The Gary Null Show

The Gary Null Show - 02.03.21

Gary takes on the real issues that the mainstream media is afraid to tackle. Tune in to find out the latest about health news, healing, politics, and the economy. Chris Hedges talks to Professor Noam Chomsky, the pioneering linguist, prolific author of numerous seminal political works, about the state of the American Empire.
 

The Gary Null Show - 02.02.21

Gary takes on the real issues that the mainstream media is afraid to tackle. Tune in to find out the latest about health news, healing, politics, and the economy.
George Orwell and 1984: How Freedom Dies
Orwell's final warning - Picture of the future
The Efficacy of Olive Leaf Extract on Healing Herpes Simplex Virus: A Randomized Double-blind Study
Lorestan University of Medical Sciences (Iran), January 29, 2021
 
Herpes simplex virus (HSV), as a common infection in healthy individuals, is treated symptomatically, but drug resistance and the side effects of drugs have drawn the attention of researchers to complementary medicine. Olive Leaf Extract (OLE) has antiviral effects that may treat HSV. The current study aimed to compare the clinical effects of OLE and Acyclovir on HSV-1.
Methods
This randomized double-blind clinical trial was conducted on 66 patients who had already been diagnosed with HSV-1. The participants were randomized into two groups, receiving 2% OLE cream or 5% acyclovir cream five times a day for six days. The symptoms were evaluated before, and three and six days after the interventions. Data were analyzed using the SPSS software through the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, chi-squared, t-test, and repeated measures ANOVA.
Results
The results showed clinical symptoms decreased in both groups during the study and both medications were effective in the treatment of HSV-1. However, the OLE group experienced less bleeding (P=0.038), itching (P=0.002), and pain (P=0.001) on the third day as well as less irritation (P=0.012), itching (P=0.003) and color change (P=0.001) on the sixth day compared to the acyclovir group. The treatment course for participants in the OLE group was shorter than in the acyclovir group (P = 0.001).
Conclusion
The evidence from these trials suggests the OLE cream is superior in the healing of episodes of HSV-1 over the acyclovir cream. Future studies are recommended to investigate if OLE could be an adjunct to acyclovir treatment.
 
How vitamins, steroids and potential antivirals might affect SARS-CoV-2
Study indicates that some vitamins, steroids and antivirals could bind to the Spike protein, and may inhibit virus infectivity, whereas high cholesterol may enable the virus
University of Bristol (UK), January 29, 2021
 
Evidence is emerging that vitamin D - and possibly vitamins K and A - might help combat COVID-19. A new study from the University of Bristol published in the journal of the German Chemical Society Angewandte Chemie has shown how they - and other antiviral drugs - might work. The research indicates that these dietary supplements and compounds could bind to the viral spike protein and so might reduce SARS-CoV-2 infectivity. In contrast, cholesterol may increase infectivity, which could explain why having high cholesterol is considered a risk factor for serious disease.
Recently, Bristol researchers showed that linoleic acid binds to a specific site in the viral spike protein, and that by doing so, it locks the spike into a closed, less infective form. Now, a research team has used computational methods to search for other compounds that might have the same effect, as potential treatments. They hope to prevent human cells becoming infected by preventing the viral spike protein from opening enough to interact with a human protein (ACE2). New anti-viral drugs can take years to design, develop and test, so the researchers looked through a library of approved drugs and vitamins to identify those which might bind to this recently discovered 'druggable pocket' inside the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. 
The team first studied the effects of linoleic acid on the spike, using computational simulations to show that it stabilizes the closed form. Further simulations showed that dexamethasone - which is an effective treatment for COVID-19 - might also bind to this site and help reduce viral infectivity in addition to its effects on the human immune system. 
The team then conducted simulations to see which other compounds bind to the fatty acid site. This identified some drugs that have been found by experiments to be active against the virus, suggesting that this may be one mechanism by which they prevent viral replication such as, by locking the spike structure in the same way as linoleic acid.
The findings suggested several drug candidates among available pharmaceuticals and dietary components, including some that have been found to slow SARS-CoV-2 reproduction in the laboratory. These have the potential to bind to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein and may help to prevent cell entry. 
The simulations also predicted that the fat-soluble vitamins D, K and A bind to the spike in the same way making the spike less able to infect cells. 
Dr Deborah Shoemark, Senior Research Associate (Biomolecular Modelling) in the School of Biochemistry, who modelled the spike, explained: "Our findings help explain how some vitamins may play a more direct role in combatting COVID than their conventional support of the human immune system. 
"Obesity is a major risk factor for severe COVID. Vitamin D is fat soluble and tends to accumulate in fatty tissue. This can lower the amount of vitamin D available to obese individuals. Countries in which some of these vitamin deficiencies are more common have also suffered badly during the course of the pandemic. Our research suggests that some essential vitamins and fatty acids including linoleic acid may contribute to impeding the spike/ACE2 interaction. Deficiency in any one of them may make it easier for the virus to infect."
Pre-existing high cholesterol levels have been associated with increased risk for severe COVID-19. Reports that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein binds cholesterol led the team to investigate whether it could bind at the fatty acid binding site. Their simulations indicate that it could bind, but that it may have a destabilising effect on the spike's locked conformation, and favour the open, more infective conformation.
Dr Shoemark continued: "We know that the use of cholesterol lowering statins reduces the risk of developing severe COVID and shortens recovery time in less severe cases. Whether cholesterol de-stabilises the "benign", closed conformation or not, our results suggest that by directly interacting with the spike, the virus could sequester cholesterol to achieve the local concentrations required to facilitate cell entry and this may also account for the observed loss of circulating cholesterol post infection."
Professor Adrian Mulholland, of Bristol's School of Chemistry, added: "Our simulations show how some molecules binding at the linoleic acid site affect the spike's dynamics and lock it closed. They also show that drugs and vitamins active against the virus may work in the same way. Targeting this site may be a route to new anti-viral drugs. A next step would be to look at effects of dietary supplements and test viral replication in cells."
Alison Derbenwick Miller, Vice President, Oracle for Research, said: "It's incredibly exciting that researchers are gaining new insights into how SARS-CoV-2 interacts with human cells, which ultimately will lead to new ways to fight COVID-19. We are delighted that Oracle's high-performance cloud infrastructure is helping to advance this kind of world-changing research. Growing a globally-connected community of cloud-powered researchers is exactly what Oracle for Research is designed to do."
 
 
Researchers find melatonin is effective against polycystic kidney disease
Concordia University (Canada), January 26, 2021
A hormone commonly associated with sleep-wake regulation has been found to reduce cysts in fruit flies, according to Concordia researchers. It's a finding that may affect the way we treat some kidney diseases and reduce the need for kidney transplants.
In a new paper published in the journal Molecules, alum Cassandra Millet-Boureima(MSc 19) and Chiara Gamberi, affiliate assistant professor of biology, write that melatonin was found to reduce cysts in the renal tubules of fruit flies. These tubules are also found in more complex mammals, including humans, where they are called nephrons. This study, which builds on previous studies by Millet-Boureima and Gamberi, was co-authored by Roman Rozencwaig and Felix Polyak of BH Bioscience in Montreal.
The researchers hope that their findings can be applied to treating people suffering from autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease. ADPKD is a genetic chronic and progressive disease characterized by the growth of dozens of cysts in the nephrons. It is incurable and affects approximately 12.5 million worldwide.
Similarities big and small
Because nephrons in vertebrates are embedded in other tissue, the researchers experimented on Drosophila -- the common fruit fly.
"Drosophila conserves many of the renal pathway components found in vertebrates and have anatomically isolated renal tubes," Gamberi explains. "With microdissection, we can isolate the tubules and conduct biochemical and molecular analysis."
The researchers bred fruit flies bearing the Bicaudal C gene mutation. It is known to cause kidney cysts in all manner of living beings, from flies to frogs to mice to humans.
Over 18 days, Millet-Boureima administered melatonin to 50 Drosophila and ethanol to a control group. She then dissected the flies and scored their cysts, a process yielding a cystic index. She found that the melatonin-treated flies had much fewer and smaller cysts than the control. Because Millet-Boureima was skilled at dissecting the insects and evaluating the recovered renal tubules, she was able to avoid bias in the count.
She was also able to distinguish three separate sections of the Drosophila tubule, each with its own unique function, and assign the cysts to a particular section. After testing several compounds on the same family of cells, she observed different activities along the length of the tubule. The researchers realized that they could potentially develop targeted treatment depending on the location of the cysts in a patient's nephrons.
"Biologically speaking, this has a lot of potential that we will obviously develop," Gamberi says.
Helping without harming
Though Gamberi says melatonin has not been previously used to treat PKD, she does think it holds some promise. PKD is a chronic disease, so treatment cannot include any toxic components. This rules out chemotherapy and tumour-killing antineoplastics used in oncology, for instance. However, melatonin is entirely non-toxic and shares certain properties with antineoplastics and anti-inflammatory agents.
"We know from oncology that melatonin has two effects when it is administered with chemotherapy," Gamberi explains. "First, it acts as a drug adjuvant to the chemotherapy, making it work more effectively against cancer cells. Second, it appears to protect healthy cells from the toxicity of the chemotherapy. Basically, melatonin increases the specificity of the chemotherapy. We hope that it can have a similar positive effect when used with an anti-ADPKD drug like tolvaptan, which can damage the liver."
The researchers are keen to share their findings as quickly as possible.
"I hope there will be more research on the drugs we tested and that we get more results that will help the PKD community," Millet-Boureima says.
 
 
Gallic acid is a dual alpha/beta-secretase modulator that reverses cognitive impairment and remediates pathology in Alzheimer 
Saitama Medical Center (Japan), January 20, 2021
 
According to news reporting from Saitama, Japan, research stated, “Several plant-derived compounds have demonstrated efficacy in pre-clinical Alzheimer’s disease (AD) rodent models. Each of these compounds share a gallic acid (GA) moiety, and initial assays on this isolated molecule indicated that it might be responsible for the therapeutic benefits observed.”  Higher concentrations of GA are found in blueberry, blackberry, strawberry, plums, grapes, mango, cashew nut, hazelnut, walnut and tea.
 
The news correspondents obtained a quote from the research from Saitama Medical Center, “To test this hypothesis in a more physiologically relevant setting, we investigated the effect of GA in the mutant human amyloid beta-protein precursor/presenilin 1 (APP/PS1) transgenic AD mouse model. Beginning at 12 months, we orally administered GA (20 mg/kg) or vehicle once daily for 6 months to APP/PS1 mice that have accelerated Alzheimer-like pathology. At 18 months of age, GA therapy reversed impaired learning and memory as compared with vehicle, and did not alter behavior in nontransgenic littermates. GA-treated APP/PS1 mice had mitigated cerebral amyloidosis, including brain parenchymal and cerebral vascular beta-amyloid deposits, and decreased cerebral amyloid beta-proteins. Beneficial effects co-occurred with reduced amyloidogenic and elevated nonamyloidogenic APP processing. Furthermore, brain inflammation, gliosis, and oxidative stress were alleviated. We show that GA simultaneously elevates alpha- and reduces beta-secretase activity, inhibits neuroinflammation, and stabilizes brain oxidative stress in a pre-clinical mouse model of AD. We further demonstrate that GA increases abundance of a disintegrin and metalloproteinase domain-containing protein 10 (ADAM10, Adam10) proprotein convertase furin and activates ADAM10, directly inhibits beta-site APP cleaving enzyme 1 (BACE1, Bace1) activity but does not alter Adam10 or Bace1 transcription. Thus, our data reveal novel post-translational mechanisms for GA.”
According to the news reporters, the research concluded: “We suggest further examination of GA supplementation in humans will shed light on the exciting therapeutic potential of this molecule.”
This research has been peer-reviewed.
 
 
Black cumin’s anti-inflammatory potential may have airways/asthma benefits: RCT
 
University College London, January 27, 2021
 
Supplements containing oil from black cumin (Nigella sativa) may improve asthma control and lung function, says a new study.
 
The seed and oil of Nigella sativa have been used extensively in traditional medicine in many Middle Eastern and Asian countries for the treatment of a range of conditions, including some immune and inflammatory disorders.
 
The new study, published in Phytotherapy Research , found that one gram per day of the oil for four weeks led to significant improvements in scores of asthma control and a “remarkable reduction of peripheral blood eosinophil count,” wrote the authors
 
“Eosinophil cell plays a major role in asthma inflammation, and blood eosinophil count is considered to be a vital biomarker in asthma trials. To our knowledge, this is the first [randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial] that showed a significant reduction of blood eosinophilia by [Nigella sativa oil (NSO)] among asthmatic patients.”
 
Scientists from University College London (UK) and King Abdulaziz University (Saudi Arabia) recruited 80 asthmatics and randomly assigned them to one of two equal groups. The participants received either capsules containing 500 mg of NSO twice per day or placebo for four weeks.
 
Data from the 60 people who completed the study (10 dropouts in each group) indicated that the black cumin supplement was associated with significant improvements in mean score on the Asthma Control Test, compared to placebo.
 
Black cumin oil products are commercially available through brands such as Life Extension. Structure-function claims made on the products include: “Modulates key regulators of inflammation”
In addition, the black cumin group also experienced a significant decrease in blood eosinophils: −50 versus 15 cells/microliter.
 
A non-statistically significant improvement in lung function, measured as forced expiratory volume in 1 second, was also associated with the black cumin supplements.
 
“The NSO supplementation appeared to be effective in enhancing the control of asthma symptoms with a trend in pulmonary function improvement,” wrote the researchers. “These findings may provide an evidence for the potential benefits of NSO supplementation in the clinical management of asthma. “Future studies should follow patients for a longer period and use additional outcomes to validate the benefits of NSO in asthma.”
 
LSD may offer viable treatment for certain mental disorders
McGill University (Quebec), January 26, 2021
Researchers from McGill University have discovered, for the first time, one of the possible mechanisms that contributes to the ability of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) to increase social interaction. The findings, which could help unlock potential therapeutic applications in treating certain psychiatric diseases, including anxiety and alcohol use disorders, are published in the journal PNAS.
Psychedelic drugs, including LSD, were popular in the 1970s and have been gaining popularity over the past decade, with reports of young professionals claiming to regularly take small non-hallucinogenic micro-doses of LSD to boost their productivity and creativity and to increase their empathy. The mechanism of action of LSD on the brain, however, has remained a mystery.
Studies in mice provide clues
To conduct their study, the researchers administered a low dose of LSD to mice over a period of seven days, resulting in an observable increase in the sociability of the mice. "This increased sociability occurs because the LSD activates the serotonin 5-HT2A receptors and the AMPA receptors -- which is a glutamate receptor, the main brain excitatory neurotransmitters -- in the prefrontal cortex and also activates a cellular protein called mTORC 1," explains Danilo De Gregorio, PharmD, PhD, who is a postdoctoral fellow in the Neurobiological Psychiatry Unit at McGill and the study's first author. "These three factors, taken together, promote social interaction in mice, which is the equivalent of empathy and social behaviour in humans." 
The researchers note that the main outcome of their study is the ability to describe, at least in rodents, the underlying mechanism for the behavioural effect that results in LSD increasing feelings of empathy, including a greater connection to the world and sense of being part of a large community. "The fact that LSD binds the 5-HT2A receptor was previously known. The novelty of this research is to have identified that the prosocial effects of LSD activate the 5-HT2 receptors, which in-turn activate the excitatory synapses of the AMPA receptor as well as the protein complex mTORC1, which has been demonstrated to be dysregulated in diseases with social deficits such as autism spectrum disorder," as specified by Prof. Nahum Sonenberg, Professor at the Department of Biochemistry of McGill University, world renowned expert in the molecular biology of diseases and co-lead author of the study.
Using the cutting-edge technique of optogenetics, a technique where genes for light-sensitive proteins are introduced into specific types of brain cells in order to monitor and control their activity precisely using light signals, the researchers observed that when the excitatory transmission in the prefrontal cortex is de-activated, the prosocial effect of LSD was nullified, highlighting the importance of this brain region on the modulation of the behavioural effects of LSD.
Moving forward to apply the findings to humans
Having found that LSD increases social interaction in mice, the researchers are hoping to continue their work and to test the ability of LSD to treat mutant mice displaying the behavioural deficits similar to those seen in human pathologies including autism spectrum disorders and social anxiety disorders. The hope is to eventually explore whether micro-doses of LSD or some novel derivates might have a similar effect in humans and whether it could also be a viable and safe therapeutic option. 
"Social interaction is a fundamental characteristic of human behaviour," notes the co-lead author Dr. Gabriella Gobbi, Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at McGill and psychiatrist at the McGill University Health Centre. "These hallucinogenic compounds, which, at low doses, are able to increase sociability may help to better understand the pharmacology and neurobiology of social behavior and, ultimately, to develop and discover novel and safer drugs for mental disorders."
 
Polyphenol-rich virgin olive oil reduces insulin resistance and liver inflammation and improves mitochondrial dysfunction
 
University of Naples (Italy), January 28, 2021
 
Studies from University of Naples Federico II Describe New Findings in Insulin Resistance (Polyphenol-rich virgin olive oil reduces insulin resistance and liver inflammation and improves mitochondrial dysfunction in high-fat diet fed rats)
 
A new study on Endocrine System Diseases and Conditions - Insulin Resistance is now available. According to news reporting originating in Naples, Italy, research stated, "Virgin olive oil is an essential component of the Mediterranean diet. Its antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties are mainly linked to phenolic contents."
 
The news reporters obtained a quote from the research from the University of Naples Federico II, "This study aims to evaluate the beneficial effects of a polyphenol-rich virgin olive oil (HPCOO) or olive oil without polyphenols (WPOO) in rats fed high-fat diet (HFD). Male Sprague-Dawley rats were divided into four groups based on the different types of diet: (I) standard diet (STD); (II) HFD; (III) HFD containing WPOO, and (IV) HFD containing HPCOO. HPCOO and WPOO induced a significant improvement of HFD-induced impaired glucose homeostasis (by hyperglycemia, altered oral glucose tolerance, and HOMA-IR) and inflammatory status modulating pro-and anti-inflammatory cytokines (TNF-a, IL-1, and IL-10) and adipokines. Moreover, HPCOO and less extensively WPOO, limited HFD-induced liver oxidative and nitrosative stress and increased hepatic fatty acid oxidation. To study mitochondrial performance, oxidative capacity and energy efficiency were also evaluated in isolated liver mitochondria. HPCOO, but not WPOO, reduced H O release and aconitase activity by decreasing degree of coupling, which plays a major role in the control of mitochondrial reactive oxygen species emission."
 
According to the news reporters, the research concluded: "HPCOO limits HFD-induced insulin resistance, inflammation, and hepatic oxidative stress, preventing nonalcoholic fatty liver disease progression."
 
For more information on this research see: Polyphenol-rich virgin olive oil reduces insulin resistance and liver inflammation and improves mitochondrial dysfunction in high-fat diet fed rats. 
 

The Gary Null Show - 02.01.21

Gary takes on the real issues that the mainstream media is afraid to tackle. Tune in to find out the latest about health news, healing, politics, and the economy.
The Next Revolution With Steve Hilton 1/31/21 FULL | FOX BREAKING TRUMP NEWS January 31 ,21

The Gary Null Show - 01.29.21

Gary takes on the real issues that the mainstream media is afraid to tackle. Tune in to find out the latest about health news, healing, politics, and the economy.
Meta-analysis finds dietary supplements improve sleep quality
Hong Kong Polytechnic University, January 27 2021. 
 
A systematic review and meta-analysis published on January 13, 2021 in Postgraduate Medical Journal found benefits for supplemental vitamin D, melatonin and amino acids in improving the quality of sleep among men and women. 
The meta-analysis included 15 randomized, controlled trials that examined the association between subjective sleep quality as assessed by the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and supplementation with amino acids, the hormone melatonin, omega 3 fatty acids and vitamin D. Pooled data for the two studies involving amino acid supplements, seven studies involving melatonin, and four studies involving vitamin D each showed significant differences between supplemented and control groups, with more favorable PSQI scores occurring among those who received the supplements. The two studies that evaluated omega 3 did not reveal significant differences between the treatment and control groups.
Two reviewed trials that were not eligible for inclusion in the meta-analysis added evidence to the benefit of melatonin in sleep quality. Other non-included trials found a benefit for nitrate-containing beetroot juice, resveratrol and zinc supplements. Co-supplementation with melatonin, magnesium and zinc was also associated with a significant benefit in comparison with a placebo. 
“Although we found a significant improvement in sleep quality by dietary supplementation, randomized, controlled trials with longer duration and larger sample size should be conducted to verify our findings,” noted authors Vicky Chan and Kenneth Lo of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. “Furthermore, dose–response effect of different supplements on sleep quality has not yet been evaluated.”
“Amino acids, vitamin D and melatonin supplements were significantly beneficial to improve sleep quality,” they concluded. “Further research on the effect of magnesium, zinc, resveratrol and nitrate supplementation on improving sleep quality is required.”
 
 
Green coffee extract and silymarin protect against carbon tetrachloride-induced liver toxicity
University of Tabuk (Saudi Arabia), January 26, 2021
 
According to news originating from the University of Tabuk research stated, “During the last few decades, patients worldwide have been interested in using alternative medicine in treating diseases to avoid the increased side effects of chemical medications. Green coffee is unroasted coffee seeds that have higher amounts of chlorogenic acid compared to roasted coffee.”
Our news journalists obtained a quote from the research from University of Tabuk: “Green coffee was successfully used to protect against obesity, Alzheimer disease, high blood pressure and bacterial infection. This study aimed to investigate the probable protective activity of the green coffee methanolic extract, silymarin and their combination on CCl4-induced liver toxicity in male rats. Thirty Sprague - Dawley male albino rats were divided into 5 groups; control negative (G1) just got the vehicle (olive oil) and the other four groups received CCl4 dissolved in olive oil through an intraperitoneal injection and were divided into untreated control positive group (G2), the third group (G3) was treated with green coffee methanolic extract, the fourth group (G4) was treated with silymarin, and the fifth group (G5) was treated with a combination of green coffee methanolic extract and silymarin. In the positive control group treated with CCl4 (G2), the CCl4-induced toxicity increased lipid peroxidation, IL-6, kidney function parameters, liver function enzymes, total cholesterol, triglycerides and low-density lipoproteins, and decreased irisin, antioxidants, CYP450 and high-density lipoprotein levels. Hepatic tissues were also injured. However, treating the injured rats in G3, G4 and G5 significantly improved the altered parameters and hepatic tissues.”
According to the news reporters, the research concluded: “Green coffee methanolic extract, silymarin, and their combination succeeded in protecting the male rats against CCl4 hepatotoxicity due to their antioxidant activity. Effect of green coffee methanolic extract mixed with silymarin in G5 was more efficient than that of green coffee methanolic extract in G3 or silymarin in G4.”
 
 
Vitamin D status and outcomes for hospitalised older patients with COVID-19
NHS Foundation Trust and University of Cyprus, January 21, 2021
 
Purpose Older adults are more likely to be vitamin D deficient. The aim of the study was to determine whether these patients have worse outcomes with COVID-19.
Methods We conducted a prospective cohort study between 1 March and 30 April 2020 to assess the importance of vitamin D deficiency in older patients with COVID-19. The cohort consisted of patients aged ≥65 years presenting with symptoms consistent with COVID-19 (n=105). All patients were tested for serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) levels during acute illness. Diagnosis of COVID-19 was confirmed via viral reverse transcriptase PCR swab or supporting radiological evidence. COVID-19-positive arm (n=70) was sub-divided into vitamin D-deficient (≤30 nmol/L) (n=39) and -replete groups (n=35). Subgroups were assessed for disease severity using biochemical, radiological and clinical markers. Primary outcome was in-hospital mortality. Secondary outcomes were laboratory features of cytokine storm, thoracic imaging changes and requirement of non-invasive ventilation (NIV).
Results COVID-19-positive arm demonstrated lower median serum 25(OH)D level of 27 nmol/L (IQR=20–47 nmol/L) compared with COVID-19-negative arm, with median level of 52 nmol/L (IQR=31.5–71.5 nmol/L) (p value=0.0008). Among patients with vitamin D deficiency, there was higher peak D-dimer level (1914.00 μgFEU/L vs 1268.00 μgFEU/L) (p=0.034) and higher incidence of NIV support and high dependency unit admission (30.77% vs 9.68%) (p=0.042). No increased mortality was observed between groups.
Conclusion Older adults with vitamin D deficiency and COVID-19 may demonstrate worse morbidity outcomes. Vitamin D status may be a useful prognosticator.
 
Mental Disorders Forecast Chronic Physical Diseases, Premature Death
University of Michigan, January 22, 2021
Poor early-life mental health may jeopardize later-life physical health, according to a new study led by a University of Michigan researcher.
The study, published in the journal JAMA Network Open, indicates that people who experience psychiatric conditions when they are young are likely to experience excess age-related physical diseases when they are older.
Leah Richmond-Rakerd, U-M assistant professor of psychology, and colleagues found that this association cannot be explained by preexisting physical illness; they ruled out the possibility of reverse causation in which having a physical illness precipitates mental health problems. Prior studies had not taken this into account. This association is present across different mental disorders and different physical diseases, she said.
The researchers conducted a nationwide hospital-register study of 2.3 million New Zealanders—aged 10-60 years at baseline—followed across three decades (1988 to 2018). They tested whether individuals with mental disorders are at increased risk for subsequent chronic physical diseases and premature mortality.
Richmond-Rakerd and colleagues collected information about hospital admissions for different mental disorders, such as substance use disorders, psychotic disorders, mood disorders, anxiety disorders and self-harm behavior. In addition, researchers collected information about hospital admissions for different chronic physical diseases, ranging from coronary heart disease to cancer.
Across the 30-year period, individuals with mental disorders were more likely to develop subsequent physical diseases and they also died earlier than people without mental disorders, the study showed. They also experienced more medical hospitalizations, spent more time in hospitals for physical-disease treatment and accumulated more associated health care costs. These associations were present across all age groups and in both men and women.
The findings indicate that addressing mental health problems in early life might be a window of opportunity for preventing future physical diseases, Richmond-Rakerd said. They also suggest the importance of joined-up services, or integrated care.
“Our health care system often divides treatment between the brain and the body,” she said. “Integrating the two could benefit population health.”
Richmond-Rakerd said they chose New Zealand because there it is possible to link hospital registers and other administrative databases for the entire population of the country.
The study’s co-authors are Stephanie D’Souza and Barry Milne of the University of Auckland, Avshalom Caspi and Terrie Moffitt of Duke University and King’s College London.
 
'Aging well' greatly affected by hopes and fears for later life, study finds
Oregon State University, January 21, 2021
 
If you believe you are capable of becoming the healthy, engaged person you want to be in old age, you are much more likely to experience that outcome, a recent Oregon State University study shows.
"How we think about who we're going to be in old age is very predictive of exactly how we will be," said Shelbie Turner, a doctoral student in OSU's College of Public Health and Human Sciences and co-author on the study.
Previous studies on aging have found that how people thought about themselves at age 50 predicted a wide range of future health outcomes up to 40 years later -- cardiovascular events, memory, balance, will to live, hospitalizations; even mortality. 
"Previous research has shown that people who have positive views of aging at 50 live 7.5 years longer, on average, than people who don't," said Karen Hooker, co-author of the study and the Jo Anne Leonard Petersen Endowed Chair in Gerontology and Family Studies at OSU. 
Because self-perceptions of aging are linked to so many major health outcomes, Hooker and Turner wanted to understand what influences those perceptions. Their study looked specifically at the influence of two factors: self-efficacy associated with possible selves, meaning a person's perceived ability to become the person they want to be in the future; and optimism as a general personality trait. 
The researchers measured self-perception of aging by having respondents say how strongly they agreed or disagreed with statements such as, "Things keep getting worse as I get older," "I have as much pep as I had last year," "As you get older, you are less useful." They measured optimism in a similar way, with respondents ranking their agreement with statements like "In uncertain times I usually expect the best." 
To measure self-efficacy, the study used a dataset that compiled survey responses from older adults where they listed two "hoped-for" future selves and two "feared" future selves, and ranked how capable they felt of becoming the person they hoped to be and avoiding becoming the person they feared to be. 
Among the "hoped for" selves were things like "A social person with a strong network of friends" and "A healthy, active person." Examples of "feared" selves were "Chronically sick and in pain," "Being dependent on others for my day-to-day needs" and "A cranky, angry old woman." 
Results showed that, as predicted, higher optimism was associated with more positive self-perception of aging. Both "hoped-for" self-efficacy and "feared" self-efficacy were also significantly associated with self-perception of aging, above and beyond optimism as a trait. 
A major factor in how people see their own aging selves is internalizing ageist stereotypes, the researchers said. Examples of such stereotypes include assumptions that older adults are bad drivers, or suffer memory problems, or are unable to engage in physical activity anymore. 
"Kids as young as 4 years old already have negative stereotypes about old people," Hooker said. "Then, of course, if you're lucky enough to live to old age, they eventually apply to you." 
Those stereotypes get reinforced every time an older adult forgets something and jokes, "Another senior moment!" But the researchers say these thought patterns can do real harm.
"People need to realize that some of the negative health consequences in later life might not be biologically driven. The mind and the body are all interwoven," Hooker said. "If you believe these bad things are going to happen, over time that can erode people's willingness or maybe even eventually their ability to engage in those health behaviors that are going to keep them as healthy as they can be." 
A way to mitigate those negative stereotypes about aging is to promote intergenerational relationships, so younger people can see older adults enjoying happy, healthy lives. 
"The more you're around older people, the more you realize that it's not all bad," Turner said. "Older people can do some things better than young people do. Increasing opportunities for intergenerational relationships is one way we can make people more optimistic about aging."
 
Over half of cannabis users with Parkinson's disease report clinical benefits
University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (Germany), January 26, 2021
 
With medicinal cannabis now legalized in many parts of the world, there is growing interest in its use to alleviate symptoms of many illnesses including Parkinson's disease (PD). According to results of a survey of PD patients in Germany in the Journal of Parkinson's Disease, over 8% of patients with PD reported using cannabis products and more than half of those users (54%) reported a beneficial clinical effect.
Cannabis products containing THC (tetrahydrocannabinol, the main psychoactive compound of cannabis) can be prescribed in Germany when previous therapies are unsuccessful or not tolerated, and where cannabis can be expected with not a very unlikely chance to relieve disabling symptoms. CBD (pure cannabidiol, derived directly from the hemp plant, a cousin of the marijuana plant) is available without a prescription from pharmacies and on the internet.
"Medical cannabis was legally approved in Germany in 2017 when approval was given for therapy-resistant symptoms in severely affected patients independent of diagnosis and without clinical evidence-based data," explained lead investigator Prof. Dr. med. Carsten Buhmann, Department of Neurology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany. "PD patients fulfilling these criteria are entitled to be prescribed medical cannabis, but there are few data about which type of cannabinoid and which route of administration might be promising for which PD patient and which symptoms. We also lack information about the extent to which the PD community is informed about medicinal cannabis and whether they have tried cannabis and, if so, with what result."
Investigators aimed to assess patient perceptions of medicinal cannabis as well as evaluate the experiences of patients already using cannabis products. They performed a nationwide, cross-sectional, questionnaire-based survey among members of the German Parkinson Association (Deutsche Parkinson Vereinigung e.V.), which is the largest consortium of PD patients in German-speaking countries with nearly 21,000 members. Questionnaires were sent out in April 2019 with the association's membership journal and were also distributed in the investigators' clinic.
Over 1,300 questionnaires were analyzed; results showed that interest in the PD community in medical cannabis was high, but knowledge about different types of products was limited. Fifty-one percent of respondents were aware of the legality of medicinal cannabis, and 28% were aware of the various routes of administration (inhaling versus oral administration), but only 9% were aware of the difference between THC and CBD. 
More than 8% of patients were already using cannabinoids and more than half of these users (54%) reported that it had a beneficial clinical effect. The overall tolerability was good. Over 40% of users reported that it helped manage pain and muscle cramps, and more than 20% of users reported a reduction of stiffness (akinesia), freezing, tremor, depression, anxiety, and restless legs. Patients reported that inhaled cannabis products containing THC were more efficient in treating stiffness than oral products containing CBD but were slightly less well tolerated. 
Patients using cannabis tended to be younger, living in large cities, and more aware of the legal and clinical aspects of medicinal cannabis. Sixty-five percent of non-users were interested in using medicinal cannabis, but lack of knowledge and fear of side effects were reported as main reasons for not trying it. 
"Our data confirm that PD patients have a high interest in treatment with medicinal cannabis but lacked knowledge about how to take it and especially the differences between the two main cannabinoids, THC and CBD," noted Prof. Dr. med. Buhmann. "Physicians should consider these aspects when advising their patients about treatment with medicinal cannabis. The data reported here may help physicians decide which patients could benefit, which symptoms could be addressed, and which type of cannabinoid and route of administration might be suitable."
"Cannabis intake might be related to a placebo effect because of high patient expectations and conditioning, but even that can be considered as a therapeutic effect. It has to be stressed, though, that our findings are based on subjective patient reports and that clinically appropriate studies are urgently needed," he concluded. 
Bastiaan R. Bloem, MD, PhD, Director, Radboudumc Center of Expertise for Parkinson & Movement Disorders, Nijmegen, The Netherlands, and Co-Editor-in Chief of the Journal of Parkinson's Disease, added: "These findings are interesting in that they confirm a widespread interest among patients in the use of cannabis as a potential treatment for people living with PD. It is important to emphasize that more research is needed before cannabis can be prescribed as a treatment, and that guidelines currently recommend against the use of cannabis, even as self-medication, because the efficacy is not well established, and because there are safety concerns (adverse effects include among others sedation and hallucinations). As such, the present paper mainly serves to emphasize the need for carefully controlled clinical trials to further establish both the efficacy and safety of cannabis treatment."
 
Covid lockdown loneliness linked to more depressive symptoms in older adults
University of Exeter (UK), January 22, 2021
 
Loneliness in adults aged 50 and over during the COVID-19 lockdown was linked to worsening depressive and other mental health symptoms, according to a large-scale online study. 
Loneliness emerged as a key factor linked to worsening symptoms of depression and anxiety in a study of more than 3,000 people aged 50 or over led by the University of Exeter and King's College London, and funded by The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) . 
Researchers had access to data going back to 2015 for participants of the PROTECT online study. They also found that a decrease in physical activity since the start of the pandemic was associated with worsening symptoms of depression and anxiety during the pandemic. Other factors included being female and being retired. 
Dr Byron Creese, of the University of Exeter Medical School, who led the study, said: "Even before the pandemic, loneliness and physical activity levels were a huge issue in society, particularly among older people. Our study enabled us to compare mental health symptoms before and after COVID-19 in a large group of people aged 50 and over. We found that during lockdown, loneliness and decreased physical activity were associated with more symptoms of poor mental health, especially depression. It's now crucial that we build on this data to find new ways to mitigate risk of worsening mental health during the pandemic."
The study found that before the pandemic, lonely people would report an average of two symptoms of depression for at least several days over the previous last two weeks. During lockdown, lonely people reported either an increase in frequency of depressive symptoms, to more than half the days in the two week period, or a new symptom for at least several days in that timeframe. In people who were not lonely, levels of depressive symptoms were unaffected. 
PROTECT began in 2011, and has 25,000 participants signed up. Designed to understand the factors involved in healthy ageing, the innovative study combines detailed lifestyle questionnaires with cognitive tests that assess aspects of brain function including memory, judgment and reasoning over time. In May, researchers included a new questionnaire designed to assess the impact of COVID-19 on health and wellbeing. Running from May 13 to June 8, the questionnaire was completed by 3,300 people, of which 1,900 were long-standing PROTECT participants. The study is continuing to run so that longer term outcomes can be assessed. 
Zunera Khan, Research Portfolio Lead at Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience said "We've found links between loneliness and a drop in physical exercise and worsening mental health symptoms. It should be within our power to find ways of keeping people socially engaged and active. Our online PROTECT platform ultimately aims to find new ways to engage people in their homes, however, technology can only be part of the picture. We need to ensure we can find new ways to help people stay active and social, whether they are online or not."
Professor Clive Ballard, Executive Dean and Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University of Exeter Medical School, who leads PROTECT, said: "We are only just beginning to learn the impact that COVID-19 is having on the health and wellbeing of older people. For example, the effect of any economic impact may not yet have emerged. Our large scale study will span a number of years, and will help us understand some of the longer-term effects of COVID-19 on mental health and wellbeing, and ultimately, on whether this has any knock-on effect on aspects of ageing, such as brain function and memory. "
The study plans to conduct further analysis on groups at particularly high risk, such as people with cognitive impairment and those with caring rolesG

The Gary Null Show - 01.28.21

Statement of Harvey A. Risch, MD, PhDProfessor of Epidemiology, Yale School of Public HealthSenators and colleagues: thank you for convening this hearing. We all understand the endemicdisease that we are facing, that we have to face it head-on and not hide from it hoping that itwill go away. I want to give you my perspective.In May of this year I observed that results of studies of a drug suggested to treat Covid,hydroxychloroquine, were being misrepresented by what I thought at the time was sloppyreporting. We have heard from Dr. McCullough how Covid disease progresses in phases, fromviral replication, to florid pneumonia to multi-organ attack. Viral replication is an outpatientcondition, but the pneumonia that fills the lungs with immune-system debris is hospitalizableand potentially life-threatening. We have also heard how each phase, each pathologic aspectof the disease, has to have its own specific treatments that apply to its own biologicmechanisms. Thus, I was frankly astounded that studies of hospital treatments were beingrepresented as applying to outpatients, in violation of what I learned in medical school abouthow to treat patients.We are now finally coming to address why over the last six months, our government researchinstitutions have invested billions of dollars in expensive patent medication and vaccinedevelopment but almost nothing in early outpatient treatment, the first line of response tomanaging the pandemic. It is not that we lacked candidate medications to study, we have hada number of promising agents. But I believe that the early-on conflation of hospital withoutpatient disease served to imply that treatment of outpatient disease had been studied andfound ineffective. This illogical premise motivated me to look at the evidence for outpatienttreatment.I reiterate: we are considering the evidence for early treatment of high-risk outpatients toprevent hospitalization and mortality. That is it. Treatment starting in the first five days or soafter the onset of symptoms. Treatment of older patients or patients with chronic conditionssuch as diabetes, obesity, heart diseases, lung diseases, kidney diseases, immune-systemdiseases, survivors of cancer etc. These are the people most likely to die from Covid, and theyare the people most needing protection. I have sought to obtain reports of every study ofevery medication pertaining to early treatment of high-risk outpatients. I monitor the literaturedaily. And what I have found is actually quite remarkable. What I have observed is that whilethere have been positive reports about a number of drugs, every study of outpatient use of onedrug, hydroxychloroquine, with or without accompanying agents, has shown substantial benefitin reducing risks of hospitalization and mortality.These studies break down into two major types. The first is double-blinded, randomizedcontrolled trials, and the second is non-randomized but still controlled trials. You have heardfrom various government and scientific personalities that randomized controlled trials providethe strongest form of evidence. Many of these people have also claimed that randomized trials provide the only trustworthy form of evidence. There is some truth in these assertions, butthere is also lots of falsehood. We know for example that the great majority of drugs used totreat heart diseases were established with non-randomized trials. Cholesterol-lowering drugswere in widespread use before randomized trials were ever done. Azithromycin, the mostcommonly used antibiotic in children, was not established by randomized trials. The idea thatonly randomized trials provide trustworthy evidence is a simplistic notion that may sound goodin theory, but the comparison between randomized and non-randomized trials is somethingthat has actually been extensively studied in the medical literature. I am an epidemiologistbecause even though I love biological theories, I develop them all the time to study how natureworks, but it is from the human empirical data that we learn how indeed nature works.And we have huge amounts of empirical data to show that randomized trials and theircorresponding non-randomized trials give the same answers. Dr. Tom Frieden, previouslyDirector of the CDC, in 2017 wrote an extensive essay in the New England Journal of Medicineshowing that non-randomized trials can provide fully compelling evidence, especially when theyare done carefully to account for reasons why patients received the drugs, and importantly,when circumstances are such that the cost of waiting for randomized trials involves majorsickness and mortality as we have been experiencing this year. But Dr. Frieden’s essay, asauthoritative as it is, provides only snapshots of the empirical evidence for his observations.The real evidence comes from a meta-analysis of meta-analyses done by the Cochrane LibraryConsortium, a British international organization formed to organize medical research findings tofacilitate evidence-based choices about health interventions. The Cochrane investigatorsexamined what involve tens of thousands of comparisons between randomized trials and theirnon-randomized counterparts and found that the two types of studies arrived at virtuallyidentical conclusions. This is the real evidence about why good non-randomized trials compriseevidence every bit as important as randomized trials. Large amounts of consistent empiricaldata are the evidence, not plausible but simplistic assumptions, no matter who says them.So what did I find about hydroxychloroquine in early use among high-risk outpatients? The firstthing is that hydroxychloroquine is exceedingly safe. Common sense tells us this, that amedication safely used for 65 years by hundreds of millions of people in tens of billions of dosesworldwide, prescribed without routine screening EKGs, given to adults, children, pregnantwomen and nursing mothers, must be safe when used in the initial viral-replication phase of anillness that is similar at that point to colds or flu. In fact, a study by researchers at theUniversity of Oxford showed that in 14 large international medical-records databases of olderrheumatoid arthritis patients, no significant differences were seen in all-cause mortality forpatients who did or did not use hydroxychloroquine. The Oxford investigators also looked atcardiac arrhythmias and found no increase for hydroxychloroquine users. This was in morethan 900,000 hydroxychloroquine users. This is examined at length in my paper in theAmerican Journal of Epidemiology in May. Now, the FDA posted a warning on July 1 on itswebsite about hydroxychloroquine used in outpatients, but we can discuss this later; the FDA has had no systematic evidence in outpatients and erroneously extrapolated from hospitalinpatients to outpatients, what I said earlier was invalid.About studies of hydroxychloroquine early use in high-risk outpatients, every one of them, andthere are now seven studies, has shown significant benefit: 636 outpatients in São Paulo, Brazil;199 clinic patients in Marseille, France; 717 patients across a large HMO network in Brazil; 226nursing-home patients in Marseille; 1,247 outpatients in New Jersey; 100 long-term careinstitution patients in Andorra (between France and Spain); and 7,892 patients across SaudiArabia. All these studies pertain to the early treatment of high-risk outpatients—and allshowed about 50 percent or greater reductions in hospitalization or death. The Saudi studywas a national study and showed 5-fold reduction in mortality for hydroxychloroquine plus zincvs zinc alone. Not a single fatal cardiac arrhythmia was reported among these thousands ofpatients attributable to the hydroxychloroquine. These are the non-randomized but controlledtrials that have been published.Now we also know that all of the outpatient randomized controlled trials this year also togethershow statistically significant benefit. These six studies comprised generally much youngerpatients, only a fraction of whom were at high risk, so they individually had too fewhospitalizations or deaths to be statistically significant. But they all suggested lower risks withhydroxychloroquine use, and when they were analyzed together in meta-analysis as mycolleagues and I found, this lower risk was statistically significant across the studies.We have spent the last six months with formal government policies and warnings against earlyoutpatient treatment, with large government investments in vaccines and expensive newtreatments yet to be proven and almost no support of inexpensive but useful medications, anda quarter of a million Americans have died from this mismanaged approach. Even with newlypromising vaccines, we have almost no information about how they will perform in older andhigh-risk patients, in whom respiratory virus vaccines are known to have weak efficacy; it willbe a number of months before they become widely available; and we don’t know how longvaccine immunity will last, or even if the vaccines will work for the newly increasing mutantstrains of the virus. As I have said on many occasions, the evidence for benefit ofhydroxychloroquine used early in high-risk outpatients is extremely strong, and the evidenceagainst harm is also equally strong. This body of evidence dramatically outweighs therisk/benefit evidence for remdesivir, monoclonal antibodies or the difficult to usebamlanivimab that the FDA has approved for emergency use authorizations while denying theemergency use authorization for hydroxychloroquine. This egregious double standard forhydroxychloroquine needs to be overturned immediately and its emergency use authorizationapplication approved. This is how we will get on the road to early outpatient treatment and themajor curtailment of mortality. Thank you.ReferencesBarbosa Esper R, Souza da Silva R, Teiichi Costa Oikawa F, et al. Empirical treatment withhydroxychloroquine and azithromycin for suspected cases of COVID-19 followed-up bytelemedicine. April 15, 2020. Accessed April 30, 2020.https://pgibertie.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/2020.04.15-journal-manuscript-final.pdfHeras E, Garibaldi P, Boix M, et al. COVID-19 mortality risk factors in older people in a longterm care center. Preprints September 9, 2020. https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-70219/v2Ip A, Ahn J, Zhou Y, et al. Hydroxychloroquine in the treatment of outpatients with mildlysymptomatic COVID-19: A multi-center observational study. Preprints August 25, 2020.https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.08.20.20178772Ladapo JA, McKinnon JE, McCullough PA, Risch HA. Randomized Controlled Trials of EarlyAmbulatory Hydroxychloroquine in the Prevention of COVID-19 Infection, Hospitalization, andDeath: Meta-Analysis. Preprints September 30, 2020.https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.09.30.20204693Lagier JC, Million M, Gautret P, et al. Outcomes of 3,737 COVID-19 patients treated withhydroxychloroquine/azithromycin and other regimens in Marseille, France: A retrospectiveanalysis. Travel Med Infect Dis 2020 Jun 25:101791.https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1477893920302817Ly TDA, Zanini D, Laforge V, Arlotto S, Gentile S, Mendizabal H, Finaud M, Morel D, Quenette O,Malfuson-Clot-Faybesse P, Midejean A, Le-Dinh P, Daher G, Labarriere B, Morel-Roux AM,Coquet A, Augier P, Parola P, Chabriere E, Raoult D, Gautret P. Pattern of SARS-CoV-2 infectionamong dependant elderly residents living in long-term care facilities in Marseille, France,March-June 2020. Int J Antimicrob Agents. 2020 Nov 6:106219.https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0924857920304301Risch HA. Early Outpatient Treatment of Symptomatic, High-Risk COVID-19 Patients ThatShould Be Ramped Up Immediately as Key to the Pandemic Crisis. Am J Epidemiol. 2020 Nov2;189(11):1218-1226. https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/189/11/1218/5847586Sulaiman T, Mohana A, Alawdah L, et al. The effect of early hydroxychloroquine-based therapyin COVID-19 patients in ambulatory care settings: A nationwide prospective cohort study.Preprints September 13, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.09.09.20184143Szente Fonseca SN, de Queiroz Sousa A, Wolkoff AG, Moreira MS, Pinto BC, Valente Takeda CF,Rebouças E, Vasconcellos Abdon AP, Nascimento ALA, Risch HA. Risk of hospitalization forCovid-19 outpatients treated with various drug regimens in Brazil: Comparative analysis. TravelMed Infect Dis. 2020 Oct 31;38:101906.https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1477893920304026

The Gary Null Show - 01.27.21

The loss of the individual and diversity in the wake of increasing cultural uniformity
Prof. Russell Jacoby is a professor of History at the University of California at Los Angeles and the holder of the Moishe Gonzales Chair of Critical Thinking at the University of California at Los Angeles where he teaches twentieth century European and American intellectual history.  He was featured in the documentary "Velvet Prisons: Russell Jacoby on American Academia"   He has published about ten books addressing the culture wars in education, multiculturalism, the politics of apathy, the history of violence, the decline of the intellectual class, and utopian idealism. His most recent book is "On Diversity: The Eclipse of the Individual in a Global Era" (Seven Stories Press), which warns us about the soulless uniformity that is being framed beneath the banner of diversity. Russell's work has earned him many notable fans including Howard Zinn and Gore Vidal. He holds degrees from the University of Chicago, the University of Wisconsin and earned his doctorate from the University of Rochester. 
 

The Gary Null Show - 01.26.21

The Rise of the Democratic Party and the backlash against free speech
Danny Sheehan is one of our nation’s most important and influential Constitutional and public interest lawyers.  During the past 45 years he has handled such public interest cases as the Pentagon Papers, the Watergate Break In, Iran Contra and the Silkwood murder case.  He has represented victims of he Three Mile Island nuclear disaster and fought against the American Nazi Party on hate crimes. He has been a lead attorney on behalf of the Native nations at Standing Rock and handling the dismissal of a federal case against Chase Iron Eyes for inciting a riot and felony trespassing. Danny is the founder of the Romero Institute, a nonprofit public policy center in Santa Cruz California. And more recently he founded the New Paradigm Institute which explores new pathways to world peace. He holds a law degree and divinity degrees from Harvard University.  Danny is the author of “The People’s Advocate: The Life and Legal History of America’s Most Fearless Public Defence Lawyer,”   And his websites are DanielPSheehan.com   AND   RomeroInstitute.org

The Gary Null Show - 01.25.21

Gary takes on the real issues that the mainstream media is afraid to tackle. Tune in to find out the latest about health news, healing, politics, and the economy.
 
The Covid-19 Pandemic as a Psychological Coup d’Etat
 
Richard Gale and Gary Null PhD
Progressive Radio Network, January 25, 2021
 
 
We have almost reached a full year since the spread of SARS-Cov2 was proclaimed a pandemic.  If we are to believe the World Health Organization’s and individual governments’ official statistics, the number of confirmed cases is reaching 100 million with over 2 million deaths. Indeed, if these numbers can be relied upon, we can surely acknowledge there is a real pandemic. It would be common sense, therefore, to expect, in fact demand, international health agencies and governments to make every effort to identify the virus’ origin.  Suspicions that the virus, now responsible for the spectrum of medical symptoms known as Covid-19, may have been bioengineered and escaped from a maximum security BSL-4 lab in Wuhan, China, were already voiced within a month after its identification was first reported.   Several highly respected medical experts, including Dr. David Relman at Stanford University, have suggested there is a strong likelihood that the virus escaped the Wuhan facility. To date, early queries about its origins remain unanswered and new questions are mounting. 
 
Recently, Jamie Metzl, a WHO advisor who earlier served under Biden in the Senate and in Bill Clinton’s National Security Council and State Department, told the Toronto Sun that the hypothesis of the virus’ natural origin in a Wuhan wet market is “a lie.”  It is no secret, Metzl noted, that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was heavily engaged in “gain of function” research to “amplify the virility of viruses.”
 
That there is very reasonable evidence that coronaviruses were being engineered in a laboratory goes back to 2003 and perhaps earlier.  That year, many Russian medical scientists, including Moscow’s head epidemiologist Dr. Nikolai Filatov, shared their opinions that the first SARS outbreak originated from a bioweapons lab.
 
In January 2020, less than a month since the first reported case in Wuhan, Dr. Igor Nikulin, a former member of the United Nation’s Commission on Biological and Chemical Weapons, stated in an interview that the US has been funding biolaboratories throughout the world, such as Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Taiwan, Philippines, etc, and “wherever there are these American biolaboratories, or near them, there are outbreaks of new diseases, often unknown.” This was also confirmed by the founding president of EcoHealth Alliance, Dr. Peter Daszak, a fundamental player in the saga of “gain of function” research on coronavirus and other viral pathogens.  During an interview at a scientific conference in Singapore in early December 2019, Daszak, less than a month before the first Covid-19 case in Wuhan, stated,
 
“You can manipulate them in the lab pretty easily… Spike protein drives a lot of what happens with the coronavirus. Zoonotic risk. So you can get the sequence, you can build the protein — and we work with Ralph Baric at [the University of North Carolina] to do this — and insert the backbone of another virus and do some work in the lab.”
 
Baric, by the way, told New York Magazine, “Can you rule out a laboratory escape? The answer in this case is probably not.”  Baric has first hand knowledge of this probability. In 2016, one of the researchers in his University of North Carolina biosafety Level 3 lab was bitten by a mouse infected with a bioengineered SARS coronavirus strain.  Worse, according to records obtained by ProPublica, the scientist was permitted to resume her life without quarantine.   Baric’s lab also encountered other incidents that could have potentially released its engineered viruses upon the American public, however the university has refused to provide details.  Back in 2015, Baric had warned that a bat virus could jump species and infect humans. 
 
In a study published in October 2003 for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Baric and his colleagues had “assembled a full-length cDNA of the SARS-CoV Urbani strain, and have rescued molecularly cloned SARS viruses (infectious clone SARS-CoV) that contained the expected marker mutations inserted into their component clones.”  This infectious coronavirus clone was subsequently patented but only after the CDC overruled the US Patent Office’s denial of issuance. That same year, Bill Gates appointed Anthony Fauci to serve on his foundation’s Global Grand Challenges Scientific Advisory Board.  Shortly thereafter efforts commenced to develop a SARS-CoV vaccine, which included Moderna and Johnson and Johnson. To date, Moderna has been granted over 130 federal US patents to develop a vaccine against SARSCoV-2, including a military DARPA grant for mRNA vaccine technology in 2013.
 
EcoHealth Alliance, according to Alexis Baden-Mayer, lead attorney and director for the Organic Consumers Association, has conducted remarkable investigative research into the “gain of function” studies and the primary individuals behind the overseeing and funding this research. She has discovered that the majority of EcoHealth’s funding derives from the US Department of Defense, the National Institutes of Health and Anthony Fauci.  Baden-Mayer’s probing inquiries uncovered a cabal of controversial figures, including Daszak, Baric and his Chinese colleague Dr. Shi Zheng-li at the Wuhan lab, Bill Gate’s Foundation director Scott Dowell, former Human and Health Services’ director Dr. Robert Kadlec and Anthony Fauci.  Together this group – a part of what journalist Brian Berletic has called the Pandemic Industrial Complex- has been engaged in private contracts with military bioweapons projects and virus hunting in the wild for “gain of function” studies for a couple decades. 
 
Curiously, there is another character deeply connected with Daszak and the “gain of function” studies sponsored by EcoHealth: David R Franz.  Franz serves as EcoHealth’s policy health advisor. According to Baden-Mayer, who has investigated Franz’s history and background, he was formally a commander at Ft. Detrick’s bioweapons laboratory that was working on “gain of function” studies on pathogens for developing bioweapons. He was also involved in the anthrax investigations shortly after 911, and was a colleague of Dr. Bruce Ivin who was accused for the release of encapsulated anthrax aerosol mailed to Congressional legislators shortly after his mysterious death. 
 
Recently, Dr. David Martin – founder of the company M-CAM and a fellow at the University of Virginia’s School of Business Management – released his dossier on Anthony Fauci summarizing over two decades of investigations into the very disturbing research and patents filed for “synthetically altering the Coronaviridae (the coronavirus family) for the express purpose of general research, pathogenic enhancement, detection, manipulation and potential therapeutic interventions.” Before the first SARS outbreak in 2003, Baric filed a patent for producing “an infectious, replication defective, coronavirus.” In other words, the University the North Carolina, with federal grants, was amplifying a coronavirus to make it more infectious. 
 
Despite the questionable nature of this patent’s and others’ filing status by the CDC, and because patent law forbids patenting any life form, the government and its laboratories sealed under contract, cornered the coronavirus market. In the event of a coronavirus outbreak, only those corporations or institutions that acquired licensure from the NIH would be permitted to work with these bioengineered viruses for developing therapeutic drugs and vaccines.
 
Controversy has arisen over the confusion about the actual number of Covid-19 deaths and whether or not many if not most deaths are due to other causes.  Deaths in the presence of SARS2 are not the same as deaths due to the virus.  We heard this narrative repeated before and stated directly by the CDC back in 2003.  During the first SARS outbreak, the CDC in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report dated April 4, 2003 stated that “anyone showing signs of fever or respiratory symptoms who travelled in or near areas affected by the virus would be labeled a SARS patient despite many of these individuals being diagnosed with other respiratory illnesses.” 
 
David Martin has released his “The Fauci/Covid-19 Dossier,” a 205 page document citing specific charges against the CDC, Dr. Anthony Fauci and his National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Disease, and individuals engaged in coronavirus “gain of function” research for funding and allegedly conspiring to commit acts of terror, lying to Congress, conspiring to engage in criminal commercial activity, illegal clinical trials and market manipulation and allocation. These are serious charges and the data Martin has collated is near conclusive and deeply disturbing. The Dossier has been filed with the US Attorney General, and is essential reading for everyone to understand the details about how the current pandemic may be an orchestrated strategy unraveling over the course of twenty years.  
 
During a recent video appearance, Dr. Martin condensed the background of alleged corruption, illegal patents and preparatory planning for the pandemic long before the outbreak. Speaking at the February 2016 Forum on Medical and Public Health Preparedness for Catastrophic Events, Daszak stated,
 
“… until an infectious disease crisis is very real, present, and at an emergency threshold, it is often largely ignored. To sustain the funding base beyond the crisis, we need to increase public understanding of the need for MCMs [Medical Counter Measures] such as a pan-influenza or pan-coronavirus vaccine. A key driver is the media, and the economics follow the hype. We need to use that hype to our advantage to get to the real issues. Investors will respond if they see profit at the end of process.” 
 
It is important to observe how Daszak lays out a strategy for a coronavirus or influenza pandemic to be framed as a commercial opportunity for the benefit of corporations and their investors, and the role the media will play in maximizing such profit.  In retrospect, Daszak’s scenario has played out accurately according to plan. Worse, the pandemic is now being manipulated by the World Economic Forum, the IMF, Bill Gates and the transnational class of corporate and banking elites, as well as the Biden administration and the Chinese, British, Canadian and German governments, as an opportunity to completely restructure the global economy. This will necessitate a thorough overall of the entire economic system thereby strengthening the global institutionalization of commercial oversight that will eventually nullify the independence of the modern nation state.
 
Martin’s Dossier continues to outline a series of purported illegal actions to deal with the pandemic that Fauci has undertaken as head of NIAID. These include 1) acting against the American Medical Association’s April 2020 recommendation that “face masks should not be worn by healthy individuals from acquiring respiratory infections because there is no evidence to suggest that face masks worn by healthy individuals are effective in preventing people from becoming ill.” 2) acting against existing published studies that show “to date, not a single study has confirmed that social distancing of any population prevented the transmission of, or the infection by SARS CoV-2.” And 3) in violation of FTC Act 15 U.S.C. 41, no product or service can be advertised to “prevent, treat or cure human disease unless you possess competent and reliable evidence… substantiating that the claims are true at the time they are made.”  This third point applies to NIAID’s promotion of face masks as well as Fauci’s aggressive push to make the drug Remdesivir, which Fauci is personally financially invested in, as a first line for treatment. 
 
If these charges of illegal activity against sound scientific evidence, are true, they warrant a thorough investigation in an international criminal court to determine their motivations.  The mishandling of the pandemic has caused enormous suffering and deaths for billions of people. Lives and livelihoods have been completely upended and our leaders are telling us things will never return to the old normal. In the meantime, the dominant forces of capitalism, aside from profiting over this catastrophe, are now framing the pandemic as an opportunity that will further reconfigure all of our social structures, including commerce, education, transportation and monitoring healthcare. It is a coup d’état against civilization’s collective psyche to foment a regime change in behavior that will eventually turn humanity into the slaves of technology as a means for social conditioning. Our only weapon against the likes of Fauci, Gates, and the transnational class of elites is educating ourselves of the damning investigations being conducted by individuals such as Dr. David Martin, Alexis Baden-Mayer, Reiner Fuellmich, Robert Kennedy Jr and others who are making every effort to shed light on the darkness in Washington and governments around the world determined to launch a Brave New World.  

The Gary Null Show - 01.22.21

Gary takes on the real issues that the mainstream media is afraid to tackle. Tune in to find out the latest about health news, healing, politics, and the economy. https://www.davidmartin.world/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/The_Fauci_COVID-19_Dossier.pdf

The Gary Null Show - 01.21.21

Gary takes on the real issues that the mainstream media is afraid to tackle. Tune in to find out the latest about health news, healing, politics, and the economy. Research suggests amino acid L-cysteine may help reverse early onset Alzheimer disease. Study: Light, magnetic field, and ultrasound could help fight COVID-19. Psychological well-being declined during second wave of the pandemic - especially for men. MIND and Mediterranean diets associated with later onset of Parkinson's disease.