In January 2022, the number of children born in the Czech Republic suddenly decreased by about 10%. By the end of 2022, it had become clear that this was a signal: All the monthly numbers of newborns were mysteriously low.

In April 2023, I wrote a piece for a Czech investigative platform InFakta and suggested that this unexpected phenomenon might be connected to the aggressive vaccination campaign that had started approximately 9 months before the drop in natality.

Denik N - a Czech equivalent of the New York Times - immediately came forward with a "devastating takedown" of my article, labeled me a liar and claimed that the pattern can be explained by demographics: There were fewer women in the population and they were getting older.

To compare fertility across countries (and time), the so-called Total Fertility Rate (TFR) is used. Roughly speaking, it is the average number of children that are born to a woman over her lifetime. TFR is independent of the number of women and of their age structure. Figure 1 below shows the evolution of TFR in several European countries between 2001 and 2023. I selected countries that experienced a similar drop in TFR in 2022 as the Czech Republic.

So, by the end of 2023, the following two points were clear:

1. The drop in natality in the Czech Republic in 2022 could not be explained by demographic factors. Total fertility rate - which is independent of the number of women and their age structure - dropped sharply in 2022 and has been decreasing ever since. The data for 2024 show that the Czech TFR has decreased further to 1.37.

1. Many other European countries experienced the same dramatic and unexpected decrease in fertility that started at the beginning of 2022. I have selected some of them for Figure 1 but there are more: The Netherlands, Norway, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Sweden. On the other hand, there are some countries that do not show a sudden drop in TFR, but rather a steady decline over a longer period (e.g. Belgium, France, UK, Greece, or Italy).

Notable exceptions are Bulgaria, Spain, and Portugal where fertility has increased (albeit from very low numbers). The Human Fertility Project database has all the numbers.

This data pattern is so amazing and unexpected that even the mainstream media in Europe cannot avoid the problem completely. From time to time, talking heads with many academic titles appear and push one of the politically correct narratives: It's Putin! (Spoiler alert: The war started in February 2022; however, children not born in 2022 were not conceived in 2021). It's the inflation caused by Putin! (Sorry, that was even later).

It's the demographics! (Nope, see above, TFR is independent of the demographics).

Thus, the "v" word keeps creeping back into people's minds and the Web's Wild West is ripe with speculation. We decided not to speculate but to wrestle some more data from the Czech government. For many months, we were trying to acquire the number of newborns in each month, broken down by age and vaccination status of the mother.

The post-socialist health-care system of our country is a double-edged sword: On one hand, the state collects much more data about citizens than an American would believe. On the other hand, we have an equivalent of the FOIA, and we are not afraid to use it. After many months of fruitless correspondence with the authorities, we turned to Jitka Chalankova - a Czech Ron Johnson in skirts - who finally managed to obtain an invaluable data sheet.

To my knowledge, the datasheet (now publicly available with an English translation here) is the only officially released dataset containing a breakdown of newborns by the Covid-19 vaccination status of the mother. We requested much more detailed data, but this is all we got.

The data contains the number of births per month between January 2021 and December 2023 given by women (aged 18-39) who were vaccinated, i.e., had received at least one Covid vaccine dose by the date of delivery, and by women wh...

By Toby Rogers at Brownstone dot org.

I. Introduction

It seems to me that the proper way to understand the autism epidemic is to read everything that has been written on autism causation, throw out any studies that are characterized by a financial conflict of interest or fatally flawed study design, and see what patterns emerge from the papers that are left. During my doctoral thesis I reviewed about 80 of the top studies in autism epidemiology and toxicology.

That was groundbreaking at the time because the vast majority of mainstream scholars don't have the courage to discuss any papers that threaten the profits of powerful industries.

As I've continued to work in this space over the last six years, I now realize that there are over 800 autism causation studies in the English language focused on the US. It's daunting to think about trying to wrap one's head around a field that large. So, most public health officials just grab a favorite study here or there to justify their biases, and that is exactly the wrong way to approach this topic. There has to be a better way of working through the available knowledge on this issue.

Now I believe that I've figured out how to map the entire field of autism causation studies (about 850 papers in all) in one article. If you sat down to read each article individually, it would likely take you several years. But as I will show below, you don't necessarily have to do that. There is a way to move through all of the literature at a meta level that I believe leads to the right answer and a viable plan for how to stop the autism epidemic.

Let's start with a quick introduction and then get into the different types of studies.

In the early 1980s, vaccines were so harmful that vaccine manufacturers routinely lost in court. They lobbied the US Congress to pass the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act to give themselves liability protection. And they pinky-swore to make vaccines safer but there was no legal mechanism in the bill to enforce that promise so they never did.

Pharmaceutical companies proceeded to add as many vaccines as possible to the schedule. Prior to 1986, there were 3 routine vaccines totaling 7 injections. Today the CDC's Maternal and Child and Adolescent vaccine schedules include 19 vaccines requiring 76 injections with 94 total doses of antigen (I'm actually less worried about the antigens than the other ingredients in the shots).

No one in a position of authority bothered to measure the impact of the growing vaccine schedule on the health of children. Most regulators were auditioning for a job with Pharma because that's where the money is. Politicians depend on Pharma donations for their re-election campaigns. The mainstream news media get most of their revenue from Pharma advertising so they were never going to bite the hand that feeds them.

Pharma invested heavily in public relations to lay siege to any remaining pockets of resistance.

Mercury (thimerosal) was grandfathered in as "Generally Recognized As Safe" because it's easier to do that than actual safety testing. Aluminum adjuvants were allowed with only minimal safety testing - 1 man, 3 rabbits, and ever-moving goal posts (chapter 9 of my thesis covers the regulatory history of aluminum adjuvants).

The gold rush was on so vaccine manufacturers were free to add whatever they wanted to vaccines and they would all be approved because the regulators and the medical industry were captured mind, body, and spirit by Pharma.

The autism rate skyrocketed in the 1990s and has continued to increase ever since. Rates of ADHD, life-threatening allergies, autoimmune disorders, asthma, childhood cancers, diabetes, and epilepsy soared too and those are probably vaccine injuries as well.

But autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is more costly than those other conditions because it's a lifelong disability with no known effective treatment (some parents have been able to recover their children through holistic and alternative therapies b...

By Bert Olivier at Brownstone dot org.

Is the Hippocratic Oath, which dates back to antiquity, relevant today? Most reasonably informed people would know that it is an oath pertaining to a code of conduct, formulated by Hippocrates of Kos in fifth century BCE ancient Greece, to guide medical practitioners ethically - that is, concerning their actions in the practice of their medical profession.

There is a classical version, dating back to the time of Hippocrates, and a modern version, written in 1964, both of which may be found here, together with a discussion of its contemporary relevance.

The discussion focuses on two things - first, the fact that at present, in the United States, most graduating medical students perform some (usually modernised) form of the oath, confirming the continued belief that it constitutes an affirmation of the desirable ethical conduct of physicians, and second, the accompanying, and perhaps surprising phenomenon, that in many quarters the continued relevance of this time-honoured code of action has lately been questioned.

On the one hand, this tendency is understandable. After all, the world in which we live is incalculably more complex than that of the fifth century before the Common Era. As will be seen in the article linked above, this is the reason why many people have argued, from different perspectives, that the Hippocratic Oath is no longer applicable to the conduct of medical professionals today. According to them, it is simply impossible to accommodate its tenets in a world where:

…a growing number of physicians have come to feel that the Hippocratic Oath is inadequate to address the realities of a medical world that has witnessed huge scientific, economic, political, and social changes, a world of legalized abortion, physician-assisted suicide, and pestilences unheard of in Hippocrates' time.

On the other hand, however, in light of the discernible intention behind the original oath - namely, to provide binding guidelines for physicians regarding their conduct when treating patients - one might argue that what might be called the 'spirit' of the Hippocratic Oath be preserved in the context of the admittedly very different world of today, even while keeping this difference in mind.

This amounts to the insistence that avoiding harm to those in need of medical treatment be reaffirmed as being imperative. (Today, one may justifiably add 'pharmaceutical treatment,' given physicians' dependence on the products of this industry.)

Arguably, this consideration is what has motivated medical schools to retain a version of this oath for graduating medical students to take. Here are two versions of the Hippocratic Oath - the 'classical' one and a modern version, which should be kept in mind when reflecting on their relevance for today:

Hippocratic Oath - Classic:

I swear by Apollo the physician, and Asclepius the surgeon, likewise Hygeia and Panacea, and call all the gods and goddesses to witness, that I will observe and keep this underwritten oath, to the utmost of my power and judgment.

I will reverence my master who taught me the art. Equally with my parents, will I allow him things necessary for his support, and will consider his sons as brothers. I will teach them my art without reward or agreement; and I will impart all my acquirement, instructions, and whatever I know, to my master's children, as to my own; and likewise to all my pupils, who shall bind and tie themselves by a professional oath, but to none else.

With regard to healing the sick, I will devise and order for them the best diet, according to my judgment and means; and I will take care that they suffer no hurt or damage. Nor shall any man's entreaty prevail upon me to administer poison to anyone; neither will I counsel any man to do so. Moreover, I will give no sort of medicine to any pregnant woman, with a view to destroy the child. Further, I will comport myself and use my knowledge in a godly manner.

I will not cut for the sto...

By Jason Strecker at brownstone.org

This was another week in what has become a regular occurrence: being contacted by concerned parents seeking advice on why their school is spiraling out of control, with their kid being caught up in the collateral damage. The feeling is akin to a song the 90s rock band Offspring composed but brought sharply into focus in 2025, The Kids Aren't Alright, but neither are the parents and schools.

I want to offer my observations as someone who has been in the teaching trade for nearly two decades, and the strategies which are working.

"I Want to Kill Myself"

As dramatic as this sounds, many teenagers contemplate suicide, even if only for a fleeting moment, as they struggle to find their place in society. What is different now is the strength of emotion experienced by some, resulting in it being vocalized as a solution to difficulties felt in their well-being. Whilst this drastic expression is not widespread, it was virtually non-existent prior to 2020.

In what is unlikely to be an isolated occurrence, A/Prof of Child & Adolescent psychiatry Peter Parry, in his evidence in the Terms of Reference to the Australian Government for a Covid-19 Royal Commission reported "five high school aged adolescents tragically losing their lives across South-East Qld in the final two weeks before the government announcement that the schools were going to reopen.

I was on call over the middle weekend and aware that in perhaps three of these cases statements of suicidal ideation because they couldn't see their friends."

Kids Just Need to Get Over It and Build Some Resilience

I want to address a new strain of an existing challenge which has occurred - emotional regulation. Imagine a 15-year-old boy, full of energy and rapid physical development, and the challenges he has with impulse control at the best of times. Now imagine a 13-year-old brain in that body. What would be the expected result? I would suggest a lack of ability to emotionally self-regulate, a rise in recalcitrant behavior, often followed by an outburst of tears or overemotive responses.

This is what is occurring, and at rates I haven't seen before.

According to the University of Oxford 2024 World Happiness Report, "For the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, happiness has decreased in all age groups, but especially for the young, so much so that the young are now, in 2021-2023, the least happy age group.

This is a big change from 2006-2010, when the young were happier than those in the midlife groups, and about as happy as those aged 60 and over…and greater for females than males." The kids are not alright and just saying they should "get over it" misconstrues the enormity of the challenge before us.

Parental Priorities

Feedback and surveys have revealed a trend away from parents prioritizing academic success and towards child well-being. Whilst this is an admirable quality, in my opinion, it is somewhat misguided. I believe in naming the problem, recognizing it as a challenge, but not letting it become the determiner of someone's life. Having said that, the children in our care are not ours. They have parents who have lovingly brought them into the world and are their advocates and responsibility.

The Teacher Tested My Child on Things They Haven't Been Taught

I have heard this comment from many distressed parents who have contacted me across differing schools and regions, and it isn't true. Parents, a word from the wise: if your child says this, be skeptical and contact the teacher. Ask with respect and you should get a respectful response. It may be that your child is the victim of the dreaded testing on topics not learnt, but they will be one of a tiny number.

It is, however, emblematic of a cultural shift which has taken place, and our overly bureaucratic educational system has been unable to adjust to. It may be that your child has missed lessons in the leadup to a test and has lacked the proactive discipline to be responsible for ca...

By Thomas Harrington at Brownstone dot org.

[The following is an excerpt from Dr. Thomas Harrington's book, Treason of the Experts: Covid and the Credentialed Class.]

I don't know about you, but long ago I learned how to recognize when I was suffering from a cold or flu, and how best to prevent myself and others from suffering from its most deleterious effects.

I developed knowledge in this area by simply watching and listening to others, and then verifying these theoretical inputs against the observable reactions and comportments of my own body.

I do not think I am unique in this. I think that, if left to their own devices, most people can determine the difference between a sore throat with a runny nose and a malady that may be attacking their body in a more serious and systematic way.

Perhaps, I should correct myself. I believe that until 22 months ago most people could confidently engage in this time-honed process of discernment. Now I am not sure that is the case.

What has changed?

What has changed is that there has been a concerted psychological campaign to effectively insert abstract and often empirically questionable paradigms of sickness between individual citizens and their understanding of their own bodies, paradigms expressly designed to remove the locus of control from that citizen and his or her instincts and deposit it in the hands of some combination of medical and governmental authority.

Viewed in terms of metaphors of sight, we could say that a distorting lens provided by outside forces that places a great emphasis on vulnerability and dependence rather than resilience is now mediating, and thus reconfiguring, the relationship that millions of people have with their own sense of health, as well as with their fellow citizens.

The mechanism used to effect for this massive usurpation of individual confidence and instinct was, of course, mass testing which conferred on the government and their chosen health officials what Gabriel García Marquez suggests in One Hundred Years of Solitude is one of the greatest cultural powers of all: the power to name.

What up until early 2020 was a set of symptoms referenced loosely and imprecisely under the rubric of "seasonal colds and flus" and expected to be lived as a perennial and unremarkable personal matter, has with the onset of mass testing been given a specific name and imbued with an all-encompassing spectral presence.

Once again, the template used to create and justify the War on Terror is instructive here. Before the inception of that never-ending pretext for projecting US power, war largely concerned soldiers who were defined in terms of their oppositional relationship to civilians. The first were fair game as objects of attack, but the second, at least in theory, were not.

What the war on terror did was to basically redefine everyone in the world, including US citizens, as potential soldiers against all that was considered good and right by the US government. How was this done? By amassing intelligence on everyone - intelligence, of course, that only government officials had the ability to see and manipulate - we were all turned into suspects, or if you prefer, pre-criminals.

After all, is there any one of us whose being could not be made to appear suspicious and thus worthy of attack (be it in the form of character assassination, strategic maiming, or outright legal entrapment) by a group of people with full editorial control of the most minute details of our personal lives?

Before the Spring of 2020, one was either sick or well according to long-understood empirical measures.

But with the advent of mass testing for asymptomatic people (with a test designed to generate copious false positives), and with it, the invention of the mythology of rampant asymptomatic transmission, the elites gained the instant ability to portray millions of us as "pre-sick," and thus as potentially grave threats to the general welfare.

And now the generalized suspicion and fear they h...

By Kim Witczak at brownstone dot org

When my husband Woody died by suicide in 2003, nothing made sense.

Everyone around me said the same thing: "He must have been depressed."

But I lived with him. I knew him. And in the deepest part of me, that explanation didn't fit.

Woody was outgoing, high-functioning, driven, and fully engaged in life. He was training for a marathon, logging his miles, showing up for work, and showing up for us. He wasn't withdrawn or struggling in the ways people typically associate with depression.

The only thing that had changed was that, five weeks earlier, his doctor prescribed him Zoloft - an antidepressant - for insomnia due to his new dream job with a start-up company.

That was it.

We didn't know much about antidepressants then. But after Woody died, we started digging. And what we found was shocking. One discovery led to another. We began connecting the dots. Ultimately, it led us to file a wrongful death/failure to warn lawsuit against Pfizer.

What we uncovered during that legal process changed everything.

Internal documents. Emails. Memos. Strategy decks. Marketing plans. Risk assessments. Quiet acknowledgments of harm.

All buried inside the system.

All on company and FDA letterhead.

All never meant for public eyes.

That's when I learned one of the most sobering truths of my life:

Truth often doesn't come from the doctor's office or the stories we're told. It lives in the documents - in black and white, behind closed doors.

Documents don't lie - they expose.

Once you've looked behind the curtain, you see it clearly: the system runs on spin, shields power, and protects profit - not people.

The BIO Leaked Memo: "It's Time for RFK Jr. to Go."

So when I read this article by James Lyons-Weiler for Brownstone Institute - a think tank I've come to respect for its commitment to questioning powerful systems and fostering honest dialogue - about the leaked BIO memo, where a pharmaceutical lobbying group discussed quietly removing RFK, Jr. and shaping public sentiment, I didn't need convincing.

I've seen this before.

The names change.

But the machinery doesn't.

The leaked internal document - reportedly from Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), the powerful lobbying arm of the pharmaceutical industry - had just come to light. And when I read the April 3, 2025 steering committee document, it was déjà vu all over again.

Because it said the quiet part out loud:

"It is time to go to The Hill and lobby that it is time for RFK Jr. to go…"

Not because of policy disagreements. But because he posed a threat - to the business model. To public scrutiny. To transparency.

The memo outlined a strategic roadmap, naming "influential voices," outlining investor fears, identifying messaging tactics, and spotlighting political allies like former FDA commissioner (now Pfizer board member) Scott Gottlieb and CMS Administrator Dr. Oz. As someone with a career in advertising and marketing, I recognized the blueprint instantly.

On one level, BIO was simply doing its job as a trade group protecting their clients' interests. But on another, it reveals how calculated and controlled the public narrative can be, especially when profits and control are at stake.

This wasn't about protecting science or public health.

This was about managing perception, neutralizing dissent, and maintaining their political capital.

This post isn't about defending RFK, Jr. or debating the politics of the FDA or NIH. It's not about red or blue. It's about something deeper - and far more dangerous: how far industry will go to protect its pockets and control the narrative, no matter who's in charge.

If you've followed my work, you know I've always said healthcare isn't a partisan issue.

It's purple - for people. For the unsuspecting public, like we were almost 22 years ago.

The Campaign Wasn't Public Health. It Was Public Relations.

And the BIO memo isn't the only example of this. There's another document, obtained through a Freedom of Information ...

By REPPARE at Brownstone dot org.

Introduction

The global health world is struggling. For the past two and a half decades, it has been based on a model of ever-growing funding, channelled from the taxpayers and investors of wealthy countries, through intermediary organizations mostly staffed from the same countries to recipient nations who have far lower income and limited health infrastructure.

This model has saved lives, yet it has also built dependency both from the health systems of recipient countries and from the army of salaried bureaucrats and non-government organizations, which have prospered from its largesse. The United States government's abrupt defunding of the world's largest aid agency, USAID, and its cut in support to the World Health Organization and GAVI (The Vaccine Alliance) have sent shockwaves through the global health world.

Most response is highly negative. Former USAID administrator Samantha Power recently told CNN that the gutting of USAID, resulting in cutting "life-saving programs," could cause millions of deaths globally. The message was clear - the West African Ebola outbreak was resolved thanks to USAID help, thus protecting Americans from Ebola. Further, potentially millions of children would die from malaria because USAID is not saving them.

The compere seems clear that a halving of child mortality in recent years is due to foreign money, particularly that of USAID and Mr Bill Gates, while 25 million lives have been saved from HIV by US government funding.

A recent Opinion in the science journal PLOS Global Public Health reflects the same sentiment. Ooms et al. call 'upon the international community to protect the global responses to HIV, TB and malaria' in the face of recent funding cuts by the United States (US).

The authors argue that other countries must make up the shortfall, particularly for the 2027- 2029 replenishment cycle of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis (GFATM), since the GFATM is highly dependent on US funding. To support this rallying call, the authors argue that HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis are 'global health security threats' that require continued collective action. 'Undermining such collective action,' they argue, 'makes the world less safe for everyone.'

HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis remain the three biggest communicable diseases, killing millions of people annually with significant socioeconomic impacts, and there is no doubt that Western money has, and is, reducing their harm. Moreover, aid policy priorities should be fastened to the greatest disease burdens, such as these. They also need to be promoting locally owned, contextualised, effective, efficient, and equitable responses.

Promoting the building of local and national capacity and sustainability.

This is where the concern lies. If, as is claimed, withdrawal of support now will have such rapid and devastating impacts, then for decades while commodities have been purchased and delivered, capacity to manage disease burden at a local and national level has clearly not been built. The model, while good at patching holes, remains extremely fragile.

Simply seeking to direct the same money into more of the same, after more than two decades of doing the same, indicates a failed international health model. Perpetual dependency is inequitable. As we argue below, claims of gains in health security of the donor nation(s) are also based on shaky ground.

Health Security from What?

Ooms et al.

argue, and Samantha Power implies, that inaction on outbreak detection and suppression of HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis 'makes the world less safe for everyone.' This statement mirrors another popular phrase within the global pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response (PPPR) lexicon; namely that 'no one is safe until everyone is safe.' Statements such as these are purposefully highly securitised and emotive, cultivating collective interest via a direct appeal for one's

self-preservation.

Yet,...

By David Bell at Brownstone dot org.

The primary reason people in wealthy countries live longer than those in poorer countries is that they have better sanitation (e.g. clean water, hygiene), nutrition (especially fresh food), living conditions (e.g. housing), and access to basic healthcare - like antibiotics for childhood pneumonia. This should be uncontroversial - it was taught in medical schools a few decades ago when evidence formed the basis of medicine.

The fact that it is now widely forgotten, or ignored as a matter of convenience, explains why there is such a fuss over the United States administration defunding Gavi - the 'Vaccine Alliance' based in Switzerland.

Our Age-Old Argument with Pathogens

As most public health people seem unaware, and many of the public also, let us review why so many of us now reach old age. Humans are constantly exposed to microbes that could cause harm. The vast majority don't, as our forebears spent hundreds of millions of years evolving defenses against them, even as the microbes evolved new ways to use our bodies to multiply their own.

Mostly, we live in harmony with bacteria - our gut is full of them, but they also cohabit in our bloodstream and elsewhere - even possibly in our brain, as that is demonstrated in other vertebrates. Most of the cells we lug around are actually not us, but bacteria that live with us.

Some microbes (bacteria, viruses, fungi, protozoa) and even small worms of various sorts can, however, cause us great harm (they become pathogens). Their genetic code is, like ours, designed to reproduce itself, and to do this they need to eat part of us or hijack the metabolism of our cells. In doing so, they can sicken or kill us.

We have evolved very effective ways to prevent this, by developing skin and mucosal barriers that hamper them from entering our bodies, and producing cells that eat or otherwise destroy them (our immune system). The brilliance of our immune system is that it has a memory. Once it has developed an effective chemical or cellular response to a pathogen, it stores that code so that an effective response can be very rapidly reactivated if the same pathogen comes along in the future.

Some pathogens frequently change their chemistry to try to get around this and still reproduce within us, and our immune response has to keep adjusting.

The Growth of Human Resilience

So, back to sanitation, nutrition, and living conditions. Relatively recently, we figured out what pathogens are (bacteria, viruses, protozoa, nematode worms, and the like) and better understood how to avoid them altogether. Many of the pathogens that used to kill us spread from person to person through a 'fecal-oral' route, as it is euphemistically called. They reproduce within the body, and the resulting multitude move on when we defecate.

If someone then drinks water contaminated by that, they get infected. Cholera, typhoid, and E. coli are well-known examples. Beyond aesthetics, this is why we have sewerage systems in towns and cities. We stopped most deaths from these simply by drinking clean water untainted by someone else's toilet.

Pathogens that spread by respiratory routes to cause disease (e.g. influenza, Covid-19) are more likely to pass between people if they live in a confined space with poor air circulation. This raises the chance of breathing in air others have breathed out, and increases the number of organisms that infect us at once (i.e. infective dose or 'viral load'). A high infective dose makes it more likely that we get very sick before our immune system can mount an effective response.

Good nutrition is absolutely essential for us to mount an effective immune response, whether to an organism or a vaccine. The cells in the immune system have specific requirements, such as Vitamins D, K2, C, and E, and zinc and magnesium, and cannot function well without an adequate concentration of them. They can also be impaired in their function when our general metabolism is impaired,...

By Charles Eisenstein at Brownstone dot org.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s remark in a Congressional hearing last week that "My vision is that every American is wearing a wearable within four years" stirred an uproar in MAHA circles, as one influencer after another scrambled to denounce his statement and accuse him of being a sellout or a traitor. Ignoring his staunch decades-long advocacy of civil liberties, these critics took his statement as proof that he is advancing a totalitarian plan to continuously monitor every person's body.

Since Kennedy has in the past warned about precisely this - the "internet of people" in which not even our own heartbeat is private - I reached out to him to see if he'd changed his mind. "What were you thinking?" I asked.

Kennedy admitted that he chose his words poorly. "What I was trying to say is that I want this technology to be universally available as one of the ways people can get on top of their health," he explained. "Of course I don't want to mandate it. And the idea of everyone's body being hooked up to a data center somewhere is horrifying. This data should be private, and when it is shared with the device provider it must be subject to health privacy laws."

Those answers are consistent with his long-standing positions. However, there are other issues involved besides privacy. I asked, "Aren't you concerned about the health effects of a Bluetooth device affixed to your body 24/7?" After all, during his presidential campaign, he spoke out about the health hazards of wireless radiation.

"Yes," he replied. "Personally, I am concerned about it, but HHS doesn't have a policy. We are going to initiate research on the topic, though, so that Americans can make an informed decision about whether the risks of these devices outweigh the benefits."

A deeper issue is the basic direction of healthcare: do we continue down a technological path, or do we turn back toward nature? The MAHA community, comprising high-tech biohackers alongside back-to-the-land homesteaders, is far from unanimous on this issue. "Is this really the path?" I asked him. "Is the future of health one of increasing dependency on technology? Are we to accept a transhumanist future where flesh merges with machine?"

Kennedy was clear that he doesn't agree with that vision either. "Technology has its place," he said, "but for most people it should be a temporary aid to help us recover good eating habits. The blood glucose monitors help people see in real time the impact of their dietary choices. But once they learn the ropes, most people shouldn't have to wear them long-term."

He continued, "Everyone is making this more complicated than it has to be. The basics of health are simple: wholesome, natural food, and the right amount of exercise. Wearables can help people make good choices, but they can't make the choices for them. That's up to each one of us."

Obviously, Kennedy had used an ill-considered figure of speech when he spoke of "every American" wearing a device. What was more alarming than his words, though, was how swiftly so many MAHA influencers turned on him. It isn't the first time. Whenever he makes a necessary political compromise or appoints someone who isn't an anti-vax hardliner, many in the movement accuse him of treason.

The reflex to excommunicate anyone who makes an ill-considered remark smacks of the kind of cancel culture that the health freedom movement rightly resisted during the Covid era. A movement is not built by constantly scrutinizing every word and gesture for ideological correctness. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. faces enormous political headwinds and bureaucratic inertia in carrying out his most ambitious goals. He has been as bold as it is possible to be while still keeping his job.

If he is to achieve anything significant in such circumstances, he needs the active support of a united movement to bring political pressure to bear on the forces - in Congress, the EPA, the USDA, and even within HHS itself - th...

By Russ Gonnering at Brownstone dot org.

Why do organizations and companies die while cities seem to live on? Why did the Western Roman Empire end in 476 A.D while the Eastern counterpart lasted for almost another 1,000 years?

Although both Empires fell, many of the cities in both have continued to the present. Why?

While the answers can be approached on multiple levels: cosmological, theological, physical, political, etc., this essay will only focus on the social, the level which we can tangibly experience and possibly influence.

Lifespans of organisms, companies, organizations, and cities are extensively, and very readably, covered in Scale: The Universal Laws of Life, Growth, and Death in Organisms, Cities, and Companies. Geoffrey West reviews the work done at the Santa Fe Institute exploring the allometric scaling equation that relates energy utilization to lifespan. Organisms and companies scale "sublinearly:" organisms based on massand companies based on economy of scale and profit.

Cities on the other hand scale "supralinearly" based on population and value innovation and idea creation. Nonprofits seem to follow an ill-defined and fluid intermediate pattern that still needs more exploration.

The concept of Entropy has been expanded from its original concept of loss of energy experienced in transfer to include randomness, ambiguity, and disorder in multiple systems: statistical mechanics, information, decision-making, social systems, and organizations. Organizational sustainability depends upon a given organization's ability to mitigate the effects of such entropy.

In a closed system, entropy invariably increases and is irreversible. Jia and Wang emphasize that the organization's effort to mitigate the effects of entropy is dependent upon the members' ability to mitigate it personally. They recommend a four-dimensional control model:

Increase learning, opening the individual and therefore the organization to new ideas.

Consciously focus on goals.

Be open to constructive change.

Understand that a certain amount of risk-taking will be necessary.

Over the past few years, I have experienced the "death" of several organizations that were important to me. Though never reaching the rank of Eagle Scout (I stopped at the penultimate level of Life Scout), the Boy Scouts of America played a pivotal role in my youth. I spent my Junior undergrad year with an organization that facilitated the study of American students at the University of Vienna.

It was an incredible life-changing experience (my future wife was also a student), but what I remember most was the ability of many students with vastly different life experiences being able to come together to form an almost organic bond.

My professional life was marked by participation in two organizations that were similar in the ability to meld individuals into something larger than themselves. One was a hospital that rose from a seemingly ordinary community hospital into a major medical center within the span of a decade. I had worked there as a surgical technician, medical student, and intern, and ended as Chief of Ophthalmology and elected Chief of Staff.

The second was a subspecialty society that devoted its efforts to creating a premier educational program for the entire United States and Canada.

I participated in a Master's of Medical Management degree (MMM) cohort at a major business school, where I learned much of what has formed the concepts behind this essay. Finally, my wife, children, and I were members of a Spirit-filled church for over 30 years that grew into a spiritual force that literally spread through the entire world.

All these organizations had a common characteristic: they were significantly more than the sum of the parts. They all had a "noble cause" that energized the participants to stretch their efforts and impact the world in which they operated. Yet within a short period of time all of them either atrophied or toppled altogether. Why?

In Drive: The Surprisi...