Outstanding. I like this point especially. "All ideas, purported facts, hypotheses and theories need to subjected to rigorous interrogation. It's a good practice to regularly expose yourself to ideas with which you disagree, so you can challenge your own beliefs and understanding. You should also subject the ideas with which you agree to scrutiny by searching for facts that contradict them, or alternative explanations." I think that human pride can swell like a toad. I think group think is much stronger through time than we wish to believe. When tremendous sums of money align with friendly scientific interests frequently bad drives out good thinking. And sticks around badly training the next generation into thinking truth is not as important as naked self interest -strictly in a professional way of course this following the leader of the pack.
You're spot on about both human pride, and the power of group think. There are dangerous and destructive tendencies in human nature that we need to be aware of, and constantly working at overcoming. I also see there being a crucial role for peers who don't blow smoke up our a** because they're our friends or want to get in good with us, but are there to hold us accountable by challenging us on our own thinking.
Character education once upon a time did not rest on mandatory curriculums and Prussian style education. To raise a human being once was tradition and not consuming education by degree.
May 20, 2023·edited May 20, 2023Liked by Robyn Chuter
Yes. My wife wrote her Ph.D on Character Education and used Savage Inequalities as a component and Jewish Folktales. I did think when I wrote this I was talking Gatto. I was wrong and it was Kozol. Dumbing Us Down by Gatto I have not yet read but quite agree. Learning how to learn can de-dumb. I was a person greatly influenced by De-Schooling Society by Illich.
Yes, always question, because assumptions are the mother of all Fups.
And yes, we all make mistakes, but we all need humility to be able to accept this, to fix the mistake, and to ensure similar behaviour does not happen again.
Exactly. I have found out that something I believed to be true, and told others was true, was actually false, on many occasions. It's OK to be wrong, but it's not OK to refuse to correct your mistake once it's pointed out to you.
Fantastic essay (as always). I'm not sure if you are familiar with the work of fellow Australian, permaculturalist Patrick Jones (https://artistasfamily.is/). He is stressing the importance of heterodox thought in general and specifically in the permaculture movement - rather split now when the co-founder David Holmgren dared to question the covid narrative.
The blurb for this video is: "Patrick examines the role of heterodox thinking both broadly and within more marginal cultural milieus. He is curious whether the myth of the turned money tables has real currency in this moment and whether permaculture in Australia is falling into wrong story by adopting the neoliberal guerrilla tactics of censorship and divisive behavioural strategies that include the creation of a contagion-scapegoat class in order to stifle dissent or debate."
Thanks for the links - yet more fascinating thinkers to explore!!!!!
I'm sorry to hear the permaculture movement has split over convid. It's astonishing how many people whom I would have assumed would see straight through the ridiculous narrative, instead got sucked in by it.
Why a woman? No strong reason, or rather, the strongest reason is guesswork or just a gut feel, which is unsatisfying, so let me try others to see if they fit.
- Anonymity might be more valuable to a woman. I am also convinced the 'turtles all the way down' authors are all women.
- There is a particular bluntness or lack of nurturing which I claim to notice in myself and other men. AMD shows the opposite. She talks about deep consideration of how her writing will affect the reader, and describes a long history of nurturing and caring for vaccine injury victims while remaining a doctor, and just observing then forgiving their religious faith in maiming kids. Myself and the men I know would have been itching for action or been kicked out of the profession long ago.
- She (claims) being focused on the victims for decades - the opposite of what people say about men wanting to solve the damn problem and move on, which I feel I have in spades compared with the women I know.
- The effort at long responses to the comment section, and the specificity with which she chooses her words. Not always more feminine traits (I aim for the same), just traits that I recall noticing which probably shaped my guess.
- The anecdotes she writes about - trips to see a friend, or colleagues she collaborated with, thought patterns or situations she has found herself in seem more likely to be the behaviour's of a woman or effeminate man somehow.
I'll still laugh when we later find out the whole AMD substack is some CIA psyop or something.
An interesting find. I wrote this in an old AMD article comment section. Seems to have aged well...
Shane wrote - "I love your substack, and it would be very hard to fake, even in written form, the genuine kindness in the author. However, i feel it worthwhile to put the 'doctors are almost all nice and well-meaning' claim in context. All doctors sat through years of indoctrination, and continued to make that choice for years. All have been happy to study a model of healthcare which has yielded such poor results, and are still there. All gained an understanding of physiology, then read the standard treatment protocols which never looked for a root cause or gave due respect to the complexity of the body, yet still said, that's the model for me! All were seemingly happy with the hypocrisy of the hippocratic oath + the standard treatment for so many things being so needlessly invasive. All are still doctors after 3 years of hardcore purging the most honest doctors from the profession, and decades of more subtle culls. The midwestern doctor is one of the best humans on the planet, doing essential work, but that is a rare type of doctor, and in many ways, they are still trumped by the naturopath who dropped out of med school to focus on diet and exercise, or the massage therapist who chose a system which allows 1hr of patient interaction. Feel free to correctly exclude paramedics, surgeons, whoever else you deem warrants it in the Allopathic umbrella, the general principle of this tirade still holds true."
Wow, this is razor-sharp and impossible to dispute. If you're still in 'the system' at this point, you've acceded to its rules.
That doesn't mean that there aren't some good doctors still in that system, who remain because they believe it's the best way to be of service to suffering people, but those who remain have had to compromise on some level (multiple levels, in fact).
Interesting article, I always understood "the story" to be Keys cherry picked his data to prove an hypothesis. This sheds a different light, maybe his research was hijacked by other interests and misinterpreted for other reasons.
This is exactly why I wrote this post. "The story" about Keys' research has been regurgitated in a thousand popular books and blog posts, by people who have quite plainly never read a damn word he wrote. The notion that Keys advocated a low fat diet is flat-out ridiculous. As the Seven Countries data came in, he moved further and further in the direction of what we would now call a Mediterranean diet, which is by no means low fat. It's not that his research was hijacked, it's that it has been completely misrepresented by a bunch of ignorant people who don't take the trouble to go back to primary sources.
I get pretty het up about this, because it's one of the things that is absolutely pounded into every undergraduate (or at least it was when I was at university; maybe they're too busy teaching woke ideology to bother teaching students basic research methods now): never quote a secondary source (i.e. a quote or summary of an idea found in another paper) unless you're unable, after strenuous searching, to track down the primary source. I cannot tell you how often I've chased up a primary source, only to find that it was quoted in a misleading way or that it actually completely contradicted the secondary source.
As I’ve said before, I think AMD is a woman or one of them is if they are a group. I also enjoy her stack but differ quite significantly from certain opinions eg. Antidepressants can be life saving not only causing side effects( which they certainly can) . AMD and others are haters of SSRIs. I am 95% over to the No Virus position and can provide good sources if anyone is interested. I categorically state that all jabs are bad and that all Convid jabs are bioweapons
It's funny you say that. I was pretty sure she was a woman, but then Steve Kirsch mentioned having met AMD and described him as a him.
On the antidepressant front, I have met people who credit them with saving their lives but I have also read Irving Kirsch's work, and he makes a very persuasive case that they don't perform any better than placebos.
I am actually thinking of hosting a debate on the virus existence/nonexistence issue by proponents of either side. I think J.J. Couey would be an excellent guest.
I have been a medical doctor for 31 years and in psychiatry for 28 of those. SSRIs categorically save lives. I have seen it do so many times. Studies and stats can and do lie. And BTW, another trope is that the serotonin hypothesis has fallen apart so SSRIs can’t work. That is trite nonsense. Most of the time we don’t understand fully how meds work and no psychiatrist adheres to a simplified serotonin hypothesis as the main explanation for depression.
Your point about the mechanism of action of many medications is well taken. However I've had many clients relate to me that their prescribing doctor (either GP or psychiatrist) has told them that they have a serotonin deficiency/biochemical imbalance, and that's why they need an SSRI. Do you think these doctors are just telling patients this story in order to gain compliance, and if so, is this ethical?
I'm interested in the claim that SSRIs save lives. How is this established? And how do we balance the lives saved against the lives lost due to increased suicidality (especially in the initial weeks of treatment)?
These are genuine questions, not attempts at gotchas, and I look forward to engaging in further dialogue with you.
Robyn, I’m happy to engage. Doctors in all fields will offer simplified explanations to patients for their illness and treatments. Do you think that explanations about blood pressure, heart failure, Parkinson’s or dementia are not similarly simplified? No doctor or specialist can review the entire body of work about the aetiology of a condition in a consultation or the many unknowns. We don’t even know what we don’t know. That should be conveyed to patients together with discussion about side effects and for SSRIs, potential triggering of mania, disinhibition and suicidality. Then the patient decides if they wish to try or not. As to lives saved and lives improved, I and Colleagues I work with have treated thousands of suicidal and profoundly depressed and catatonic patients who completely recovered and went on with living after treatment with SSRIs.
Thanks for being willing to have this discussion. It's so important that those of us who are aligned with medical freedom engage with each other on topics where there's disagreement, or different perspectives.
I always ask my clients about their understanding of their condition/s, and the vast majority have only the most rudimentary understanding of it. I know that medical consultation times are limited by various payers, but I still find it shocking that doctors can't set aside 15-30 minutes, maybe across multiple consultations, to explain to patients what they have, what is known about the condition and its causes, and what they can do to help themselves. My appointments with clients are 60-90 minutes, and I always devote a good chunk of the initial appointment to assessing their current level of knowledge about their condition, and filling in the gaps. This helps enormously with my clients' motivation to comply with their treatment plan, because they understand the rationale behind each component of it.
On the SSRI question, what specific effects of these drugs have you seen on patients' feelings, thoughts, behaviour (or anything else) that you believe to be responsible for them having the beneficial effects that you describe? Many dissident psychiatrists and psychotherapists state that SSRIs have a numbing effect on patients' emotions, and that this numbing effect actually interferes with effective psychotherapy. I have had many clients report to me that when they were on SSRIs, they no longer felt very sad, but they didn't feel very happy either. They felt very little of anything at all, and consequently they weren't motivated to change any of the circumstances in their lives that had triggered the depressive episode. What do you make of this - do your patients report this to you, and do you think it might be an impediment to recovery?
SSRI’s can numb patients range of emotions and this may be a reason to wean the dose or cease them. Some will tolerate a mild numbing if it’s mostly the lows that are numbed and not the happiness. It’s up to the patient if they can or will tolerate this side effect. The benefits are often as clear, mood lifts, suicidal thoughts stop, anxiety lessens and panic attacks lessen or stop. These and other benefits will often outweigh mild numbing and is for the patient to decide the risk benefit ratio. Obviously severe numbing or blunting of mood should not be tolerated by patients or their doctors. I’ve had many patients who can only tolerate the work of psychotherapy when their mood has lifted enough and anxiety lessened by medication to then solidify their improvement with therapy.
Peter Breggin has been talking and writing about the role that SSRIs play in violent homicides and suicides for decades. He was the leading expert witness in a whole slew of legal cases involving SSRIs.
Hi Robyn, Thanks for another excellent article. No scientist despite a degree that suggest I should be, I have been rattling around the 'heart disease' issue for nearly 40 years. I came to the conclusion nearly 10 years ago that while many things may be contributing to cardiovascular issues the link to Diabetes, type 2 in particular, was worth researching. Onto the scene came the data gathered by a Chicago hospital Pathologist, Dr Joseph Kraft, who with his team over from memory 1978-1994 or thereabouts conducted 14380 or so Fasting Blood Glucose tests taking blood at intervals throughout a 3 hour period AND most importantly an Insulin assay concurrently. Please don't scream at me if I present this incorrectly BUT the major conclusion Kraft came to was that some 80% of all North Americans were Diabetic, nothing 'pre ' about it, with a large number completely unaware. What has this to do with Heart issues? People diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes have repeatedly been found to be about 8 x more likely to suffer a Coronary event within the next 5 years and 4 x more are likely to die of a coronary event than general population. To me that yells whatever increases the Diabetic risk is likely a MAJOR factor in Coronary outcomes, meaning common, and I am very sure it has little to nothing to do with Cholesterol. And it just may link to Liver and Pancreatic cancers. After 70 years of poking about with Cholesterol and Fats maybe a different approach is needed. I have a book of Kraft's results which is not easy reading but 'Bing' the light bulb went on. Something interesting here me thinks.
There's no doubt whatsoever that blood glucose dysregulation is a huge risk factor for CVD, and that it's far more common than the official diagnosis rate would indicate. There are links between insulin resistance and blood lipids; for example people who are insulin resistant have more atherogenic lipoprotein particles. When it comes to all these theories of causation of CVD, it's not a matter of either/or, it's both/and.
Robyn, a most gracious review of a fraught battlefield. My instinct tells me that a simplistic, one size fits all (statins) is asking for trouble. I have been on statins since 2014 and am very much looking forward to a robust discussion with my cardiologist. Thank you for the education to help my discussions.
That conversation with your cardiologist will be an interesting test of his/her ability to engage in discussion with you, as an educated patient. If you get a hostile response ("shut up and take your meds!!") I suggest finding another cardiologist who is more respectful of you. Likewise if he/she resorts to "I'm just following the guidelines" - not good enough!
It's well worth digging into the NNT site as they cite the sources of their recommendations. You might like to print these out (at least the abstracts) and take them to your appointment.
Good luck, and do drop back in to let us know how it went!
Thank you, I must say, these last thee years have woken me up to the fact that all of us need to take responsibility for our health, and view the medical people as simply a resource, not as masters.
Exactly. Trust no one. Check the facts and evidence. Listen to both sides of the argument. The fact that most so called freedom fighters don't seem to do this leaves me a bit despondent. But I used to be more gullible and attached to my beliefs (thinking they were facts), so maybe we can teach the art of healthy scepticism . .
I share your concern about the 'freedom community' - many people in it seem to me to lack discernment. They attach themselves to particular beliefs, or particular figures, and refuse to brook any discussion about them.
I wonder whether it is possible for adults to learn critical thinking skills, or whether there's a 'sensitive period' (as Maria Montessori described it) for learning this, and if one is not already temperamentally predisposed to critical thinking, one can't learn it after this sensitive period has passed. I hope I'm wrong. The only comprehensive solution that I can see to this problem is to teach critical thinking skills to children. Obviously the current schooling system is not doing this, and I don't know that many alternative schooling systems do a good job of it either. Returning to largely home-based education following classical principles seems to me to be the best option, but at present, that's a pipe dream for most parents.
I think there's a personality component to applying these skills. It might be possible for everyone to learn them, but most people probably won't WANT to apply them because their personalities incline them to 'going with the flow' rather than challenging consensus views. Early education in critical thinking skills might be the only way to overcome this natural disinclination.
Totally agree that asking questions (the Socratic method) is superior to telling people they're wrong.
How about the "egoistic attachment" to contagious viral theory? Or is that still off limits verboten? The last time I brought it up here, you accused me of recycling "the same tired talking points" instead of dealing with the methodological and logical invalidity of that whole field.
As an aside, I am currently writing Part 5 of my Clean Energy Series because I was too soft on Simon Michaux’s report and it needs some major correcting!
I am actually thinking of hosting a debate on the virus existence/nonexistence issue by proponents of either side. I think J.J. Couey would be an excellent guest.
I do find that the 'no virus' people repeat a small number of assertions that I've seen comprehensively addressed by the 'yes virus' people.
I found the fabled exchange, 600 comments down. She Big Lebowski'd Robyn (and the whole concept of nutrition). Lebowski'd = "that's just, like, your opinion, man". Something which annoys me no end if i've gone to the trouble of being referenced and objective.
Yeah, that's what stuck in my craw. I wasn't stating my opinions on the four matters that I brought up, I was pointing out factual errors that were easily demonstrable (and one statement that I thought was misleading).
I'm really interested in why you think AMD is a woman. I don't want to pre-empt you, but after this exchange, I admit that I did think to myself "this feels like how a woman would argue". Which feels a bit weird to say, since I'm a woman myself. But I've had the misfortune to work in a female-dominated workplace for just long enough to notice certain tactics that women tend to resort to more often than men, when they feel like their position of dominance is threatened.
This whole episode (including JP and Robyn in this chat) strikes me as time/energy saving heuristics in action. I applaud such things because I am naturally lazy, but also because they seem essential for our brains. Noble as our verification intentions might be, at some stage we all just need a summary to carry on with.
eg) AMD's might be: Nutrition topic comes up. (subconscious - my perfectionism would mean i instantly double my workload if I investigate this topic with the same vigour as I do allopathic stuff) manifests as - (that's just, like, your opinion, man) which we can take as (I'm tired dammit, let me pidgeonhole this as 'nutrition opinions' so I can ignore it but still feel diligent)
Although I wasn't weighing in on whether any particular nutrition approach is better than another. I was pointing out that a factual error had been made which misrepresented Ancel Keys' work. That's very different. Whatever people may conclude about which particular dietary approach is superior in a particular circumstance, the starting point should be that we don't misrepresent or lie about what a particular researcher reported.
I clicked on link about your 'altercation' with AMD but it didn't work . Sadly, I have to confess that this is too highbrow for me. As an aside, and I rarely click on links to sources, apparently ChatGPT invents links :) So even 'IT' wants to be appear to be right :) I do like AMD, but often don't bother to spend the 20 mins or so reading his stuff (I was most interested in his writings about the snallpox protests in the 1700s !) but then again, during lockdown, I had more time to read. I'm not sure why anyone would this post offensive.
That's very strange, because the link works for me (I just checked it again). You can just click on the link to AMD's article and then click on the link for Comments, to find it.
As you know, being offended is actually a vocation for a good chunk of the population these days 🤣.
Quite correct Robyn, agree entirely. A case of "Don't know how to respond or if I can be bothered to, so I will just say its you opinion get all huffy and offended and not bother then". In Aussie speak its a cop-out for a brain being put to sleep (by whose brain it is). I do wonder why some people think they have life or is this arrogant or egoistic? Can I go back to my insanity now please?
This whole BS of "well, I'm just speaking my truth" drives me nuts. There isn't "your truth" and "my truth"; there's "THE truth". Many truths aren't easily discernable and we can spend our whole lives inching closer and closer to grasping them, but it's the commitment to doing so that distinguishes the moral person from the virtue signaller. When it comes to developing opinions on objective questions, it's vital to put the effort into discovering and verifying matters of fact. People can know the same facts and still reach different opinions on them, but if believe things that are factually untrue, any opinions that you form from these false notions are fatally flawed.
Outstanding. I like this point especially. "All ideas, purported facts, hypotheses and theories need to subjected to rigorous interrogation. It's a good practice to regularly expose yourself to ideas with which you disagree, so you can challenge your own beliefs and understanding. You should also subject the ideas with which you agree to scrutiny by searching for facts that contradict them, or alternative explanations." I think that human pride can swell like a toad. I think group think is much stronger through time than we wish to believe. When tremendous sums of money align with friendly scientific interests frequently bad drives out good thinking. And sticks around badly training the next generation into thinking truth is not as important as naked self interest -strictly in a professional way of course this following the leader of the pack.
You're spot on about both human pride, and the power of group think. There are dangerous and destructive tendencies in human nature that we need to be aware of, and constantly working at overcoming. I also see there being a crucial role for peers who don't blow smoke up our a** because they're our friends or want to get in good with us, but are there to hold us accountable by challenging us on our own thinking.
Character education once upon a time did not rest on mandatory curriculums and Prussian style education. To raise a human being once was tradition and not consuming education by degree.
I'm guessing you're familiar with John Taylor Gatto's books?
Yes. My wife wrote her Ph.D on Character Education and used Savage Inequalities as a component and Jewish Folktales. I did think when I wrote this I was talking Gatto. I was wrong and it was Kozol. Dumbing Us Down by Gatto I have not yet read but quite agree. Learning how to learn can de-dumb. I was a person greatly influenced by De-Schooling Society by Illich.
Fascinating! Is her thesis available to the public?
I am not sure. She went to USF in San Francisco. She just self published her thesis as book at Amazon. She was ill recently so we got bogged down trying to market in April. https://www.amazon.com/Jewish-Folktales-Character-Education-Teaching/dp/B0BW23B55Z
good article.
Yes, always question, because assumptions are the mother of all Fups.
And yes, we all make mistakes, but we all need humility to be able to accept this, to fix the mistake, and to ensure similar behaviour does not happen again.
Exactly. I have found out that something I believed to be true, and told others was true, was actually false, on many occasions. It's OK to be wrong, but it's not OK to refuse to correct your mistake once it's pointed out to you.
Fantastic essay (as always). I'm not sure if you are familiar with the work of fellow Australian, permaculturalist Patrick Jones (https://artistasfamily.is/). He is stressing the importance of heterodox thought in general and specifically in the permaculture movement - rather split now when the co-founder David Holmgren dared to question the covid narrative.
The blurb for this video is: "Patrick examines the role of heterodox thinking both broadly and within more marginal cultural milieus. He is curious whether the myth of the turned money tables has real currency in this moment and whether permaculture in Australia is falling into wrong story by adopting the neoliberal guerrilla tactics of censorship and divisive behavioural strategies that include the creation of a contagion-scapegoat class in order to stifle dissent or debate."
https://youtu.be/Gg7ZrN2fd2k
Thanks for the links - yet more fascinating thinkers to explore!!!!!
I'm sorry to hear the permaculture movement has split over convid. It's astonishing how many people whom I would have assumed would see straight through the ridiculous narrative, instead got sucked in by it.
Why a woman? No strong reason, or rather, the strongest reason is guesswork or just a gut feel, which is unsatisfying, so let me try others to see if they fit.
- Anonymity might be more valuable to a woman. I am also convinced the 'turtles all the way down' authors are all women.
- There is a particular bluntness or lack of nurturing which I claim to notice in myself and other men. AMD shows the opposite. She talks about deep consideration of how her writing will affect the reader, and describes a long history of nurturing and caring for vaccine injury victims while remaining a doctor, and just observing then forgiving their religious faith in maiming kids. Myself and the men I know would have been itching for action or been kicked out of the profession long ago.
- She (claims) being focused on the victims for decades - the opposite of what people say about men wanting to solve the damn problem and move on, which I feel I have in spades compared with the women I know.
- The effort at long responses to the comment section, and the specificity with which she chooses her words. Not always more feminine traits (I aim for the same), just traits that I recall noticing which probably shaped my guess.
- The anecdotes she writes about - trips to see a friend, or colleagues she collaborated with, thought patterns or situations she has found herself in seem more likely to be the behaviour's of a woman or effeminate man somehow.
I'll still laugh when we later find out the whole AMD substack is some CIA psyop or something.
Really interesting insights, thank you.
And yes, won't it be hilarious is AMD turns out to be a grubberment insider, psyop-ing us all!
An interesting find. I wrote this in an old AMD article comment section. Seems to have aged well...
Shane wrote - "I love your substack, and it would be very hard to fake, even in written form, the genuine kindness in the author. However, i feel it worthwhile to put the 'doctors are almost all nice and well-meaning' claim in context. All doctors sat through years of indoctrination, and continued to make that choice for years. All have been happy to study a model of healthcare which has yielded such poor results, and are still there. All gained an understanding of physiology, then read the standard treatment protocols which never looked for a root cause or gave due respect to the complexity of the body, yet still said, that's the model for me! All were seemingly happy with the hypocrisy of the hippocratic oath + the standard treatment for so many things being so needlessly invasive. All are still doctors after 3 years of hardcore purging the most honest doctors from the profession, and decades of more subtle culls. The midwestern doctor is one of the best humans on the planet, doing essential work, but that is a rare type of doctor, and in many ways, they are still trumped by the naturopath who dropped out of med school to focus on diet and exercise, or the massage therapist who chose a system which allows 1hr of patient interaction. Feel free to correctly exclude paramedics, surgeons, whoever else you deem warrants it in the Allopathic umbrella, the general principle of this tirade still holds true."
Wow, this is razor-sharp and impossible to dispute. If you're still in 'the system' at this point, you've acceded to its rules.
That doesn't mean that there aren't some good doctors still in that system, who remain because they believe it's the best way to be of service to suffering people, but those who remain have had to compromise on some level (multiple levels, in fact).
'
Interesting article, I always understood "the story" to be Keys cherry picked his data to prove an hypothesis. This sheds a different light, maybe his research was hijacked by other interests and misinterpreted for other reasons.
This is exactly why I wrote this post. "The story" about Keys' research has been regurgitated in a thousand popular books and blog posts, by people who have quite plainly never read a damn word he wrote. The notion that Keys advocated a low fat diet is flat-out ridiculous. As the Seven Countries data came in, he moved further and further in the direction of what we would now call a Mediterranean diet, which is by no means low fat. It's not that his research was hijacked, it's that it has been completely misrepresented by a bunch of ignorant people who don't take the trouble to go back to primary sources.
I get pretty het up about this, because it's one of the things that is absolutely pounded into every undergraduate (or at least it was when I was at university; maybe they're too busy teaching woke ideology to bother teaching students basic research methods now): never quote a secondary source (i.e. a quote or summary of an idea found in another paper) unless you're unable, after strenuous searching, to track down the primary source. I cannot tell you how often I've chased up a primary source, only to find that it was quoted in a misleading way or that it actually completely contradicted the secondary source.
As I’ve said before, I think AMD is a woman or one of them is if they are a group. I also enjoy her stack but differ quite significantly from certain opinions eg. Antidepressants can be life saving not only causing side effects( which they certainly can) . AMD and others are haters of SSRIs. I am 95% over to the No Virus position and can provide good sources if anyone is interested. I categorically state that all jabs are bad and that all Convid jabs are bioweapons
It's funny you say that. I was pretty sure she was a woman, but then Steve Kirsch mentioned having met AMD and described him as a him.
On the antidepressant front, I have met people who credit them with saving their lives but I have also read Irving Kirsch's work, and he makes a very persuasive case that they don't perform any better than placebos.
I am actually thinking of hosting a debate on the virus existence/nonexistence issue by proponents of either side. I think J.J. Couey would be an excellent guest.
I have been a medical doctor for 31 years and in psychiatry for 28 of those. SSRIs categorically save lives. I have seen it do so many times. Studies and stats can and do lie. And BTW, another trope is that the serotonin hypothesis has fallen apart so SSRIs can’t work. That is trite nonsense. Most of the time we don’t understand fully how meds work and no psychiatrist adheres to a simplified serotonin hypothesis as the main explanation for depression.
Your point about the mechanism of action of many medications is well taken. However I've had many clients relate to me that their prescribing doctor (either GP or psychiatrist) has told them that they have a serotonin deficiency/biochemical imbalance, and that's why they need an SSRI. Do you think these doctors are just telling patients this story in order to gain compliance, and if so, is this ethical?
I'm interested in the claim that SSRIs save lives. How is this established? And how do we balance the lives saved against the lives lost due to increased suicidality (especially in the initial weeks of treatment)?
These are genuine questions, not attempts at gotchas, and I look forward to engaging in further dialogue with you.
Robyn, I’m happy to engage. Doctors in all fields will offer simplified explanations to patients for their illness and treatments. Do you think that explanations about blood pressure, heart failure, Parkinson’s or dementia are not similarly simplified? No doctor or specialist can review the entire body of work about the aetiology of a condition in a consultation or the many unknowns. We don’t even know what we don’t know. That should be conveyed to patients together with discussion about side effects and for SSRIs, potential triggering of mania, disinhibition and suicidality. Then the patient decides if they wish to try or not. As to lives saved and lives improved, I and Colleagues I work with have treated thousands of suicidal and profoundly depressed and catatonic patients who completely recovered and went on with living after treatment with SSRIs.
Thanks for being willing to have this discussion. It's so important that those of us who are aligned with medical freedom engage with each other on topics where there's disagreement, or different perspectives.
I always ask my clients about their understanding of their condition/s, and the vast majority have only the most rudimentary understanding of it. I know that medical consultation times are limited by various payers, but I still find it shocking that doctors can't set aside 15-30 minutes, maybe across multiple consultations, to explain to patients what they have, what is known about the condition and its causes, and what they can do to help themselves. My appointments with clients are 60-90 minutes, and I always devote a good chunk of the initial appointment to assessing their current level of knowledge about their condition, and filling in the gaps. This helps enormously with my clients' motivation to comply with their treatment plan, because they understand the rationale behind each component of it.
On the SSRI question, what specific effects of these drugs have you seen on patients' feelings, thoughts, behaviour (or anything else) that you believe to be responsible for them having the beneficial effects that you describe? Many dissident psychiatrists and psychotherapists state that SSRIs have a numbing effect on patients' emotions, and that this numbing effect actually interferes with effective psychotherapy. I have had many clients report to me that when they were on SSRIs, they no longer felt very sad, but they didn't feel very happy either. They felt very little of anything at all, and consequently they weren't motivated to change any of the circumstances in their lives that had triggered the depressive episode. What do you make of this - do your patients report this to you, and do you think it might be an impediment to recovery?
SSRI’s can numb patients range of emotions and this may be a reason to wean the dose or cease them. Some will tolerate a mild numbing if it’s mostly the lows that are numbed and not the happiness. It’s up to the patient if they can or will tolerate this side effect. The benefits are often as clear, mood lifts, suicidal thoughts stop, anxiety lessens and panic attacks lessen or stop. These and other benefits will often outweigh mild numbing and is for the patient to decide the risk benefit ratio. Obviously severe numbing or blunting of mood should not be tolerated by patients or their doctors. I’ve had many patients who can only tolerate the work of psychotherapy when their mood has lifted enough and anxiety lessened by medication to then solidify their improvement with therapy.
I would love to love to see this
I've not looked too closely but AMD's assertion that SSRI's are a factor in the increase in mass shootings is interesting.
Peter Breggin has been talking and writing about the role that SSRIs play in violent homicides and suicides for decades. He was the leading expert witness in a whole slew of legal cases involving SSRIs.
Another stacker refuted this claim of SSRIs being a major factor. Will check who
Hi Robyn, Thanks for another excellent article. No scientist despite a degree that suggest I should be, I have been rattling around the 'heart disease' issue for nearly 40 years. I came to the conclusion nearly 10 years ago that while many things may be contributing to cardiovascular issues the link to Diabetes, type 2 in particular, was worth researching. Onto the scene came the data gathered by a Chicago hospital Pathologist, Dr Joseph Kraft, who with his team over from memory 1978-1994 or thereabouts conducted 14380 or so Fasting Blood Glucose tests taking blood at intervals throughout a 3 hour period AND most importantly an Insulin assay concurrently. Please don't scream at me if I present this incorrectly BUT the major conclusion Kraft came to was that some 80% of all North Americans were Diabetic, nothing 'pre ' about it, with a large number completely unaware. What has this to do with Heart issues? People diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes have repeatedly been found to be about 8 x more likely to suffer a Coronary event within the next 5 years and 4 x more are likely to die of a coronary event than general population. To me that yells whatever increases the Diabetic risk is likely a MAJOR factor in Coronary outcomes, meaning common, and I am very sure it has little to nothing to do with Cholesterol. And it just may link to Liver and Pancreatic cancers. After 70 years of poking about with Cholesterol and Fats maybe a different approach is needed. I have a book of Kraft's results which is not easy reading but 'Bing' the light bulb went on. Something interesting here me thinks.
There's no doubt whatsoever that blood glucose dysregulation is a huge risk factor for CVD, and that it's far more common than the official diagnosis rate would indicate. There are links between insulin resistance and blood lipids; for example people who are insulin resistant have more atherogenic lipoprotein particles. When it comes to all these theories of causation of CVD, it's not a matter of either/or, it's both/and.
Robyn, a most gracious review of a fraught battlefield. My instinct tells me that a simplistic, one size fits all (statins) is asking for trouble. I have been on statins since 2014 and am very much looking forward to a robust discussion with my cardiologist. Thank you for the education to help my discussions.
That conversation with your cardiologist will be an interesting test of his/her ability to engage in discussion with you, as an educated patient. If you get a hostile response ("shut up and take your meds!!") I suggest finding another cardiologist who is more respectful of you. Likewise if he/she resorts to "I'm just following the guidelines" - not good enough!
It's well worth digging into the NNT site as they cite the sources of their recommendations. You might like to print these out (at least the abstracts) and take them to your appointment.
Good luck, and do drop back in to let us know how it went!
Thank you, I must say, these last thee years have woken me up to the fact that all of us need to take responsibility for our health, and view the medical people as simply a resource, not as masters.
Exactly. Trust no one. Check the facts and evidence. Listen to both sides of the argument. The fact that most so called freedom fighters don't seem to do this leaves me a bit despondent. But I used to be more gullible and attached to my beliefs (thinking they were facts), so maybe we can teach the art of healthy scepticism . .
I share your concern about the 'freedom community' - many people in it seem to me to lack discernment. They attach themselves to particular beliefs, or particular figures, and refuse to brook any discussion about them.
I wonder whether it is possible for adults to learn critical thinking skills, or whether there's a 'sensitive period' (as Maria Montessori described it) for learning this, and if one is not already temperamentally predisposed to critical thinking, one can't learn it after this sensitive period has passed. I hope I'm wrong. The only comprehensive solution that I can see to this problem is to teach critical thinking skills to children. Obviously the current schooling system is not doing this, and I don't know that many alternative schooling systems do a good job of it either. Returning to largely home-based education following classical principles seems to me to be the best option, but at present, that's a pipe dream for most parents.
Hi Robyn. Well I didn't learn critical thinking until my late thirties. Maybe not everyone can learn it and the younger you are taught the better.
One thing is for sure, it is better to ask people questions about their erroneous beliefs than to tell them they are wrong.
I think there's a personality component to applying these skills. It might be possible for everyone to learn them, but most people probably won't WANT to apply them because their personalities incline them to 'going with the flow' rather than challenging consensus views. Early education in critical thinking skills might be the only way to overcome this natural disinclination.
Totally agree that asking questions (the Socratic method) is superior to telling people they're wrong.
How about the "egoistic attachment" to contagious viral theory? Or is that still off limits verboten? The last time I brought it up here, you accused me of recycling "the same tired talking points" instead of dealing with the methodological and logical invalidity of that whole field.
As an aside, I am currently writing Part 5 of my Clean Energy Series because I was too soft on Simon Michaux’s report and it needs some major correcting!
I am actually thinking of hosting a debate on the virus existence/nonexistence issue by proponents of either side. I think J.J. Couey would be an excellent guest.
I do find that the 'no virus' people repeat a small number of assertions that I've seen comprehensively addressed by the 'yes virus' people.
Please please please show me where virology's "begging the question" fallacy has been at all addressed with empirical proof:
https://fullbroadside.substack.com/p/virologys-fatal-flaw
I agree, am more convinced daily by No Virus
Alas, the link to the acrimonious exchange doesn’t work.
I just tested it and it's working for me, although it takes a while to connect.
Thanks. It did work later.
$5 on AMD being a she.
I found the fabled exchange, 600 comments down. She Big Lebowski'd Robyn (and the whole concept of nutrition). Lebowski'd = "that's just, like, your opinion, man". Something which annoys me no end if i've gone to the trouble of being referenced and objective.
Yeah, that's what stuck in my craw. I wasn't stating my opinions on the four matters that I brought up, I was pointing out factual errors that were easily demonstrable (and one statement that I thought was misleading).
I'm really interested in why you think AMD is a woman. I don't want to pre-empt you, but after this exchange, I admit that I did think to myself "this feels like how a woman would argue". Which feels a bit weird to say, since I'm a woman myself. But I've had the misfortune to work in a female-dominated workplace for just long enough to notice certain tactics that women tend to resort to more often than men, when they feel like their position of dominance is threatened.
Perhaps a useful musing:
This whole episode (including JP and Robyn in this chat) strikes me as time/energy saving heuristics in action. I applaud such things because I am naturally lazy, but also because they seem essential for our brains. Noble as our verification intentions might be, at some stage we all just need a summary to carry on with.
eg) AMD's might be: Nutrition topic comes up. (subconscious - my perfectionism would mean i instantly double my workload if I investigate this topic with the same vigour as I do allopathic stuff) manifests as - (that's just, like, your opinion, man) which we can take as (I'm tired dammit, let me pidgeonhole this as 'nutrition opinions' so I can ignore it but still feel diligent)
As usual Shane, you provide me with a lot of interesting things to think about!
Although I wasn't weighing in on whether any particular nutrition approach is better than another. I was pointing out that a factual error had been made which misrepresented Ancel Keys' work. That's very different. Whatever people may conclude about which particular dietary approach is superior in a particular circumstance, the starting point should be that we don't misrepresent or lie about what a particular researcher reported.
I clicked on link about your 'altercation' with AMD but it didn't work . Sadly, I have to confess that this is too highbrow for me. As an aside, and I rarely click on links to sources, apparently ChatGPT invents links :) So even 'IT' wants to be appear to be right :) I do like AMD, but often don't bother to spend the 20 mins or so reading his stuff (I was most interested in his writings about the snallpox protests in the 1700s !) but then again, during lockdown, I had more time to read. I'm not sure why anyone would this post offensive.
That's very strange, because the link works for me (I just checked it again). You can just click on the link to AMD's article and then click on the link for Comments, to find it.
As you know, being offended is actually a vocation for a good chunk of the population these days 🤣.
Quite correct Robyn, agree entirely. A case of "Don't know how to respond or if I can be bothered to, so I will just say its you opinion get all huffy and offended and not bother then". In Aussie speak its a cop-out for a brain being put to sleep (by whose brain it is). I do wonder why some people think they have life or is this arrogant or egoistic? Can I go back to my insanity now please?
This whole BS of "well, I'm just speaking my truth" drives me nuts. There isn't "your truth" and "my truth"; there's "THE truth". Many truths aren't easily discernable and we can spend our whole lives inching closer and closer to grasping them, but it's the commitment to doing so that distinguishes the moral person from the virtue signaller. When it comes to developing opinions on objective questions, it's vital to put the effort into discovering and verifying matters of fact. People can know the same facts and still reach different opinions on them, but if believe things that are factually untrue, any opinions that you form from these false notions are fatally flawed.