Junte-se a nós no Telegram , Twitter e VK.

Escreva para nós: info@strategic-culture.su

Nos últimos meses, o Brasil vem sendo agitado por uma questão que é pertinente para todo o mundo: a possibilidade de os paralíticos com lesão medular total (e só eles) recuperarem totalmente os movimentos, caso recebam uma certa injeção na medula até 3 dias após o acidente e façam fisioterapia.

O Brasil começou a prestar atenção ao assunto quando, em setembro de 2025, a imprensa publicou a incrível história de Bruno Drummond: em 2018 ele quebrou o pescoço num acidente de trânsito, ficou tetraplégico e aceitou ser cobaia de uma pesquisa piloto. Em menos de 24 horas, ele recebeu a injeção na medula e hoje consegue caminhar. Ele saiu direto da classificação A (sem movimentos) para a D (força e sensibilidade para quase todos os movimentos), fato sem precedentes na literatura médica. Esse teste piloto tinha seis pacientes. Os cinco pacientes restantes pularam do A para o C (com parte da força e mobilidade). A pesquisa era desenvolvida por pesquisadores da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro liderados pela Prof. Tatiana Sampaio em parceria com o laboratório brasileiro Cristália.

O Brasil ficou empolgadíssimo, e os internautas repetiam que ela merece o Nobel. Diante da novidade, as famílias dos pacientes, desesperadas, começaram a entrar na justiça para pedir o uso compassivo do medicamento em teste. E aí apareceu mais uma história muito importante: um certo Diogo Brollo trabalhava instalando janelas num prédio quando caiu, sofreu uma lesão total da medula e sua irmã conseguiu uma ordem judicial para que ele recebesse o tratamento por uso compassivo. Em apenas quinze dias, ele conseguiu mexer o pé e a perna. Até 22 de fevereiro, havia 55 pedidos judiciais, dos quais 30 foram aceitos.

Os pacientes que tomam o medicamento por uso compassivo não contam como caso clínico. Assim, fica a questão: se porventura a corrida judicial continuar, e o tratamento continuar tendo resultados favoráveis, como seguir os trâmites da pesquisa?

E aí temos a polêmica que incendiou o Twitter brasileiro. Um economista neoliberal que escreve para o mais tradicional jornal liberal de direita do país tuitou um corte de 28 segundos da entrevista da Prof. Tatiana Sampaio ao Roda Viva no qual ela dizia: “Vamos supor uma hipótese: que essas 30 pessoas que receberam por uso compassivo, todos voltem a andar. Você teria coragem de fazer um estudo clínico controlado?”, ao que uma entrevistadora responde, impassível, que é preciso seguir todos os trâmites e passar por todas as fases. Junto com o vídeo, o economista postou o comentário irônico “Agora o Nobel vem”. Ato contínuo, os mesmos atores que defendiam as maravilhas da “vacina” da Pfizer passaram a tratar a Prof. Tatiana Sampaio como uma charlatã ou uma simplória que não conhece a ciência.

Na mesma entrevista, porém, Tatiana Sampaio explicava os problemas de se fazer teste clínico nesse caso em particular, bem como em geral. Comecemos com o particular: cada vez que um paciente ganha na justiça o direito de fazer o teste, é preciso que o laboratório Cristália envie um neurocirurgião até o local para fazer o procedimento invasivo de injetar polilaminina na medula espinhal. No teste duplo-cego, cuja finalidade é eliminar o efeito placebo, dá-se o medicamento para uma parte de cobaias e placebo para outra, a fim de comparar os resultados. Ora, é antiético submeter um paciente a um procedimento invasivo para enfiar um líquido na melhor das hipóteses inócuo em sua medula. Além disso, mesmo que fosse um procedimento simples e fácil de substituir por um placebo, o tempo é importante para a eficácia do tratamento, logo, aquele que recebesse o placebo estaria fadado à cadeira de rodas. (A isto acrescentemos: se o paralítico pode conseguir o medicamento por via judicial, por que aceitaria ser cobaia num duplo-cego?)

Diante do fato de que é difícil seguir os trâmites existentes de maneira ética, a Prof. Tatiana Sampaio diz que é preciso pensar em novos modelos. E essa não é a única questão burocrática que clama por reflexão.

A questão das patentes e do custo dos testes clínicos

Outra notícia que chamou a atenção é que a cientista teve que pagar do próprio bolso pela patente. Há muito tempo a UFRJ tem sérios problemas administrativos que nenhuma autoridade quer resolver. Vou me limitar a observar que ela tem um orçamento bilionário mas, ainda assim, deixou o Museu Nacional pegar fogo devido à precariedade da rede elétrica – e o reitor ainda culpou os bombeiros. As múmias egípcias do imperador viraram pó; coleções de fósseis se perderam. Ao menos o Meteorito do Bendegó não pôde ser destruído. Assim, a UFRJ não iria pagar pela renovação das patentes brasileira, estadunidense e europeia, e perguntou à professora se ela mesma não queria pagar para não perder. Ela pagou somente a brasileira e as demais se perderam. Depois ela encontrou o Cristália.

Na entrevista ao Roda Viva, ela explicou que isso foi um mal que veio para bem, pois se a patente dos Estados Unidos ainda valesse, provavelmente teria sido comprada por um laboratório do primeiro mundo, o qual dispensaria os pesquisadores brasileiros, faria uma bateria de testes com toda rapidez e venderia o produto por uma fortuna. De posse da patente brasileira, ela e o laboratório esperam que no futuro o medicamento seja vendido para o SUS (o NHS brasileiro). Somos convidados a pensar, então, quantos países mundo afora não financiam cientistas nacionais para que uma grande empresa compre a patente de suas pesquisas em estágio inicial, termine de desenvolvê-las e ponha um preço absurdo a ser pago por esses mesmos países quando vão comprar o medicamento. O estrago que Reagan fez ao permitir que a verba pública de pesquisa virasse patente privada foi globalizado.

De resto, vale destacar o custo e a razoabilidade dos testes clínicos, que foi justamente o que levou os pets da Pfizer a atacarem a cientista após a entrevista no programa Roda Viva. Encerro citando a Prof.ª Tatiana Sampaio: “A patente é muito importante quando você vai vender alguma coisa. Imagina que você tem uma proposta de um novo medicamento e aí você quer fazer um estudo clínico para poder testar se ele funciona mesmo. Para fazer esse estudo clínico, você precisa de um orçamento muito grande, porque os estudos clínicos são muito caros. E aí você precisa que alguém se interesse por fazer aquele estudo clínico. E esse alguém, via de regra, vai se interessar por fazer esse estudo se ele tiver a perspectiva de um lucro muito grande com a exploração comercial daquilo. Por isso ele precisa da patente para garantir que só ele possa ganhar dinheiro com aquilo. Toda essa dinâmica é como a roda gira. Mas eu tenho que te dizer que não acho que seja uma situação ideal, na minha opinião. Eu acho que isso acaba fazendo uma grande reserva de mercado para grandes corporações.”

O entrevistador pergunta se então o ideal seria o Estado bancar, ao que ela responde: “Não sei, o ideal é uma coisa nova que a gente tem que fazer. A gente não precisa ter medo disso. Tem que construir uma coisa nova, porque esse paradigma de: você faz a patente, e aí você vende a patente para alguém que tem muito dinheiro e que vai botar muito dinheiro, e que vai… A gente tem que se perguntar isso: no afã de proteger as pessoas de serem usadas como cobaia, será que a gente não tá também fazendo uma reserva de mercado para um ente que tem uma expectativa muito grande de lucro?”

Join us on Telegram, Twitter, and VK.

Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

In recent months, Brazil has been abuzz with an issue that is relevant to the whole world: the possibility of paralytics with complete spinal cord injury (and only them) fully recovering their movements if they receive a certain injection into the spinal cord within 3 days of the accident and undergo physiotherapy.

Brazil began paying attention to the issue when, in September 2025, the press published the incredible story of Bruno Drummond: in 2018 he broke his neck in a car accident, became quadriplegic, and agreed to be a guinea pig in a pilot study. In less than 24 hours, he received the spinal cord injection and today he can walk. He went directly from classification A (no movement) to D (strength and sensitivity for almost all movements), an unprecedented fact in medical literature. This pilot test had six patients. The remaining five patients jumped from A to C (with some strength and mobility). The research was being developed by researchers at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), led by Prof. Tatiana Sampaio, in partnership with the Brazilian laboratory Cristália.

Brazil was thrilled, and internet users repeatedly said she deserved the Nobel Prize. Faced with the news, the patients’ families, desperate, began to go to court to request the compassionate use of the drug being tested. And then another very important story emerged: a certain Diogo Brollo was working installing windows in a building when he fell, suffered a total spinal cord injury, and his sister obtained a court order for him to receive treatment under compassionate use. In just fifteen days, he was able to move his foot and leg. By February 22, there were 55 court requests, of which 30 were accepted.

Patients who take the drug under compassionate use do not count as clinical cases. Thus, the question remains: if the legal battle continues, and the treatment continues to have favorable results, how will the research procedures proceed?

And then we have the controversy that set Brazilian Twitter ablaze. A neoliberal economist who writes for the country’s most traditional right-wing liberal newspaper tweeted a 28-second clip from Professor Tatiana Sampaio’s interview on Roda Viva in which she said: “Let’s suppose a hypothesis: that these 30 people who received it for compassionate use, all walk again. Would you have the courage to conduct a controlled clinical trial?”, to which an interviewer replies, impassively, that it is necessary to follow all the procedures and go through all the phases. Along with the video, the economist posted the ironic comment “Now the Nobel Prize is coming”. Immediately afterwards, the same actors who defended the wonders of Pfizer’s “vaccine” began to treat Professor Tatiana Sampaio as a charlatan or a simpleton who does not know science.

In the same interview, however, Tatiana Sampaio explained the problems of conducting clinical trials in this particular case, as well as in general. Let’s start with the specifics: every time a patient wins the right in court to undergo the test, the Cristália laboratory has to send a neurosurgeon to the location to perform the invasive procedure of injecting polylaminin into the spinal cord. In the double-blind test, whose purpose is to eliminate the placebo effect, the medication is given to one group of test subjects and a placebo to another, in order to compare the results. Now, it is unethical to subject a patient to an invasive procedure to inject a liquid that is, at best, innocuous into their spinal cord. Furthermore, even if it were a simple procedure and easy to replace with a placebo, time is important for the effectiveness of the treatment, so the one who received the placebo would be doomed to a wheelchair. (To this we add: if the paralytic can obtain the medication through legal means, why would they agree to be a test subject in a double-blind trial?)

Given the fact that it is difficult to follow existing procedures ethically, Professor Tatiana Sampaio says that it is necessary to think about new models. And this is not the only bureaucratic issue that calls for reflection.

The issue of patents and the cost of clinical trials

Another piece of news that caught attention is that the scientist had to pay for the patent out of her own pocket. UFRJ has had serious administrative problems for a long time that no authority wants to solve. I will limit myself to observing that it has one billion dollar’s budget but, even so, allowed the National Museum to catch fire due to the precariousness of the electrical grid – and the rector even blamed the firefighters. The Egyptian mummies of the emperor turned to dust; fossil collections were lost. At least the Bendegó Meteorite could not be destroyed. Thus, UFRJ was not going to pay for the renewal of the Brazilian, American and European patents, and asked the professor if she herself did not want to pay so as not to lose them. She only paid for the Brazilian one and the others were lost. Then she found Cristália.

In the interview on Roda Viva, she explained that this was a blessing in disguise, because if the United States patent were still valid, it would probably have been bought by a first-world laboratory, which would have dismissed the Brazilian researchers, conducted a battery of tests very quickly, and sold the product for a fortune. With the Brazilian patent in hand, she and the laboratory Cristália hope that in the future the drug will be sold to the SUS (the Brazilian NHS). We are invited to consider, then, how many countries around the world do not fund national scientists so that a large company can buy the patent for their research in its initial stages, finish developing it, and set an absurd price to be paid by these same countries when they go to buy the drug. The damage that Reagan did by allowing public research funds to become private patents has been globalized.

Furthermore, it is worth highlighting the cost and reasonableness of clinical trials, which is precisely what led the Pfizer puppets to attack the scientist after her interview on the Roda Viva program. I conclude by quoting Professor Tatiana Sampaio: “A patent is very important when you are going to sell something. Imagine that you have a proposal for a new drug and then you want to do a clinical study to test if it really works. To do this clinical study, you need a very large budget, because clinical studies are very expensive. And then you need someone to be interested in doing that clinical study. And that someone, as a rule, will be interested in doing this study if they have the prospect of a very large profit from the commercial exploitation of it. That is why they need the patent to ensure that only they can make money from it. All this dynamic is how the wheel turns. But I have to tell you that I don’t think it’s an ideal situation, in my opinion. I think this ends up creating a large market reserve for large corporations.”

The interviewer asks if the ideal solution would be for the state to fund it, to which she replies: “I don’t know, the ideal is something new that we have to do. We don’t need to be afraid of that. We have to build something new, because this paradigm of: you get the patent, and then you sell the patent to someone who has a lot of money and who will invest a lot of money, and who will… We have to ask ourselves this: in the eagerness to protect people from being used as guinea pigs, aren’t we also creating a market reserve for an entity that has a very high expectation of profit?”

Junte-se a nós no Telegram , Twitter e VK.

Escreva para nós: info@strategic-culture.su

No mês passado, tratei do problema de que a ciência moderna padece desde o seu berço: o seu caráter fragmentário, já que existem mil disciplinas autônomas, com mil e uma especialidades, mas não existe um corpus de conhecimento. A física não sabe se o vidro é sólido ou líquido, a química tem certeza de que é sólido. Não existe uma definição do homem válida em todas as disciplinas, e de repente tivemos de aceitar (por força de lei) que mulheres têm pênis. Esse caráter fragmentário, creio eu, advém da influência que a magia renascentista teve sobre a constituição da ciência moderna: quando o edifício uno da filosofia escolástica foi destruído pela Revolução Copernicana, entraram em cena os homens da Renascença, que faziam tentativas ecléticas de construir conhecimento sem se preocupar com coerência, importando-se antes com a utilidade aparente. Além disso, a imensa influência da cabala na Renascença fez com que os homens de ciência colocassem em primeiro plano a meta de dominar a natureza para fazer “magia”, tal como Francis Bacon pretendia. Com o espírito da Renascença, a ciência abandona a pretensão universalista de descrever o todo e passa a procurar truques úteis.

Argumentei então que o mundo precisa restaurar o ideal original da universidade, que visava a constituir um conhecimento do todo (universum) que criasse um corpo coerente, em vez de continuarmos com disciplinas que não prestam contas umas às outras. Mesmo antes do advento do pós-modernismo, o atual estado de coisas é o do relativismo, já que cada disciplina tem a “sua” verdade.

Neste mês, temos visto a possibilidade de o neoateísmo ser um artifício propagandístico promovido por gente que, na verdade, quer privatizar os fenômenos não-explicáveis pelas ciências naturais. A plebe tem que ser ateia e guiar-se por um clero laico de divulgadores científicos, enquanto uns poucos iluminados têm um misterioso templo numa ilha privada, na qual se fazem as coisas mais horripilantes. Assim, devemos perguntar: qual é a atitude que a humanidade produtora de conhecimento deveria ter diante de fenômenos que não são explicáveis pelas ciências naturais?

A atitude atual creio que seja exatamente aquela promovida por David Hume (1711 – 1776) na Investigação sobre o entendimento humano. Aí ele defende que não se deve crer em nenhum relato de milagre, porque o testemunho de nenhuma autoridade humana deve ser superior ao testemunho que atesta a regularidade das leis naturais. Se todos os historiadores dissessem que a Rainha Elisabete morreu e dias depois ressuscitou, o homem de hoje teria de considerar que os historiadores estavam pregando uma peça, porque a experiência ensina que ninguém ressuscita, e nós devemos crer mais na experiência do que na palavra de terceiros. Ademais, os milagres não acontecem na Royal Society diante de cientistas, mas em meio à gente pobre e ignorante. Acontecem em rincões (como a Judeia), não em Roma à vista de todos. Se a experiência diz que a natureza nunca viola sua regularidade, diz também que os homens gostam de crer em relatos que despertam paixões – e isso explica não os milagres, mas a crença neles. Podemos dizer que o senso comum científico é esse: as leis da natureza não se suspendem jamais, então todo relato de milagre (ou, por extensão, de fenômenos demoníacos extraordinários) é fruto da mentira ou ignorância.

Alguns séculos após a morte de Hume, os métodos para documentar e analisar ocorrências miraculosas melhorou muito. Se a NASA analisou o manto de Guadalupe e não conseguiu encontrar alguma explicação natural para a maneira como foi feita, ou por que não se decompôs, não se trata mais de meros relatos que podem ser mentirosos. Além disso, os processos de canonização – que não são poucos desde o avanço da ciência – analisam reivindicações de milagres de potenciais santos. Ao badalado Carlo Acutis, por exemplo, foi atribuída a cura de um menino brasileiro que tinha uma deformidade no pâncreas – uma cura que não podia ser explicada pela medicina moderna. E aí ficamos assim: o senso comum científico é que não existem milagres, mas cientistas analisam rotineiramente alegações de milagres para o Vaticano.

Novamente, não existe nenhuma autoridade científica universal que determine que milagres existem ou que não existem. Tudo é subjetivo: se você é ateu, então para você com certeza não existem milagres; se você não é ateu, então para você talvez milagres existam. Mas se você disser que a terra tem 5 mil anos e que a evolução das espécies não existe, aí não pode, porque a ciência já deu o seu veredito sobre o assunto. Ora, talvez seja o caso de se perguntar se a ciência, enquanto corpo de conhecimento universal, não deveria ter uma posição sobre o assunto. O atual estado de coisas é do relativismo, o qual abre a possibilidade para a adoção de dogmas simplesmente errados por parte da maioria dos cientistas.

Um experimento engraçado foi feito por William Friedkin em seu documentário de 2017. William Friedkin (1935 – 2023) é famoso pelo seu filme O Exorcista, de 1973. Mais de 40 anos depois, ele soube que o exorcista da diocese de Roma, o Pe. Amorth, escreveu um livro de memórias no qual revela que O Exorcista é o seu filme predileto. Elogiou-o, ressalvando porém que os efeitos especiais são exagerados. Friedkin então entrou em contato com o Pe. Amorth, encontrou-o na Itália e pediu para filmar um exorcismo pela primeira vez na vida. O Pe. Amorth pediu um tempo para refletir e pouco depois conseguiu uma autorização – fato sem precedente. O combinado era que Friedkin iria filmar sozinho (isto é, sem equipe), com uma câmera pequena, a nona sessão de exorcismo de uma arquiteta na Itália.

E assim foi feito. O exorcista, nada lúgubre, é um velhinho bem humorado que gosta de fazer graça; a família da arquiteta está toda reunida, mais o namorado e uma porção de padres. Durante o ritual, ela se debate e se contorce, precisando ser segurada por homens, e ruge com uma voz que não é normal (é gutural e às vezes parece ser de várias pessoas). Respondendo às perguntas do exorcista, diz que se chama Satanás e é uma legião de 89 demônios.

Ato contínuo, Friedkin leva a gravação para a Ciência averiguar – na verdade, para três professores neurocirurgiões e um departamento de psiquiatria. Pergunta a todos o que a arquiteta tem, e se as suas respectivas especialidades poderiam resolver o problema dela. Dois neurocirurgiões, ambos da UCLA, não sabem o que ela tem e negam que possam resolver o problema dela. O primeiro, que é o mais normal, aponta que nunca viu coisa assim e que aquela voz não é deste mundo. Argumenta que ela está consciente e interage com as pessoas da sala, o que descarta um certo tumor que causa delírios. Em seguida, passa para a entrevista de um professor neurocirurgião de Tel-Aviv, que acha que pode ser um tumor e que ela pode estar delirando. Não menciona a voz, que é o que mais chama a atenção. Este último tem em comum com o segundo neurocirurgião da UCLA (que parece ser ateu) a crença de que a arquiteta só está naquela situação por causa da religião. Esse tipo de coisa pode acontecer com gente religiosa: um padre, com um rabino; em suma, com quem acredita. Ao que Friedkin pergunta ao israelense em que ele acredita, e ele fica incomodado. Embora não seja religioso, acredita que Deus existe no que não pode ser compreendido. Será um espinosano ambíguo como Sagan e Sam Harris? Até aqui, mesmo com um  crendo em Deus, temos dois neurocirurgiões que agem conforme a preceito humeano. O segundo neurocirurgião da UCLA pensa que talvez se trate de um fenômeno natural que, um dia, ainda será descoberto (como a radioatividade foi um dia), e acha que a arquiteta deve continuar com o exorcismo devido ao efeito placebo. Assim como uma pessoa pode se sentir melhor só por ter uma consulta com um psiquiatra que não prescreva remédios, uma pessoa religiosa pode se sentir melhor com um padre, e isso explicaria a eventual eficácia do exorcismo.

O momento mais divertido, porém, é o da reunião com o departamento de psiquiatria de Colúmbia. Ali aprendemos que ela tem a Desordem de Transtorno Dissociativo, e mostram um paper que atrela esse diagnóstico a pessoas que relatam possessão demoníaca e se submetem a exorcismos. Nessa reunião, Friedkin aprende que o DSM respeita a diversidade cultural e, como os relatos de possessão demoníaca ocorrem em várias culturas, “possessão demoníaca” está no DSM. Conforme já vimos em maior detalhe antes (usando o trabalho do psiquiatra Guido Palomba), o DSM não tem causalidade: ele lista uma série de sintomas e dá um nome a uma síndrome que tem um protocolo de tratamento.

Nomear é fácil. E quanto ao tratamento? Um jovem médico se pronunciou. Relatar possessão demoníaca é algo que ocorre entre pessoas religiosas, e ele tem uma paciente protestante muito parecida com aquela da gravação. Inclusive tem aquela voz estranha – o jovem médico e o cirurgião normal são os únicos a destacar a coisa que mais chama a atenção na gravação. Pois a paciente tem feito terapia e tomado medicamentos e está melhor. Fica-se com a impressão de que, se um psiquiatra tiver uma paciente girando a cabeça 360º como no filme, fará terapia e tomará remédios. Ao cabo, os psiquiatras dizem que a arquiteta tem solução (terapia e remédio), enquanto os neurocirurgiões disseram que não.

Por outro lado, no documentário vê-se que tudo isso começou por causa da universidade. William Peter Blatty (1928 – 2017), autor do livro O Exorcista em que o filme se baseia, teve aulas de teologia com um jesuíta na Universidade de Georgetown, em Washington, e ouviu a história da possessão demoníaca de um adolescente ocorrida em 1949, em Maryland, numa família luterana. O menino de 14 anos dizia estar possuído, a família procurou médicos e psiquiatras, mas acabou recorrendo aos serviços da Igreja Católica, que enviou um padre de Washintgon para realizar o exorcismo. Blatty foi atrás da história e do padre, mas não conseguiu contato com a família do garoto, que queria manter sigilo máximo sobre a história. O fato de que uma família luterana procurou a Igreja Católica sugere que os cientistas estavam errados ao crerem que a eficácia, explicada como placebo, depende da afinidade cultural.

Pois bem: aí se vê bem o estado de coisas da universidade. Uma disciplina – uma disciplina bem desprezada, e cujo conteúdo varia a depender da instituição – diz que milagres e ações demoníacas são reais. Já as outras não dizem nada, mas têm um senso comum tácito, chancelado pela mídia, segundo o qual não existem em hipótese alguma. Cada um crê no que quiser.

Join us on Telegram, Twitter, and VK.

Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

Last month, I dealt with the problem that modern science has suffered from since its birth: its fragmentary nature, since there are a thousand autonomous disciplines, with a thousand and one specialties, but there is no corpus of knowledge. Physics doesn’t know if glass is solid or liquid, chemistry is sure it is solid. There is no one definition of man that is valid across all disciplines, and suddenly we had to accept (by force of law) that women have penises. This fragmentary character, I believe, comes from the influence that Renaissance magic had on the constitution of modern science: when the unified edifice of scholastic philosophy was destroyed by the Copernican Revolution, Renaissance men entered the scene, who made eclectic attempts to construct knowledge without worrying about coherence, caring rather about apparent usefulness. Furthermore, the immense influence of the Kabbalah in the Renaissance caused men of science to put at the forefront the goal of dominating nature to create “magic”, as Francis Bacon intended. With the spirit of the Renaissance, science abandons the universalist claim to describe the whole and starts looking for useful tricks.

I then argued that the world needs to restore the original ideal of the university, which aimed to constitute knowledge of the whole (universum) that created a coherent body, instead of continuing with disciplines that are not accountable to each other. Even before the advent of postmodernism, the current state of affairs is that of relativism, since each discipline is entitled to its own truth.

This month, we have seen the possibility that New Atheism is a propaganda device promoted by people who, in fact, want to privatize phenomena that cannot be explained by natural sciences. The common people have to be atheists and be guided by a secular clergy of scientific popularizers, while a few enlightened people have a mysterious temple on a private island, where the most horrifying things are done. Thus, we must ask: what is the attitude that knowledge-producing humanity should have when faced with phenomena that are not explainable by natural sciences?

The current attitude I believe is exactly that promoted by David Hume (1711 – 1776) in the Inquiry into Human Understanding. There he argues that no report of miracles should be believed, because the testimony of any human authority should be superior to the testimony that attests to the regularity of natural laws. If all historians said that Queen Elizabeth died and was resurrected a few days later, today’s man would have to consider that historians were playing a trick, because experience teaches that no one is resurrected, and we should believe experience more than the words of others. Furthermore, miracles do not happen in the Royal Society in front of scientists, but among poor and ignorant people. They happen in remote places (like Judea), not in Rome in plain sight. If experience says that nature never violates her regularity, it also says that men like to believe in reports that arouse passions – and this explains not miracles, but the belief in them. We can say that scientific common sense is this: the laws of nature are never suspended, so every report of miracles (or, by extension, of extraordinary demonic phenomena) is the result of lies or ignorance.

A few centuries after Hume’s death, methods for documenting and analyzing miraculous occurrences greatly improved. If NASA analyzed Guadalupe’s mantle and couldn’t find any natural explanation for how it was made, or why it didn’t decompose, the issue is no longer about mere reports that could be untrue. Furthermore, canonization processes – which are not few since the advancement of science – analyze potential saints’ claims of miracles. The famous Carlo Acutis, for example, was credited with curing a Brazilian boy who had a deformity in his pancreas – a healing that could not be explained by modern medicine. And so we are left with this: scientific common sense is that there are no miracles, but scientists routinely analyze claims of miracles for the Vatican.

Again, there is no universal scientific authority that determines that miracles exist or not. Everything is subjective: if you are an atheist, then fou you miracles certainly do not exist; if you are not an atheist, then for you maybe miracles exist. But if you say that the earth is 5 thousand years old and that the evolution of species does not exist, then you are wrong, because science has already given its verdict on the matter. Now, perhaps it is worth asking whether science, as a body of universal knowledge, should not have a position on the subject. The current state of affairs is one of relativism, which opens the possibility for the adoption of simply wrong dogmas by the majority of scientists.

A funny experiment was done by William Friedkin in his 2017 documentary. William Friedkin (1935 – 2023) is famous for his 1973 film The Exorcist. More than 40 years later, he learned that the exorcist of the diocese of Rome, Father Amorth, wrote a memoir in which he reveals that The Exorcist is his favorite movie. He praised it, noting however that the special effects are exaggerated. Friedkin then contacted Father Amorth, met him in Italy and asked to film an exorcism for the first time in his life. Father Amorth asked for time to reflect and shortly after obtained authorization – an unprecedented event. The agreement was that Friedkin would film alone (that is, without a crew), with a small camera, the ninth exorcism session of an architect in Italy.

And so it was done. The exorcist, not at all lugubrious, is a good-humoured old man who likes to be funny; the architect’s family is all together, plus her boyfriend and a bunch of priests. During the ritual, she struggles and writhes, needing to be held by men, and roars with a voice that is not normal (it is guttural and sometimes sounds like it belongs to several people). Responding to the exorcist’s questions, she says her name is Satan and she is a legion of 89 demons.

Next, Friedkin takes the recording to Science to investigate – in fact, to three neurosurgeon professors and a psychiatry department. He asks everyone what the architect has, and whether their respective specialties could solve her problem. Two neurosurgeons, both from UCLA, don’t know what she has and deny that they can solve her problem. The first, which is the most normal guy, points out that he has never seen anything like that, and that such voice is not from this world. He argues that she is conscious and interacts with the people in the room, which rules out a certain tumor that causes delusions. The film then moves on to an interview with a neurosurgeon professor from Tel-Aviv, who thinks it might be a tumor and that she might be delusional. He doesn’t mention the voice, which is what draws the most attention. The Israeli has in common with the second neurosurgeon at UCLA (who seems to be an atheist) the belief that the architect is only in that situation because of religion. This kind of thing can happen to religious people: a priest, a rabbi; in short, with those who believe. To which Friedkin asks the Israeli what he believes, and he becomes uncomfortable. Although he is not religious, he believes that God exists in what cannot be understood. Is he an ambiguous Spinozan like Sagan and Sam Harris? So far, even though one believes in God, we have two neurosurgeons who act according to Humean precepts. The second neurosurgeon at UCLA thinks that perhaps it is a natural phenomenon that will one day be discovered (like radioactivity once was), and thinks that the architect should continue with the exorcism due to the placebo effect. Just as a person can feel better just by having an appointment with a psychiatrist who does not prescribe medication, a religious person can feel better with a priest, and this would explain the eventual effectiveness of exorcism.

The funniest moment, however, is the meeting with the Columbia psychiatry department. There we learn that she has Dissociative Trance Disorder, and they show a paper that links this diagnosis to people who report demonic possession and undergo exorcisms. At this meeting, Friedkin learns that the DSM respects cultural diversity, and because reports of demonic possession occur in many cultures, “demonic possession” is in the DSM. As we have seen in greater detail before (using the work of psychiatrist Guido Palomba), the DSM does not have causality: it lists a series of symptoms and gives a name to a syndrome which has a protocol of treatment.

Naming is easy. What about treatment? A young doctor spoke up. Reporting demonic possession is something that occurs among religious people, and he has a Protestant patient very similar to the one in the recording. She even has that strange voice – the young doctor and the normal surgeon are the only ones to highlight the thing that catches the most attention in the recording. Well, the patient has been undergoing therapy and taking medication and is getting better. One gets the impression that, if a psychiatrist has a patient turning her head 360º like in the movie, she will undergo therapy and take medication. In the end, the psychiatrists say that the architect has a solution (therapy and pills), while the neurosurgeons said no.

On the other hand, in the documentary you see that all this started because of the university. William Peter Blatty (1928 – 2017), author of the book The Exorcist on which the film is based, took theology classes with a Jesuit at Georgetown University, in Washington, and heard the story of the demonic possession of a teenager that occurred in 1949, in Maryland, in a Lutheran family. The 14-year-old boy claimed to be possessed, the family sought doctors and psychiatrists, but ended up using the services of the Catholic Church, which sent a priest from Washington to perform the exorcism. Blatty went after the story and the priest, but was unable to reach the boy’s family, who wanted to keep the story as confidential as possible. The fact that a Lutheran family turned to the Catholic Church suggests that scientists were wrong in believing that efficacy, explained as placebo, depends on cultural affinity.

Well, that clearly shows the state of affairs at the university. A discipline – a much despised discipline, and whose content varies depending on the institution – says that miracles and demonic actions can be real. The others say nothing, but have a tacit common sense, endorsed by the media, according to which they do not exist under any circumstances. Everyone believes what they want.

Join us on Telegram, Twitter, and VK.

Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

Alongside the powers that be everywhere, Google’s still anonymous AI is also a pious believer in the virtues of free expression. It proclaims boldly and for all the right reasons that free speech is vital to democracy, in which it also claims to believe. It reminds us also, which is good to know, that freedom of expression promotes an informed citizenry and self-governance and ensures government accountability. Furthermore, that open dialogue and debate facilitate the “marketplace of ideas,” which is a vital condition for social progress and provides society with a much-needed “safety valve.” And finally, that the unhindered right to express one’s thoughts, beliefs, and values without fear is a fundamental aspect of human dignity and self-fulfilment. Amen, amen, amen.

In theory, all would heartily salute those noble sentiments. And that includes even some of their most ruthless violators, such as the German government.

For over a year after kidnapping him abroad, the German government kept prominent German lawyer Dr. Reiner Fuellmich in prison on contrived charges and under extraordinarily harsh and inhuman conditions, which were seemingly designed just to torment him. In Germany, for Dr. Fuellmich at least, the right to express one’s thoughts with dignity (never mind self-fulfilment) in the manner so movingly preached by Google’s AI avatar went out the window many moons ago.

How many are there who still remember who Dr. Fuellmich is and what he stands for, let alone are aware of his current plight?

For those who do not, a brief note is in order. Shortly after the sudden appearance of the Covid affair in 2019, Dr. Fuellmich, a prominent trial attorney from Gottingen, gained public attention by raising sensible questions about the nature and origin of the commotion which was becoming global in scope. Identical questions were on the minds of many, but few were capable of articulating them in legal terms as effectively as he was. Initially, his questions were formulated rather timidly, barely overstepping the unspoken bounds of permissible inquiry. There was nigh a suggestion of any “conspiracy theory” or frontal challenge to the integrity of the system that in a matter of weeks had improvised, for purposes then still unknown, a global health emergency which was the pretext for unprecedentedly comprehensive social disruptions and the imposition of hitherto inconceivable restrictions on elementary human liberties.

As prominent professionals in the medical and other fields began also to sound the alarm and to raise questions from their respective areas of expertise, it became obvious to those who followed Reiner Fuellmich’s public pronouncements that both the direction and tone of the Covid inquiry he and his associates were pursuing were beginning to change. The issues he was now beginning to raise were no longer merely technical. Increasingly, as he dug deeper he was calling into question the bona fides of the political, media, and pharmaceutical intimidation machine that was invoking a supposed pandemic to implement a global lock-down regime, with compulsory mass injection of untested “therapeutic” substances.

Dr. Fuellmich’s basic questions about the “pandemic” are well worth recapitulating:

• “One: is there a corona pandemic, or is there only a PCR test pandemic, specifically, does a positive PCR test result mean that the person tested is infected with COVID-19, or does it mean absolutely nothing, in connection with the COVID-19 infection;
• “Two, do the so-called anti-corona measures, such as the lockdowns, facemasks, social distancing, and quarantine regulations serve to protect the world’s population from corona, or do they serve only to make people panic, so they believe, without asking any questions, that their lives are in danger, so that in the end, the pharmaceutical and technology companies can generate huge profits from the sale of PCR tests, antigen and antibody tests and vaccines, as well as the harvesting of our genetic fingerprints; and
• “Three, is it true that the German government was extensively lobbied, more so than any other government, by the chief protagonists of the so-called corona pandemic? Germany is known as a particularly disciplined country and was therefore to become a role model for the rest of the world, for its strict, and therefore, successful adherence to the corona measures.”

When, compelling as they evidently were, those interrogatories remained ignored in the public arena (whilst Dr. Fuellmich himself was being ridiculed and vilified just for asking) there began a perceptible shift in the scope and focus of his inquiry. His razor sharp legal mind was activated in the highest degree. The Establishment’s stonewalling on mostly softball issues gradually led him to undertake an unsparing in-depth scrutiny of the systemic background of the global Covid affair, fully intending to go to the root of it and leaving no stone unturned. Dr. Fuellmich threw the gauntlet when he announced that he was assembling evidence of crimes against humanity on a massive scale and of sufficient weight to convene a Medical Nuremberg II, with parallel criminal and class action proceedings that he intended to initiate in the judicial system of the United States and also before the European Court of Human Rights.

Dr. Fuellmich had stepped on some very sensitive and hostile toes. Clearly no such lunacy as he was contemplating could possibly be allowed. Plans were laid immediately to derail him by means of one of those shabby, low life operations in which secret services excel. Informants were planted in the target’s immediate circle to snitch on him and under false witness to furnish compromising evidence. A secret indictment (lettre de cachet, as this practice was known under the ancien regime in France and which recently was revived by the Hague Tribunal) for a purported money laundering scheme was duly prepared and German authorities waited for the convenient opportunity to catch their unsuspecting prey. That opportunity presented itself two years ago when Dr. Fuellmich, as a German citizen, appeared on the premises of the German consulate in Mexico (technically German territory, of course) to solicit a routine consular service. There, he was apprehended and promptly packed off to Germany to be disposed of as the German authorities saw fit. The only saving grace is that he was not snuffed and chopped up like the dissident journalist at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

Following an unprecedented, almost two-year, pre-trial incarceration under medieval conditions that was seemingly devised especially for him (the old “flight risk” ruse was cited as the official rationale for this harsh measure) in April 2025 Dr. Fuellmich was finally sentenced to three years and nine months in prison on the bogus charges filed against him. On the surface, everything appears neat and proper. Technically, he was condemned for a crime of moral turpitude. His real “offence” against the vindictive globalist Establishment, the irrefutable public exposure of its totalitarian and population-reduction agenda and its corrupt liaison with the nefarious pharmacological mafia and compulsory promotion of its lethal products, was not even alluded to in the course of those proceedings. Yet, while Dr. Fuellmich is rotting in prison, every one of the principal claims for which he actually was imprisoned is now being scientifically corroborated.

The so-called “covid vaccines” are now known to be associated with heart damage, exactly as Dr. Fuellmich and numerous other researchers insistently warned during the “pandemic” (also here). As predicted by Dr. Fuellmich and his research team, a surge of life threatening blood clots has been correlated with the mass injection of untested “vaccines.” There has also been a marked acceleration of deadly cancer conditions. As further evidence of the fraudulence of the “pandemic emergency,” a peer reviewed study has demonstrated that 86% of allegedly PCR-positive “Covid  cases” were not even real infections. That had originally been stated by Dr. Fuellmich, to widespread derision at the time. It is a fact that dismantles the scientific foundation used to justify lockdowns, social distancing, and vaccine mandates. And perhaps the most damning fact of all, Japanese scientists have demonstrated that contrary to disinformation about infected bats and unsanitary Chinese markets when the pandemic broke out, all known Covid variants are in fact of laboratory origin. That raises obvious and legitimate questions about criminal intent both on the level of the proposed “cures” and of the fabricated health emergency itself that those cures presumably were developed to resolve.

The vicious treatment allotted to the distinguished German lawyer Dr. Reiner Fuellmich is comparable to the persecution of figures like Giordano Bruno. It gives the lie to the collective West’s pharisaical pretence of freedom of expression. The dark stain it leaves will be indelibly recorded as a shameful episode in the history of German jurisprudence.

Join us on Telegram, Twitter, and VK.

Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

The 47^th POTUS is the oldest person ever elected to the White House, so now may be a good time to question his increasingly erratic behavior.

Nobody will ever accuse the American president of being a linear thinker and talker. Trump’s speaking style meanders wildly from one subject to another, occasionally leaving the listener feeling vertigo in the process. A rollercoaster ride comes to mind. In the past several months, however, people have noticed a change in tune, and not necessarily for the better. Trump’s thought processes have veered off course as the 79-year-old leader appears more confused, combative and bombastic than ever before. This has caused an increasing number of people to question his state of mind.

In the past several months, there have been numerous Trump social media posts (160 in five hours on December 2) that bear little resemblance to reality and that have left members of his administration scrambling to explain them to a startled public. In November, for example, Trump unleashed a powerful salvo against Nigeria, which left many wondering if the United States was gearing up for war against the African nation.

“If the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the U.S.A. will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria, and may very well go into that now disgraced country, “guns-a-blazing,” to completely wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities. I am hereby instructing our Department of War to prepare for possible action. If we attack, it would be fast, vicious, and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our CHERISHED Christians! WARNING! THE NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT BETTER MOVE FAST!” Trump posted to his Truth Social account, Nov.1.

So much for ‘speak softly and carry a big stick,’ as Teddy Roosevelt once advised. While Trump has good cause to be concerned about the treatment of Christians, a restrained, nuanced and presidential message may have been the best approach. At the very least, it would have presented the U.S. leader as being in full command of his senses and emotions. This is just one example of Trump seeming to forget that hundreds of millions of people hang on his every word. Meanwhile, perhaps the only thing that prevented war in Africa was the flare up against America’s neighbor Venezuela, which has become the target of Trump’s wrath over drug trafficking.

“To all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY,” Trump posted to social media on November 29 as rumors of a full-scale invasion of the South American country hung in the air.

Apparently, however, nobody informed the U.S. leader that he does not have the authority to close the airspace in another country. The warning came after Trump told Venezuela’s leader Nicolás Maduro that the U.S. would consider military force if he didn’t leave power willingly. Thus far, Maduro continues to call Trump’s bluff, remaining in office together with his entire administration.

Then there was an earlier message in October in which Trump ranted about restarting the testing of America’s nuclear weapons. He wrote on October 29 during a meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping: “The United States has more Nuclear Weapons than any other country. This was accomplished, including a complete update and renovation of existing weapons, during my First Term in office. Because of the tremendous destructive power, I HATED to do it, but had no choice! Russia is second, and China is a distant third, but will be even within 5 years. Because of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis. That process will begin immediately. Thank you for your attention to this matter! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP”
Where to begin? First of all, Russia possesses the largest nuclear weapon stockpile, not the United States. He then talks about other countries that are now conducting tests of their nuclear weapons, which of course is not true. No country is in the process of testing their nuclear weapons by means of detonation. Russia has not conducted such a test in 35 years, in the last days of the Soviet Union. Finally, it is the Energy Department that oversees nuclear weapon testing, not the Department of War.

It is hard to understand what Trump’s announcement really means. Once again, the reader is left with nothing more than uncertainty over the mental condition of the man who possesses America’s nuclear football.

All this points to the possible conclusion that Donald Trump is suffering some sort of cognitive decline that is becoming more and more apparent with each passing day. The problem in such cases, however, is getting the afflicted person to admit to their condition and pass the torch to someone else. Trump is simply too much of a vain and conceited egoist to admit to such a thing, while his loyal administration – much as was the case under Joe Biden – is satisfied to continue with the status quo. None of this bodes well for the United States and its immediate future.

Join us on Telegram, Twitter, and VK.

Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

Very few will still remember, but in the mid-sixties of the last century, when serious issues could be raised and were still passionately debated, Pope Paul VI published an encyclical, Humanae Vitae, that today reverberates even more powerfully than at the time when it was written. The encyclical clarified the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church on artificial contraception but its core warning was that the seemingly innocuous practice that many couples engaged in for their sensual convenience would open the path to a culture that devalues human life. A culture of death is what Paul VI, we can now say prophetically, called it in 1968 as humanity stood at the threshold of a new age of moral numbness sixty years ago.

Several decades later, as in practice the moral intuition of Paul VI was being undeniably vindicated, one of his successors, John Paul II, writing in the encyclical Evangelium Vitae, expanded on Paul’s far-seeing analysis by adding abortion and euthanasia to the list of life-degrading evils unleashed by modernity.

What provokes now the remembrance of these forgotten Papal encyclicals is not their impact, for they obviously had little to none, but their prescient witness. Today, many decades later, the sombre news emanating from once idyllic and now euthanasia obsessed Canada should distress every morally sensitive soul, urbi et orbi. Canada has turned into an active laboratory for the mass practice of euthanasia, euphemistically known today as “assisted suicide.” Until quite recently it also went under the plainer and more revealing designation of “mercy killing.”

We are learning that Canada’s once justifiably admired health care system is now in shambles. Waiting lists even for routine interventions are unbearably long. Helpful legislators have stepped in to provide a “solution” by greatly loosening legal restrictions to “mercy killing.” The list of circumstances and conditions is expanding that allows doctors and state functionaries, acting at the request of desperate patients who are unable to obtain even the palliative care that would ease their agony, to approve lethal interventions. Such interventions a very short time ago in Canada and the rest of the civilised world would have been regarded as unthinkable and equivalent to murder. It is being done, of course, for purely humanitarian motives, to put the unfortunate patients “out of their misery.”

Jonathon Van Maren, director of the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform, writes in this regard that “stories of Canadians seeking palliative care, mental health resources, homecare, and other medical support finding that the only option available to them is assisted suicide have become routine over the past several years. Euthanasia has become a pressure valve for an overworked and under-funded healthcare system serving an aging population increasingly need of complex care – and if assisted suicide for mental illness is legalized, things will get much, much worse.” It may confidently be assumed that mental illness will be added to the list soon.

Van Maren supports that assertion by citing many poignant examples of  Canadian patients who were manoeuvred into opting for the legally available choice of self-annihilation because financially Canadian society  is no longer in the position to offer them adequate lifesaving medical care. One wonders where the money that could have restored the health and relieved the pain and suffering of many Canadian taxpayers has gone? To prop up the Ukrainian neo-Nazi regime perhaps? Just a wild guess.

Statistics for Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying or [MAID] (as the legal regulation that allows euthanasia is known) are chilling. In 2024 alone, 15, 343 Canadians chose to have their lives terminated under the provisions of this law, constituting 4,7% of all deaths recorded in Canada for that year, a 15,8% increase in relation to 2022.

In cold bureaucratic language, Canadian legislation “permits eligible adults to receive medical assistance to end their life, a process that is available to individuals with a serious and incurable illness, disease, or disability, and who are in an advanced state of irreversible decline with enduring and intolerable suffering. The law has evolved since its 2016 introduction, with expansions that now include those whose death is not reasonably foreseeable, provided they meet other criteria.”

We have obviously come a long way, and arguably in the wrong direction, since both Humanae Vitae and Evangelium Vitae were promulgated, in Canada at least. Investing social resources into the preservation and enhancement of human life evidently does not rank high amongst the priorities of those who run Canada any more, judging by many signs, than of the elites in charge of the collective West in general. Canadian legislators who passed the MAID law to legalise euthanasia, be it recalled, recently enthusiastically feted in their midst a veteran Nazi SS officer invited by their political leadership, who were, of course, fully aware of that individual’s scandalous background. The SS man was there to endorse the visiting head of the Ukrainian neo-Nazi regime who was in Canada to seek another financial transfusion, a request that, as we have seen, could only be satisfied at the expense of life and health of needy Canadian taxpayers who are cynically nudged into choosing suicide because the health care that their society owes them is unavailable.

Which brings us to an historical episode that is very pertinent to our topic. In Nazi Germany “assisted suicide,” “mercy killing,” “euthanasia” or whatever one wishes to call this barbaric practice, was state policy. The Nazi extermination programme was disguised under the official designation of Aktion T4. Its purpose was to physically eliminate human beings with disabilities whom the Nazi state considered undesirable since they did not fit in its master race profile. Yet even in that dark period in 1942, when the totalitarian Nazi regime was at the height of its power, a brave churchman, Bishop Clemens August von Galen of Münster found the courage to publicly raise his voice in several sermons and vigorously denounce the abomination.

The Canadian MAID programme has been operating legally since 2016.   Official statistics disclose that since permissive euthanasia legislation was introduced that year, the cause of 60,301 deaths, or one in every twenty in Canada, was listed as “assisted suicide”. Is there in all of Canada a single  bishop of the moral calibre of von Galen, or even a secular moral authority of whatever kind, whose conscience compels him to raise his voice and who has the courage to do so?

Or are the prescriptions of political correctness and “woke ethics” more intimidating in Canada than the Gestapo was in Germany?

Join us on Telegram, Twitter, and VK.

Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

Declining vaccination levels have sparked a new outbreak of measles in the US. Lower vaccination rates, alongside climate change and globalization, have created a public health crisis that will continue to grow unless contained. Governments may not respond rapidly enough, but Americans must find a way forward if they are to prevent deadly global outbreaks in the future.

Measles infections in the US have reached a record 33-year high. Previously contained, measles is now infecting 42 states with more than 1,400 cases and counting. The reason is simple, infuriating and far too familiar: declining vaccination levels. That is just the beginning.

Around the world, a disturbing trend is unfolding. Seasonal viruses are behaving out of turn. The H3N2 flu virus is striking earlier and more forcefully in Indian and Australian metropolises. Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is experiencing surges outside of its typical seasons. At the same time, the slow creep of avian influenza has infected hundreds of bird and mammal species and could eventually reach the stage of continuous human transmission.

In India, the Nipah virus has reemerged, killing two in Kerala. Officials were quick to confirm additional cases, but fears continue to grow that a virus with a high death toll and no cure will spread again amongst the population.

This is not science fiction. It is an established, proven fact, driven by urbanization, deforestation and the climate crisis. Looming over all of this is the threat of antimicrobial resistance. A less flashy but potentially more terrifying threat. Infections that once responded to basic antibiotics now resist them. We are headed into a post-antibiotic world and most governments are still treating it as a theory.

The forces that spread disease 

Vaccine hesitancy is no longer on the margins: it is a public health emergency. Driven by misinformation and politicization, the US is now on the brink of vaccination rates being below the threshold necessary for herd immunity. Politicians, including those who hold positions in the national office, systematically undermine mandatory childhood vaccinations. We are witnessing the live demolition of medical progress over the decades.

Climate change is also redrawing the disease map. Longer winters allow ticks and mosquitoes to survive longer, increasing the spread of Lyme disease, dengue fever and malaria. Even other diseases extend into wider latitudes. Floods, droughts and the extension of wildlife are pushing humans into new forms of viral contact. Diseases that were once “tropical” are becoming global.

Globalization has accelerated the spread of disease even further. Air travel spreads infections faster than our health system can keep up. This has caused the world to become smaller and less prepared to handle this kind of rapid spread.

Disease is on the rise, and not just a new disease. Old and familiar scourges are finding new means of survival in a world that is becoming increasingly unable to defend itself. The question is not whether the disease will continue to rise. It already is. The question is: Will we make our response rapid enough to adapt?

To date, the indicators aren’t auspicious. They might become so if we behave as though it makes a difference.

The future of public health

We already have the answers to prevent many of these crises, or at least manage them.

Vaccines are effective. Public health messaging is effective. Global surveillance connecting countries and species — what scientists call the “One Health” approach is effective. But too frequently, these solutions are underfunded, politically sabotaged or simply ignored until it is too late.

The return of measles to America should be a wake-up call. Not only because of what it is but because of what it implies. If we can not manage a disease we had previously contained, how can we possibly manage the next Nipah virus, the next COVID-19 or the next drug-resistant supervirus?

The 20th century gave us miracles: antibiotics, vaccines, sanitation and disease surveillance on a worldwide scale. The 21st century will test whether or not we can maintain them.

Original article:  www.fairobserver.com

Join us on Telegram, Twitter, and VK.

Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

For all the media hand-wringing over the government shutdown the fact is only approximately 750,000 of the over two million non-military federal workers are being furloughed. 

Most federal programs will continue operating, including the major entitlement and welfare programs. The national parks will remain open, if understaffed and with closed visitor centers. Unfortunately, the shutdown will not affect the military-industrial complex.

President Trump’s supposed “master plan” to implement mass firings of federal employees will only fire 16,000 employees.

Democrats are refusing to vote for a short-term continuing resolution unless it extends the increase in Obamacare subsidies that was part of the Biden-era covid relief legislation. Republicans, who for years campaigned on repealing and replacing Obamacare, are not opposing extending the subsidies. Instead, they are focusing on concerns the Democrats want to allow illegal immigrants to receive taxpayer-funded health benefits. Republicans are also emphasizing that they want to negotiate over extending the Obamacare subsidies, not simply shove them into a “must pass” continuing resolution. Republicans also want to ensure that laws barring illegal immigrants from receiving the subsidies are in place.

Republicans’ de facto embrace of the increased Obamacare subsidies, which were supposed to be a temporary increase to help Americans who lost their jobs because of the covid lockdowns, is a little noticed but major milestone in the history of Obamacare. For many years Republicans campaigned on a promise to “repeal and replace” Obamacare. Opposition to Obamacare, along with opposition to the big bank bailouts and the cap and trade scheme, fueled the “Tea Party” movement, which led in the 2010 election to a Republican takeover of the House of Representatives. In 2013, as the federal government was implementing Obamacare, Tea Party Republicans orchestrated a government shutdown. The argument was this was the last chance to repeal Obamacare because once it was fully implemented the number of people who would become reliant on the program would make Obamacare politically impossible to repeal.

These Tea Party Republicans were mocked for their efforts, but history has proven them right. Even though Donald Trump and many Republican candidates for House and Senate promised to repeal Obamacare in their 2016 campaigns, they never even held a vote on full repeal of the healthcare law. Instead, they pushed legislation repealing the “unpopular” parts of Obamacare even though the way the program was structured it was impossible for the popular parts to work without the unpopular parts. The legislation repealing the “unpopular” parts of Obamacare was opposed by some Republicans who had previously voted to repeal all of Obamacare.

In the 2018 midterm election, the Democrats then turned the tables on Republicans by running as champions of healthcare who would protect Obamacare from the Republicans. This helped them retake the House.

Now, the majority of Republicans appear ready to ratify President Biden’s increase in Obamacare subsidies. So, Republicans have gone from promising to repeal Obamacare to promising to repeal the “unpopular” provisions to de facto supporting the program.

Republican failure to effectively oppose Obamacare is because of failure to acknowledge that the pre-Obamacare healthcare system was seriously flawed because of government interventions. Therefore, a way to “fix” healthcare is via measures giving patients and providers control over the healthcare system, such as tax credits and Health Savings Accounts (HSAs). Unapologetic advocacy of free markets is the only effective way to oppose big government schemes like Obamacare and advance liberty.

Original article:  ronpaulinstitute.org

Segue nostro Telegram. 

Il cosiddetto “scudo penale per i medici”, approvato dal Consiglio dei Ministri nell’ambito del disegno di legge delegato sulla riforma delle professioni sanitarie, comporta rilevanti cambiamenti nel sistema della responsabilità sanitaria. Viene introdotto un nuovo art. 590-sexies del codice penale, secondo il quale il personale sanitario risponde penalmente soltanto nei casi di colpa grave, a condizione che la condotta sia stata conforme alle linee guida o alle buone pratiche clinico-assistenziali. A ciò si aggiunge un art. 590-septies, che definisce criteri di valutazione della colpa, come scarsità di risorse, disfunzioni organizzative inevitabili, situazioni di urgenza o incertezza scientifica. Parallelamente, la legge statale n. 24/2017 (c.d. Gelli-Bianco) viene modificata, attribuendo alle linee guida carattere “inderogabile”, pur con la clausola che tiene conto delle peculiarità del caso concreto.

La domanda da porsi davanti a tutto questo è: perché serve uno scudo penale, per di più così complesso e potente, per i medici?

La categoria in questione, almeno teoricamente, dovrebbe essere per eccellenza una delle più “responsabili” delle proprie azioni, fatta di professionisti che sanno quello che fanno e che fanno quello che sanno, pronti a sacrificarsi con eroismo per salvare la vita agli altri. Da un eroe, di solito, ci si aspettano cose belle. Invece, ora, pare che questi famigerati “angeli col camice” siano più simili a demoni pronti a strappare la vita, non a conservarla.

Lo scudo penale si rende necessario come misura per proteggere una categoria che è stata oggetto di corruzione irrefrenabile e di smarrimento dell’etica professionale – e di un minimo di coscienza morale – come mai era successo prima.

Sì, i medici sono stai i grandi traditori della Verità e del Bene, i primi ad aver venduto la propria anima per denaro, allorché avrebbero dovuto combattere per ribadire l’ovvio e contrastare l’assurdo. Invece, si sono piegati, in virtù della comodità dei loro salari e della opportunità finanziaria che gli veniva offerta. Poco importa della salute dei pazienti quando puoi garantirti la tua, e meglio ancora garantirtela con qualche “bonus” in più, no?

Da eroi incaricati per vocazione e per professione, sotto solenne giuramento, si sono trasformati in persecutori e promotori di morte, spacciata vigliaccamente per vita. Questo è. La legalizzazione moralizzata di comportamenti criminali, l’elevazione alla santità sociale di cooperatori dell’inganno. Vuoi per ignoranza, vuoi per debolezza, vuoi per ottusità, i medici dal 2020 hanno riposizionato la loro immagine sociale.

Ma come mai lo scudo penale, dicevamo?

Perché è proprio a medici che viene attribuita da molti la “colpa” della strage per le vaccinazioni (cosiddette). Da un punto di vista della filosofia morale, no, non è meramente colpa dei professionisti della sanità che hanno spinto e/o praticato ai pazienti l’inoculazione dei sieri sperimentali: ognuno ha, fino all’ultimo, personale responsabilità delle proprie scelte e azioni, indistintamente. L’ultimo assenso è sempre stato personale, non coatto in senso stretto. Ma i medici avevano il compito, nella loro professione e posizione sociale autorevole, di onorare il loro giuramento, le leggi positive e quelle naturali, preservando le persone dalla strage inoculatoria, non invogliarle all’iniezione. Questo è.

La riforma avanzata, come si può osservare, non rappresenta una misura temporanea, bensì una disciplina strutturale e permanente del regime di colpa in ambito sanitario. Qui si giocherà un passaggio importante per il futuro.

Un primo punto critico riguarda il principio di legalità penale, sancito dall’art. 25, comma 2, della Costituzione, che richiede determinatezza e precisione delle fattispecie incriminatrici. La questione della graduazione della colpa era già stata affrontata dalla Corte costituzionale con la sentenza n. 166/1973, nella quale si affermava che la deroga alla responsabilità penale per colpa aveva una giustificazione specifica ed era comunque limitata e circoscritta, soprattutto nell’ambito della perizia. Oggi, invece, l’introduzione di clausole generali come “scarsità di risorse” o “carenze organizzative” lascia al giudice un margine di discrezionalità eccessivo, che rischia di violare il principio di tassatività e di determinare, in pratica, l’esclusione quasi sistematica della responsabilità.

Un secondo problema riguarda il principio di uguaglianza sancito dall’art. 3 della Costituzione. La nuova disciplina crea un’irragionevole disparità di trattamento, riconoscendo al personale sanitario un regime più favorevole: di fronte a eventi gravissimi per la vita e la salute, la soglia penale è innalzata alla colpa grave, mentre in altri ambiti professionali resta punibile anche la colpa lieve. La Corte costituzionale ha costantemente affermato che la differenziazione normativa deve avere una proporzione ragionevole con il bene giuridico tutelato. Qui, invece, proprio dove il bene protetto è massimo, si riduce la forza del presidio penale.

Il profilo sovranazionale non è meno rilevante. La Corte europea dei diritti dell’uomo (CEDU) sostiene che gli Stati hanno l’obbligo positivo di predisporre un quadro regolatorio effettivo a tutela della vita, anche in ambito sanitario. Questo non significa necessariamente criminalizzare ogni condotta colposa, ma garantire strumenti adeguati ed efficaci. Una normativa che riduce drasticamente l’area della responsabilità penale, senza rafforzare parallelamente i rimedi civilistici e disciplinari, rischia di porsi in contrasto con l’art. 2 CEDU e, indirettamente, con l’art. 117, comma 1, della Costituzione.

È altresì ingannevole l’argomento relativo alla medicina difensiva. L’esecutivo sostiene che lo scudo ridurrà costi e tempi d’attesa. Tuttavia, le cifre di spesa attribuite a tale fenomeno, stimate intorno agli 11 miliardi di euro annui, risultano controverse e prive di validi riscontri scientifici. Fondare un’immunità penale di categoria su stime incerte significa piegare il diritto penale a logiche economiche, in contrasto con l’art. 27 Cost., che collega la responsabilità penale esclusivamente al fatto personale e alla sua colpevolezza.

Un ulteriore aspetto critico è rappresentato dalla scelta di rendere le linee guida inderogabili. Il rispetto delle linee guida non costituisce automaticamente una scriminante, poiché resta necessaria la valutazione del caso concreto. Trasformare le linee guida in norme rigide riduce la pratica medica a mera esecuzione burocratica, limitando l’autonomia professionale e, al tempo stesso, offrendo uno scudo indiscriminato. Si tratta di un arretramento nella qualità della cura, che compromette il diritto alla salute sancito dall’art. 32 Cost., subordinando la centralità del paziente alla rigidità dei protocolli.

Lo scudo penale promosso dal Governo Meloni snatura la funzione del diritto penale, non assicura vera serenità ai medici, che deriva piuttosto da condizioni di lavoro sicure, da un’organizzazione efficiente e da un’adeguata formazione. Non elimina la medicina difensiva, poiché sposta il contenzioso su altri piani, civile e disciplinare. Non rafforza la tutela dei pazienti, che al contrario ne escono indeboliti.

In realtà, ciò che si configura è una sorta di amnistia mascherata: si istituzionalizza l’impunità, si deresponsabilizza il sistema e si sacrifica la centralità del malato, riducendo la giustizia a mero strumento di convenienza politica.