Corruption in the US Healthcare System and its Effects

The healthcare system in the US has been plagued with various forms of corruption and morally abhorrent practices since its inception.  Most of these factors aren't know to most Americans, who have a very simplistic understanding of how our system was created and how it works.  The influence of money and power has shaped many aspects of the system from how medical schools function, what they teach, and who they train to the formation of the American Medical Association and how it pushed its rival associations out of the picture.  

Large scale changes in the types of health problems facing the American public began in the 1960s with the recognition of auto-immunity and the meteoric rise in prevalence of auto-immune conditions, which remain poorly understood and for which treatments are not very effective or reliable.  A similar rise in prevalence in atopic diseases- diseases involving allergic and allergy-type responses- began not long afterwards, beginning in the 1980s.  Cancer rates have skyrocketed, and there has never been an area of research in which more money has been spent and yet so few advances have actually been made.  Many of what are claimed to be advances have more to do with playing with statistics and altering definitions than with actual improved patient outcomes.

Medical research has increasingly been funded by sources with vested interests in the outcome, calling into question the neutrality and validity of the results.  Research has become slewed towards drug development rather than other types of prevention and treatment which might be more effective and safer but are less profitable.  The encroachment of private investment into medicine has reached its peak destructiveness in the form of private equity investments that are doing little more than buying up hospitals, medical practices, pharmacies, insurance companies, and other medical businesses, raiding them for their assets, and then leaving the carcasses in bankruptcy.  This has jeopardized the safety of most Americans and led to more deaths and serious harm than we will ever know, just so that the already obscenely rich can become slightly richer. 

Sanders Says Senate Hearing Will Put 'Greed on Display' With or Without Healthcare CEO

A company called Steward Health Care has made massive profits, paid its private owners millions in dividends, and the CEO Dr. Ralph de la Torre paid himself $4 million and purchased a mega yacht thought to be worth $40 million, while incurring massive debt and driving all 31 of its hospitals into bankruptcy.  

Further, "On Thursday, CBS News reported that in 2017 Steward executives including de la Torre illegally conspired with Maltese officials in order to secure a hospital contract, according to a whistleblower.  While a spokesperson for the executive denied any wrongdoing, whistleblower Ram Tumuluri alleged in a complaint to the U.S. Congress that "in touting Steward's supposed competitive advantage in Malta... de la Torre boasted that he could issue 'brown bags' to government officials if necessary to close transactions."

Medicare Advantage is rife with corruption

Medicare Advantage plans 'intentionally using prior authorization to boost profits': Senate report

Physical Symptoms of Stres and Trauma

Windows to the Soul: How Trauma Negatively Impacts Your Eyes
Our bodies have a clench and withdraw response if we can't fight or flight, such as when we are children.  This entails tensing up, clenching fists, curling inward, raising knees to chest, essentially curling up in the fetal position.  Physically, this posture is an attempt to protect the vital organs from anticipated harm and  is associated with feeling helpless.  Muscle tension is one of the most common symptoms of stress and anxiety, caused by muscle contractions from going into the fight/flight response.  This includes the blood vessels and viscera constricting as well and when this muscle tension goes on for a long time, as in chronic stress, and can result in headaches, pain behind the eyes, TMJ, limited range of movement, joint discomfort, chronic pain, and difficulty concentrating.  It can lead to migraines when the tension releases and blood flow into the brain suddenly increases.  

"Energy flow in the body is managed by contractions of the diaphragms (there are many diaphragms in the body).  For children with Complex Trauma, the high arousal of stress is managed through powerful, chronic contractions in all the diaphragms of the body, most promisingly in the respiratory diaphragm (affects breathing) but also in the diaphragms at the base of the skull and in the eyes (Tentorium cerebella), feet and joints.  This changes the depth of their breathing and affects their breathing, but it also creates pain in their face, head, and eyes."  All eight of the bodies diaphragms constrict when they sense stress or danger.  

"Fetuses and infants are primarily visceral systems and central nervous systems without a developed musculature.  The only protective responses to them are to shut down and freeze (clench and withdrawal) the central nervous system and the visceral system" - Larry Heller

Trauma also affects the eyes by making them hypersensitive and affecting pupil dilation.  Trauma in young children activates a part of the brain stem called the Reticular Activating System (RAS) whose job it is to filter out the sensory input that the individual doesn't need to be consciously aware of all the time, such as textures of clothing or hum of lights.  In children who have experienced trauma, the RAS will allow through more or even all of the sensory input into the brain which can overwhelm the brain and lead to sensory processing problems and sensitivities.  

At 11:09 there is a slide that outlines the four kinds of eye movements.  When a person perceives danger and their sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight system) is activated, it causes certain changes in the eyes and how they focus that leads to tunnel vision.  This is so that the person can focus on the threat, which is the only important thing in the moment.  The pupils in the eye normally got larger or smaller depending on light, but when a person looks at things with certain emotional charge, such as fear or surprise, their eyes widen even more.  This response is especially strong in children who have experienced trauma.  For people with PTSD, their pupils have been found to stay the same when shown novel images and to dilate more than normal in response to scary images.  This can cause older people to have difficulty driving at night because their pupils don't constrict when they see bright lights, including headlights or streetlights.  

The parasympathetic nervous system, also called the rest and digest or rest and repair system, has the opposite effect.  It allows your pupils to contract in bright light, it improves up-close vision, and it increases tear production, which keeps the eyes more comfortable and less irritated.  

In infants, the eyes play a key role in their ability to do the basic things they need to do to survive- they need to communicate, to connect with safe caregivers, and to regulate.  "Scientists have discovered that signals pass back and forth between a mother and child as fast as 1/300th of a second."  The eyes contain a massive amount of information about the state of our nervous system, and looking into a caregiver's eyes gives a baby the information it needs to read the emotional state of the caregiver, which is what regulates the nervous system of the baby.  The baby is looking to see if the caregiver is attuned to them, accepting of them, present, open, loving, nurturing, regulating, and safe to connect to.  In general we use what we see in people's eyes to read their emotional state.  

In a family with generational or complex trauma, the baby may not see those things in the eyes of their parents.  Instead the parents may be distracted, fearful, distant, uncaring or cold, not accepting of the baby, basically dysregulated not safe to connect to.  This creates fear, panic, and rejection in the baby.  At first the baby will try to get the parent's attention to connect by crying, reaching out, or other means.  If that doesn't work the baby will either shut down and dissociate or become dysregulated and cry.  This can lead to emotions of anger and fear building up in the child that will affect them later.  

In complex trauma this is happening over and over every day, which causes the child to go into the clench and withdraw response.  This can affect the eyes in a number of way.- It can make it hard for the child to make and maintain eye contact- the child might be afraid to look into eyes and see rejection, disgust, anger, disinterest, or the child may be afraid that other people will see the dysregulation in their eyes, they may have internalized shame, and they may want to hide their inner world.  Another effect is that the child's eyes may take on a "glassy stare" as if they are looking past people, not paying attention, not focusing on who is in front of them.  They might even look catatonic.  They may make intense eye contact that is unnerving because they aren't trying to connect, they're studying the person they're looking at to see if that person is safe or about to change moods or harm them.  This is a kind of hyper vigilance.  This video also claims that people who were in the clench and withdrawal response often as children may have a more sallow complexion around their eyes.  Some people, in high stress, may even develop eye tics.

So, what can people who experience the negative effects on their eyes from trauma do about it?  One thing is to pay attention to muscle tension in your body, pay attention to pain that indicates clenching, and take steps to relax and release the tension.  You can have someone you trust look into your eyes and tell you what emotions they see there.  Practice eye contact with someone you trust to become more comfortable with it.  intentionally unfocusing your eyes can help you "turn on" your parasympathetic nervous system and help you relax.  Somatic therapies that include things like music therapy, pet therapy, yoga and breathing exercises, walking in nature, all can help by putting you into the parasympathetic system. 

 

The Birthplace of COVID 19

Discussions about one of the most important topics in recent history, the origin of the COVID 19 vaccine, have been censored from the beginning.  This goes against the everything that science is and stands for.  When you see censorship, you know that science had been abandoned and is not present in any form.  Science is a methodology for answering certain kinds of questions, it is a method for finding things out.  There can be no per-conceived ideas of what the answer should or shouldn't be, can or can't be.  Scientific inquiry is always guided by observable evidence, NEVER dogma- no matter what the implications.  Science does not take sides.  It was obvious from the beginning that the question of where COVID 19 came from was not being investigated in a scientific manner, that the process of inquiry was being guided by dogma and personal interests.  

There were obvious signs all along.  One is the term "wet market" itself, which was used to conjure up images of dirty and unsafe handling of food animals, one that played on western racist ideas of Asian people eating "disgusting" and exotic animals.  The name "wet market" is essentially a translation error.  A long time ago, there were food stores that sold only dry goods, and stores that sold fresh food as well, and ended up being called "wet markets" because "wet" is the opposite of "dry".  So a "wet market" is a food market where fresh food such as fruits and vegetables and meats are sold.  Any farmer's market in the US is therefore also a "wet market".

It is of vital importance that we figure out how COVID 19 came to be and how the pandemic happened, both because people need to be held accountable if there was any negligence or wrongdoing, and because we need to do everything we can to minimize the risk of a pandemic such as this happening again.  Understanding the viral origins of the pandemic is essential.   

Origins of COVID-19: An Examination of Available Evidence
Full Committee Hearing  June 18, 2024
Homeland Security, Governmental Affairs
"The COVID 19 pandemic was one of the worst public health crises our country has ever faced.  We lost more than 1 million Americans to the virus."

The following are comments made by Dr John Campbell talking about these hearings.  He points out that the evidence doesn't point towards a natural spillover event to explain the origins of COVID because the virus would have popped up at various places and times, which it didn't; we haven't found an intermediate animal, we haven't found an evolutionary history of the virus, and there are no antibodies to the virus in the natural reservoir.  What the evidence does show us- gain of function research was being done at the Wuhan lab, evidence including e-mails was intentionally destroyed, and open scientific inquiry was not allowed.  This is the video in which Dr Campbell talks about the hearing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEyRQLEmNGk&list=PL00DD377C0ACD51FB&index=8

Testimony of Senator Rand Paul:
Contents of e-mails that have been recently made public by FOIA request include:

"The lab escape version of this is so friggin' likely to have happened because they were already doing this type of work, and the molecular data is fully consistent with that scenario." -Christian Anderson 

"Ian Lipkin stressed the nightmare of circumstantial evidence to assess regarding the possibility of inadvertent release given the scale of bat coronavirus research pursued in Wuhan.  

Bob Gerry said "I really can't think of a plausible natural scenario where you get from the bat virus, or one very similar to it, to COVID 19, where you insert exactly 4 amino acids, 12 nucleotides, and all have to be added at the exact same time to gain this function.  I just can't figure out how this gets accomplished in nature.  It's not crackpot to suggest this could have happened given the gain-of-function research we know was happening at Wuhan."

Ralph Berrick (a world-famous researcher of gain-of-function who collaborated with Dr Shi at the Wuhan lab) said "So they (the Wuhan lab) have a very large collection of viruses in their laboratory and so as you know proximity is a problem, it's a problem." 

"Dr Fauci himself, privately acknowledged concerns about gain-of-function research in Wuhan and mutations in the virus that suggest it might have been engineered, just days before he commissioned the proximal origin paper.  Despite these private doubts, publicly these so-called experts and their allies were dismissing the lab leak theory as a conspiracy.  Within days, Anderson, Lipkin, and Gerry were putting final touches on what would be remembered as one of the most remarkable reversals in modern history.  In their "proximal origin" paper, these scientists concluded "we do not believe that ANY type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible."  Privately they were saying one thing, publicly they were saying another."

Media went along with this and censored discussion of viral origins that didn't support the official story.  Information and evidence was withheld by researchers and people in the federal government from the public and from congress.  One example is Dr David Morenz of NIH deleting emails regarding early discussions and then commenting "I think we're safe now" to Peter Daszac at EcoHealth Alliance.  NIH and HHS have withheld documents regarding gain-of-function research from congress, despite congress passing a law to make the evidence public.  The people involved are saying there wasn't gain-of-function research but won't allow anyone to look at the supposed discussion.  "This has been a deliberate, prolonged effort to deceive the committee about certain gain-of-function research experiments that the agencies have been withholding.

"What we've found as we've gone through this is that at every step there's been resistance, so the hearing today is to try to find out whether or not we can get to the truth.  Do we know for certain it came from the lab?  No, but there's a preponderance of evidence indicating that it may have come from the lab.  Do we know viruses have come from animals in the past?  Yes they've come from animals in the past.  But this time there's no animal reservoir, no animal handlers with antibodies, there are a lot of reasons why...there are indications that this could well have come from the lab".  He goes on to say that there will be scientists from both sides presenting evidence, and there should be a spirited debate.

Medical Gaslighting

The Martha Mitchell Effect

Martha Mitchell was married to the attorney general in the Nixon administration, John Mitchell.  She spoke up about the illegal activities that she was witnessing, but her claims were written off as delusional until the actual events of the Watergate scandal became public, when she was vindicated.  Sometimes a patient reports events to a doctor or other health care provider that the provider finds difficult to believe and considers to be delusions even when what the patient is reporting is actually true.  This is called the "Martha Mitchell effect" in reference to her experience of being wrongfully considered delusional.  This is particularly likely to happen when a patient's symptoms are the result of the malicious actions of another person, such as harm resulting from harassment or abuse.  This might include poisoning, stalking, gangstalking (group harassment), or gaslighting.  Abusers sometimes deliberately do things to their victims that make the victim sound crazy if they report it.  This is also more likely to occur if the patient reports harm from a medical procedure, treatment, or another medical provider, or from someone who is powerful or well known.

This effect was seen recently when some people presented to the hospital during the COVID 19 pandemic suffering adverse events from the COVID vaccines and were diagnosed as delusional when they were suffering actual side effects that were later acknowledged by the medical establishment and public health authorities.

Chinese Sesame Ginger Condiment

 Ingredients:

6-7 inch piece of young ginger root, chopped as fine as possible
1bunch green onions, sliced into very thin rounds
1 tsp sea salt
1 T toasted sesame oil

Combine the chopped ginger and green onions in a mortar or bowl (made of glass or ceramic).

Rub and grind the salt in with the pestle or a metal spoon to break down the ginger and green onions, to grind them into a paste-like consistency.  

Add the sesame oil and stir well.  

Let it sit for at least an hour before using.

Homemade Pizza Sauce

 Ingredients:

1-2 T oil or fat (for cooking)
1 onion
4 large tomatoes
2 tsp dried oregano
2 tsp dried basil
3-4 cloves of garlic, crushed
salt to taste

Finely chop the onion in a food processor or blender, set aside.

Puree the tomatoes in the food processor or blender, set aside.

Heat the oil or fat in a skillet.  Add the chopped onion and saute for about 5 minutes.

Stir in the garlic and herbs.  Pour in the tomatoes and add some salt, and let it simmer for 1 to 2 hours to cook down to desired thickness.  

Remove from heat and adjust salt and seasonings.

Food Supply Dangers (Bird Flu)

Big Ag, Not Wild Birds, Is What Really Spreads Avian Flu

Bird flu (H5N1) was first identified in chickens on a farm in Scotland in 1959.  In 1996 an outbreak occurred on a goose farm in China and spread to humans, killing half of the humans who contracted it.  In 2005 bird flu was spread from domestic birds to wild birds who spread it via migration, bringing it to the Americas in 2021.  The problem of bird flu is usually presented as one in which a virus infecting wild birds is being brought into domestic bird farms, where it spreads like crazy, harming the birds and threatening the health of humans who have contact with farmed birds.  This version of the story seems to be backwards.  The evidence shows bird flu as primarily a problem arising from our farming practices that sometimes spills over into wild birds, who are capable of spreading it.

"We’re getting the story of bird flu backward. The way that we farm animals in the U.S. and the world is amplifying costly and potentially deadly pathogens. Stopping this outbreak and preventing future outbreaks means reckoning with a troubling paradox: Food is essential for our health, but the conditions under which we create our food is making us and the animals around us sick."

Industrial animal farming involves overcrowding animals in cramped and unnatural conditions that jeopardize their health, a situation worsened by poor cleanliness (animals are often sitting in their own waste) and the fact that the animals are often genetically similar which makes them susceptible to the same pathogens.  These factors together create an environment like a petri dish in which the influenza virus can easily mutate and spread, and that spread isn't limited to just other birds- it can also spread to pigs and cows, allowing it to mutate further.  What is particularly dangerous about bird flu spreading to pigs is that their immune systems are similar to those of humans in such a way that when the virus mutates among pig populations it becomes more likely to be dangerous to humans.  There is reason to believe this may also be true of cows, but in cows there is the added risk that sick cows tend to be asymptomatic, so the infections are missed. This is basically a problem with the fundamental way that food animals are produced in the US and many other countries.