Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and his Attack on Science, Part Two

 

 This is my second entry into a critique of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s book, The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health. The first entry can be found here. 

(Note: I accidentally overwrote a long version of this post with a draft. I have endeavored to restore the long, finished version.) 

Continuing with the Introduction

 I left off midway through the Introduction in the middle of an attack on Fauci and his response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Perhaps it was a good place to break. Let me begin this chapter in my blog by addressing larger issues. 

I began my life as a scientist from a Christian perspective. There are few more succinct summaries of science than what can be found in the First Letter to the Thessalonians, chapter 5, verse 21: Test all things. Hold fast to what is good.

Kennedy declares in his Introduction: "Science, like democracy, flourishes on skepticism toward official orthodoxies." No, this is closer to the definition of contrarianism. Skepticism toward official doctrines is only half the story. Science uses skepticism to build useful "truths" that become orthodoxies. Contrarianism does advocate testing all things, but it doesn't hold fast to what is good.

Quite often what is orthodoxy is perfectly correct (that's the goal of science). The body of knowledge of aerodynamics provides what is needed to create airplanes that fly. To claim that aerodynamics is an  orthodoxy that prevents people from flapping their arms and flying off rooftops is ludicrous. That it criticizes people who believe in arm flying and censors them from science journals is a good thing.

Sometimes those orthodoxies are based on errors. Fine. Question and continue to question. But not by invective.  You have to build and test your arguments to improve on those that came before. Hurling bombs to tear things down is cheap. Doing it dishonestly is not skepticism.

Invective, noun. A denunciatory or abusive discourse. (This book, denouncing with its very title.) Kennedy doesn't simply set out to construct a villain in Fauci. He seeks to create a supervillain. The following are the loaded terms he uses to describe the response to COVID and to Fauci himself in the Introduction. 

Invectives directed to the response to COVID. (2nd paragraph of Introduction) generate fear, promote obedience, discourage critical thinking, herd seven billion people to march to a single tune, health experiments with a "novel, shoddily tested, improperly licensed technology so risky that manufacturers refused to produce it unless every government on Earth shielded them from liability." (They got every government on earth to agree to something?) 

(3rd paragraph.) totalitarianism, mass propaganda, censorship, promotion of terror, suppression of debate, vilification of dissent, forcefully prevent protest. unwanted, experimental, zero-liability medical interventions. Objectors faced orchestrated gaslighting, marginalization, and scapegoating. Essentially repeating the second paragraph but changing the words. Forceful invective, poor writing.

(5th paragraph) "suddenly turned against our citizens and our values with such violence." I'll keep an open mind about this, but I don't recall violence. Perhaps he will provide examples, later.

(later) carefully planned militarization and monetization of medicine that left American health ailing and its democracy shattered. propelling our country toward the desolate destination where democracy goes to die.

Invective directed toward Fauci. technocrat who orchestrated a historic coup d'état against Western democracy. power enjoyed by few rulers and no doctor in history. Encouraged his [own] canonization and disturbing inquisition against his blasphemous critics.

Interestingly, Kennedy also attacks Trump. Trump represented an existential crisis. Fauci is contrasted to Trump's desultory, narcissistic bombast. erratic President.

Kennedy says, "Dr. Anthony Fauci spent half a century as America's reigning health commissar, ever preparing for his final role as Commander of history's biggest war against a global pandemic. Beginning in 1968, he occupied various posts at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), serving as the agency's Director since November 1984."

Okay, half-a-century as health commissar? (He repeats "50-year saga" in the Introduction.) Kennedy can't count and his fact checkers can't check. Fauci's early work in the work in the government before he took over NIAID in 1984, a post that hardly serves as commissar, did not have that much influence. Almost forty years might be honest if Kennedy wants to smear him with that title. Capitalizing "Commander" is a cheap smear. COVID, the world's biggest pandemic? I would have said the forty some years of AIDS with 40 million dead outranks the several years of COVID with seven million dead. (Of course, Fauci did have a large role in AIDS.)

Kennedy cites Fauci as saying "attacks on me quite frankly are attacks on science." Rather than those nine words, Kennedy should have at least provided his full sentence. "A lot of what you're seeing as attacks on me, quite frankly, are attacks on science, because all of the things that I have spoken about, consistently from the very beginning, have been fundamentally based on science."

"Attacks on me" without "a lot of" makes it sound like Fauci is claiming infallibility. And Fauci does go on to explain his assertion. He further stated in that interview, ". . .if you go through each and every one of them, you can explain and debunk it immediately. I mean, every single one."

I don't know if what Fauci says is true. It has been fairly easy to debunk most of the details Kennedy has provided so far. I do know that it is dishonest of Kennedy to take Fauci's comments out of context. (I started this critique being skeptical about Kennedy. I am beginning to get disgusted by his poor writing and how he chooses snark over context.)

Kennedy goes on to say "[Dr. Fauci acknowledged] that he twice lied to Americans to promote his agendas." Kennedy leaves it at that. There is not enough information to determine what Kennedy is referring to. I will be interested to see Kennedy give the details on that assertion. He has yet to win my confidence. 

Kennedy says, "Dr. Fauci's acolyte [meaning devoted follower]—CNN's television doctor Peter Hotez—published an article in a scientific journal calling for legislation to "expand federal hate crime protections" to make criticism of Dr. Fauci a felony." Kennedy goes on to call Hotez a "high visibility henchman." 

From Kennedy's writing so far, let me make a prediction: the above is a wildly dishonest statement. It doesn't pass the sniff test. The actual paper "Mounting antiscience aggression in the United States" does not nearly come close to suggesting criminalization of criticism of Fauci. Fauci is not even the focus of the article. Out of 13 paragraphs in the article, Fauci is mentioned only in the context of a "Fire Fauci Act" introduced in Congress by Marjorie Taylor Greene and Representative Jim Jordan claiming Fauci is hiding something. 

The article does address "expanded protection for scientists currently targeted by far-right extremism in the United States." To address this targeting, "Still another possibility is to extend federal hate-crime protections." Hate crime protections do not extend to criticism. Nowhere does it suggest that people not be allowed to criticize Fauci. 

"Dr. Hotez, who says that vaccine skeptics should be snuffed out." Ooh. How ominous, how violent. No, Hotez said that "An American anti vaccine movement is building and we need to take steps now to snuff it out." From: Will an American-Led Anti-Vaccine Movement Subvert Global Health? 

Kennedy goes back to giving Fauci superhuman status. "Dr. Fauci's direct and indirect control—through NIH, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Wellcome Trust of some 57 percent of global biomedical research funding. . ." What is this precisely saying? "Global research funding" is a term given for US funding of projects outside of the US. Is that what he means? Or the total funding of biomedical research around the globe? Which sounds like what he is suggesting.

Fauci was in charge of NIAID, not NIH. NIAID has 15% of the budget of NIH. And then there are other US agencies involved in research which total in budget, around 80 billion (NIAID is 8% of that total.) Research America states that industry (Big Pharma for example) in the United States spent $161.8 billion in research in 2020 far more than the government or private foundations. 

Fauci was the head of NIAID. That doesn't mean he single-handedly controlled its research. I have served on panels to decide which projects are funded. I never once heard a word from the top bosses which projects should be chosen or rejected. Serving on the board of Wellcome Trust or the Gates Foundation doesn't make Fauci the big decider, or as Kennedy puts it, that he had "direct or indirect control."

Fauci did have a lot of influence beyond his government position, but more like a pebble tossed into a rock pile: not nearly "control." If Fauci did have control of the COVID epidemic response, it would have gone differently. He would have put a muzzle on Trump and perhaps vaccinated Trump for rabies. I would argue that Kennedy and his skeptics had more influence in driving the COVID response disaster. People listened to him. 

Fauci and Deaths Due to COVID

Kennedy transitions to discuss "Fauci's" record in regards to COVID. "As the world watched, Tony Fauci dictated a series of policies that resulted in by far the most deaths, and one of the highest percentage COVID-19 body counts of any nation on the planet." He goes on to cite deaths by percentage of population. 

Kennedy presents the figures of death rates from COVID per million population as of September 30, 2021, presumably the cutoff time at which he turned in the book. 

He begins with the United States: 2107 deaths per million. The subsequent countries are Iran 1449 deaths per million, Sweden 1444, going on, selecting 16 more countries, citing Japan with 139 per million and ending with Tanzania 0.86 deaths per million. 

I followed these numbers closely as they came out. Kennedy's list represents an odd assortment of countries, avoiding those with the worst numbers. I'll get to those numbers in a moment. 

First, what is remarkable is how Kennedy's table totally undercuts his arguments. Throughout his introduction Kennedy has been decrying how Fauci had a huge influence over the world. Japan, among others, essentially, followed his advice. They had fewer than 7% the US death (as of September 30, 2021). Japan did quarantines. Japan did masking. Better than the United States did. 83% of people in Japan were fully vaccinated (as of November 2022, I couldn't find September 2021 figures) versus 64% in the United States. Some people in the United States listened to anti-vacciners.

Furthermore, what is left off the table are countries that did poorer than the United States and pursued policies counter to Fauci's advice. As of September 30th, 2021, Peru had 5880 deaths per million. Those countries that didn't follow his advice? Brazil, through its leader, Jair Bolsonaro, famously rejected Fauci's advice. They had 2708 deaths per million. Hungary through its strongman, Viktor Orbán, had 3095 deaths per million. (Use the above link, go to the country, the cumulative death charts and select date.)

The Kennedys have great hair. My counter argument will probably make RFK Jr.'s stand on end. The failure of the American response to COVID is because we didn't listen to Fauci. He was undercut every step of the way. By Trump declaring the infection wasn't that bad. By declaring the infection would be gone by summer. By holding mass political rallies that served as superspreader events. Trump declared that the infection was all a political game and would disappear the day after elections. 

I will examine one such superspreader event and its consequences in detail, partly because I had run the numbers myself at the time. Kristi Noem, governor of South Dakota, permitted a Harley-Davidson bikers rally in August 2020 and August 2021 attended by a total of nearly a million "vehicles." (Attendance cited by vehicles, not people. Presumably at least one person per bike.) 

Back during 2020, when I had to stay at home, I took up a project of ranking states and the District of Columbia weekly by their COVID-19 statistics to see which states were doing better and which ones were doing worse, adjusted for population. The two graphs below show the increase in hospitalizations in South Dakota and, because many bikers were not local, I added North Dakota (the same were true for other bordering states. I'll go into their statistics briefly, but will mainly focus on the Dakotas). The 2020 Harley-Davidson rally took place from August 7 to 16. The delay in hospitalizations (and ultimately deaths) is because the rally merely seeded infections. The real problem came from those who became infected infecting others, and those, in turn, infecting still others. I will presented infection numbers and deaths after the hospitalizations.

South Dakota, 2020

 

North Dakota, 2020

I would argue that hospitalizations best describe the toll of COVID infections. Deaths can be related to improvements in therapy or negatively by having hospitals overwhelmed. Cases are often underestimated with those who are asymptomatic or who have minor symptoms not being tested and counted. Other states that border South Dakota:

Nebraska, 2020

Wyoming, 2020

Montana, 2020

Iowa, 2020

Minnesota, the one other state that bordered South Dakota, I don't have a snapshot of its hospitalizations in my archive. Here are two states over the same time period that did not have dramatic increases in hospitalizations. 

Georgia, 2020

California, 2020

In the week before the South Dakota rally, South Dakota ranked 15th among states (and DC) in having the lowest rate of increase in COVID-19 infections. North Dakota was in the middle of the pack. By the week ending September 5, North and South Dakota would take up the last two places, positions they kept until the week ending November 21. 

North and South Dakota, dead last, week ending October 17

State rankings, week of July 27, before the rally.

Here is the beginning of the uptick of cases in South Dakota (left) and North Dakota (right). You might almost say some happened around the middle of August.

First come infections, then hospitalizations and then deaths. The increase in deaths in the Dakotas was not immediate, but over time became overwhelming. For South Dakota, on August 17, the day after the rally ended, the death toll stood at 153 statewide. In four months that number was up to 1300 (and still on a steep slope of climbing) an increase of 750%. In North Dakota, over the same time period, the deaths increased from 126 to 1195, an increase of 848%. In contrast, nationwide, between August 17 and December 17, the deaths increased by 89%. Numbers source. 

The Sturgis bike rally superspreader event is presented only as an example. There were others. So, did this motorcycle rally and other superspreader events occur because people were listening to Fauci? 

By downplaying the infection, Trump created a resistance to public health care precautions and ultimately had a lot of people reject the vaccination, a vaccination that Trump's policies helped create. If we did listen to Fauci, the U.S. numbers would be like those of Japan and not closer to those of Brazil. 

Furthermore, Trump gave credence to worthless therapies. I see by the chapter titles that Kennedy will discuss some of these therapies. I will deal with those arguments as they come.

A last point as I come to the end of this post. In my first entry into this series of blogs, I skipped over the Acknowledgments, suggesting that it had little to do with a critique. Now, I would like to note that Kennedy thanked eight individuals as fact checkers. That is significant. They did a poor job. His editors did a poor job. I have no fact checkers and I can usually quickly find errors (or perhaps just conscious falsities) in what he presents. 

I am about halfway through the Introduction. I cannot give you a page number. The book has no page numbers. This is in spite of referring to page numbers in the index and the table of contents. It has the feel of being self-published, even though it went through Skyhorse Press.

To be continued. (Note: I apologize for multiple versions of this post. I posted a long version and then accidentally overwrote with a shorter draft. In this post, I have endeavored to restore what I lost.)

Martin Hill Ortiz is the author of several novels including most recently the thriller, Floor 24. 

Floor 24
Oliver-Heber Books

"From the mob underworld to the tops of new skyscrapers, Floor 24 is a heart-thumping New York 1920's historical mystery!" - Holly Newman, bestselling author of A Chance Inquiry mystery series. 

Continue reading →

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and his Attack on Science

 

 Big Conspiracy

 You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant. Author Harlan Ellison.

When I was a teenager and living with my brothers being raised by a single parent, my mother rented a house in the small town of Las Vegas, New Mexico. It had a coal heater in the basement and, next to that heater, the previous tenant left behind a huge pile of religious-themed magazines. One title promoted the doctrine of creationism, specifically that God created the earth about 6,000 years ago. Articles declared that the propagation of the theory of evolution was the biggest conspiracy of all time. Science journals refused to publish creationist articles due to prejudice and fear of the truth. The creationists declared themselves to be like Galileo, rejected by the orthodoxy of corrupt secular science. 

Those journals set the tone for me to understand all the subsequent "biggest conspiracy ever" tales of my lifetime. The faked moon landing, those surrounding the AIDS virus, those denying global warming, and those surrounding vaccines and COVID (among many others). The advocates of those theories were unjustly persecuted. They were rejected for telling the truth. They were Galileo, struggling against the corrupt orthodoxy of the world. They often chose a timeline that showed that the world had gone to hell since a key event in their conspiracy occurred. They often choose a villain that is real: corporate corruption, personal greed, to be part of the focus of their wrath.

Having researched HIV for 30 years, I have been at the target end of some of these. HIV doesn't cause AIDS. AIDS was designed to kill homosexuals. Science and corporations are suppressing natural chemicals that would cure AIDS and promoting those that sponge the most money off of the sick (an argument that I would partly agree with but not to most of its particulars, there is a multiplicity individual drugs and alternative products). 

Remarkably, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. says that he is not anti-vaccine, that he is merely pro-vaccine safety. He has yet to write a book promoting the general worthwhileness of vaccines. However, he has written the books Vaccine Villains (2017), Profiles of the Vaccine Injured (2022), Vax-Unvax: Let the Science Speak (2023), among others and the one I will focus on in my blog: The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health (2021).

The Title and the First Material.

The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health: A Critical Analysis. The title certainly doesn't pull punches or fail to name villains. This is already a problem for me. I prefer to be convinced step-by-step before being confronted. Being told what is "real" before providing evidence of it is the equivalent of the Soviet Union official newspaper, Pravda, which translates to "The Truth." Okay, so convince me. 

The book begins, as many do, with quotes. The first quote is Nobel Prize winner and heroic discoverer of the AIDS virus, Luc Montagnier. The second is talk show host Tucker Carlson, a go-to person for such conspiracies as the stealing of the 2020 election or the global warming "hoax." Another quote comes from actor Rob Schneider, "Deuce Bigalow." I would never have guessed that the opinions of Montagnier and Deuce Bigalow would be found together. 

As for many of the others cited, Kennedy has a nasty habit of quoting the person for one thing they agree with and ignoring the fact that they would treat many of his arguments with alarm or else that they have other wild opinions that would make any view they have a suspicious or worthless. I will come to examples of these time and again. Using prominent people who agree with one thing Kennedy is saying to give him and his arguments gravity but who would strenuously disagree with mostly ever thing else is dishonest. It would be easy for Kennedy to quote me for something we agree on: for example, the sins of big Pharma. I would hate to be quoted by him or to be associated in any way with his work. He would probably say, in my case, no loss.

Dedication & Acknowledgments

The tome (and this is a tome and a doorstop) begins with "Dr. Anthony Fauci's opinions and proclamations have been omnipresent in American media, and some people might assume his ideas are universally supported by scientists or that he somehow represents science and medicine."

Hoo-boy. So many problems with that first sentence. I would hardly call Fauci's pronouncements omnipresent and no scientist's ideas and actions are universally supported by scientists. Science is an argument. When it's good, it's a fair and bracing argument. When it starts with a sentence like this, it is a crap argument. "Some people might assume" is lazy writing that can fit anywhere into any argument. And, of course, Fauci does "somehow represent science and medicine," in fact, that is Kennedy's chief complaint, that he shouldn't. Perhaps if this sentence was better written Kennedy could have landed his point.

The next sentence is also problematic. This worries me. To analyze this book, am I going to have to go sentence by sentence? "To the contrary, many leading scientists and scholars around the world oppose lockdowns and other aspects of Dr. Fauci's pandemic management." First of all, another way to slide in a specious argument, is to use the word "many." It is so vague that it can mean hundreds of the millions of scientists or millions of them. "Opposing lockdowns or other aspects"? To get past that requirement you would have to completely agree with Fauci on everything. I don't agree with Fauci on everything. Doesn't make me want to be part of Kennedy's claimed "many." 

Robert Kennedy is a good lawyer. He provides sentences composed of smoke and mirrors to wow without concern for substance. The above sentences could be used to fit just about anything that anyone could claim is a controversy. Substance is science. The writing so far is crap. 

I am critiquing this while reading a page at a time. That has some faults. Perhaps a convincing argument will be built. However, Kennedy is not writing this in such a format. He is stating his conclusions before supporting them. 

Continuing with the dedication, he talks about heroes of the truth who "may one day restore from the shattered souls" of the medical profession and the scientific establishment.

In dedication, he names 47 individuals, all but one preceded by the title "Dr." (that one is also a doctor, poor editing). Some are noted for their accomplishments, some are merely referred to as physician. 

I really don't want to go through 47 names and research each of their positions. I suspect some of them do agree with Kennedy, and are not being named because they are miscellaneous heroes. Instead, I used a random number generator to choose two to look at. The numbers that came up were 13 and 36.

Hoo-boy. The thirteenth entry was Dr. Didier Raoult, as the book put it, Director Infectious and Tropical Emergent Diseases Research Unit (France), physician and microbiologist. Technically, this was not true. He retired in 2021 after a scandal regarding his ethical practices "30 years of unregulated experiments on humans." Journals retracted six of his pre-COVID papers. A criminal investigation is underway. Perhaps Kennedy will declare him one of the persecuted. 

The thirty-sixth entry is Dr. Catherine L. Lawson, Rutgers University Research Professor, Institute for Quantitative Biomedicine. Her profile in the Rutgers page says that she is retired. I reviewed her published articles and couldn't find her opinions on COVID. Her one paper that refers to COVID at all, says, "New features and resources are described in detail using examples that showcase recently released structures of SARS-CoV-2 proteins and host cell proteins relevant to understanding and addressing the COVID-19 global pandemic." I contacted her. She politely replied, saying that she was surprised to be on the list but that she did support Kennedy's efforts at vaccine safety.

To some extent there is nothing wrong with the dedication as presented as long as it is treated in the spirit of a dedication. If he dedicated it to Galileo Galilei, that would be fine. It doesn't mean that Galileo endorses the book. 

I will skip over Acknowledgments as it has nothing to do with his arguments.

I will mostly skip over the Publisher's Note. It is the opinion of the publisher. Skyhorse Publishing does take on a variety of controversial issues (and sometimes controversial people) but that is free speech. Perhaps I will revisit this subject. I believe censorship is going to be part of Kennedy's arguments.

Introduction.

Finally getting to the meat of the book, we have the introduction. It begins with a quote. 

"The first step is to give up the illusion that the primary purpose of modern medical research is to improve Americans' health most effectively and efficiently. In our opinion, the primary purpose of commerically funded clinical research is to maximize final return on investment, not health." John Abramson, MD, Harvard University.

I almost completely agree with this sentiment. It does, however, refer to commercially-funded clinical research, so it is a bit strange to use it to begin a critique of government-funded research. Okay, there is a fair amount of connection between the two, but that should be established before making such a critique, or be substituted with a quote that actually addresses government-funded research. Also, it should be noted that John Abramson is adamant about the effectiveness of COVID vaccines, as can be found in this interview where he describes COVID vaccines as being protective twenty times above not taking them. 

Such acts of drawing on the prestige of scientists while ignoring the bottom line of what they say makes me suspect every quote used by Kennedy. Which is not fair on my part. I am sure he's bound to quote some who genuinely support his views.

Okay, on to a lengthy diatribe, perhaps his core diatribe. I encounter a problem here. How to quote it without running foul of copyright laws but to give his arguments their due. 

I should at least provide the opening salvo. "I wrote this book to help Americans–and citizens across the globe–understand the historical underpinnings of the bewildering cataclysm that began in 2020." Hey, that's a good opening sentence. It doesn't rely on fuzzy words or generic arguments that could apply to anything. 

It continues with "In that single annus horribilis, liberal democracy effectively collapsed worldwide." Okay, now I'm having problems. Providing the conclusion as a fait accompli. I would feel much more receptive to his arguments if he began, in a lawyerly way, to say that "I intend to show. . ." Frankly, this is an argument that is selecting the readership. In your face! Agree with me and we go on.

And he does go on. Still, first paragraph. "The very governmental health regulators, social media eminences, and media companies that idealistic populations relied upon as champions of freedom, health, democracy, civil rights, and evidence-based public policy seemed to collectively pivot in a lockstep assault against free speech and personal freedoms." (end of first paragraph)

I do appreciate he couched this with the word "seemed." This is what seemed to Kennedy and others to be happening and it is clear he is expressing an opinion rather than claiming a fact. He repeats "seemed" in the next sentence which reiterates and expands this notion.

Skipping down a little. For the third paragraph he abandons seemed and declares "shell-shocked citizens experienced all the well-worn tactics of rising totalitarianism. . ." 

I am not going to analyze this line-by-line. It would be tedious for you and much of the first several paragraphs repeat what has been said above. It can be summed up with his declaration of the COVID response as "a bewildering array of draconian diktats . . ."

In the fifth paragraph we get to Dr. Anthony Fauci. "Standing in the center of all the mayhem, with his confident hand on them, was one dominating figure." Okay, from an American perspective, that is arguable. I would have said that Donald Trump was the one I would choose to fit that description, for America. Trump (and then Biden) had more power than Fauci, one of several major scientists at NIH and the other agencies that oversee health research. When it came to the worldwide response, I would make a spitball estimate that Fauci had a small percentage of a role. Below WHO, the EU, those leaders of the billions who live outside of the United States, etc. And for the worse, I would say the leaders of China played a more dominating role. Yes, the United States does take an oversized role in influencing the world, but not so much as to provide "one dominating figure." 

Fauci was head of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), an institute with a budget of around 6.5 billion dollars. NIAID is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In 2021, NIH had a budget of 42.9 billion dollars. As you can see, he was in charge of a fraction of NIH and NIH is a fraction of the total U.S. health research budget along with other large agencies such as USDA and CDC. On top of this, Fauci was an advisor to the president. Fauci's influence was important, but hardly all-dominating. If Fauci were all-dominating, Trump would not have made many of his pronouncements regarding COVID.

Kennedy goes on to talk about himself, about his history as a Democrat, and his fights as an environmental lawyer against Big Oil and Big Coal. Good for him. (I'm not being sarcastic: good for him.)

Here he pivots to what I consider a disingenuous presentation. "NIH owns hundreds of vaccine patents and often profits from the sale of products it supposedly regulates." Umm, no. NIH does not profit anymore than the National Park Service profits from selling snowglobes in their tourist centers. I suppose the next sentence is there to state that individuals pockets money. "High level officials, including Dr. Fauci, receive yearly emoluments of up to $150,000 in royalty payments on products they help develop and then usher through the approval process."

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Soviet dissident and Nobel Prize winner, once said that, with a careful reading of Soviet newspapers you could learn the hidden truth. This applies to the above sentence. First of all, it uses the classic advertising lingo of "up to." Save up to 50%, a true statement which includes "or save nothing at all" and even "pay more." (I fell for this while switching my cellular service a couple of years ago. It's going to be $35 a month, no hidden fees, right? I asked a half-dozen times.) Secondly, the sentence says "high level officials including Dr. Fauci." This tells me that Kennedy didn't have Dr. Fauci's numbers. If he did have Dr. Fauci's numbers and they were bad, he would have presented them. Or, if he was being out and out dishonest, and had Fauci's numbers and they were unimpressive, he was lumping Fauci together with others to make Fauci look like he was getting a lot of money. 

The next sentence says "The FDA receives 45 percent of its budget from the pharmaceutical industry . . ." an enlightening observation, but Fauci doesn't work for the FDA. Kennedy is making the case for Fauci as guilt due to others guilt. (Hey, we got a bad system.) There are other problems with that sentence. A good deal of the money the FDA receives comes from pharmaceutical companies who pay for the process to try to get their drugs approved. That's a good thing and a bad thing. Good: Make them pay. Bad: The money is almost like lobbying. There are dramatic instances where that monetary influence has led to bad decisions. There are also instances where conscientious workers at the FDA turned down drug approvals in spite of heavy, well-funded pressure from the pharm industry.

This blog is running very long and I'm barely half-way through the introduction. There are so many problems with the book. I will continue my analysis in future blog posts. I will leave with two matters. First, I should share this next sentence because it is sounds like a thesis statement and finally does talk about what Kennedy intends to prove rather than just hurling manure. I think it is an excellent place to let Kennedy speak for himself without comment or critique.

"In this book, I track the rise of Anthony Fauci from his start as a young public health researcher and physician through his metamorphosis into the powerful technocrat who helped orchestrate and execute 2020's historic coup d'état against Western democracy." 

I will finish this entry by addressing the following statement. "His [Fauci's] $417,608 annual salary makes him the highest paid of all four million federal employees, including the President." (The President makes $400,000.) First of all, this is not true. As to how many federal employees make more, I do not know. However, with a ten-second Google search (I type fast), I found that the head of the Tennessee Valley Authority made in the millions and several of his underlings made more than a million. 

Secondly, this statement lacks context. Physicians are typically among the highest paid public employees. The average U.S. physician specialist makes $380,000 per year (plastic surgeons average $570,000). Fauci would not be considered the average specialist–and I'm not saying that simply because of his reputation (Time Magazine Man of the Year) which would have added to his salary in the private sector. He has been a physician going on fifty years and a private career would have been paying him much more than "the average" physician, a set which includes those just out of medical school. Fauci took a pay cut to do his job.

To be continued. Part Two.

Martin Hill Ortiz is the author of several novels including most recently the thriller, Floor 24. 

Floor 24
Oliver-Heber Books

"From the mob underworld to the tops of new skyscrapers, Floor 24 is a heart-thumping New York 1920's historical mystery!" - Holly Newman, bestselling author of A Chance Inquiry mystery series.

Continue reading →