COVID-19
Consent of the Governed, Where Art Thou?
From the Brownstone Institute
BY
The essay was prompted by a midnight Saturday evening Zoom call with a Canadian physician who was pleading for me to help intervene with the Canadian authorities overseeing the “vaccine” campaign.
I am often asked some form of the question “What caused you to come out of the closet and start criticizing the vaccines?” On a related note, when interviewed by a reporter from the infamous Atlantic August 2021 hit piece, Stan Gromkowski (a former Vical colleague of mine) prophetically opined, “He’s fucking up his chances for a Nobel Prize.”
The answer to this persistent question is nicely summarized in the first essay which I wrote in objection to what was being done, titled “COVID Vaccine Deployment under EUA: It’s time we stop and look at what’s going down.” published in Trial Site News on May 30, 2021 (three months before the defamatory Atlantic attack). I guess that article struck a nerve, because it currently has over 19,000 likes; pretty good for an article on a specialty paid site targeting the clinical research industry.
The essay was prompted by a midnight Saturday evening Zoom call with a Canadian physician who was pleading for me to help intervene with the Canadian authorities overseeing the “vaccine” campaign. This specific physician later had his office raided and office computers damaged by the Canadian government for prescribing early treatment and writing vaccine exemptions, and has now being required to submit to the Canadian government re-education and contrition program for his sins if he wishes to retain the ability to practice medicine, just as has been required of Jordan Peterson. But that was all in the future.
Talking until midnight Saturday, he had described what was being done in Canada to force toxic COVID “vaccines” on an unwitting population including children, imploring me to somehow intervene with Health Canada to stop the madness. I told him I did not have the necessary connections, and there was nothing much I could do to help.
Waking early the following Sunday, I realized there was something I actually could do to advance his cause. I could dip into my extensive training in bioethics and write about the fundamental breaches of established biomedical ethics that were going on in Canada, and would soon migrate to USA, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and across the western “democracies.”
The following is the core of my argument back then (May 2021), which I assert has withstood the test of time much better than the notorious Atlantic hit piece published three months later.
I believe that adult citizens must be allowed free will, the freedom to choose. This is particularly true in the case of clinical research. These mRNA and recombinant adenovirus vaccine products remain experimental at this time. Furthermore, we are supposed to be doing rigorous, fact-based science and medicine. If rigorous and transparent evaluation of vaccine reactogenicity and treatment-emergent post-vaccination adverse events is not done, we (the public health, clinical research and vaccine developer communities) play right into the hands of anti-vaxxer memes and validate many of their arguments.
The suppression of information, discussion, and outright censorship concerning these current COVID vaccines which are based on gene therapy technologies cast a bad light on the entire vaccine enterprise. It is my opinion that the adult public can handle information and open discussion. Furthermore, we must fully disclose any and all risks associated with these experimental research products.
In this context, the adult public are basically research subjects that are not being required to sign informed consent due to EUA waiver. But that does not mean that they do not deserve the full disclosure of risks that one would normally require in an informed consent document for a clinical trial. And now some national authorities are calling on the deployment of EUA vaccines to adolescents and the young, which by definition are not able to directly provide informed consent to participate in clinical research – written or otherwise.
The key point here is that what is being done by suppressing open disclosure and debate concerning the profile of adverse events associated with these vaccines violates fundamental bioethical principles for clinical research. This goes back to the Geneva convention and the Helsinki declaration.
There must be informed consent for experimentation on human subjects. The human subjects – you, me, and the citizens of these countries – must be informed of risks. As a community, we have already had a discussion and made our decision – we cannot compel prisoners, military recruits, or any other population of humans to participate in a clinical research study. For example, see the Belmont report, which provided the rationale for US federal law Code of Federal Regulations 45 CFR 46 (subpart A), referred to as “The Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects” (also known as the “Common Rule”).
Quoting from the Belmont Report:
“Informed Consent. — Respect for persons requires that subjects, to the degree that they are capable, be given the opportunity to choose what shall or shall not happen to them. This opportunity is provided when adequate standards for informed consent are satisfied.
While the importance of informed consent is unquestioned, controversy prevails over the nature and possibility of an informed consent. Nonetheless, there is widespread agreement that the consent process can be analyzed as containing three elements: information, comprehension and voluntariness.”
Information, comprehension, and voluntariness. To my eyes, it appears that in many regions public health leadership has stepped over the line and is now violating the bedrock principles which form the foundation upon which the ethics of clinical research are built. I believe that this must stop. We must have transparent public disclosure of risks – in a broad sense – associated with these experimental vaccines. It is either that, or the entire modern bioethical structure which supports human subjects research will have to be re-thought.
This was not a major intellectual leap. It was a simple restatement of the training in clinical research bioethics which I had received and which had been repeatedly reinforced over the prior decade. No big deal, except that few if any were willing to make such a statement at that time. Long before the infamous Dark Horse or Rogan podcasts.
The failure to disclose the risks of the gene therapy-based COVID vaccines by the US and other “Western” governments became widespread, chronic, and well-documented. Fast forwarding to the present, on December 22, 2023 investigative journalist Greg Piper of the alternative “Just The News” published yet another chapter in the abundant library of documented government withholding of key information concerning COVID genetic “vaccine” harms.
Misinformation for thee, not me? FDA had similar concerns as COVID vaccine skeptics, docs suggest
FOIA production shows the agency wasn’t impressed by Pfizer’s plan to mitigate “endotoxins,” complained about insufficient cleaning in manufacturing, and had no basis to claim post-vax heart inflammation was rare.
If an outsider raises questions about contamination of COVID-19 vaccines or how closely the Food and Drug Administration monitors for severe adverse events, the agency considers it a boon to misinformation that lowers vaccine uptake and hence kills people.
If the FDA itself raises these issues, that’s a different story…
The FDA documents, some heavily redacted under the FOIA exemption for trade secrets, show less daylight than may be thought between the agency and critics of federal COVID policy such as Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo.
Mr. Piper went on to summarize a range of recent freedom of information act and court-ordered document disclosures which clearly demonstrate a systematic and intentional failure by the US Government to properly inform the public of the risks associated with accepting gene therapy-based COVID “vaccine” products.
- The CDC had no scientific research to back its public claim in January that people can safely get their COVID, flu, and monkeypox vaccines “at the same time.”
- “Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, didn’t just tell Florida Surgeon General Joe Ladapo last week his concerns about DNA contamination were “quite implausible” but also shamed him for feeding what he considered misinformation that will cause preventable deaths. Yet an Aug. 6, 2021 email to Pfizer from CBER Senior Regulatory Review Officer Mike Smith about “endotoxins” – potential contaminants introduced in pharmaceutical manufacturing – shows the feds had similar concerns as they considered full approval for Pfizer’s Comirnaty.”
- “A month before then-acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock told the media that post-vaccination heart inflammation “appears to be very low,” a CBER “surveillance” scientist made clear that the leader was not relying on the agency’s own data. Joyce Obidi reviewed how well CBER’s Sentinel Program, created under a 2007 law to monitor drug safety through electronic healthcare data, could “evaluate the serious risk for myocarditis and pericarditis” following Pfizer COVID vaccination in recipients 16 and older, the first population authorized for emergency use. “Post-authorization safety data identified serious risks for myocarditis and pericarditis after COMIRNATY, with increased risk in males under 30 years of age,” Obidi wrote in the May 18, 2021, memo, which is also buried in the agency’s 246-document public folder on materials related to Comirnaty’s approval.”
- Obidi also stated that “Available data sources in the CBER Sentinel Program are NOT sufficient to identify the outcomes of myocarditis and pericarditis” and not “sufficiently powered to assess the magnitude of risk” for ages 12-30. She wrote. The program would need a minimum of 3-6 months follow up data to check for “long-term sequelae,” and it cannot study subclinical myocarditis “because of the absence of a definition of subclinical myocarditis and unknown background incidence of troponin abnormalities,” according to Obidi. Sentinel’s data sources at full approval of Comirnaty did not have “sufficient power to assess the magnitude of risk in patients 12-30 years of age” and hence cannot assess the “serious risks of myocarditis and pericarditis, and subclinical myocarditis” associated with the vaccine.”
- “In another May 18, 2021, memo reviewing Pfizer’s proposed pharmacovigilance plan for its vaccine, Analytic Epidemiology Branch Medical Officer Deborah Thompson evaluated the company’s claim that “vaccine-associated enhanced disease” is just a “theoretical risk.” She cited Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System reports of deaths in “fully vaccinated” patients at that early stage of vaccination. “Severe manifestations and death from COVID-19 raise the possibility” of VAED because it has “overlapping clinical manifestations with natural SARS-CoV-2 infection, making it difficult to differentiate VAED from severe” infection in VAERS reports.”
- Despite assurances otherwise from Peter Marks in his letter to the Florida Surgeon General, major manufacturing process good practices were breached. “In a Form 483 to Pfizer following inspections that uncovered possible or actual product adulteration, FDA investigators made 13 observations about procedures at Pfizer’s Andover, Massachusetts, manufacturing facility. They include “insufficient data to support product quality prior to the release” of vaccine batch FA8057. The observation says “a deviation [redacted] was initiated due to the multiple control limit excursions during [redacted]” and the “affected batch was manufactured with a process that deviated from the validated process parameters” and was “not put on stability until July 22, 2021.” It was released on a redacted date. An observation on “inadequate quality oversight” implies that Pfizer was late in adding a notation to a batch record that “[redacted] exceeded the allowable [redacted].” The company’s quality assurance does not review “electronic data/reports” from a redacted manufacturing process “during batch record review or prior to batch release.” <Note: No clinical trial I have ever been involved in has been associated with an FDA 483 warning letter. This is no small matter.>
- Just the News asked the FDA prior to publication of this report on 22 December for its characterization of the FOIA-disclosed and related documents in light of Marks’ comments to Ladapo about feeding misinformation. A spokesperson responded two days later, saying the agency was working to provide an answer. As of 27 December, the FDA still has not provided a response.
At this point, the burden of publicly available documentation clearly demonstrates multiple examples of intentional breaches of informed consent by both the US government and the pharmaceutical industry manufacturers of these products. It is difficult to dispute that the US government and the pharmaceutical industry sponsors are colluding in a public-private partnership to suppress information concerning risks of these products. Likewise, there has been an agreement between the UK and US governments to suppress disclosure of information concerning risks and adverse events associated with these products.
In a normal, historic regulatory and bioethical environment, this breach of international bioethical norms concerning informed consent would rise to the level of a clear-cut crime against humanity. But in the “through the looking glass” world of COVID post-late 2019, established legal, moral, and ethical norms concerning patient and citizen rights to proper informed consent have all been turned upside down. All of these clear-cut breaches ostensibly being actively “justified” by mockingbird media, the massive censorship-industrial complex, and government officials as being in service of the public interest and the greater good.
The western Five Eyes alliance participants, deferring to the leadership of the US government, are all acting in coordination and cooperation to disregard and hide the implications and consequences of their illegal and unethical actions. This is being justified based on the following oft-repeated catechism, each element of which is demonstrably false or opposed to established Western bioethical consensus:
- COVID-19, the disease caused by infection with SARS-CoV-2, is highly pathogenic with a case fatality rate of 3.4 %. <The actual case fatality rate was approximately 0.02% when this disease was first “modeled” in 2020 and is much lower now>
- The gene therapy-based COVID-19 “vaccines” are safe and effective, are effective as prophylactics, are effective in preventing infection and spread of COVID-19 disease, and if taken by a sufficient fraction of the population <a moving goalpost> can be used to achieve herd immunity. <all of these previous claims are now clearly demonstrated unsupported falsehoods>
- The gene therapy-based COVID-19 “vaccines” are effective at preventing severe disease and death from SARS-CoV-2, and have saved 14 million lives. <this 14 million lives saved claim turns out to be based on flawed mathematics, and all cause mortality data analysis indicates something more like 17 million lives lost globally due to the products>
- Fully disclosing actual risks, morbidity and mortality data concerning the COVID-19 genetic vaccines will result in “increased vaccine hesitancy” and avoidable harm due to reduced “vaccine” (booster) uptake. <at this point in the outbreak, multiple data sources indicate that acceptance of boosters is associated with “negative effectiveness,” meaning that after a 2-3 month lag period (shorter in some studies) you are more likely to suffer death or severe COVID-19 disease – and other diseases- if you accept injection with these products than if you do not.>
This fourth point is a clear-cut example of flawed logic. Flawed both in terms of the data on morbidity, mortality, and immune imprinting, as well as flawed bioethical reasoning.
Think this through with me. The essence of the statement is essentially the governments’ assertions that “if the public knew about the risks that we know about, then they would choose not to accept those risks based on their assessment of the effectiveness of the product and the clinical risks of infection with the virus. Therefore there would be much more avoidable disease, disability, and death from COVID-19 than would be saved from vaccine products not administered.”
And on the basis of this ill-logic, governments and Pharma are withholding adverse event data, and thereby are unilaterally making medical decisions for sovereign individuals and their children. This is what we have come to. The ultimate embodiment of the nanny state, with corporatist allies. The State knows best, and will withhold medical information from the public which would cause members of that public to question its wisdom and decision-making.
Basically, the State is asserting that it has the right to sentence you to increased risk of death and disease by purchasing (using tax dollars), mandating (vaccines for children program), distributing, enticing, and marketing an injectable product while censoring or defaming (using modern psychological warfare technologies) any and all who disagree or even have the temerity to question the decisions and rights of the State to do so.
Republished from the author’s Substack
COVID-19
Canadian veteran challenges conviction for guarding War Memorial during Freedom Convoy
From LifeSiteNews
When the convoy first came to Ottawa, allegations were floated that the memorial had been desecrated. After learning of this, Evely quickly organized a group of veterans to stand guard around the clock to protect the area.
A Canadian veteran appealed to the Ontario courts after he was convicted for organizing a guard around the National War Memorial during the Freedom Convoy.
In an October press release, the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) announced that an appeal has been filed in the Ontario Court of Appeals on behalf of Master Warrant Officer (Ret’d) Jeffrey Evely over his conviction for mischief and obstructing police while on his way to guard the Ottawa War Memorial during the 2022 Freedom Convoy.
“By locking down large sections of downtown Ottawa, the police were effectively preventing all civilians from accessing public areas and greatly exceeded their powers under the common law,” constitutional lawyer Chris Fleury explained.
“This case raises issues that have implications for protests across the province and the country. We are hopeful that the Ontario Court of Appeal will agree and grant leave to appeal,” he added.
The appeal argues that police overstepped their authority in their response to the 2022 protest of COVID mandates. Police actions at the time included locking down the Ottawa core, establishing checkpoints, and arresting protesters.
In September 2024, Everly was convicted of mischief and obstruction after his involvement in the 2022 Freedom Convoy, which protested COVID mandates by gathering Canadians in front of Parliament in Ottawa.
As LifeSiteNews previously reported, when the convoy first came to Ottawa, allegations were floated that the memorial had been desecrated. After learning of this, Evely quickly organized a group of veterans to stand guard around the clock to protect the area.
However, under former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s use of the Emergencies Act, many parts of downtown Ottawa were blocked to the public, and a vigilant police force roamed the streets.
It was during this time that Evely was arrested for entering a closed off section of downtown Ottawa during the early hours of February 19, 2022. He had been on his way to take the 4:25 a.m. shift protecting the Ottawa War Memorial.
As Evely walked to the memorial, he was allegedly told to stop by police. According to the police, Evely “ran for a short distance before being confronted by two additional police officers.”
He was forcibly pushed to the ground, landing face first. The veteran was then arrested and charged with mischief and obstructing police.
At the time, the use of the EA was justified by claims that the protest was “violent,” a claim that has still gone unsubstantiated.
In fact, videos of the protest against COVID regulations and shot mandates show Canadians from across the country gathering outside Parliament engaged in dancing, street hockey, and other family-friendly activities.
Indeed, the only acts of violence caught on video were carried out against the protesters after the Trudeau government directed police to end the protest. One such video showed an elderly women being trampled by a police horse.
While the officers’ actions were originally sanctioned under the EA, Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley ruled that Trudeau was “not justified” in invoking the EA, forcing Crown prosecutors to adopt a different strategy.
Now, Crown prosecutors allege that the common law granted police the authority to stop and detain Evely, regardless of the EA.
However, Evely and his lawyers have challenged this argument under section 9 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, insisting that his “arrest and detention were arbitrary.”
Earlier this month, Freedom Convoy organizers Tamara Lich and Chris Barber were sentenced to 18-month house arrest after a harrowing 25-month trial process. Many have condemned the sentence, warning it amounts to “political persecution” of those who stand up to the Liberal government.
COVID-19
Freedom Convoy leader Tamara Lich says ‘I am not to leave the house’ while serving sentence
From LifeSiteNews
‘I was hoping to be able to drop off and pick up my grandsons from school, but apparently that request will have to go to a judge’
Freedom Convoy leader Tamara Lich detailed her restrictive house arrest conditions, revealing she is “not” able to leave her house or even pick up her grandkids from school without permission from the state.
Lich wrote in a X post on Wednesday that this past Tuesday was her first meeting with her probation officer, whom she described as “fair and efficient,” adding that she was handed the conditions set out by the judge.
“I was hoping to be able to drop off and pick up my grandsons from school, but apparently that request will have to go to a judge under a variation application, so we’ll just leave everything as is for now,” she wrote.
Lich noted that she has another interview with her probation officer next week to “assess the level of risk I pose to re-offend.”
“It sounds like it’ll basically be a questionnaire to assess my mental state and any dangers I may pose to society,” she said.
While it is common for those on house arrest to have to ask for permission to leave their house, sometimes arrangements can be made otherwise.
On October 7, Ontario Court Justice Heather Perkins-McVey sentenced Lich and Chris Barber to 18 months’ house arrest after being convicted earlier in the year convicted of “mischief.”
Lich was given 18 months less time already spent in custody, amounting to 15 1/2 months.
As reported by LifeSiteNews, the Canadian government was hoping to put Lich in jail for no less than seven years and Barber for eight years for their roles in the 2022 protests against COVID mandates.
Interestingly, Perkins-McVey said about Lich and Barber during the sentencing, “They came with the noblest of intent and did not advocate for violence.”
Lich said that her probation officer “informed me of the consequences should I breach these conditions, and I am not to leave the house, even for the approved ‘necessities of life’ without contacting her to let her know where I’ll be and for how long,” she wrote.
“She will then provide a letter stating I have been granted permission to be out in society. I’m to have my papers on my person at all times and ready to produce should I be pulled over or seen by law enforcement out and about.”
Lich said that the probation officer did print a letter “before I left, so I could stop at the optometrist and dentist offices on my way home.”
She said that her official release date is January 21, 2027, which she said amounts to “1,799 days after my initial arrest.”
As reported by LifeSiteNews, Lich, reflecting on her recent house arrest verdict, said she has no “remorse” and will not “apologize” for leading a movement that demanded an end to all COVID mandates.
LifeSiteNews reported that Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre offered his thoughts on the sentencing, wishing them a “peaceful” life while stopping short of blasting the sentence as his fellow MPs did.
In early 2022, the Freedom Convoy saw thousands of Canadians from coast to coast come to Ottawa to demand an end to COVID mandates in all forms. Despite the peaceful nature of the protest, Trudeau’s government enacted the never-before-used Emergencies Act (EA) on February 14, 2022.
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