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.
0 comments:
Post a Comment