News Round-Up: Dr Bhattacharya, Dr Makary to Lead NIH and FDA, Homelessness Problem in Brussels and Walmart Ditches DEI Policies
Every week, the editorial team of Freedom Research compiles a round-up of news that caught our eye, or what felt like under-reported aspects of news deserving more attention.
Over the past week, the following topics attracted our attention:
Dr Jay Bhattacharya to lead US National Institutes of Health.
Dr Marty Makary to lead the US Food and Drug Administration.
Brussels has a growing homelessness problem.
Walmart is another big company to ditch DEI policies.
Germany: Green Party proposes ‘women-only’ train cabins in Berlin due to soaring sexual violence.
Dr Jay Bhattacharya to lead US National Institutes of Health
This week, US President-elect Donald Trump appointed epidemiologist and health economist Dr Jay Bhattacharya, a professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine who was a strong critic of Covid lockdowns and vaccine mandates, to head one of the most important public health institutions in the United States – the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Dr Bhattacharya has said that the vaccine mandates, which prohibited unvaccinated people from participating in society and working, were a breach of Americans' trust in the public health system. In fact, according to a study published in the summer, Americans’ trust in doctors and hospitals fell from 71% to 40% during the years of the Covid crisis. Bhattacharya has called for a reduction in the power of NIH agencies because, in his view, some career officials, such as the crisis-era White House Covid policy coordinator, Dr Anthony Fauci, misguidedly shaped national policy at the height of the pandemic and failed to take into account any dissent.
Dr Bhattacharya is one of three authors who published the Great Barrington Declaration as early as October 2020, predicting irreparable damage to the society if lockdown policies were to continue. Alongside Bhattacharya, the paper was co-authored by Oxford University Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology Sunetra Gupta and then Harvard University biostatistician and epidemiologist Professor Martin Kulldorff. The authors advocated herd immunity and that most groups in society could continue to lead normal lives, gaining protection against the virus by contracting it naturally. Only people at risk would need special protection, they argued. However, instead of public discussions over the most sensible part, they were called ‘three fringe epidemiologists’ by Fauci and other important public health officials at the time.
Because of his outspoken criticism, Dr Bhattacharya had to suffer censorship, as social media companies, under pressure from the US government, restricted messages from him and other critical thinkers like him. Bhattacharya is one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the Biden administration for restricting free speech. In a case known as Murthy v. Missouri (formerly Missouri v. Biden), lower courts acknowledged that the government had indeed violated the Constitution in restricting free speech and banned the administration from interacting with social media companies and issued an injunction banning such communication between the authorities and the companies, but a majority of the US Supreme Court overturned this in June this year. The case itseld is still ongoing, though.
If Dr Bhattacharya gets the Senate’s approval, he would serve under the future Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and take the helm of the NIH, which has a budget of around $48 billion (€44 billion) to conduct medical research and fund research grants to outside scientists for vaccines, cancer and other diseases. The NIH has long been criticized for funding risky research on several issues. For example, it supported gain of function research of coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology through the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the NIH, headed by Fauci. A claim that Covid-19 was a product of these experiments is now seen as quite credible by many. We have written at length on the origin of the virus here.
Dr Marty Makary to lead the US Food and Drug Administration
Before the appointment of Dr Jay Bhattacharya to lead the NIH, Trump had announced that Dr Marty Makary, a surgeon and professor at Johns Hopkins University, is going to be the head of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Makary is also a fierce critic of the current administration's health policies and was a vocal critic of vaccine mandates and other coercive public health measures during the Covid crisis.
Trump hopes Dr Makary will restore the Food and Drug Administration ‘to the gold standard of scientific research, and cut the bureaucratic red tape at the agency to make sure Americans get the medical cures and treatments they deserve’.
Professor Makary has said the US health care system is broken and needs to be restructured. Makary's views align broadly with those of his future superior, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. In his books and articles, Makary has decried the overprescribing of drugs, the use of pesticides on foods and the undue influence of pharmaceutical and insurance companies over doctors and government regulators, which are some of the points that Kennedy has also harped on for years.
Talking about the Covid crisis, Makary has stated that ‘the greatest perpetrator of misinformation during the pandemic has been the United States government’. He was talking about misinformation such as that Covid can spread through surfaces; that immunity from vaccination is superior to natural immunity; that myocarditis is more common after contracting the virus than after vaccination. He was also against mask mandates and although he was not against the Covid vaccines, he was concerned about the repeated vaccination of children. Makary has also said that it is the vaccine mandates that have led to the increase in the number of people refusing vaccines altogether now.
Makary has brought attention to how drugmakers used misleading data to urge doctors to prescribe OxyContin and other opioids as low-risk, non-addictive pain relievers. That marketing was permitted under FDA-approved labeling from the 1990s, suggesting the drugs were safe for common ailments like back pain. Of course, opioids are highly addictive, so prescribing them created a huge addiction problem for millions of people. They also carry a high risk of overdose, which is often fatal.
If he gets Senate’s approval, Dr Makary will head the FDA. Headquartered in the Maryland suburbs outside Washington, the 18,000 employees of the FDA are responsible for the safety and effectiveness of prescription drugs, vaccines and medical devices as well as a swath of other consumer goods, including food, cosmetics and vaping products. In their totality, those products represent an estimated 20% of U.S. consumer spending annually, or $2.6 trillion (€ 2.34 trillion).
Brussels has a growing homelessness problem
The number of people living on the streets of the Belgian capital has almost quadrupled since 2008. According to the Red Cross, the authorities have no plan to deal with the homeless and prevent people from ending up on the streets.
In 2022, there were around 7,000 homeless people sleeping rough on the streets of Brussels, a figure that has now risen to 10,000, writes The Brussels Times. The number of people living on the streets of the Belgian capital has almost quadrupled since 2008. According to the Red Cross, homelessness is no longer just an issue of the big cities, with around 30% of the homeless living in small towns, e.g. in Wallonia there are 19,000 homeless people, 4,700 of them children.
A large proportion of the homeless in Brussels are illegal immigrants. In recent years, however, people living in poverty or with mental health problems have also found their way onto the streets. At the same time, the profile of vulnerable social groups has continued to expand. More and more elderly and chronically ill people are being reported, and almost four out of ten homeless people have a mental health problem such as psychosis, depression or an addictive disorder. In addition, more and more women, single mothers and children without parents are finding themselves on the streets of Brussels every year. The reasons cited range from the Covid crisis to the energy and economic crisis. According to the authorities, the main causes are the lack of shelters and the increased number of illegal immigrants.
Street homelessness is just the tip of the iceberg though, according to volunteer organisation Bruss'help. Homeless people should also include those who do not have a home of their own and who live "temporarily" with friends or family. However, it is almost impossible to collect accurate data on this group.
In any case, the Red Cross is extremely concerned now for the people on the streets as the cold winter conditions are approaching and these people do not have the means to keep themselves warm.
Support services in Brussels have been operating for years on a ' thermometer policy', meaning that when the temperature drops below zero, temporary shelters will open. But now it is acknowledged that the streets are not safe and ‘kill all year-round’. In recent years, Brussels has tried to set up a system to offer year-round accommodation for around 5,100 people. However, services say that even this is not enough because shelters are full and people are already being turned away. However, there is no money for more shelters.
Walmart another big company to ditch DEI policies
On Monday Walmart, the world’s largest retail chain, confirmed that it’s ending some of its diversity initiatives, removing some LGBTQ-related merchandise from its website and winding down a nonprofit that funded LGBTQ and other programs under the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies, CNBC reports.
The US largest employer, which has about 1.6 million workers in the US, joined a growing list of companies that have stepped back from DEI policies after their customers have shown all the more dissatisfaction with such actions. Some have also attributed changes to the US Supreme Court’s decision last year that struck down affirmative action programs at colleges.
In a statement, Walmart said it is “willing to change alongside our associates and customers who represent all of America.” “We’ve been on a journey and know we aren’t perfect, but every decision comes from a place of wanting to foster a sense of belonging, to open doors to opportunities for all our associates, customers and suppliers and to be a Walmart for everyone,” the statement said.
Among the changes, Walmart will no longer allow third-party sellers to sell some LGBTQ-themed items on Walmart’s website, including items marketed to young people suffering from gender dysphoria, such as chest binders. Walmart also said they have stopped sharing their data with the Human Rights Campaign, an activist organization that tracks companies’ LGBTQ policies, or with other similar organizations. Additionally, the big-box retailer is winding down the Center for Racial Equity, an activist organization that Walmart started in 2020 during the Black Lives Matter protests.
In recent months, several major US companies have backtracked on DEI policies. For example, retailer Tractor Supply abandoned them earlier this summer, followed by motorcycle manufacturer Harley-Davidson, home and hardware retailer Lowe's, with Jack Daniel's whiskey producer Brown-Forman Corp. making the same decision.
Others, such as Anheuser-Busch-owned Bud Light and Target, have faced sharp backlash and falling sales due to marketing campaigns featuring men who claim to be women or selling products that are meant for such persons.
Germany: Green Party proposes ‘women-only’ train cabins in Berlin due to soaring sexual violence
In response to soaring crime on German public transport, due in large part to mass migration, the Berlin Greens want to make “women-only” train cars available for the public, Remix News reports. The demand was put forward by Berlin Green Party MP Antje Kapek, who pointed to the “terrible attacks on women,” noting that many of the attacks occur “even when it is very crowded.” She says that women should be able to travel “without being attacked or assaulted,” and the biggest danger is in the evenings and at night.
As many German papers mention, a rape directly on a train in Berlin has jumpstarted the proposal. However, what no paper mentions is who was behind this rape – purportedly an Iranian immigrant, 33-year-old Moshen K., raping an 63-year-old woman allegedly belonging to Berlin high society.
While women have always faced a certain level of risk on European public transport, the migration crisis has turbocharged the threat. Some of the most absurd headlines out of Germany have to do with the country’s rail system and the daily terror inflicted on train personnel and passengers, largely due to mass immigration – everything from migrants masturbating on rail lines, resulting in regional traffic shutdowns, to German staff being terrorized to the point that they are not showing up for work, for concerns of physical assault and sexual violence among other reasons. There is now even a policy in place to not check train tickets for people who look foreign, out of fear of assault.
The Berlin police recorded 391 sexual offenses on public transport last year; this is a slight decrease from last year’s 450, but when viewed over the long term, the trend shows that sexual offenses are rising rapidly. Since 2013, when there were 108 such crimes reported, this figure has increased by 260 percent.
While Berlin’s crime statistics obscure foreign perpetrators, Germany as a whole is witness to statistics which reveal the overwhelming number of foreign suspects. Foreigners only make up about 15 percent of the German population, but these same suspects account for a tremendous 59 percent of all sexual crimes at German train stations, according to federal police data obtained by the NIUS outlet. However, it should be kept in mind that the statistics regard only the perpetrators who do not have a German passport as foreigners, while the state has quite generously given citizenship to immigrants in recent years.
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