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
Trump DOJ seeks to quash Pfizer whistleblower’s lawsuit over COVID shots
From LifeSiteNews
The Justice Department attorney did not mention the Trump FDA’s recent admission linking the COVID shots to at least 10 child deaths so far.
The Trump Department of Justice (DOJ) is attempting to dismiss a whistleblower case against Pfizer over its COVID-19 shots, even as the Trump Food & Drug Administration (FDA) is beginning to admit their culpability in children’ s deaths.
As previously covered by LifeSiteNews, in 2021 the BMJ published a report on insider information from a former regional director of the medical research company Ventavia, which Pfizer hired in 2020 to conduct research for the company’s mRNA-based COVID-19 shot.
The regional director, Brook Jackson, sent BMJ “dozens of internal company documents, photos, audio recordings, and emails,” which “revealed a host of poor clinical trial research practices occurring at Ventavia that could impact data integrity and patient safety […] We also discovered that, despite receiving a direct complaint about these problems over a year ago, the FDA did not inspect Ventavia’s trial sites.”
According to the report, Ventavia “falsified data, unblinded patients, employed inadequately trained vaccinators, and was slow to follow up on adverse events reported in Pfizer’s pivotal phase III trial.” Overwhelmed by numerous problems with the trial data, Jackson filed an official complaint with the FDA.
Jackson was fired the same day, and Ventavia later claimed that Jackson did not work on the Pfizer COVID-19 shot trial; but Jackson produced documents proving she had been invited to the Pfizer trial team and given access codes to software relating to the trial. Jackson filed a lawsuit against Pfizer for violating the federal False Claims Act and other regulations in January 2021, which was sealed until February 2022. That case has been ongoing ever since.
Last August, U.S. District Judge Michael Truncale dismissed most of Jackson’s claims with prejudice, meaning they could not be refiled. Jackson challenged the decision, but the Trump DOJ has argued in court to uphold it, Just the News reports, with DOJ attorney Nicole Smith arguing that the case concerns preserving the government’s unfettered power to dismiss whistleblower cases.
The rationale echoes a recurring trend in DOJ strategy that Politico described in May as “preserving executive power and preventing courts from second-guessing agency decisions,” even in cases that involve “backing policies favored by Democrats.”
Jackson’s attorney Warner Mendenhall responded that the administration “really sort of made our case for us” in effectively admitting that DOJ is taking the Fair Claims Act’s “good cause” standard for state intervention to mean “mere desire to dismiss,” which infringes on his client’s “First Amendment right to access the courts, to vindicate what she learned.”
Mendenhall added that in a refiled case, Jackson “may be able to bring a very different case along the same lines, but with the additional information” to prove fraud, whereas rejection would send the message that “if fraud involves government complicity, don’t bother reporting it.”
That additional information would presumably include the FDA’s recent admission that at least 10 children the agency has reviewed so far “died after and because of receiving COVID-19 vaccination.”
“The truth is we do not know if we saved lives on balance,” admitted FDA Chief Medical Officer Vinay Prasad in a recent leaked email. “It is horrifying to consider that the U.S. vaccine regulation, including our actions, may have harmed more children than we saved. This requires humility and introspection.”
The COVID shots have been highly controversial ever since the first Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed initiative prepared and released them in a fraction of the time any previous vaccine had ever been developed and tested. As LifeSiteNews has extensively covered, a large body of evidence has steadily accumulated over the past five years indicating that the COVID jabs failed to prevent transmission and, more importantly, carried severe risks of their own.
Ever since, many have intently watched and hotly debated what President Donald Trump would do about the situation upon his return to office. Though he never backed mandates like former President Joe Biden did, for years Trump refused to disavow the shots to the chagrin of his base, seeing Operation Warp Speed as one of his crowning achievements. At the same time, during his latest run he embraced the “Make America Healthy Again” movement and its suspicion of the medical establishment more broadly.
So far, Trump’s second administration has rolled back several recommendations for the shots but not yet pulled them from the market, despite hiring several vocal critics of the COVID establishment and putting the Department of Health & Human Services under the leadership of America’s most prominent anti-vaccine advocate, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Most recently, the administration has settled on leaving the current jabs optional but not supporting work to develop successors.
In a July interview, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary asked for patience from those unsatisfied by the administration’s handling of the shots, insisting more time was needed for comprehensive trials to get more definitive data.
COVID-19
Canadian Health Department funds study to determine effects of COVID lockdowns on children
From LifeSiteNews
The commissioned study will assess the impact on kids’ mental well-being of COVID lockdowns and ‘remote’ school classes that banned outdoor play and in-person learning.
Canada’s Department of Health has commissioned research to study the impact of outdoor play on kids’ mental well-being in light of COVID lockdowns and “remote” school classes that, for a time, banned outdoor play and in-person learning throughout most of the nation.
In a notice to consultants titled “Systematic Literature Reviews And Meta Analyses Supporting Two Projects On Children’s Health And Covid-19,” the Department of Health admitted that “Exposure to green space has been consistently associated with protective effects on children’s physical and mental health.”
A final report, which is due in 2026, will provide “Health Canada with a comprehensive assessment of current evidence, identify key knowledge gaps and inform surveillance and policy planning for future pandemics and other public health emergencies.”
Bruce Squires, president of McMaster Children’s Hospital of Hamilton, Ontario, noted in 2022 that “Canada’s children and youth have borne the brunt” of COVID lockdowns.
From about March 2020 to mid-2022, most of Canada was under various COVID-19 mandates and lockdowns, including mask mandates, at the local, provincial, and federal levels. Schools were shut down, parks were closed, and most kids’ sports were cancelled.
Mandatory facemask polices were common in Canada and all over the world for years during the COVID crisis despite over 170 studies showing they were not effective in stopping the spread of COVID and were, in fact, harmful, especially to children.
In October 2021, then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced unprecedented COVID-19 jab mandates for all federal workers and those in the transportation sector, saying the un-jabbed would no longer be able to travel by air, boat, or train, both domestically and internationally.
As reported by LifeSiteNews, a new report released by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) raised alarm bells over the “harms caused” by COVID-19 lockdowns and injections imposed by various levels of government as well as a rise in unexplained deaths and bloated COVID-19 death statistics.
Indeed, a recent study showed that COVID masking policies left children less able to differentiate people’s emotions behind facial expressions.
COVID vaccine mandates and lockdowns, which came from provincial governments with the support of the federal government, split Canadian society.
-
National2 days agoCanada’s free speech record is cracking under pressure
-
Digital ID2 days agoCanada considers creating national ID system using digital passports for domestic use
-
International2 days ago100 Catholic schoolchildren rescued, Nigeria promises release of remaining hostages
-
Alberta2 days agoHere’s why city hall should save ‘blanket rezoning’ in Calgary
-
Fraser Institute2 days agoClaims about ‘unmarked graves’ don’t withstand scrutiny
-
Energy2 days agoMeet REEF — the massive new export engine Canadians have never heard of
-
Business2 days agoUNDRIP now guides all B.C. laws. BC Courts set off an avalanche of investment risk
-
Fly Straight - John Ivison1 day agoMPs who cross the floor are dishonourable members



