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Brownstone Institute

Sweden Did Exceptionally Well During the COVID-19 Pandemic

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17 minute read

From the Brownstone Institute

BY Peter C. GøtzschePETER C. GØTZSCHE

No wonder the news media are totally silent about the data that show that Sweden’s open society policy was what the rest of the world should have done, too. Numerous studies have shown Sweden’s excess death rate to be among the lowest in Europe during the pandemic and in several analyses, Sweden was at the bottom.

This is remarkable considering that Sweden has admitted that it did too little to protect people living in nursing homes.

Unlike the rest of the world, Sweden largely avoided implementing mandatory lockdowns, instead relying on voluntary curbs on social gatherings, and keeping most schools, restaurants, bars and businesses open. Face masks were not mandated and it was very rare to see any Swede dressed as a bank robber.

The Swedish Public Health Agency “gave more advice than threatened punishment” while the rest of the world installed fear in people. “We forbade families to visit their grandmother in the nursing home, we denied men attendance at their children’s births, we limited the number who were allowed to attend church at funerals. Maybe people are willing to accept very strong restrictions if the fear is great enough.”

If we turn to other issues than mortality, it is clear that the harms done by the draconian lockdowns in the rest of the world have been immense in all sorts of ways.

For any intervention in healthcare, we require proof that the benefits exceed the harms. This principle was one of the first and most important victims of the pandemic. Politicians all over the world panicked and lost their heads, and the randomised trials we so badly needed to guide us were never carried out.

We should abbreviate the great pandemic to the great panic.

In my book, “The Chinese virus: Killed millions and scientific freedom,” from March 2022, I have a section about lockdowns.

Lockdown, a questionable intervention

The reborn intolerance toward alternative ideas has been particularly acrimonious in the debate about lockdowns.

There are two main ways to respond to viral pandemics, described in two publications that both came out in October 2020.

The Great Barrington Declaration is only 514 words, with no references. It emphasizes the devastating effects of lockdowns on short- and long-term public health, with the underprivileged disproportionately harmed. Arguing that for children, COVID-19 is less dangerous than influenza, it suggests that those at minimal risk of death should live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection and to establish herd immunity in the society.

It recommends focused protection of the vulnerable. Nursing homes should use staff with acquired immunity and perform frequent PCR testing for COVID-19 of other staff and all visitors. Retired people living at home should have groceries and other essentials delivered to their home and should meet family members outside when possible.

Staying home when sick should be practiced by everyone. Schools, universities, sports facilities, restaurants, cultural activities, and other businesses should be open. Young low-risk adults should work normally, rather than from home.

I have not found anything in the Declaration to be factually wrong.

The other publication is the John Snow Memorandum, which came out two weeks later.  Its 945 words are seriously manipulative. There are factual inaccuracies, and several of its 8 references are to highly unreliable science. The authors claim that SARS-CoV-2 has high infectivity, and that the infection fatality rate of COVID-19 is several times higher than that of seasonal influenza.

This is not correct (see Chapter 5), and the two references the authors use are to studies using modelling, which are highly bias-prone.

They also claim that transmission of the virus can be mitigated through the use of face masks, with no reference, even though this was, and still is, a highly doubtful claim.

“The proportion of vulnerable people constitute as much as 30% of the population in some regions.” This was cherry-picking from yet another modelling study whose authors defined increased risk of severe disease as one of the conditions listed in some guidelines. With such a broad definition, it is easy to scare people. However, they did not tell their readers that the modelling study also estimated that only 4% of the global population would require hospital admission if infected,36 which is similar to influenza.

The two declarations did not elicit enlightened debates, but strongly emotional exchanges of views on social media devoid of facts. The vitriolic attacks were almost exclusively directed against those supporting the Great Barrington Declaration, and many people, including its authors, experienced censorship from Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

The Great Barrington Declaration has three authors; the John Snow Memorandum has 31. The former was published on a website, which is kept alive, the latter in Lancet, which gives its many authors prestige.

In 2021, over 900,000 people had signed the Great Barrington Declaration, including me, as I have always found that the drastic lockdowns we have had, with all its devastating consequences for our societies, were neither scientifically nor ethically justified. I did Google searches to get an idea how much attention the two declarations have had. For the Great Barrington Declaration, there were 147,000 results; for the John Snow Memorandum only 5,500.

The Great Barrington Declaration has not had much political impact. It is much easier for politicians to be restrictive than keeping the societies open. Once a country has taken drastic measures, such as lockdowns and border closings, other countries are accused of being irresponsible if they don’t do the same – even though their effect is unproven. Politicians will not get in trouble for measures that are too draconian, only if it can be argued that they did too little.

In March 2021, Martin Kulldorff and Jay Bhattacharya, two of the three authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, drew attention to some of the consequences of the current climate of intolerance.  In many cases, eminent scientific voices have been effectively silenced, often with gutter tactics. People who oppose lockdowns have been accused of having blood on their hands and their university positions threatened.

Many have chosen to stay quiet rather than face the mob, for example Jonas Ludvigsson, after he had published a ground-breaking Swedish study making it clear that it is safe to keep schools open during the pandemic, for children and teachers alike. This was taboo.

Kulldorff and Bhattacharya argued that with so many COVID-19 deaths,  most of which have been in old people, it should be obvious that lockdown strategies have failed to protect the old.

The attacks on the Great Barrington Declaration appear to have been orchestrated from the top. On 8 October 2020, Francis Collins, the director of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), sent a denigrating email to Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and advisor for several US Presidents, where he wrote:

“This proposal from the three fringe epidemiologists who met with the Secretary seems to be getting a lot of attention – and even a co-signature from Nobel Prize winner Mike Leavitt at Stanford. There needs to be a quick and devastating published take down of its premises. I don’t see anything like that online yet – is it underway?”

Stefan Baral, an epidemiologist from Johns Hopkins, reported that a letter he wrote about the potential harms of population-wide lockdowns in April 2020 was rejected by more than 10 scientific journals and 6 newspapers, sometimes with the pretence that there was nothing useful in it.  It was the first time in his career that he could not get a piece placed anywhere.

In September 2021, BMJ allowed Gavin Yamey and David Gorski to publish an attack on the Great Barrington Declaration called, Covid-19 and the new merchants of doubt.  A commentator hit the nail when he wrote:

“This is a shoddy smear that is not for publication. The authors have not shown where their targets are scientifically incorrect, they just attack them for receiving funding from sources they dislike or having their videos and comments removed by social media corporations as if that was some indication of guilt.”

Kulldorff has explained what is wrong with the article. They claimed the Declaration provides support to the anti-vaccine movement and that its authors are peddling a “well-funded sophisticated science denialist campaign based on ideological and corporate interests.” But nobody paid the authors any money for their work or for advocating focused protection, and they would not have undertaken it for a professional gain, as it is far easier to stay silent than put your head above the parapet.

Gorski is behaving like a terrorist on social media, and he is perhaps a troll. Without having any idea what I had decided to talk about, or what my motives and background were, he tweeted about me in 2019 that I had “gone full on antivax.”  My talk was about why I am against mandatory vaccination for an organisation called Physicians for Informed Consent. Who could be against informed consent? But when I found out who the other speakers were, I cancelled my talk.

In January 2022, Cochrane published a so-called rapid review of the safety of reopening schools or keeping them open. The 38 included studies comprised 33 modelling studies, three observational studies, one quasi‐experimental and one experimental study with modelling components. Clearly, nothing reliable can come out of this, which the authors admitted: “There were very little data on the actual implementation of interventions.”

Using modelling, you can get any result you want, depending on the assumptions you put into the model. But the authors’ conclusion was plain nonsense: “Our review suggests that a broad range of measures implemented in the school setting can have positive impacts on the transmission of SARS‐CoV‐2, and on healthcare utilisation outcomes related to COVID‐19.”

They should have said that since there were no randomised trials, we don’t know if school closures do more good than harm. What they did is what Tom Jefferson has called “garbage in and garbage out … with a nice little Cochrane logo on it.”

About the failing scientific integrity of Cochrane reviews, the funder of the UK Cochrane groups noted in April 2021 that, “This is a point raised by people in the Collaboration to ensure that garbage does not go into the reviews; otherwise, your reviews will be garbage.”

Even though there was nothing to conclude from it, the authors filled 174 pages – about the length of the book you are currently reading – about the garbage they included in their review, which was funded by the Ministry of Education and Research in Germany.

A 2020 rapid systematic review in a medical journal found that school closures did not contribute to the control of the SARS epidemic in China, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

Lockdowns could even make matters worse. If children are sent home to be looked after by their grandparents because their parents are at work, it could bode disaster for the grandparents. Before the COVID-19 vaccines became available, the median age of those who died was 83.

The whole world missed a fantastic opportunity to find out what the truth was by randomising some schools to be closed while keeping others open, but such trials were never done. Atle Fretheim, research director at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, tried to do a trial but failed. In March 2020, Norwegian government officials were unwilling to keep schools open. Two months later, as the virus waned, they refused to keep schools closed. Norwegian TV shot the messenger: “Crazy researcher wants to experiment with children.” What was crazy was not to do the study. Craziness was also the norm in USA. In many large American cities, bars were open while schools were closed.

When people argue for or against lockdowns and how long they should last and for whom, they are on uncertain ground. Sweden tried to go on with life as usual, without major lockdowns. Furthermore, Sweden has not mandated the use of face masks and very few people have used them.

Author

  • Peter C. Gøtzsche

    Dr. Peter Gøtzsche co-founded the Cochrane Collaboration, once considered the world’s preeminent independent medical research organization. In 2010 Gøtzsche was named Professor of Clinical Research Design and Analysis at the University of Copenhagen. Gøtzsche has published more than 97 papers in the “big five” medical journals (JAMA, Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, British Medical Journal, and Annals of Internal Medicine). Gøtzsche has also authored books on medical issues including Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime. Following many years of being an outspoken critic of the corruption of science by pharmaceutical companies, Gøtzsche’s membership on the governing board of Cochrane was terminated by its Board of Trustees in September, 2018. Four board resigned in protest.

Brownstone Institute

Trump Covets the Nobel Peace Prize

Published on

From the Brownstone Institute

By Ramesh ThakurRamesh Thakur 

Many news outlets reported the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday by saying President Donald Trump had missed out (Washington Post,  YahooHindustan TimesHuffington Post), not won (USA Today), fallen short (AP News), lost (Time), etc. There is even a meme doing the rounds about ‘Trump Wine.’ ‘Made from sour grapes,’ the label explains, ‘This is a full bodied and bitter vintage guaranteed to leave a nasty taste in your mouth for years.’

For the record, the prize was awarded to María Corina Machado for her courageous and sustained opposition to Venezuela’s ruling regime. Trump called to congratulate her. Given his own attacks on the Venezuelan president, his anger will be partly mollified, and he could even back her with practical support. He nonetheless attacked the prize committee, and the White House assailed it for putting politics before peace.

He could be in serious contention next year. If his Gaza peace plan is implemented and holds until next October, he should get it. That he is unlikely to do so is more a reflection on the award and less on Trump.

So He Won the Nobel Peace Prize. Meh!

Alfred Nobel’s will stipulates the prize should be awarded to the person who has contributed the most to promote ‘fraternity between nations…abolition or reduction of standing armies and…holding and promotion of peace congresses.’ Over the decades, this has expanded progressively to embrace human rights, political dissent, environmentalism, race, gender, and other social justice causes.

On these grounds, I would have thought the Covid resistance should have been a winner. The emphasis has shifted from outcomes and actual work to advocacy. In honouring President Barack Obama in 2009, the Nobel committee embarrassed itself, patronised him, and demeaned the prize. His biggest accomplishment was the choice of his predecessor as president: the prize was a one-finger send-off to President George W. Bush.

There have been other strange laureates, including those prone to wage war (Henry Kissinger, 1973), tainted through association with terrorism (Yasser Arafat, 1994), and contributions to fields beyond peace, such as planting millions of trees. Some laureates were subsequently discovered to have embellished their record, and others proved to be flawed champions of human rights who had won them the treasured accolade.

Conversely, Mahatma Gandhi did not get the prize, not for his contributions to the theory and practice of non-violence, nor for his role in toppling the British Raj as the curtain raiser to worldwide decolonisation. The sad reality is how little practical difference the prize has made to the causes it espoused. They bring baubles and honour to the laureates, but the prize has lost much of its lustre as far as results go.

Trump Was Not a Serious Contender

The nomination processes start in September and nominations close on 31 January. The five-member Norwegian Nobel committee scrutinises the list of candidates and whittles it down between February and October. The prize is announced on or close to 10 October, the date Alfred Nobel died, and the award ceremony is held in Oslo in early December.

The calendar rules out a newly elected president in his first year, with the risible exception of Obama. The period under review was 2024. Trump’s claims to have ended seven wars and boasts of ‘nobody’s ever done that’ are not taken seriously beyond the narrow circle of fervent devotees, sycophantic courtiers, and supplicant foreign leaders eager to ingratiate themselves with over-the-top flattery.

Trump Could Be in Serious Contention Next Year

Trump’s 20-point Gaza peace plan falls into three conceptual-cum-chronological parts: today, tomorrow, and the day after. At the time of writing, in a hinge moment in the two-year war, Israel has implemented a ceasefire in Gaza, Hamas has agreed to release Israeli hostages on 13-14 October, and Israel will release around 2,000 Palestinian prisoners (today’s agenda). So why are the ‘Ceasefire Now!’ mobs not out on the streets celebrating joyously instead of looking morose and discombobulated? Perhaps they’ve been robbed of the meaning of life?

The second part (tomorrow) requires Hamas demilitarisation, surrender, amnesty, no role in Gaza’s future governance, resumption of aid deliveries, Israeli military pullbacks, a temporary international stabilisation force, and a technocratic transitional administration. The third part, the agenda for the day after, calls for the deradicalisation of Gaza, its reconstruction and development, an international Peace Board to oversee implementation of the plan, governance reforms of the Palestinian Authority, and, over the horizon, Palestinian statehood.

There are too many potential pitfalls to rest easy on the prospects for success. Will Hamas commit military and political suicide? How can the call for democracy in Gaza and the West Bank be reconciled with Hamas as the most popular group among Palestinians? Can Israel’s fractious governing coalition survive?

Both Hamas and Israel have a long record of agreeing to demands under pressure but sabotaging their implementation at points of vulnerability. The broad Arab support could weaken as difficulties arise. The presence of the internationally toxic Tony Blair on the Peace Board could derail the project. Hamas has reportedly called on all factions to reject Blair’s involvement. Hamas official Basem Naim, while thanking Trump for his positive role in the peace deal,  explained that ‘Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims and maybe a lot [of] people around the world still remember his [Blair’s] role in causing the killing of thousands or millions of innocent civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq.’

It would be a stupendous achievement for all the complicated moving parts to come together in stable equilibrium. What cannot and should not be denied is the breathtaking diplomatic coup already achieved. Only Trump could have pulled this off.

The very traits that are so offputting in one context helped him to get here: narcissism; bullying and impatience; bull in a china shop style of diplomacy; indifference to what others think; dislike of wars and love of real estate development; bottomless faith in his own vision, negotiating skills, and ability to read others; personal relationships with key players in the region; and credibility as both the ultimate guarantor of Israel’s security and preparedness to use force if obstructed. Israelis trust him; Hamas and Iran fear him.

The combined Israeli-US attacks to degrade Iran’s nuclear capability underlined the credibility of threats of force against recalcitrant opponents. Unilateral Israeli strikes on Hamas leaders in Qatar highlighted to uninvolved Arabs the very real dangers of continued escalation amidst the grim Israeli determination to rid themselves of Hamas once and for all.

Trump Is Likely to Be Overlooked

Russia has sometimes been the object of the Nobel Peace Prize. The mischievous President Vladimir Putin has suggested Trump may be too good for the prize. Trump’s disdain for and hostility to international institutions and assaults on the pillars of the liberal international order would have rubbed Norwegians, among the world’s strongest supporters of rules-based international governance, net zero, and foreign aid, the wrong way.

Brash and public lobbying for the prize, like calling the Norwegian prime minister, is counterproductive. The committee is fiercely independent. Nominees are advised against making the nomination public, let alone orchestrating an advocacy campaign. Yet, one laureate is believed to have mobilised his entire government for quiet lobbying behind the scenes, and another to have bad-mouthed a leading rival to friendly journalists.

Most crucially, given that Scandinavian character traits tip towards the opposite end of the scale, it’s hard to see the committee overlooking Trump’s loud flaws, vanity, braggadocio, and lack of grace and humility. Trump supporters discount his character traits and take his policies and results seriously. Haters cannot get over the flaws to seriously evaluate policies and outcomes. No prizes for guessing which group the Nobel committee is likely to belong to. As is currently fashionable to say when cancelling someone, Trump’s values do not align with those of the committee and the ideals of the prize.

Author

Ramesh Thakur

Ramesh Thakur, a Brownstone Institute Senior Scholar, is a former United Nations Assistant Secretary-General, and emeritus professor in the Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.

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Autism

Trump Blows Open Autism Debate

Published on

From the Brownstone Institute

By Maryanne DemasiMaryanne Demasi 

Trump made sweeping claims that would have ended political careers in any other era. His health officials tried to narrow the edges, but the President ensured that the headlines would be his.

Autism has long been the untouchable subject in American politics. For decades, federal agencies tiptoed around it, steering research toward genetics while carefully avoiding controversial environmental or pharmaceutical questions.

That ended at the White House this week, when President Donald Trump tore through the taboo with a blunt and sometimes incendiary performance that left even his own health chiefs scrambling to keep pace.

Flanked by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, CMS Adminstrator Dr Mehmet Oz, and other senior officials, Trump declared autism a “horrible, horrible crisis” and recounted its rise in startling terms.

“Just a few decades ago, one in 10,000 children had autism…now it’s one in 31, but in some areas, it’s much worse than that, if you can believe it, one in 31 and…for boys, it’s one in 12 in California,” Trump said.

The President insisted the trend was “artificially induced,” adding: “You don’t go from one in 20,000 to one in 10,000 and then you go to 12, you know, there’s something artificial. They’re taking something.”

Trump’s Blunt Tylenol Warning

The headline moment came when Trump zeroed in on acetaminophen, the common painkiller sold as Tylenol — known as paracetamol in Australia.

While Kennedy and Makary described a cautious process of label changes and physician advisories, Trump dispensed with nuance.

“Don’t take Tylenol,” Trump said flatly. “Don’t take it unless it’s absolutely necessary…fight like hell not to take it.”

Kennedy laid out the evidence base, citing “clinical and laboratory studies that suggest a potential association between acetaminophen used during pregnancy and adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes, including later diagnosis for ADHD and autism.”

Makary reinforced the point with references to the Boston Birth Cohort, the Nurses’ Health Study, and a recent Harvard review, before adding: “To quote the dean of the Harvard School of Public Health, there is a causal relationship between prenatal acetaminophen use and neurodevelopmental disorders of ADHD and autism spectrum disorder. We cannot wait any longer.”

But where the officials spoke of “lowest effective dose” and “shortest possible duration,” Trump thundered over the top: “I just want to say it like it is, don’t take Tylenol. Don’t take it if you just can’t. I mean, it says, fight like hell not to take it.”

Vaccines Back on Center Stage

The President then pivoted to vaccines, reviving arguments that the medical establishment has long sought to bury. He blasted the practice of giving infants multiple injections at a single visit.

“They pump so much stuff into those beautiful little babies, it’s a disgrace…you get a vat of 80 different vaccines, I guess, 80 different blends, and they pump it in,” Trump said.

His solution was simple: “Go to the doctor four times instead of once, or five times instead of once…it can only help.”

On the measles, mumps, and rubella shot, Trump insisted: “The MMR, I think should be taken separately…when you mix them, there could be a problem. So there’s no downside in taking them separately.”

The moment was astonishing — echoing arguments that had once seen doctors like Andrew Wakefield excommunicated from medical circles.

It was the kind of line of questioning the establishment had spent decades trying to banish from mainstream debate.

Hep B Vaccine under Attack

Trump dismissed the rationale for giving the hepatitis B vaccine at birth.

“Hepatitis B is sexually transmitted. There’s no reason to give a baby that’s just born hepatitis B [vaccine]. So I would say, wait till the baby is 12 years old,” he said.

He made clear that he was “not a doctor,” stressing that he was simply offering his personal opinion. But the move could also be interpreted as Trump choosing to take the heat himself, to shield Kennedy’s HHS from what was sure to be an onslaught of criticism.

The timing was remarkable.

Only last week, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunisation Practices (ACIP) had been preparing to vote on whether to delay the hepatitis B shot until “one month” of age — a modest proposal that mainstream outlets derided as “anti-vax extremism.”

By contrast, Trump told the nation to push the jab back 12 years. His sweeping denunciations made the supposedly radical ACIP vote look almost tame.

The irony was inescapable — the same media voices who had painted Kennedy’s reshaped ACIP as reckless now faced a President willing to say far more than the panel itself dared.

A New Treatment and Big Research Push

The administration also unveiled what it deemed a breakthrough: FDA recognition of prescription leucovorin, a folate-based therapy, as a treatment for some autistic children.

Makary explained: “It may also be due to an autoimmune reaction to a folate receptor on the brain not allowing that important vitamin to get into the brain cells…one study found that with kids with autism and chronic folate deficiency, two-thirds of kids with autism symptoms had improvement and some marked improvement.”

Dr Oz confirmed Medicaid and CHIP (the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which provides low-cost health coverage to children in families that earn too much to qualify for Medicaid) would cover the treatment.

“Over half of American children are covered by Medicaid and CHIP…upon this label change…state Medicaid programs will cover prescription leucovorin around the country, it’s yours,” said Oz.

Bhattacharya announced $50 million in new NIH grants under the “Autism Data Science Initiative.”

He explained that 13 projects would be funded using “exposomics” — the study of how environmental exposures like diet, chemicals, and infections interact with our biology — alongside advanced causal inference methods.

“For too long, it’s been taboo to ask some questions for fear the scientific work might reveal a politically incorrect answer,” Bhattacharya said. “Because of this restricted focus in scientific investigations, the answers for families have been similarly restricted.”

Mothers’ Voices

The press conference also featured raw testimony from parents.

Amanda, mother of a profoundly autistic five-year-old, told Trump: “Unless you’ve lived with profound autism, you have no idea…it’s a very hopeless feeling. It’s very isolating. Being a parent with a profound autistic child, even just taking them over to your friend’s house is something we just don’t do.”

Jackie, mother of 11-year-old Eddie, said: “I’ve been praying for this day for nine years, and I’m so thankful to God for bringing the administration into our lives…I never thought we would have an administration that was courageous enough to look into things that no prior administration had.”

Their stories underscored what Kennedy said at the announcement about “believing women.” Here were mothers speaking directly about their lived reality, demanding that uncomfortable conversations could no longer be avoided.

Clashes with the Press Corps

Reporters pressed Trump on the backlash from medical groups.

Asked about the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) declaring acetaminophen safe in pregnancy, Trump shot back, “That’s the establishment. They’re funded by lots of different groups. And you know what? Maybe they’re right. I don’t think they are, because I don’t think the facts bear it out at all.”

When one journalist raised the argument that rising diagnoses reflected better recognition, Kennedy bristled,

“That’s one of the canards that has been promoted by the industry for many years,” he said. “It’s just common sense, because you’re only seeing this in people who are under 50 years of age. If it were better recognition or diagnosis, you’d see it in the seventy-year-old men. I’ve never seen this happening in people my age.”

Another reporter then asked Trump, “Should the establishment media show at least some openness to trying to figure out what the causes are?”

“I wish they would. Yeah, why are they so close-minded?” Trump replied. “It’s not only the media, in all fairness, it’s some people, when you talk about vaccines, it’s crazy…I don’t care about being attacked.”

Breaking the Spell

For years, autism policy has been shaped by caution, consensus, and deference to orthodox positions. That spell was broken at today’s press conference.

The dynamic was striking. Kennedy, Makary, Bhattacharya, and Oz leaned on scientific papers, review processes, and cautious advisories. Trump, by contrast, brushed it all aside, hammering his message home through repetition and personal anecdotes.

Trump made sweeping claims that would have ended political careers in any other era. His health officials tried to narrow the edges, but the President ensured that the headlines would be his.

“This will be as important as any single thing I’ve done,” Trump declared. “We’re going to save a lot of children from a tough life, really tough life. We’re going to save a lot of parents from a tough life.”

Whatever the science ultimately shows, the politics of autism in America will never be the same.

Republished from the author’s Substack


Author
Maryanne Demasi

Maryanne Demasi, 2023 Brownstone Fellow, is an investigative medical reporter with a PhD in rheumatology, who writes for online media and top tiered medical journals. For over a decade, she produced TV documentaries for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and has worked as a speechwriter and political advisor for the South Australian Science Minister.

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