a higher rate of autism in African American boys and that the thimerosal-laced flu vaccine was associated with a higher incidence in neurological tics, involuntary twitches and spasms that are a defining symptom in Tourette's syndrome. Several published studies, including one authored by Dr. Thompson himself and published in a 2007 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine have shown this relationship. A subsequent 2012 study confirming the same was published in the journal Pediatric Psychology in 2012. Both of these revelations about the measles and flu vaccines were devastating enough to prompt CDC officials to gather all the scientific data for destruction. Professor Hooker notes, "Dr. Thompson attempted to warn the CDC Director at the time, Dr. Julie Gerberding, regarding this relationship, prior to a February 2004 Institute of Medicine meeting on vaccines and autism. Rather than allowing Dr. Thompson to present the information at this meeting, Dr. Gerberding replaced him as a speaker with Dr. Frank DeStefano, current director of the CDC’s Immunization Safety Office, where he presented fraudulent results regarding the MMR vaccine and autism. Dr. Thompson was put on administrative leave and was threatened that he would be fired due to “insubordination.”Dr. Thompson withheld copies of the incriminating documents, which were later provided to Prof. Hooker and Representative Bill Posey who has championed the cause of freedom for medical choice regarding vaccination. It is estimated that Thompson released 10,000 documents.  Despite efforts to have Dr. Thompson to testify before Congress, all attempts have been thwarted by the CDC.  The myth of vaccine safety today clearly trumps the health of the nation, and in the meantime serious childhood neurological disorders increase dramatically, and our federal officials scramble to find answers everywhere other than 50 vaccine doses children receive before the age of six. Certainly, all of these immunizations, which contain genetically altered live or inactivated bacteria and viruses, toxic chemicals such as formaldehyde, preservatives, heavy metals like aluminum, antibiotics and human, animal and insect DNA and RNA cannot be injected into a child without medical risks, either known and unknown. Frankly it is ethically irresponsible to blindly believe such a toxic stew is completely safe to inject into a young developing child. Our federal health agencies have yet to conduct or fund definitive studies with legitimate methodology to determine once and for all individual vaccine safety and whether or not vaccines as exogenous factors are contributing to the onslaught of illnesses ravishing the nation's children. Worse, history of the pharmaceutical industry's vaccine clinical trials is non-existent of viable gold-standard double-blind studies with a legitimate inert placebo. Yet this is exactly what a recent editorial in Scientific American's June 24th issue wants readers to believe.  The article, "The US Needs to Tighten Vaccination Mandates," states, "[T]here isn’t an iota of doubt that vaccines are a safe and effective way to prevent many diseases."  No scientific evidence whatsoever to raise doubt? Despite a Supreme Court ruling that vaccines are "unavoidably unsafe?"  Perhaps more disconcerting is that the essay was written by the magazine's "Editors," meaning this is now Scientific American's official policy statement regarding vaccination rather than being the opinion of a single author. In effect, the magazine is telling its readers that it stands firmly behind the CDC propaganda machine and we should never expect to see any scientific evidence that challenges the magazine's vaccine dogma within its pages. This is one example for why on certain subjects Scientific American has become less scientific in recent years. The effort to silence all vaccine criticism, including attacking reputable scientists, physicians, and attorneys such as Kennedy who defend the rights of vaccine-injured children has been full throttle on Google, Facebook, Twitter and Wikipedia.  The article repeats many of the CDC's lead talking points to promote a medical regime that will eventually enforce mandatory vaccination upon the nation, thereby making state laws ineffective.  The magazine editors' key points are: Unvaccinated children and their parents are to be blamed for recent infectious disease epidemics, notably the 2019 measles outbreaks; Unvaccinated persons and those who oppose vaccine mandates are a national threat to public health; The nation must achieve herd immunity in order to once and for all eradicate infectious diseases; Herd immunity can only be reached by full compliance to the CDC's vaccination schedule and religious and philosophical exemptions are an obstacle for reaching this goal; The internet is the main source for the proliferation of information that questions vaccine efficacy and safety; Dr. Andrew Wakefield, a former gastroenterological researcher at the Royal Hospital in London, is largely to be blamed for the increase in vaccine hesitancy. Behind these messages, the Scientific American is softly advocating widespread censorship of information that questions vaccine safety. This would have to include numerous peer-reviewed  studies and analyses that show vaccines in fact cause a large variety of mental and physical adverse effects, and the biological pathways behind the cause of these injuries are known. If vaccine opponents can be silenced or blacklisted from search engines and social media, then the public would never know about the scientific literature that exposes vaccines' flaws and a mythic herd immunity can be reached unimpeded. The medical and immunological research that uncovers vaccine injury causation would be buried in obscurity because no pro-vaccine advocate who agrees with the Scientific American's official policy would ever reference them.  It is therefore inconceivable that the Scientific American and numerous other popular publications and the major media networks that are fully beholden to the CDC and the drug industry would print new research challenging politically correct claims about vaccine safety. This is one reason why the anti-vaccination community is so essential at this time to keep the public debate on vaccine efficacy and safety alive and to prevent a national vaccination mandate being implemented and based upon biased and unsound scientific findings. It has only been through the diligent motivations of vaccine truth seekers, who perform exhaustive research in the scientific literature, that an alternative vaccine story reaches public light.  Readers are encouraged to visit any of the leading anti-vaccine websites and read the articles in the archives that consistently analyze, and reference very specific peer-reviewed studies buried in the esoteric world of medical literature that raises serious concerns about the medical establishment's vaccination rhetoric. You will never learn about these studies by reading mainstream journals, such as Scientific American, and major news sources. The editorial revisits the old yarn to condemn Dr. Andrew Wakefield in the typical fashion of misrepresenting the facts of both the court case and his research in the medical journal The Lancet. On no occasion during the lead up to his being discredited by the British court did Dr. Wakefield make the claim that the measles vaccine caused autism in any of the children enrolled in his research. His Lancet paper focused on gastrointestinal inflammation that is not an uncommon condition in autistic children. Wakefield's study reported on the presence of MMR's viral component embedded in the children's gut. His conclusion was that this may be the causal factor for the GI disorders in certain children on the autism spectrum scale.  However, today, with the US' latest autism rate at roughly 1 in 40 children (the state of New Jersey having the high of 1 in 34), parents of vaccine injured children are increasing dramatically. And they will seek out answers to understand why their children are damaged. This is a crisis our federal health agencies are criminally ignoring. However, any qualified reporter or journal editor could have determined that Dr. Wakefield was only one among a team of scientists, and none had stated the MMR caused autism but recommended further research be performed. Collectively, The Lancet paper's authors had published numerous papers earlier and were all vaccine advocates. The paper was retracted and the two lead authors, Dr. Wakefield and his superior Dr. John Walker Smith, were subsequently charged with scientific fraud and had their medical licenses revoked. Dr. Walker-Smith appealed, and the highest British court exonerated him and stated its disapproval the British medical board's behavior and the court ruling. The court's ruling in effect said that the entire case against Wakefield was unfounded. And yet today, Scientific American clearly did not get the message. The irony is that Dr. Wakefield's research is rarely mentioned or referenced any longer within the anti-vaccination community. That was an earlier generation. Yet the corporate friendly media continues to highlight it repeatedly as central to its arsenal of propagandist fodder. The new generation of parents with vaccine-injured children is far savvier and more educated; they mine the body of scientific literature incessantly. They know far more about vaccine ingredients and their toxicological properties than their pediatricians and primary doctors. If an honest public debate on vaccine safety were to be held, many of these parents would turn the Scientific American's pro-vaccine editors into biased amateurs. They have independent science, uncontaminated with conflicts of interest, on their side.  If the CDC and other federal agencies want to know why anti-vaccine sentiments continue to grow and are unswerving, here is the answer. There is a large body of science that validates their early experiences and suspicions after their healthy child changed for the worse after receiving a vaccine or multiple vaccines.  This is a reason why you will rarely, if ever, see or hear a leading pro-vaccine advocate such as Dr Paul Offit at Children’s' Hospital of Philadelphia participate in an honest public debate about the pros and cons found in the scientific literature. Pro-vaccine advocates are strongest and most effective while tucked away in their institutional and media citadels that remove them from the pubic commons.  Their primary strategy is denialism. In short, pro-vaccine advocacy is a culture of unscientific cowardice and breeds the same. And Scientific American's editors should be shamed for its irrational treatment of the subject.It  may also be noted that the Scientific American's Chief Editor Mariette DiChristina has some relationships that raise serious questions about her scientific objectivity. She has been lauded praise by the small medical cult of radicalized, militant Skeptics in the Science Based Medicine group for promptly taking charge to discredit a story in the magazine's Brazilian issue that was favorable towards agricultural homeopathy.  As the magazine's Chief Editor, she is on record for stating that homeopathy is a "pseudoscience", a common term used by followers of Skeptical medical materialism to denounce non-conventional medical theories and therapeutic practices. She is also favorable towards the Gates Foundation, the world's wealthiest and most aggressive philanthropic funder of vaccine research and development and for founding vaccination programs in developing countries. This year DiChristina attended the World Economic Forum in Davos and interviewed the Foundation's president of global health, Trevor Mundel, about the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), the largest international endeavor of its kind to create vaccine platforms for rapid responses to infectious disease outbreaks.  Another managing editor for the magazine, Curtis Brainard, has written articles to demonize Dr. Wakefield for spearheading anti-MMR frenzy. If we were to peak into the minds of Scientific American's editors, we might discover a dangerous world view that embraces scientific materialism, and the ideology that humans are nothing but machines. Human society is no different than a corral of cattle, all undergoing the same medication regime before going to slaughter. The editors write, "we need to consider the needs of the herd over the individual." We believe this statement would find a home in fascism, and it hearkens to Nobel Prize winner Bertrand Russell's warnings about scientific materialism's threats to civilization and democracy.  By suppressing the scientific data that warns us about vaccine risks, the magazine's editors are either intentionally or unknowingly supporting the creation a doctrinal medical regime that will deprive citizens of any right to medical interventions of their choice.  Later, if and when such a regime is nationally operative and enforced, it is predicable that the journal's editors may also advocate for fines for liability damages during infection outbreaks and even imprisonment. Similar recommendations have already been made by the rabid pro-vaccine advocate Arthur Caplan, a professor of Medical Ethics at New York University's School of Medicine and an adviser to the US Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency on synthetic biology. In a worse scenario, we could witness Gestapo-like forced vaccination of children at their homes or schools against their parents' will. Would the editors of Scientific American stand by and support such draconian measures? This is not a scientific question; it is a deeply moral one, especially when there are other viable preventative means to protect oneself from infectious diseases that do not require a vaccine. But for those who have buried their heads in the black hole of medical materialism they are unable to recognize nor evaluate the alternatives. 

Sin Hang Lee, M.D. is a graduate from Wuhan Medical College in China. After completing his residencyat Cornell-New York Hospital and Memorial Hospital for Cancer, Dr. Lee was certified by the American Board of Pathology and obtained his FRCP degree. Between 1968 and 2004, he taught on the pathology faculties of McGill University in Montreal and Yale University from 1968-2004 while serving as a pathologist at hospitals.  Dr. Lee is currently the director of Milford Molecular Diagnostics in Milford, Connecticut. He developed the Sanger genetic sequencing-based testing methods for HPV, gonorrhoeae, Chlamydia trachomatis, Lyme disease borreliae and Ebola virus implementable in community hospitals. In recent years, Dr. Lee has been addressing the genetic and ingredient anomalies over the health risks and safety factors in the HPV vaccine, notably Gardasi.  and recently received confirmatory evidence through a Freedom of Information Act that there has been a coverup about the vaccine’s dangers among high ranking medical officials.  

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The Gary Null Show is here to inform you on the best news in health, healing, the environment. Part 1 - Environmentalists have long promoted renewable energy sources like solar panels and wind farms to save the climate. But what about when those technologies destroy the environment? In this provocative talk, Time Magazine “Hero of the Environment” and energy expert, Michael Shellenberger explains why solar and wind farms require so much land for mining and energy production, and an alternative path to saving both the climate and the natural environment. Michael Shellenberger is a Time Magazine Hero of the Environment and President of Environmental Progress, a research and policy organization. A lifelong environmentalist, Michael changed his mind about nuclear energy and has helped save enough nuclear reactors to prevent an increase in carbon emissions equivalent to adding more than 10 million cars to the road. He lives in Berkeley, California. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community       Part 2 - This “Enviro Close-Up with Karl Grossman” demolishes the hoax that nuclear power is green. The program features actor Alec Baldwin who has long challenged nuclear power; former U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission chairman Gregory Jaczko who declares that nuclear power “is not the right way forward” and not “a solution to climate change;” Joseph Mangano, executive director of the Radiation and Public Health Project, who tells of releases to the environment by nuclear power; attorney Susan H. Shapiro now in court taking on the $7.6 billion New York State bail-out of nuclear plants based on the no-emissions claim—a bail-out being imitated by other states; Dr. Mark Cooper of the Vermont School of Law who says continuing with nuclear power “will delay the transition to a clean energy future:’ New York State Assemblywoman Ellen Jaffee who blasts the $7.6 billion bail-out; and Dr. Mark Z. Jacobson, energy analyst at Stanford University who emphasizes how “nuclear is not zero carbon at all." The program was filmed at a New York City conference organized by the Radiation and Public Health Project.