"The currency of the future will be relationships of trust." – Dr. med. Andreas Heisler, President of Swiss-based independent medical and health network ALETHEIA
Hey Hive community,
A democratic culture can be defined as one that invites open dialogue of different views, promotes transparency, and builds trust. Yet trust in American media and public institutions is currently at an all-time low. In response, people all over the world are reviving the common good by exposing important information that protects people and the environment from private exploitation.
A few weeks ago, I had the meaningful opportunity to attend Rise and Resist, the annual Children's Health Defense (CHD) conference in Savannah, Georgia. For 3 days, courageous thought leaders and whistleblowers within science, law, medicine, and technology came to speak on important issues shaping our lives: medical and government corruption, vaccine injured families and children, chronic health epidemics, environmental toxins, food system solutions, media censorship, and the financial system crisis.
The ability to talk openly about these issues is a healthy sign of critical thinking and collective problem-solving. Yet unfortunately, they have had very little coverage in the mainstream press. To MSN News and NBC News, the event was labeled as an anti-vax conference and mainly focused on one aspect of the conference: CHD founder and presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr.'s speech and his "grim comments to strangers." The conference was nothing like how these news articles were painting it to be.
Mainstream media coverage of the event was obviously biased. The issues that were foregrounded threaten official narratives, and they expose harmful agendas of those in power. When much of the mainstream media landscape is controlled by a handful of powerful elites, the narratives that dominate the airwaves tend to be in service of commercial interests. Public discourse has to be narrowed and manipulated, to prevent large-scale inquiry into these corruptions that these corporate elites benefit from.
Here's what actually happened at the conference, and why it matters.
The weekend was rich of legal and scientific panel discussions, peer-reviewed and evidence-based science, powerful human stories, film screenings, successful CHD litigation cases revealing undeniable corporate and government harm, and cutting-edge thoughts about the future of healthcare and science. A whole area was dedicated to nonprofit organizations and conscious businesses sharing important resources, services, and products for healthy living and activism.
Overall, there was an intellectual sophistication and a cultural, generational diversity that transcended partisan politics. Many people I met at the conference were physicians, university professors, molecular biologists, pediatricians, farmers, special education teachers, and other politically progressive people who had been personally harmed by the pharmaceutical industry. In no shape or form did I get any whiff of the stereotypes associated with these issues, like white supremacy ideology or tin foil hat conspiracy theories.
What brought us all together is the sobering recognition that our society is deeply sick, and we need to do something real about it. The US spends the most on health care but has the worst health outcomes among high-income countries. More than half of children now have chronic health conditions. 1 in 6 kids lives with a developmental disorder and 1 in 30 children have autism. Meanwhile, 1 in 10 kids will be diagnosed with ADHD and 1 in 12 kids will experience asthma. As a former educator that ran a wellness center and mentored all types of youth from elementary to high school ages, I can attest to the alarming rates of illness in our youth. This should be making headlines. Why is this not being thoroughly investigated?
Rise and Resist was not just about vaccine harms. The conference offered a multifactorial approach to understanding root causes of chronic illness and disease, especially in children. Toxic chemicals in our food are linked to cancer, severe depression, and cognitive decline. When journalists and scientists speak the truth about what's in our food, they're discredited and targeted. With the proliferation of cell towers and tech devices, we are now being exposed to unprecedented levels of untested wireless radiation exposure. Countless studies and news articles reveal the link between wireless radiation and cancer, declined sperm quality, and increased miscarriage rates.
At the heart of these harms are powerful, corporate entities: Big Pharma, Big Tech, Big Telecom, and Big Ag/Big Food. By relentlessly pursuing profits from the technologies, medicines, and genetically modified foods they produce, these entities also downplay the significant risks these products have on human and environmental health.
Scientific literature is heavily manipulated to serve Big Pharma interests. America's opioid industry operated like a drug cartel, reaping billions in profits while Americans suffered the cost. The shapers of US food and nutrition policies receive millions from ultra-processed food companies responsible for contributing to diabetes, heart disease, and obesity. The FCC shields cell phone companies from valid wireless radiation safety concerns.
As renowned British cardiologist, and evidence-based medicine expert Dr. Aseem Malhotra stated at the conference, these corporate forces are the enemies of democracy. They suppress free speech by deplatforming, smearing, and censoring experts who share information that dissents from the official narrative–even if the information is factual . Meanwhile, we're swimming in a toxic soup and our government leaders are failing to appropriately address these public health challenges. Is it any wonder that about 80% of the population will be hospitalized or receive psychiatric drugs for mental health illness?
Understanding the revolving door between private and public sectors is crucial to understanding why big corporations have completely captured the very government agencies designated to regulate them.
Vaccines are not separate from the harmful reality of captured agencies that prioritize profits over people.
Globally, the vaccine industry is on track to more than double its worldwide revenues by 2024—from $32.5 billion in 2015 to a projected $77 billion. An excellent, free eBook by Children's Health Defense thoroughly investigates the ins and outs of the childhood vaccine schedule, including the conflicts of interest driving U.S. vaccination programs. The book also reveals how public health officials covered up and censored evidence linking vaccines to autism , autoimmune issues, and other negative health impacts. Vax-Unvax: Let The Science Speak is a recent book by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and CHD Chief Scientific Officer Brian Hooker. In the book, they compiled over 100 vaccinated-unvaccinated studies comparing health outcomes in both populations. These studies are indexed in PubMed, the National Library of Medicine's vast database of biomedical scholarly research. Interestingly enough, the studies reveal significant increases in office visits and chronic illness among vaccinated children, compared to youth who were not vaccinated.
In May of 2017, RFK Jr., vaccine safety activist Del Bigtree, civil rights attorney Aaron Siri, and registered nurse Lyn Redwood met with former NIH director Francis Collins and former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the health comparisons between vaccinated and unvaccinated children. The NIH and CDC could not produce any studies comparing vax-unvax studies. Read more about the shocking lack of government data on childhood vaccine safety studies.
During the COVID pandemic, perhaps no phrase had been used with greater persistence by government officials and agencies during the last few years than "the COVID vaccine is safe and effective." Yet now that some time has passed, there is clear evidence showing the contrary.
Rigorous studies and recent lawsuits indicate that vaccines have undisclosed safety risks. Current and former FDA advisers and academics recently asked the FDA to make critical changes to official COVID vaccine product labels, citing a range of significant adverse events and injuries post vaccination. Four months later, the agency denied almost every request.
Twenty-year research veteran Brook Jackson was the director of Ventavia Research Group working for Pfizer during the COVID pandemic. She blew the whistle on "poor lab management, patient safety concerns, and data integrity issues" at her site. After Ventavia-Pfizer failed to address these concerns, she emailed the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), a list of a "dozen concerns she had witnessed," including: Protocol deviations not being reported; lack of timely follow-up of patients who experienced adverse events, mislabeled laboratory specimens, and the targeting of staff for who reported these problems." Jackson was fired that same day. A short time later, the FDA gave Pfizer's emergency authorization for its vaccine to be used publicly. Despite Jackson's claims, the FDA only visited 9 of the 153 Pfizer trial sites, before giving Pfizer full approval for its vaccine.
Meanwhile, vaccine injuries are not as rare as we're told. The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is a voluntary government reporting system that only captures a portion of the actual injuries. Vaccine adverse event numbers are made publically available, and currently show 2,543,974 COVID vaccine injury reports, 36,501 COVID Vaccine Reported Deaths, and 211,257 COVID Vaccine Reported Hospitalizations.
The Children's Health Defense bus traveled over 50,000 miles in the US and around the world to document countless stories of those impacted by devastating vaccine injuries. Many of these families had healthy children until they received one (or more) of the vaccines on the childhood vaccine schedule. In the excellent documentary VAXXED II: The People's Truth, these stories of everyday American people are finally heard and seen. The film also features doctors and scientists who admit that they are not even trained to understand (or even know of) vaccine injuries.
Another excellent documentary, Anecdotals, follows the lives of many people who stepped up to get the COVID vaccine for themselves or the greater good, yet whose lives changed drastically as a result. Instead of having their stories heard and seen, they were discredited and abandoned by the medical system and our media systems.
You would think there is accountability and justice for all of the harms that people suffered as a result of getting vaccinated. Yet at the conference, we discussed the political and legal barriers. In 1986, Congress passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA), giving pharmaceutical companies blanket immunity from liability for injuries resulting from childhood vaccines. During the pandemic, a little-known federal agency called BARDA, or Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, was responsible for conducting quality reviews of every COVID vaccine administered in the U.S. According to Sasha Latypova, a former pharmaceutical industry executive who now specializes in pharmaceutical fraud, "Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission disclosures show the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) and BARDA contracts with the pharmaceutical companies were structured such that these protections weren't required."
Pharmacide: death and injury by Big Pharma corruption.
One new term I learned at the conference was pharmacide: death and injury by Big Pharma corruption. This is a word coined by CHD's new initiative, Reform Pharma. Guided by a bold and detailed 10-Point Plan, the vision is simple: restore health integrity and medical freedom. In times like these, we need solutions and ideas to bring forth a society of healthy and empowered people.
And as CHD President Mary Holland said during the conference, we all have a need to trust authority figures. However, our authority figures have been compromised. Government censorship is a tool to hide exploitation and injustice. The suppression of dissent creates the "illusion of consensus" in medicine, leading to a society that unquestioningly trusts official narratives at the expense of countless injuries and deaths. What gives Big Government, Tech, and Pharma the right to censor and ridicule information that opposes their interests? Why do we give so much power to these institutions to the point where they can stifle free speech? What are we to do about what some consider "misinformation" today, but not on examination later?
If there is any risk to these medicines and vaccines, there must be choice and informed consent–not harsh mandates, censorship, medical gaslighting, and cancel culture. The silencing of alternative narratives weakens our collective muscles to collaborate and solve problems across our differences. Access to the open flow of information opens up the doors for effective participatory action and public forums of open and fair debate. As Malhotra eloquently stated in his presentation, there's a collective intuitive intelligence that emerges when people speak the truth. Yet the truth must be evidence-based, clear, concrete, and placed in the context of what we care about.
When Malhotra asked us to raise our hand if we knew someone who died or was severely injured by a vaccine, I looked around to see almost every hand raised in the large crowd of hundreds of people. People had tears in their eyes, as we took a moment of silence. Feeling this together was a profound reminder that we are not alone. The thread of humanity connects us all.
Conference attendees had the opportunity to watch a special film screening of Protocol 7, a new drama-thriller film by physician and filmmaker Andy Wakefield that is set to be released next year. The film is based on true stories, centering around a small-town lawyer who confronts corporate pharmaceutical fraud when her adopted son is severely injured by the MMR vaccine. It was a poignant and emotionally stirring film that left the whole audience standing in ovation.
During the Q&A after the film, the lead actress Rachel Whittle shared her courageous process of taking on this role. She knew that choosing to be in this film would impact her ability to attract other acting opportunities, due to the controversial nature of vaccine issues. Yet I'll never forget what she said with tears flowing down her face. "How would I feel about myself if I knew about these harms… and didn't do anything about it?"
I left Rise and Resist feeling deeply inspired by the collective goodness in the room. You could feel an energy of possibility, strength, and hope in the air. So many of us were touched by the stunning courage of the people that spoke at the conference. In the eyes of the mainstream press (and Wikipedia), these people are villains and "anti-vaxxers." They represent a massive threat to establishment, commercial interests. These people have lost their jobs, medical licenses, and credibility. Yet they have not lost their heart, and their commitment to saving lives through science, advocacy, and litigation.
In the words of Holland during the closing session of Rise and Resist, people are waking up and the truth will come out. We will carry this movement for everyone until they can carry it for themselves. Thank you, Children’s Health Defense, for putting on such a galvanizing event.