South Carolina ‘heartbeat’ bill upheld by top state court

 

The top court in South Carolina upheld the state’s “heartbeat” abortion law on Wednesday, saying there is no right to an abortion as part of the state’s constitutional right to privacy.

The legislation, which was signed into law earlier this spring by Gov. Henry McMaster (R), bans abortions after an ultrasound detects cardiac activity, which is usually at about six weeks — before many women know they’re pregnant.   The law contains exceptions for the life and health of the mother, as well as for medical emergencies and fatal fetal anomalies, and allows abortions before 12 weeks in cases of rape and incest, so long as there is a report to law enforcement.   The court ruled 4-1, with Chief Justice Donald Beatty as the lone dissenter.   The court struck down a nearly identical version of the law in January, ruling it violated South Carolina’s constitutional right to privacy. But that 3-2 opinion was written by Justice Kaye Hearn, the court’s only woman. Hearn was replaced after reaching mandatory retirement age, locking in an all-male court.   Writing for the majority, Justice John Kittredge said that this year’s law was “materially different” than the 2021 version.   “The legislature has made a policy determination that …  a woman’s interest in autonomy and privacy does not outweigh the interest of the unborn child to live,” Kittredge wrote. “We cannot say as a matter of law that the 2023 Act is unreasonable and thus violates the state constitution.”    Abortion rights groups said the ruling will have devastating effects across the entire south, where South Carolina had been a surprising lifeline for abortion access.     While other southern states banned or severely restricted abortion, disagreements in the legislature over how strict the law should be led to an impasse, so abortion remained legal up to about 20 weeks after fertilization.   Catherine Humphreville, an attorney with Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said the group is seeking clarity from the court to confirm whether the ban took effect right away. Still, providers in South Carolina have already been forced to stop services for patients who are more than six weeks pregnant.   “This is already causing chaos and confusion throughout the state,” Humphreville told reporters Wednesday. https://thehill.com/newsletters/health-care/4167753-heartbeat-law-upheld-in-south-carolina/

How cancer rewires a key immune pathway to spread

 A study led by researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) and Weill Cornell Medicine discovered a new relationship between cancer cells and the immune system, and shows how cancer can selfishly hijack a normally helpful immune pathway.

Usually, activation of this key immune pathway -- called the STING pathway -- triggers a strong inflammatory response that protects the body from foreign and unhealthy cells. But prolonged activation of the same pathway leads to a desensitization and ultimately to a "rewiring" of cellular signaling, which aids and abets cancer's spread, the researchers found.

"You might think of it like a car alarm," says Samuel Bakhoum, MD, PhD, a researcher and radiation oncologist at MSK, and one of the study's two senior authors. "If it goes off rarely, that's going to get your attention. But if it's going off all the time, you're going to get used to it and tune it out."

The findings, which were published in Nature on August. 23, help explain why drugs to activate STING (known as STING agonists) have been unsuccessful in clinical trials in patients with advanced cancer, and suggest, counterintuitively, that many patients may actually benefit from drugs that block STING activation (STING inhibitors).

"There's been millions of dollars invested in drugs that activate the STING pathway to fight cancer, and so far in clinical trials, they have not shown significant anti-cancer efficacy," Dr. Bakhoum says. "In the lab, these drugs held a lot of promise -- but in one trial of 47 patients, there were only two whose cancers even showed a partial response. In another trial of more than 100 patients that combined STING agonists with another immunotherapy, the overall response rate was 10%. So the question driving this research was, 'Why don't they work despite such promise in the preclinical setting?'"

The team's discoveries were made possible through the development of an innovative computational tool in the lab of the study's other senior author, Ashley Laughney, PhD, an assistant professor of physiology and biophysics and member of the Institute for Computational Biomedicine at Weill Cornell Medicine. Dubbed ContactTracing, the approach predicts cell-to-cell interactions and also examines how different cells respond to stimuli in growing tumors. By mapping interactions into a mandala-like pattern, the tool revealed that the long-term activation of the STING pathway leads to changes in cellular signaling that attracts cells that suppress the immune response to the area in and around the tumor.

"This isn't just another tool to document whether cell type A might interact with cell type B," says Dr. Laughney, who is also a member of the Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center at Weill Cornell Medicine. "We're looking at whether and how these interactions actually affect the cell receiving the signal."

The study was led by a team of four co-first authors from the Bakhoum and Laughney laboratories: postdoctoral fellow Jun Li, PhD, and senior research technician Mercedes Duran, MS, from the Bakhoum Lab; and computational scientist Melissa Hubisz, PhD, and Tri-Institutional Computational Biology and Medicine graduate student Ethan Earlie, MS, from the Laughney Lab.

When Cell Division Goes Haywire

Central to the research is a phenomenon known as chromosomal instability.

"It's a feature of cancer, especially advanced cancers, where the normal process of cell division goes haywire," says Dr. Bakhoum, whose lab is part of the Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program at MSK.

If the chromosomes are the instruction manual for the body, it's like having some cells that wind up with a lot of duplicated and/or missing pages, he explains.

"We knew that chromosomal instability is an important driver of cancer's ability to spread, otherwise known as metastasis," Dr. Bakhoum says. "What we discovered here is that the immune system plays a central role in this process."

Cooperation Between Cancer Cells and the Immune System Is Driven by STING

A previous collaboration between researchers at MSK and Weill Cornell Medicine, which was also published in Nature, showed the complex chain of events triggered by chromosomal instability leads to changes in cells that drive cancer metastasis.

"That study was done in partially immune-compromised mice," Dr. Bakhoum says. "So it was really neither here nor there in terms of understanding the role of the immune system."

To figure out the immune system's role, the new study used mouse models of cancer that either had fully functional immune systems or greatly weakened immune systems. It also looked at tumor cells with both high and low levels of chromosomal instability, as well as cells missing the STING1 gene, which makes a protein called STING, that activates an inflammatory response when it detects foreign DNA molecules in the cytoplasm.

"What we found was that the effect was largely dependent on the immune system," Dr. Bakhoum says. "Basically, there is sinister cooperation between cancer cells with chromosomal instability and immune cells -- and that cooperation is driven by STING."

The results from mouse models of cancer were then validated in healthy cells and tumor samples from human patients.

For example, the researchers treated a simple type of cell, known as a fibroblast, with a STING agonist -- the foundation for the drugs developed for human patients -- and observed a strong initial immune response.

"But by day five, you have basically no immune response left," Dr. Bakhoum says. "The cells became desensitized to this pro-inflammatory pathway very quickly -- mirroring the response we saw in the cancer cells. Instead, the cells started to signal stress response pathways that dampened the immune response, thus having the opposite effect."

Digging Into Complex Cell-to-Cell Interactions

The scientists used a technique called single-cell sequencing to understand all the different cellular players in and around a tumor (also called the tumor microenvironment). The technique allows for the detailed analysis of all the many types of cells involved -- such as macrophages, T cells, B cells, neutrophils, and tumor cells -- and the ligands and receptors they express. Notably, to communicate, cells typically emit ligands that bind to complementary receptors on the surface of target cells, thereby triggering a change in the behavior of the target cell. While most methods predict cell-to-cell interactions based on just the mutual expression of complementary ligand-receptor pairs, the research team focused on whether their interaction actually changes the cell receiving the signal.

"One of our most important findings was that altering the level of chromosomal instability or the activation of STING dramatically changes responses in the environment in and around the tumor," Dr. Laughney says.

And to understand those impactful interactions between the cancer cells and different immune cells, the researchers developed ContactTracing. By design, the tool exploits the variability of real-world biology without the need for prior knowledge.

The method is based on the simple premise that in a given tumor, there is inherent biological diversity -- not every cancer cell is going to secrete the same binding molecule, or ligand. And not every immune cell is going to express the right receptor for that ligand, Dr. Laughney explains.

So, by comparing cells that are interacting to ones that aren't, the tool gives scientists a clearer picture of what exactly is changed by the interaction between the two.

"When you look at the effects that elicit a response in the cancer microenvironment, all the ligands on those chromosomally unstable cancer cells were associated with a specific cellular stress response -- one that happens to involve STING," she says.

And when the same interactions were examined in the context of low chromosomal instability or where STING had been depleted from cancer cells, they trigger a different response -- a strong immune response that attacked the cancer cells.

The new ContactTracing method could also help illuminate other areas of biology and disease where cell-to-cell interactions are critical, Dr. Laughney notes.

Findings Suggest Therapeutic Opportunities

The findings from the study suggest an opportunity to improve treatments for the many patients with advanced cancer driven by chromosomal instability, Dr. Bakhoum says.

"It appears the reason activating STING in these patients isn't very effective is that most patients' cells are already desensitized to it due to the persistent activation of the pathway from chromosomal instability," he says. "Counterintuitively, these patients may actually benefit from STING inhibition."

Treatment of study mice with STING inhibitors reduced chromosomal instability-driven metastasis in melanoma, breast, and colorectal cancer models.

Additionally, by identifying the subset of patients whose tumors can still mount a strong response to STING activation, doctors could select better candidates for STING agonists, Dr. Bakhoum says.

Journal Reference:

1. Jun Li, Melissa J. Hubisz, Ethan M. Earlie, Mercedes A. Duran, Christy Hong, Austin A. Varela, Emanuele Lettera, Matthew Deyell, Bernardo Tavora, Jonathan J. Havel, Su M. Phyu, Amit Dipak Amin, Karolina Budre, Erina Kamiya, Julie-Ann Cavallo, Christopher Garris, Simon Powell, Jorge S. Reis-Filho, Hannah Wen, Sarah Bettigole, Atif J. Khan, Benjamin Izar, Eileen E. Parkes, Ashley M. Laughney, Samuel F. Bakhoum. Non-cell-autonomous cancer progression from chromosomal instability. Nature, 2023; DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06464-z

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/08/230823122523.htm

Sedentary time in children linked with heart damage in young adulthood

 Hours of inactivity during childhood could be setting the stage for heart attacks and strokes later in life, according to research presented at ESC Congress 2023.1 The study found that sedentary time accumulated from childhood to young adulthood was associated with heart damage -- even in those with normal weight and blood pressure.

"All those hours of screen time in young people add up to a heavier heart, which we know from studies in adults raises the likelihood of heart attack and stroke,"2 said study author Dr. Andrew Agbaje of the University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio, Finland. "Children and teenagers need to move more to protect their long-term health."

This was the first study to investigate the cumulative effect of smartwatch-assessed sedentary time in young people and cardiac damage later in life. It was conducted as part of the Children of the 90s study, which began in 1990/1991 and is one of the world's largest cohorts with lifestyle measurements from birth.3

At 11 years of age, children wore a smartwatch with an activity tracker for seven days. This was repeated at 15 years of age and again at 24 years of age. The weight of the heart's left ventricle was assessed by echocardiography, a type of ultrasound scan, at 17 and 24 years of age and reported in grams relative to height (g/m2.7). The researchers analysed the association between sedentary time between 11 and 24 years of age and heart measurements between 17 and 24 years of age after adjusting for factors that could influence the relationship including age, sex, blood pressure, body fat, smoking, physical activity and socioeconomic status.

The study included 766 children, of whom 55% were girls and 45% were boys. At 11 years of age, children were sedentary for an average of 362 minutes a day, rising to 474 minutes a day in adolescence (15 years of age), and 531 minutes a day in young adulthood (24 years of age). This means that sedentary time increased by an average of 169 minutes (2.8 hours) a day between childhood and young adulthood.

Each one-minute increase in sedentary time from 11 to 24 years of age was associated with a 0.004 g/m2.7 increase in left ventricular mass between 17 to 24 years of age. When multiplied by 169 minutes of additional inactivity this equates to a 0.7 g/m2.7 daily rise -- the equivalent of a 3 gram increase in left ventricular mass between echocardiography measurements at the average height gain. A previous study in adults found that a similar increase in left ventricular mass (1 g/m2.7) over a seven-year period was associated with a two-fold increased risk of heart disease, stroke, and death.4

Dr. Agbaje said: "Children were sedentary for more than six hours a day and this increased by nearly three hours a day by the time they reached young adulthood. Our study indicates that the accumulation of inactive time is related to heart damage regardless of body weight and blood pressure. Parents should encourage children and teenagers to move more by taking them out for a walk and limiting time spent on social media and video games. As Martin Luther King Jr. once said, 'If you can't fly, run. If you can't run, walk. If you can't walk, crawl. But by all means keep moving.'"

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/08/230823122511.htm

Medicaid’s Dark Money

 A bipartisan group of 51 senators recently called for Congress to cancel an impending $8 billion cut to federal Medicaid allotments for “uncompensated” hospital care. No limit currently exists on the federal matching funds that states can claim to provide Medicaid benefits to eligible beneficiaries. The $8 billion cut would only trim the degree to which states can steer Medicaid funds away from the program’s covered benefits—often for purposes which Congress has specifically prohibited.

When Congress enacted Medicare in 1965 to provide health care for elderly Americans, it also established Medicaid, which gives states funds to provide health care to low-income Americans. For every $1 that states spent on health care for most eligible beneficiaries, the federal government gave them between $1 and $3—an enormously generous proposition, which all states were eager to exploit.

The federal government initially allowed hospitals to claim repayment for whatever broadly defined costs they incurred treating Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries. Expenses surged. In the early 1980s, Congress responded by establishing specific Medicare fees for each hospital procedure and allowed states to set their own fees for hospitals to treat Medicaid patients.

Hospitals in low-income neighborhoods serving mostly Medicaid or uninsured patients struggled to cover their overhead costs by using revenues from privately insured patients, so Congress allowed states to claim additional federal matching funds as a lump sum to subsidize such “Disproportionate Share Hospitals” (DSH). In the early 1990s, states realized that the absence of a direct link between the ability to obtain matching funds and the obligation to deliver services gave them an opportunity to claim a windfall in federal funds. States would artificially inflate DSH costs by imposing taxes on hospitals, which would receive kickbacks for participating in the scam. DSH spending surged from $1 billion in 1990 to $17 billion in 1992, before Congress capped the funds that each state could claim. This entrenched an essentially arbitrary distribution of federal aid: in 2023, New Hampshire received $2,123 in DSH grants per poor resident; Wyoming, only $4.

After DSH allotments were capped, a similar supplemental supplemental-payment scheme was soon devised, whereby states that set base Medicaid fees for hospitals below Medicare rates could claim the difference as lump-sum grants. These “upper payment limit” federal funds could then be distributed to select hospitals to use for discretionary purposes, rather than in return for specific Medicaid-covered services. Hospitals then complained that they were underpaid for Medicaid patients—justifying additional subsidies.

Federal law allows states to finance up to 60 percent of their contribution to Medicaid from local government funds. As there is a constant flow of intergovernmental transfers between states, cities, and counties for various purposes, publicly owned hospitals are well suited to exploiting these rules by manipulating funding streams. Hospitals in New York, for example, receive more in Medicaid supplemental payments than those in any other state, and New York City’s municipal Health + Hospitals system has become particularly dependent on them. Medicaid supplemental payments accounted for 31 percent of all H+H revenues in 2016—a big deal for a system operating at an 8 percent loss.

Health + Hospitals runs 11 acute-care hospitals and 70 Community Health Centers, with a mission of delivering care to the city’s underserved and uninsured “regardless of race, immigration status, or ability to pay.” It treats 15 percent of Manhattan’s hospitalized patients but 72 percent of its uninsured. H+H delivers few lucrative surgical procedures to privately insured patients but provides the bulk of treatment for substance-abuse and psychiatric disorders.

H+H also uses its discretionary funds for an array of activities, ranging from “faith based initiatives” and “plant-based medicine” to after-school programs and housing aid, in an attempt to promote wellness and healthy living. Though federal law prohibits states from extending Medicaid benefits to even recent legal immigrants, supplemental payments have allowed H+H to deliver free health-care services to New York City’s half-million illegal immigrants. The city also uses H+H to fund health care for its jail inmates and prison staff—neither of whom are eligible for Medicaid.

Despite its supposed rationale, the bulk of Medicaid supplemental payments do not go to facilities serving low-income communities. Forty-three percent of all hospitals nationwide received DSH funds in 2017. In fact, a 2016 U.S. Government Accountability Office report concluded that “the bulk of supplemental payments to hospitals were made contingent on these hospitals or the relevant local government providing funds to finance the nonfederal share of the payments the hospitals received, rather than Medicaid services they provided.”

The 2010 Affordable Care Act sought to offset part of the cost of its insurance subsidy expansion by slashing DSH allotments. These cuts were to be concentrated on states with relatively high DSH expenditures, few uninsured residents, and weak targeting of funds at institutions providing uncompensated care—conditions that placed New York hospitals in the crosshairs for a $1.4 billion (66 percent) cut.

But Congress has repeatedly postponed the scheduled DSH cuts with broad bipartisan support, under the pretext that the ACA failed to reduce the number of uninsured as intended—with Republican legislators pointing to red states that had opted against expanding Medicaid, and Democrats eager to preserve grants that mostly went to blue states.

The hospital industry, which spent $125 million lobbying last year, has been eager to portray reduced DSH allotments as cuts to services. But in reality, the cuts would simply lead states to reallocate their DSH contributions to Medicaid base payments, which are not capped. Nothing prevents states from continuing to draw federal matching funds in return for state funds currently used for DSH, so long as they are used to pay for covered benefits.

The main consequence of allowing the scheduled cuts to take effect would therefore be to ensure that a larger proportion of Medicaid funds is reserved for eligible low-income beneficiaries, gets distributed to facilities serving such beneficiaries in a traceable manner, and is provided in return for delivering care for which the facilities can be held accountable. Medicaid dollars should be kept for Medicaid benefits, not diverted into a slush fund for states.

Chris Pope is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/medicaids-dark-money

Letitia James Threatens Schools That Ban Classroom Materials On 'Pretext' Of Obscenity, Lewdness

 by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

New guidance on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) announced by New York Attorney General Letitia James warns schools not to ban any curriculum components from classrooms on the "pretext" of obscenity or lewdness—or face the prospect of legal action.

Ms. James and New York State Education Department Commissioner Betty Rosa have jointly released guidance reminding New York public schools that they have a legal obligation to promote DEI to schoolchildren.

The guidance (pdf) warns schools not to ban certain books; not to remove curriculum components under the "pretext" that they are inappropriate, lewd, or obscene; and not to stop students who are transgender or nonbinary from using single-gender facilities or participating in programs that don't match their biological sex.

“As states such as Texas, Florida, and Missouri are banning books and canceling classes, New York is making clear that diversity, equity, and inclusion will always be protected and central to our children’s education," Ms. James said in a statement.

Parents in a number of states—with Florida and Texas being at the forefront of such efforts—have raised objections to their children being exposed to what they say are sexually inappropriate, explicit, or outright pornographic materials and have been fighting to get such materials banned.

In the guidelines, Ms. James and Ms. Rosa told schools that New York State’s Dignity for All Students Act and the New York State Human Rights Law contain anti-discrimination provisions that prohibit a district from adopting a curriculum that "excludes" people or their histories because of race, color, national origin, sexual orientation, or gender—including gender identity.

Schools could be in violation of these laws if they decide to adopt an "exclusive" curriculum on an impermissible basis (such as race or gender identity) or if the curriculum "causes or contributes to race- or gender-based harassment."

One notable example of an action that could cause a school to run afoul of the two laws is "using a pretext of inappropriateness or lewdness to systemically remove diverse perspectives from the classroom."

Another such action, according to the guidance, is prohibiting classroom discussions on issues related to "lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, nonbinary and gender expansive people, or diverse family structures and identities using a pretext of inappropriateness or obscenity."

Yet another is "prohibiting a transgender, gender expansive, or nonbinary person from using the single-gender extracurricular program or facility most closely aligned with their gender identity."

Parental Backlash

It comes as parents in schools across the country have raised objections to their children being exposed to books and classroom materials that contain sexually inappropriate or explicit material and are fighting to have such materials removed.

For example, Florida adopted a law that prohibits K–3 students from receiving any type of teaching or classroom materials that deal with sexual orientation or gender identity.

Florida Citizens Alliance, a group that has been pushing for the removal of sexually explicit materials from schools, provided a sample list of objectionable materials in its "porn in schools" report and argued that all the books listed at the very least "violate common decency for age-appropriate material and undermine Judeo-Christian and traditional family values."

"We urge parents to be extremely vigilant on what their kids are reading," the group wrote in the report.

Content that parents might find disturbing in books often found in school libraries is detailed in reports on an independent review site called BookLooks. The home page of the site reads, "Find out what objectionable content may be in your child's book before they do."

In another example of pushback against the availability of objectionable materials in schools, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill into law in June that restricts the availability of sexually themed content in public schools and affirms that parents are the main decision-makers on what materials their children are exposed to.

"Some school libraries have books with sexually explicit and vulgar materials," Mr. Abbott said at a signing ceremony on June 12. "I'm signing a law that gets that trash out of our schools."

By contrast, some organizations, such as civil liberties advocacy group PEN America, have expressed alarm over book bans, portraying moves to ban books and other classroom content as censorship and as discriminatory, and in some cases premised on a shaky legal foundation.

For example, PEN America wrote in a note that the crux of the "porn in schools" report by the Florida Citizens Alliance is the claim that the books on the list violate Florida laws because of alleged sexually explicit content, "characterized as 'indecent,' 'inappropriate,' 'pornographic,' and 'obscene.'"

"These allegations do not appear to adhere to legal definitions nor take into account relevant federal jurisprudence, resulting in a lack of foundational integrity of the report," the group argued.

PEN America stated in its Index of School Book Bans that there have been nearly 1,500 instances of book banning in schools in the first half of the 2022–2023 school year, a nearly 30 percent increase from the prior year.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/letitia-james-threatens-schools-ban-classroom-materials-pretext-obscenity-lewdness

Medical Journal Busted With Huge Conflict Of Interest Over 'Medical Misinformation' Expert

 A leading medical journal, JAMA, recently published an essay lamenting that the National Institutes of Health would be slowing awards for "misinformation research," aka, studies to justify censorship.

Written by JAMA reporter Rita Rubin, the piece cites one Dr. Richard Baron, president and CEO of the American Board of Internal Medicine.

Yet, what journalist Paul Thacker uncovered in a recent article in The Disinformation Chronicle is mind-numbingly par for the course given the propaganda we've seen from leading 'experts' over the last 3.5 years; Baron is totally conflicted.

According to Thacker, Baron has been collaborating with Pfizer and Moderna's PR firm, Weber Shandwick.

But wait, there's more!

And here comes a shocker: Richard Baron’s concern about “misinformation” was first triggered when physicians spoke out against COVID vaccine safety, efficacy, and side effects. Of course, these are the same concerns held by Weber Shandwick, who Pfizer and Moderna are paying big buck to promote their vaccines.

What a surprise.

...

Now that I’ve explained what Richard Baron views as “misinformation” let me explain what Weber Shandwick views as “medicine.” Some years back, Weber Shandwick was caught aiding Forest Pharmaceuticals in their illegal promotion of Celexa for treating children and adolescents suffering from depression. Forest later pleaded guilty and paid $313 million in 2010 to resolve this with the Department of Justice.

-The Disinformation Chronicle

And why would Baron collaborate with Weber Shandwick on "misinformation"? Because it's become a central focus for vaccine makers and, of course, their PR firms! Hence the massive, undisclosed conflict of interest contained within the JAMA article.

After taking her sweet time, Bibbins-Domingo finally responded - saying in a statement:

"Thank you for bringing this to our attention.  We initiated our internal investigation earlier this week, in accordance with our standard processes for allegations of non-disclosure of conflicts."

More via The Disinformation Chronicle...

Congress started investigating university misinformation researchers after the Twitter Files exposed some of the academics who cloak censorship under the rubric of “misinformation research”—people such as Stanford’s Renee DiResta, formerly with the CIA, and Brown University’s Claire Wardle. Due in part to this pressure, the NIH has been slowing down awards for research that helps the government censor Americans.

As JAMA’s Rita Rubin reported:

As stated by the Common Fund, the program’s objectives were to “investigate, develop, test, and disseminate new approaches for effective and equitable health communication,” an effort that would include addressing misinformation. The 5-year program would partner its research with technology and social media platforms, marketing experts, and health information communicators. The budget was set at $154.3 million, a tiny share of the NIH’s 2023 fiscal year budget of $47.5 billion but a windfall for health communications researchers.

One of the experts Rubin cites to explain why the NIH should keep funding medical “research” that runs afoul of First Amendment protected speech is Dr. Richard Baron. In Baron’s mind, this is all about politics, not free speech.

“They’re backing away from research that could save lives because there’s some political agenda they’re afraid they’re going to run afoul of.”

In this case, Baron said, the political agenda appears to center on the debate over whether people who make claims on social media that go against public health recommendations are simply exercising their First Amendment right to free speech.

At the bottom of the Rubin’s JAMA essay, the journal discloses the conflicts of interest of anyone named or mentioned in the essay. But at no point does JAMA disclose that Baron is collaborating with Weber Shandwick in his crusade against “misinformation.”

I first brought to light Baron’s collaboration with Weber Shandwick last November: “PR Firm Repping Vaccine Manufacturers Now Promotes Doctors Group Denouncing Alleged COVID Vaccine Disinformation.” Weeks before uncovering Baron’s ties to Weber Shandwick, I had discovered that the PR firm was repping Pfizer and Moderna while staffing the vaccine office at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/thacker-leading-medical-journal-busted-huge-conflict-interest

Rand Paul On Return Of COVID Measures: "These People Have No Shame"

 by Steve Watson via Summit News,

In response to reports of COVID restrictions, including social distancing and masking being reimplemented by colleges and offices, Senator Rand Paul asserted that those pushing the measures again “have no shame.”

During a Fox News interview, Paul described the move as “hysteria” being pushed by the leftist media to financially benefit their corporate pharma owners.

“These people are so conflicted,” Paul said, adding “It’s so dishonest to put people like that on the air to promote a product that they make more money from … promote this hysteria. This defies all logic. It defies science, and it defies common sense.”

“To see this coming up again, these people have no shame,” Paul continued, pointing to Morris Brown College in Atlanta, a black private liberal arts college that has reinstated the measures as part of a “precautionary step.” 

“That university that’s wanting to mask up and do all this testing — zero cases,” Paul urged, adding “But even worse than that, even when COVID was really more potent in 2020, the death rate for young, healthy people turned out to be close to zero.”

“We don’t know for sure because the CDC won’t release it, but we do know that Germany released all of their data, and not one young, healthy person died. So, it’s a crime to mandate masks. It’s a crime to mandate vaccines, which do have some risks for young, healthy people,” Paul further noted.

The Senator urged that Americans are “not going to lay down and take it again,”adding “there will be more resistance” this time.

“We will fight back, and we will point out that they are making money off of this. These are not high-minded people. They are making money off of us and making money off of generating hysteria,” the Senator asserted.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/rand-paul-return-covid-measures-these-people-have-no-shame