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Culture & Society, Current Events, Doctors, Featured, Health Policy, Law, Medical Ethics, Medicine, What's New

America Out Loud PULSE: What Do Roe, Doe, and Dobbs Really Mean?

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From my America Out Loud Pulse podcast with Brian Johnston – https://www.americaoutloud.com/what-do-roe-doe-and-dobbs-really-mean/

Ever since the Supreme Court opinion in Roe v Wade  making privacy—which included abortion—a federal Constitutional right in 1973, the right to life debate has come and gone out of the public eye. At this point, most people who paid attention to the Roe opinion knew was not based on anything in the Constitution. It was more of a sociological and cultural decision than a legal one.

A couple of years ago, New York’s Catholic Democratic Governor had the World Trade Center in lights to celebrate its abortion-on-demand-until-the-day-of-birth law. This law was framed as empowering women through guaranteeing “reproductive health.” This and eight other similar state laws were largely ignored as merely codifying Roe v Wade. But the state of Virginia’s pediatrician former governor’s ghoulish advocacy for abortion until delivery of the infant was jaw-dropping as he explained that killing the infant after birth was allowed. Adding insult to injury, in California minors can obtain abortions without parental consent.

The normalization of the intentional killing of human beings weaved its way into our culture. Life was not only cheap for the unborn, but for other vulnerable or unwanted persons such as the elderly. Half the states have laws that charge a person for two murders if he or she kills a woman in any stage of pregnancy.

Fortunately for unborn children, the recent Supreme Court case, Dobbs v Jackson brought the abortion debate into the forefront. The pro Roe crowd went so far as to surround the homes of conservative Supreme Court justices. The media could not continue to ignore the large numbers of people participating in marches for life. More and more people publicly admitted that aborting a baby is not the solution for an unplanned pregnancy.

We can only hope that more and more physicians prefer to practice medicine in the mode of Dr. Mildred Jefferson, the first black woman accepted to Harvard Medical School: “I became a physician in order to help save lives. … I am not willing to stand aside and allow the concept of expendable human lives to turn this great land of ours into just another exclusive reservation where only the perfect, the privileged, and the planned have the right to live.”

Culture & Society, Doctors, Health Policy, Medical Ethics, Medicine, Politics, What's New

America Out Loud PULSE: Patients and Physicians Reclaiming Choice in Medical Treatment

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From my America Out Loud Pulse podcast with Shibrah Jamil, MD – https://www.americaoutloud.com/patients-and-physicians-reclaiming-choice-in-medical-treatment/

For years the health insurance industry has been increasingly dictating the quality and quantity of medical treatments. High insurance premiums, co-pays, and out-of-pocket deductibles are squeezing patients out of the market. Even so, physicians and patients begrudgingly acquiesced. Now, not only is private equity taking over the health care industry but the administrative state is making hard for physicians to serve their patients fully satisfactory for both parties.

The Oath of Hippocrates has upheld the sanctity of the patient-physician relationship for thousands of years. Mandates intrude into that relationship. Mandates rely on coercion rather than informed consent. Various laws in, particularly in California, are squelching choice for patients and free speech for physicians even with threats of loss of their licenses. Consequently, patients are losing their choice in medical treatment.

For example, many colleges have mandated Covid vaccines, even in the face of mounting evidence of an association with myocarditis (heart inflammation). California now has an immunization registry invading our privacy. Another law would punish physicians for telling their patients Covid “misinformation” – a term that is about as clear as mud.

The silver lining? Medical tyranny has gone so far that more and more patients and physicians are becoming activists.

Today’s guest is one of those physicians who is taking to the streets to reclaim medicine for patients and physicians.

Featured, Health Policy, Law, Medical Ethics, What's New

America Out Loud PULSE: Ethical Considerations in Organ Donation

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From my America Out Loud Pulse podcast with Dr. Heidi Klessig –https://www.americaoutloud.com/ethical-considerations-in-organ-donation-with-heidi-klessig-md/

Organ donation is a wonderful gift to a fellow human. One organ donor of critical organs such as the heart, lungs, liver, and kidneys can save up to 8 lives. According to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) 105,820 Americans are awaiting organs and over 40,000 transplants were performed in 2021. But like so many things in today’s culture, the zeal to procure organs for transplant may have, as they say, gone too far.

Death is always an uncomfortable topic. And organ harvesting is even more so. I remember the first time I was delivering anesthesia for an organ harvest. I was thinking, if the patient is dead, why do they need me? Of course, the patient’s heart was beating and his kidneys were still functioning. I gave a good anesthetic, keeping all the vital signs stable with multiple drugs and every tool I had at my disposal. Then the surgeon looked up and instructed me to turn it all off. I could not walk away. I stayed until the patient’s heart stopped beating quite as while later.

So what death is for purposes of organ harvesting? In the United States, if a person is pronounced brain dead, they are legally dead. Death is defined in the United States by the Uniform Determination of Death Act (UDDA), proposed in 1981, as either (1) irreversible cessation of circulatory and pulmonary functions or (2) irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, which means brain death. The need for human organs for transplants has spawned some eye-popping processes.

Currently, surgeons are experimenting with a Frankensteinian-sounding procedure whereby terminal patients are allowed to die, then their hearts are resuscitate while blood flow to the brain is clamped off. In January 2022, surgeons implanted a genetically modified pig heart into a human. The patient lived for 49 days. The surgeons got their transplants, but medical ethics may have died.

The American Medical Association’s Code of Medical Ethics addresses issues regarding organ transplantation, including xenotransplantation, that is, organs from a non-human. The first guideline states: “(1) . . . A prospective organ transplant offers no justification for a relaxation of the usual standard of medical care for the potential donor.”

Organ transplantation is a great medical breakthrough that saves and improves lives. As with any medical procedure, informed consent with a full discussion of all the available information and assurance that the highest ethical standards are essential. Unfortunately, sometimes the unattractive details of organ donation are glossed over. Today’s conversation will provide some food for thought.

 

COVID-19, Featured, Law, Medical Ethics, Politics, What's New

America Out Loud PULSE: Informed Consent and Medical Coercion in the Age of Covid

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From my America Out Loud Pulse podcast with Greg Glaser, JD –https://www.americaoutloud.com/informed-consent-and-medical-coercion-in-the-era-of-covid/

Informed consent is the keystone of medical autonomy and participating in our own medical care. It is the physician’s ethical and legal duty to provide informed consent, and patients have the right to make decisions about their own health. Informed consent is generally something people only think about when they are about to undergo a surgical procedure. Thankfully, now “informed consent” is on the tips of the tongues of newly minted advocates of medical freedom.

Many patients and physicians had lost their curiosity about the effects of many medications, including vaccines. But we must not be lazy about exercising our rights. We need informed consent before subjecting our bodies to any outside intervention – even if it is “for our own good.” Assuming you have the mental capacity to make the decision, informed consent must include an understandable explanation of the intervention with the risks and benefits of the medical intervention and the probability that the risk or benefit will occur. Informed consent must voluntarily, without coercion or duress. The physician might not agree with your decision, but the decision is yours to make.

The Covid fiasco has brought to light the element of coercion with the vaccination mandates. The government authorities banned children from in-person schooling, people—including critically needed health care professionals—lost their jobs.

However, the government’s vaccine tyranny did not begin with Covid. We have laws on the books like the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act enacted in 2005. The PREP Act provides nearly blanket immunity from liability for manufacturers, distributors, and administrators of certain drugs meant to counteract an epidemic or pandemic. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) merely determines that something either is or may become a public health emergency. Then HHS can make a “declaration” that certain entities and “countermeasures” (including vaccines) are covered by the PREP Act.

The federal government has given itself a lot of power. Today we’ll discuss returning some of that power to the people with my guest, Greg Glaser, JD.

Featured, Health Policy, Medical Ethics, What's New

America Out Loud PULSE: Government Secrecy and Medical Radiation Experiments

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From my America Out Loud Pulse podcast – https://www.americaoutloud.com/government-secrecy-and-medical-experiments-radiation/

Lately, we are hearing a lot of talk about transparency of prices of pharmaceuticals and medical services. Where was the call for transparency when our government was conducting experiments on unsuspecting Americans? Secret experiments on human guinea pigs are a sickening part of our history. We are supposed to be a country founded on moral principles.

Several weeks ago, I discussed a variety of government experiments perpetrated on unwitting Americans. This episode discusses experiments with radiation on similarly unconsenting victims ranging from prisoners, disabled children, cancer patients, and perfectly healthy individuals.

If it were not for good investigative journalists, many government misdeeds might be buried forever. In November 1993 Department of Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary officially revealed the government’s radiological experiments. Her hand was forced when journalist Eileen Welsome’s articles were published in the Albuquerque Tribune. Following a six-year investigation, Welsome uncovered details of five experiments in which plutonium was injected into 18 people without their informed consent. (She won a 1994 Pulitzer Prize for her reporting.)

On January 15, 1994, President Clinton appointed the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experimentsto investigate reports of possibly unethical experiments funded by the government. At the same time, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) was readying its Report on Cold War Era Programs Involving Human Experimentation that was released in September 1994. Read them and weep.

After the fact, some of the project “doctors” justified the secretive, amoral behavior because the experiments yielded “valuable information.” When these projects began, the Nuremburg Code regarding informed consent for human experimentation had not been written. However, the Hippocratic Oath and basic respect for human beings should have been enough to make the professionals involved – as we said in the 60s — question authority.

It is a stark reality that world tensions dictate that some government projects remain out of the public view. But science and national security cannot be advanced on the backs of unsuspecting individuals. The government assumed(s) individuals cannot be trusted to maintain secrecy and that they never would have consented had they known the risks. The continued misinformation about Covid, the suppression of early treatments, and the relative silence about vaccine side effects indicate that the government has not learned its lesson.

COVID-19, Current Events, Guest Column, Medical Ethics, What's New

COVID-19: Questions to Ask Your Employer

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Guest column by Jane M. Orient, MD

If you work for a company that is giving employees an opportunity to have a conversation with an expert concerning COVID vaccination, say their PharmD, what might you ask?

Our Sept 11 dispatch suggested several questions: Can you delay the requirement pending availability of the only FDA-approved product, labeled Comirnaty, or better yet, completion of studies on myocarditis to be completed in 2027?

In addition, consider the data from Israel showing twice as many COVID deaths in 2021, with one of the highest vaccination rates in the world, compared with 2020, before the vaccines were available.

Questions for the company’s expert:

·         How do you explain the 100-percent increase in cases and deaths in almost-fully-vaccinated Israel?

·         If there is to be a testing requirement, will it apply to all? President Biden said: “We need to protect the vaccinated from the unvaccinated.” How will we know whether they have been protected without testing them?

·         There have been reports by unvaccinated persons, especially of menstrual irregularities, after contact with vaccinated persons. Will the company collect reports, offer testing as for coagulation abnormalities, or institute any precautions?

·         Can the company expert provide references to male and female fertility studies in several species of animals? What about pathologic examination of the placenta in women who had a miscarriage post vaccination (1,757 reports to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, VAERS, as of Sept 9)?

·         Will the company allow alternate methods of COVID prophylaxis such as iodinated mouthwash and nasal spray, iota-carrageenan, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, or other measures? Results of studies for pre-exposure and post-exposure prophylaxis are compiled at c19study.com.

Additional information: 

·         For a compendium of some suggested treatment protocols and resources, see c19protocols.com.

·         Download and share the updated AAPS Guide to Home-Based COVID Treatment.

·         Find out whether you are eligible for monoclonal antibody treatment and where you can receive it.

Jane Orient, M.D.

Executive Director

Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, jane@aapsonline.org

COVID-19, Current Events, Guest Column, Medical Ethics, Politics, What's New

COVID-19: Shall We Rush to Get the Biden Jab?

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Guest column by Jane M. Orient, MD

If you are not already in the half of Americans who are fully vaccinated, President Biden’s speech on mandates gives the vaccination decision a new urgency.

The timing, just prior to the 20th anniversary of 9/11—and just after our chaotic exit from Afghanistan—is interesting. As Biden said, “this is not about freedom or personal choice.” Many of our freedoms were already crushed under the rubble of the World Trade Center. Will the rest be lost in the war against a virus?

Trust is the key issue—trust in our government and in the established public health and medical authorities. If you don’t like Biden, you can think of the jab as the Trump vaccine. Physicians feel threatened with loss of their livelihood if they disseminate “misinformation” about COVID-19, so they may rely solely on Anthony Fauci, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, and cdc.gov. The message is “get vaccinated.” Or else—get fired, or possibly even be denied medical treatment.

For other official views, you need to look outside the U.S. The Tokyo Medical Association recommends ivermectin for early treatment—with results in the graph.The U.S.FDA launched a Twitter campaign against this long-approved drug, which has both human and veterinary indications.

What can Americans do if they do not wish to take the vaccine?

·         Medical and religious exemptions are supposed to be available. 

·         One might try asking for a postponement pending availability of the only FDA-approved product, Comirnaty, made by BioNTech in Mainz, Germany. The Pfizer product, contrary to media reports, got only an extended Emergency Use Authorization (EUA). One might also ask to delay pending completion of FDA-required post-marketing studies on issues such as myocarditis, with a 5-year follow-up (ending in 2027).

·         One might ask the employer about providing pre- and post-vaccination studies pertaining to the FDA warning about myocarditis (cardiac enzymes, ultrasound, MRI), plus guaranteed payment for treatment if it occurs, including paid time off if exercise restriction is needed.

·         One might ask for pre- and post-vaccination coagulation studies such as D-dimers, with payment for anti-clotting treatment if needed.

·         One probably needs to be prepared for termination and explore what legal remedies might be available to obtain unemployment compensation or severance pay. 

Whether vaccinated or not, all Americans should check their disaster plans (life insurance, disability insurance) and inform themselves about prevention and early treatment options. 

·         For a compendium of some suggested treatment protocols and resources, see c19protocols.com.

·         Download and share the updated AAPS Guide to Home-Based COVID Treatment.

·         Find out whether you are eligible for monoclonal antibody treatment and where you can receive it.

·         A summary of studies on many therapies with links to original articles: c19study.com.

Jane Orient, M.D., Exec. Dir., Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, jane@aapsonline.org

janeorientmd@gmail.com

Culture & Society, Doctors, Featured, Medical Ethics, Politics, What's New

Reflections on Medical Education

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I was a surgery intern almost 50 years ago, before black women were surgery interns. I was proud of that achievement—particularly when recalling what one surgeon told me when I applied: “we don’t like women in surgery but we like you.” Why? Because I worked hard, excelled on my surgery rotations, and didn’t whine about the long hours. 

I was in medical school before diversity was an identity-based political buzzword. It was a time when diversity meant different kinds of people mingling together at school, work, or otherwise. We had the common goal of learning as much as we could absorb and achieving good grades.

Fast forward to the 1980s and beyond, where achieving diversity in school or the workplace took precedence over excellence. Now diversity means condemning different kinds of people to a life in their own racial silo. People are no longer individuals. Sadly, little kids are no longer just kids. Now they are a black kid, or a “Latinex” kid, or a white supremacist kid who, unbeknownst to him/her hates brown-skinned kids.

We cannot let this kind of thinking seep into the medical profession. We are human beings who are physicians, who want to contribute to society, and who want the best for our patients.

We have to be at the forefront of an alternate way to see that minorities are represented in our profession—not by parroting empty rhetoric, but through action. We need to go to schools and tell some fascinating stories that illustrate that there is more to black history than slavery and white oppression. And yes, white people are allowed to tell these stories. 

Let’s start with an inspiring piece of medical history. As a child I learned about Dr. James Derham (c. 1757-1802?), born a slave in Philadelphia. He was the first known black American physician, although he did not attend medical school. As was common at the time, physicians were trained in apprenticeships. Young Derham’s masters were physicians who taught him to read and write and ultimately, he became a paid medical assistant. He earned his freedom and in 1783 opened a private practice in New Orleans. He spoke three languages and had patients of all colors.

We should teach young racial minorities that they are strong survivors who can overcome anything. Do not buy into the dreadful notion that brown-skinned folks are inferior victims whose lives are controlled by their white overlords. Tell them not to engage in the race to be the biggest victim, but rather the biggest winner. We recognize and lament past injustices. However, we must tell students to live in the moment and pave their own future. 

Brown-skinned students should not be told that getting “Cs” is just fine. This “soft bigotry of low expectations” has far-reaching consequences. Young college and graduate students have told me how lucky I was that I was in school before affirmative action took root. They felt like no one would know if they were actually competent or an “affirmative action baby.” Imagine having that burden to live with. In medicine, many minorities wonder whether their colleagues and patients might think they are not as smart as the white doctor next door.

I grew up knowing I was as good as anyone else. And that’s what drove me to excellence. That is what I want for our future physicians.

And P.S. When I was in medical school, I attended the birth of a set of twins. Their father was a black American, their mother was a recent immigrant from Korea. The daughter was the spitting image of her mother; the son was the spitting image of his father. The nurse asked the pediatrician what race she should write for the birth certificate. The pediatrician answered, “human.” 

COVID-19, Culture & Society, Current Events, Featured, Health Policy, Medical Ethics, Medicare, Op-eds, What's New

There’s More to Death Than Covid-19

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Breathless headlines featuring ‘the Virus” are beginning to fade into a chronic undercurrent of fear thy neighbor for he might be bearing the gift of Covid. What you won’t see in the headlines are stories about a more pervasive and ultimately more lethal virus: a growing disregard for others and devaluation of life. Rampant homicides are disheartening enough, but more shocking is the shifting morality in medicine. 

News headlines gave the impression that the newly instituted Covid rules were designed to save lives, yet we soon learned the lockdowns, masking, school closures did more harm than good. Meanwhile—in plain sight—government-sanctioned sacrifice of the elderly was taking place. In 5 “progressive” states, Covid-positive patients were discharged from hospital isolation units and returned to their nursing homes where they comingled with uninfected residents. Of course, many more residents became ill. It didn’t make the headlines that half of Covid deaths were in nursing homes and 80 percent of deaths were in those over 65. This might have encouraged more policies that protected our elders and allowed the younger folks to carry on with their lives. To date, the news has not reported any apologies to the families of the victims of government and medical incompetence.

In 2020, many hospitals in the United States considered guidelines that would allow doctors to withhold CPR from Covid patients, ignoring the patient’s wishes. Our neighbor to the north, Quebec had actually issued such an order lasting from April to September 2020. Bless the paramedics on the front lines who complained and had the order lifted.

Age-related rationing is alive and well. The ethics advisor to 78-year-old President Biden, Ezekiel Emanuel, MD, author of the utilitarian “Complete Lives System” of  medical care, chose age 75 as his personal benchmark for ending life. This is so wrong. As Mahatma Gandhi said, “The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.” Whether mentally sharp or in declining health, older people give texture and context to our lives. Reflecting on older folks reminds us that in their lifetime innovations have gone from puttering around in a car to rocketing to the moon. And Dick Tracy’s comic book two-way wrist radio is now a commonly worn Apple watch. 

The behavior of bureaucrats and the medical establishment during the Covid “crisis” laid bare the dismissive treatment of elders. And an uncomfortable question hangs in the air: was the nursing home debacle a conscious attempt to cull the herd? After all, Medicare chews up 15 percent of the federal budget and 25 percent of Medicare dollars are spent in the last year of the patient’s life. According to the 2019 Medicare Trustees report, the Medicare Hospital Insurance trust fund will be depleted in 2026—a short 5 years away. 

If this form of population control sounds un-American, remember that our country seriously engaged in eugenics, marked by 75 years of Supreme Court-approved forced sterilization. The abortion industry has devolved from a time when a woman was mortified to have an abortion to where clinics are advertised on highway billboards. The quest for clean air has gone from encouraging recycling and renewable energy to suggesting that human depopulation is the only way to save the planet. 

Human concern in medicine has taken a back seat to marginal scientific ethics and perhaps, secret agendas. We have become numb to the experiments using fresh aborted fetal tissue to create “humanized mice” that sprout various human organs. This slow walk to the edge of medical ethics has allowed science to go in grotesquely anti-human directions. Jointly with Chinese government funding, United States researchers created viable embryos that are a mix of human and monkey cells (a “chimera”). With funding from the Chan Zuckerberg [Mr. Facebook] Initiative, researchers tinkered with male rats so they could deliver live babies via Cesarian section. 

Sadly, physicians have become willing participants in the government’s borderline coercion by not informing themselves about early treatments for Covid or the side effects of the experimental vaccine. Federal and state governments are bribing, cajoling, and subjecting us to door-to-door pressure to take an injection of a product that could be killing us in numbers not seen before. Serious reactions include miscarriages, Bell’s palsy, Guillain-Barre Syndrome, blood clotting disorders (including brain clots), and anaphylaxis. Bizarrely, the White House is challenging colleges to vaccinate its entire campus, despite sometimes fatal heart inflammation after vaccinations in young adults (who have infinitesimal risk of significant Covid illness). 

It appears we are guinea pigs in a grand experiment. The elderly were the casualties of Phase I. As the post-vaccine bodies pile up, the Nuremberg Code’s principle is being ignored: The experiment must be stopped if continuation would result in injury and death.

It’s not too late. Physicians must remember their Oath of Hippocrates and speak up and act for the benefit of their patients even in the face of conflicting government dictates. 

COVID-19, Current Events, Guest Column, Medical Ethics, Uncategorized, What's New

COVID-19: Are There Ethical Issues with Jabs or Mandates?

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By Jane M. Orient, MD

If your faith forbids sterilization, or your respect for human rights forbids involuntary sterilization, then you need to consider the risk of infertility from COVID jabs.

We do NOT know that the COVID jab will cause infertility. But we also do not and cannot know that it doesn’t. There simply has not been enough time to see.

Despite the uncertainty, thousands of our youth are being forced to choose between taking the jab or putting their educational plans or careers on hold. How much risk can we ethically take, or coerce others to accept—whether the risk is of infertility, miscarriage, disability, chronic disease, or death?

The ethical and legal issues of a mandate are outlined in a letter to colleges and universities from the William J. Olson law firm in Vienna, VA. The letter also requests a commitment to assume financial liability for death, disability, or illness of students being required to take the COVID-19 inoculation. While manufacturers are immune from product liability, those who coerce students or employees to receive it might not be.

Investigations that might inform us about the reproductive risks have not been done (or reported). More than 700 post-injection miscarriages have been reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). Where are the pathological examinations of the placentas? Were there spike-proteins in the blood vessels, and inflammation that cut off oxygen or nutrients to the baby? We don’t know. An NEJM article that concluded there were no safety signals had no information on the placentas.

Was there damage to the reproductive organs of the nearly 7,000 persons who died post injection? The first (only?) autopsy report, of an 86-year-old man, published in June, did not address this. 

Nanoparticles are meant to be distributed widely, and do accumulate in ovaries, testes, and uterus. What happens to the lipid nanoparticles that enclose the genetic material in the mRNA vaccines? Pfizer did not perform standard biodistribution studies. 

College students are probably delaying marriage and family until educational or career goals are achieved. So, they might not discover infertility for years. But there are early warnings from fertility clinics about failed in-vitro fertilization with previously successful donors. 

Once injected, the genetically engineered materials cannot be removed. We do not know how long the mRNA or the spike proteins it codes for will remain in the tissues.

Risks and benefits need be considered for different age groups. Persons past reproductive years have a higher risk of disease; younger persons seldom get seriously ill with COVID. A one-size-fits-all mandate is without justification.

Those deciding whether to accept the shots, and their spiritual, parental, and career advisors, have a heavy responsibility with a potential impact on all future generations.

For further information:

·         64 days without answers from the CDC

·         57 experts call for immediate halt to COVID vaccine programs

·         2 vaccine deaths for 3 prevented (retracted because vaccines not proved to be cause of death)

·         AAPS open letter to universities on COVID mandate

Jane Orient, M.D., Exec. Dir., Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, jane@aapsonline.org

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