This is my eleventh entry in my 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. My first entry is here and you can follow the links from there. So far, I have written over 20,000 words in my critique and have covered six pages of the Acknowledgments & Dedication, ten pages of the Introduction and nineteen pages of Chapter One. This works out to be more words in my critique than in the book (so far). This is because Kennedy tosses out one ridiculous line after another, sometimes not providing any reference in support, sometimes providing a reference that shows his statement to be a lie. One sentence from Kennedy often requires several sentences to set the record straight.
In my last entry I discussed ivermectin, a drug which Kennedy spent many pages promoting as a treatment for COVID (according to the Index, it is referenced on 32 pages). I had hoped to continue by discussing hydroxychloroquine, a more complex candidate for aiding COVID patients. I will save that analysis until after the holidays. For now, I will summarize some of my findings.
The Most Eye-Opening, Jaw-Dropping, Ridiculous Statements in the Book Thus Far.
I didn't know what I was stepping into by reading this book. I had supposed that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. would at least try to make a reasoned argument. Instead, it is page after page of poorly-thought-out material from a disoriented mind who knows little to nothing about science.
There are no page numbers in my copy of the book (although references to page numbers exist in the Index and Table of Contents). The page numbers presented for the quotes given below are from hand-numbering. I numbered the Introduction using Roman numerals (i to xiv) and the pages in the first chapter beginning with the number 1.
#1. Kennedy cites lunatics.
Kennedy cites various doctors, describing them as bravely responding to the arrival of COVID by immediately putting forward their own recipes for treating the disease. He quotes Dr. David Brownstein of Detroit (page 15, Chapter One, emphasis below in bold, mine).
"'We've been treating viral diseases here for twenty-five years, COVID can't be any different.' In all that time, our office had never lost a single patient to flu or flu-like illness. We treated people in their cars with oral vitamins A, C, and D, and iodine. We administered IV solution outside all winter with IV hydrogen peroxide and vitamin C. We'd have them put their butts out the car window and shot them up with intramuscular ozone."
Kennedy doesn't recognize that this statement is batshit insane and, rather than support his arguments for physicians being heroic, shows that Kennedy knows nothing about medicine or patient well-being. IV hydrogen peroxide has no special advantage to treat a viral infection and, if it were administered in any antiviral concentration, it would be poisonous to the patient. Ozone becomes a liquid at -112 degrees Celsius. So, if not liquid ozone, were the IM injections by gas? In his Dedication & Acknowledgments, Kennedy cites Dr. Brownstein as part of his "Heroic Healers Honor Roll."
Kennedy cites several other doctors who performed human experimentation using drugs and compounds to treat COVID which could politely be called unproven treatments. As I note in my entries, the doctors themselves cite evidence that they didn't have the required institutional board approval for ethical research. The were egomaniacs administering sometimes dangerous drugs.
Before treating someone in a study with a drug like hydroxychloroquine, it is necessary to have approved inclusion and exclusion criteria. Exclusion criteria (for excluding prospective patients from the study) for hydroxychloroquine would include patients with arrhythmias and those with G6PD deficiency, among other prerequisites. When the pioneering doctors that Kennedy references published, if they made any reference to receiving approval for their protocols, they made clear they had approval covering retrospective analyses, not for the patient treatments.
#2. Kennedy believes that Fauci is responsible for virtually all things bad that have happened in the health world since the mid-80s.
From page ix of the Introduction.
"Some 80 autoimmune diseases, including juvenile diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis, Graves' disease and Crohn's disease, which were practically unknown prior to 1984, suddenly became epidemic under his [Fauci's] watch."
First of all, the claim of a great increase in the numbers isn't the case. Kennedy provides one citation in the reference to this claim. It refers to a study conducted in a single Polish hospital regarding juvenile diabetes in a retrospective analysis and which, among other things, doesn't mention Crohn's disease. Second of all, any doctor who has been practicing since the 1980s knows that the listed diseases were not "practically unknown." Kennedy makes wild statements and doesn't care what his citations say.
From page viii-ix of the Introduction.
"Under Dr. Fauci's leadership, the allergic, autoimmune, and chronic illnesses which Congress specifically charge NIAID to investigate and prevent, have mushroomed to afflict 54 percent of children, up from 12.8 percent when he took over NIAID in 1984."
Do over half of children today have such illnesses? A ridiculous assertion which Kennedy doesn't even try to defend with a citation. From a scientific point of view, measuring the prevalence of all allergic, autoimmune, and chronic illnesses (which fall under NIAID) from a specific year, 1984 to date, is a near impossible task. (Even more so, the 80 diseases cited above). Lots of studies are out there trying to tackle the prevalence of one specific disease.
#3. Kennedy blames Fauci for worldwide disasters and millions of deaths.
From page vi of the Introduction:
"As Dr. Fauci's policies took hold globally, 300 million fell into poverty . . . [and] In 2020, disruptions to to health and nutrition services killed 228,000 children in South Asia."
In my blog posts, I point out that Kennedy's citations do not support what he says on the above matters. Furthermore, Fauci's policies did not control the worldwide response to COVID beyond Kennedy's imagination that Fauci was all-powerful.
Kennedy cites Dr. Vladimir Zelenko who put forth the assertion that COVID vaccines themselves caused millions of deaths.
#3a. Kennedy blames Fauci for such things as the destruction of global democracy and the American middle class and much more.
From page viii of the Introduction. In one incredibly poorly-written run on sentence that repeats item after item such as constitutional rights and Bill of Rights as though they were non-overlapping things, Kennedy says:
"With fears of COVID generously stoked, the dramatic and steady erosion of constitutional rights and fomenting a global coup d'état against democracy, the demolition of our economy, the obliteration of a million small businesses, the collapsing of the middle class, the evisceration of our Bill of Rights, the tidal wave of surveillance capitalism and the rising bio-security state, and stunning shifts in wealth and power going to a burgeoning oligarchy of high-tech Silicon Valley robber barons seemed, to a dazed and uncritical America, like it might be a reasonable price to pay for safety." (And if this repetition weren't bad enough, the previous sentence bemoaned how an "outlaw gang has stolen our democracy, our civil rights, our country, and our way of life . . .)
I guess you have to be a conspiracy theorist to get paid for such mediocre thinking and writing.
#4. Kennedy sometimes cites unqualified or else unsavory people and sources.
Kennedy cites Alex Gutentag as an authority, not mentioning that Gutentag is a middle-grade school teacher. (He is responsible for the above quote about 228,000 children dying.)
Kennedy makes this particularly snarky claim: "Dr. Fauci dreamily recounted his own grade school measles and mumps vaccines—an unlikely memory since those vaccines weren't available until 1963 and 1967 [respectively], and Dr. Fauci attended grade school in the 1940s." (page 4, Chapter One)
First of all, the mumps vaccine came out in 1948 (1950 for widespread use when Fauci was still in grade school). Second of all, the citation that Kennedy provides saying Fauci "dreamily recounted" such a memory is a Twitter post from a group described (in Wikipedia) as one that promotes neo-Nazi propaganda.
Kennedy not knowing when the mumps vaccine came out segues into the next problem.
#5. Kennedy doesn't know science.
From page 6, Chapter One.
"During the centuries that science has fruitlessly sought remedies against coronavirus (aka the common cold), only zinc has repeatedly proved its efficacy in peer reviewed studies."
Coronaviruses are neither "aka the common cold" nor are they the main cause. From the American Lung Association. "Rhinoviruses are the most common cause of colds in the U.S. Parainfluenza viruses, adenoviruses, enteroviruses, human metapneumovirus and common human coronaviruses also cause colds." Coronaviruses cause about 20% of common colds.
Kennedy did inadvertently state a truth: lots and lots of compounds don't work as antivirals.
#6. Kennedy often cites sources that plain disagree with what he is stating or simply disagree with him about issues such as vaccines.
One of the most egregious examples comes with this quote. Page 5 of Chapter One. Kennedy begins by referencing his own obsessions about conspiracies surrounding 9/11.
"Public surveys showed that, just as Fox News audiences were shockingly misinformed following the 9/11 bombings, CNN viewers and New York Times readers were catastrophically misinformed about the facts of COVID-19 during 2020. Successive Gallup polling showed that the average Democrat believed 50% of COVID infections resulted in hospitalization."
Kennedy provides a citation for this Gallup poll. It says nothing like what he claims it does. First, it doesn't mention anything about CNN viewers or New York Times readers. Second, while it does discuss Democrats views on what percentages of COVID infections result in hospitalizations, it divides up that perception of risk into whether the individuals at risk were vaccinated or unvaccinated. In their survey they found 54% of Democrats said that risk was 1% or less for those vaccinated, and only 2% said that the risk was higher than 50%. As for the risk for those unvaccinated, 41% of Democrats said that the risk was 50% or greater. Furthermore, the survey pointed out their own numbers said that being vaccinated led to a 78-fold reduction in hospitalizations.
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| Vaccination rate by Political Affiliation, U.S. through September 2021 From the abovementioned Gallup Poll |
Kennedy cites Stephen Woolf of the Virginia Commonwealth University regarding the decreased longevity in the U.S. subsequent to COVID. He doesn't cite Woolf decrying COVID conspiracy theorists and the fact that Woolf supports COVID vaccination.
#7. Kennedy seems to think America followed Fauci's recommendations.
Mandatory stay-at-home orders for COVID for much of the country lasted six weeks or less. Many states never had mandatory orders. Five states never passed even voluntary lock downs (Arkansas, Connecticut, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Wyoming). Superspreader gatherings were regular occurrences. There was massive resistance to masking. America had a poor vaccination rate compared to many countries which had much better survival rates.
#8. Kennedy often presents lies when it would be easy to tell the truth.
I find this to be one of Kennedy's most annoying habits. From the Introduction, page iii.
"Dr. Anthony Fauci spent half a century as America's reigning health commissar . . ." (Kennedy repeats this claim of Fauci having 50-year "regime.")
As of the publication date of Kennedy's book, Fauci had been the head of the NIAID for 37 years. The NIAID has a small percentage of the budget of the National Institutes of Health and even a smaller percentage of budget for U.S. health research. Kennedy lied about Fauci's career and influence to make his wild claims.
Continued with a look at hydroxychloroquine.
Martin Hill Ortiz is the author of several novels including most recently the thriller, Floor 24.
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| 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.
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