What Really Happened In Maui

One of my main goals with this platform has been to help and support people who do not have the voice be heard (e.g., the forgotten victims of medicine). Since the Maui Wildfires started, I have received a lot of requests over email from readers in Hawaii to discuss what is happening there, so I’ve spent the last week trying to get a clear idea of that and what I can share which will be the most helpful to the people in Maui.
 Note: I try to read all the emails I receive—however I typically do not respond to them because I’ve found people I respond to often permanently add me to their mailing lists, leading to the email address becoming unusable due to the volume of emails it receives.
 Video Reports
 There have been a lot of videos going around describing differing narratives over what happened in Maui. Of the videos I have reviewed, these are the two I believe most accurately depict the current situation and provide the most useful information for those wishing to help. The first one is shorter (12 minutes) the second one is longer (58 minutes). Points from those videos will be referenced throughout this article.

 Note: colleagues I trust who know Bruce Douglas and Paul Deslauriers informed me that they hold both of these individuals in high regard. They also emphasized that both Paul and Bruce have repeatedly succeeded in making a large impact (which is rare for activists), and they have been consistent in their work for decades (which suggests they won’t be bought off).
 The Forgotten Side of Medicine is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

 How to Help
 A few major issues are currently afflicting the victims of this disaster. The most immediate ones are medical complications for the survivors, a lack of shelter and a lack of necessary supplies. The organization everyone has told me is doing the most to directly help the people affected by this disaster (and did so from the very start) is the one mentioned in the previous video, Hungry Heroes Hawaii , so if you wish to support a group, I would encourage supporting them .
 Note: People on the ground have told me that The Red Cross has also been helpful. Unfortunately, since it is a larger organization, a significant amount of the money donated to them goes towards administrative costs rather than directly helping people in need.
 Regarding the medical issues, I believe the largest issue is the PTSD survivors of Lahaina experienced—what they went through was horrific and something guaranteed to leave many with nightmares for years to come. I know that initially, many different local healers and therapists worked pro bono at the shelters to try and help the survivors psychologically recover, but as time went on, the shelters became much stricter with who was and was not allowed in. In short, the need for appropriate psychiatric care will likely be an unmet need for years to come (e.g., consider this account of how survivors from the California Paradise Fire are faring five years after the fact).
 Note: I believe two of the most effective methods for resolving past trauma are EMDR and removing trapped emotions. Both of these were discussed in this article .

 I also believe there will be issues with toxic smoke inhalation and burns. From the reports I’ve heard, smoke inhalation has not been as big an issue as it was in the larger wildfires and is primarily an issue for already sensitive patients (e.g., those with COVID-19 vaccine injuries and other chronic inflammatory disorders). I believe the most helpful and easy to use approach for healing wildfire toxicity is nebulized glutathione (which was discussed in this previous article on the mechanisms of and treatments for wildfire toxicity).

Regarding burns, severe burns requiring hospitalization were initially an issue, leading to many burn victims being shipped to Oʻahu (as more medical care is available there), but that appears to now be over. More people were affected by less severe burns, which while extremely unpleasant, did not require hospitalization. Burns (especially severe ones) have always been quite challenging to treat, and I believe this is due to the blood clumping burns create throughout the body ( the forgotten research on zeta potential and blood sludging discovered this). Since this concept is not recognized within conventional medicine, it hence is only indirectly addressed.
 Presently, my preferred ways for working with burns are as follows:
•Use aloe vera topically (beyond my own observation, there is real evidence this helps ). The major issue with this approach is ensuring the quality of the aloe vera used.

•Use Chinese burn cream (Ching Wan Hung). This readily available ointment is one of the most effective Chinese herbal formulas I have ever come across (the other being Yunnan Baiyao —which will be the subject of a future article).
 •Be around a negative ion generator. A lot of (sadly forgotten) research (detailed within this book ) was done on patients in burn units and found it dramatically improved their recovery (much more so than any other available therapy). I believe this worked because the negative ions, through imparting a negative charge on the surfaces they contact, directly restore the zeta potential of the burn site and antidote the blood sludging from the burn. Unfortunately, negative ion generators vary in quality and not all work for this function.
 I have also heard of a lot of other approaches being used for burns (e.g., certain topical cold laser treatments reportedly were quite helpful for hospitalized burn victims). However, since I have no direct experience with these I cannot comment on them.
 In addition to these immediate issues, there are also broader ones the people of Maui will have to deal with, such as:

•Retaining employment—much of Maui’s economy is tourism based, so Hawaii’s governor encouraging people to stop coming to Maui was devastating for locals who are already stretched thin making ends meet (Maui has become prohibitively expensive for locals to live in since COVID). For this reason, one of the most helpful things you can do for the people of Maui is to encourage those you know to resume vacationing there (most of the island was unaffected by the fires).
 •Which narrative ultimately becomes “truth”—that this disaster was the unpreventable result of climate change or that this disaster was a result of massive incompetence by Hawaii’s government (and the corporate interests that control it).

The great fear everyone I’ve spoken to holds is that the non-affluent natives who create the spirit and aloha of Hawaii will be economically displaced by affluent outsiders who only care about their own enjoyment and corporate interests primarily motivated by profit. If the state is able to escape its culpability for what happened, nothing will constrain it from following a path that leads to this occurring and there are already many signs that is the long term plan for Lahaina.
 The Politics of Hawaii
 Hawaii has a curious political situation—from the top down it has one of the worst state governments in the USA, but from the bottom up, it has one of the best grassroots movements in the country. For example, many of the most extreme and long lasting COVID power grabs were done by Hawaii’s government, while many of the most effective citizen actions against the COVID policies (e.g., the mandates) were also done in Hawaii.

Likewise, despite its relatively small population, a disproportionate number of my readers come from Hawaii. While Substack doesn’t show me an island by island breakdown, based on the emails I receive, I believe many of them are in Maui. For example, I’ve received multiple requests to cover a concerning deployment of lab altered mosquitos (designed to control the existing mosquito population) being forced onto Maui and then the other islands despite it currently being challenged in court—which is discussed in this article and this article written by a coalition opposing it.

My best explanation for this contrast between the Hawaii’s grassroots networks and their state government is that island nations (due to the distance from a central authority) tend to have significantly more dysfunctional and corrupt governments. Conversely, something about the environment in Hawaii tends to make locals be much more connected to their hearts and communities, so they are more likely to go out of their way to make things better for everyone.

A recent illustration of this contrast can be seen in how these fires were handled. The state government, especially at the start, largely failed to meet the needs of those hurt by the fires, but the locals dropped everything they were doing to care for their fellow Hawaiians—and were remarkably effective in doing so.
 The history of this contrast traces back to 1893. At that date, Hawaii’s government, against the wishes of both the native Hawaiians and America’s government, was overthrown by American corporate interests , before long becoming our territory and later still a state. Because of this, those corporate interests (and their descendants) have both been able to exert significant influence over Hawaii with less than adequate oversight from the federal government and continually been at odds with the native Hawaiians.
 Presently, a “Democrat” political machine controls the state government, where residents will overwhelming vote in favor of the Democrat candidate (e.g., 92% of the state senate are Democrats, 88% of the state house of representatives are Democrats, and 64% of Hawaii voted for Biden). Because of this, the party bosses control the state legislature, and (I’ve heard this from insider sources) if elected Democrats do not comply with the wishes of those party bosses, they are effectively neutered and unable to do anything during their legislative tenure (e.g., their bills go nowhere and they do not end up on any committees).

At a local level (e.g., members of a city council), party preference has a much smaller impact, so those who are elected are much more able to create change in the system. Until recently, many of the key governmental positions in Maui were directly appointed by officials beholden to corporate interests. That changed due to a 2018 citizen’s initiative , which until 2022, was able to elect a majority on the local town council who did not serve corporate interests and then set about reforming many longstanding issues (e.g., how key officials were appointed).
 So, as best as I can tell, a similar tension to the one being seen throughout the world exists in Maui, where groups which for generations have held power over the people no longer can do so in the face of new tools for promoting Democracy. Since people never like to let go of power, the transition typically is quite turbulent.
 Business on Hawaii
 The primary factor which motivated overthrowing Hawaii’s government was the money to be made there—which at the time was through selling tropical crops such as sugar cane and pineapples (e.g., Sanford Dole was appointed as the new leader of Hawaii after the old government was overthrown and his cousin founded Dole Pineapple).
 Over time, it became less and less profitable to produce tropical cash crops in Hawaii and tourism displaced agriculture as the predominate industry. For example, on Maui, there was a longstanding 41,000 acre sugar cane plantation residents frequently protested against (due to the pollution cane burning practices created). That business gradually stopped being profitable (e.g., workers had to be paid more rather than being treated as indentured servants, subsidies and tariffs stopped being provided to protect its market and much cheaper sources of sugar were found). After 146 years of operation, in 2016, the plantation closed and was sold to California farm company and a Canadian investment firm for 246 million.
 Note: in California, many believe the primary cause of its recurring wildfires are poor forestry management (e.g., not creating firebreaks in the forest, aggressively suppressing smaller fires and not conducting controlled burns) that has resulted from longstanding political forces (e.g., environmental lobbyists) preventing the appropriate forestry management from being implemented. In Maui, a similar situation exists, as the sugar cane plantations replaced native (fire resistant) plants with easily combustable grasses. Many felt this was a fire risk and petitioned for it to be addressed, but neither the sugar cane plantation’s management nor its new owners were willing to do so.
 As agriculture lost its profitability in Maui, luxury living replaced it. In turn, the economic force behind the island became the developers (many of whom I have been told are descended from the same families who originally took over Hawaii), and there has been a constant push and pull between the natives and the developers for land they can turn into lucrative property.
 Lahaina has been at the center of this because it has extremely valuable land (it’s at the center of Maui’s tourism district) and until 1842 was the capitol of the Hawaiian Kingdom. Because of its historical ties to the native Hawaiians (e.g., they consider it to be a sacred site and many parts of their cultural heritage were located there) many Hawaiian families had lived there for generations and were not willing to give their land up to developers. As a result, a variety of battles had been fought over what would be done with Lahaina’s land, and until the fires happened, the developers had been kept away from key districts of Lahaina. Many (especially those who had spent years fighting this) thus believe the fires were a backhanded way for the developers to gain access to that land.
 Energy in Hawaii
 One of the major challenges Hawaii faces is producing energy due to its isolation—making energy significantly more expensive there (e.g., in 2022, it was 2.47 times the national average). The typical way this challenge is addressed is through nuclear power, but in Hawaii’s case, no nuclear reactors exist on the island (presumably because Hawaii does not want the various environmental risks they entail) and instead fossil fuels are imported from far away to run their power plants.
 For this reason (along with Hawaii’s wealth and liberal population) Hawaii is often at the top of the list for a transition to green energy (e.g., wind or solar). As a result, the share of energy in Hawaii produced by renewable resources has been rapidly increasing (e.g., in 2022 roughly 30% of its energy came from renewable resources) and a state law requires 100% of it to be from renewable sources by 2045.
 Note: Although Hawaii has had a decent amount of success with traditional renewable options like solar or wind, I personally believe the best existing energy option for Hawaii would be geothermal plants on the island of Hawaii (since it has active volcanos), which is then stored as hydrogen and distributed to the other islands. The pilot geothermal plant on Hawaii has successfully produced a lot of energy, but it has not been scaled up, yet alone has anyone consider how its energy could be transferred to the other islands. On the surface, I strongly support the idea of adopting green energy technologies, but I simultaneously do not because (as discussed in this article ) the ones that are ultimately chosen tend to be expensive and damaging to the environment rather than technologies that offer a significant improvement over existing fossil fuel systems.
 Presently, I am not sure how much of the high cost of Hawaii’s electricity comes from the inherent cost of its situation and how much of it comes from their energy company overcharging the state (Hawaii Electric—which has a monopoly and produces 95% of the state’s electricity). Often, when you have private for-profit institutions controlling a public utility (e.g., electricity), costs are raised while necessary maintenance (which the increased costs should be paying for) is deferred. One of the most notorious examples of this price gouging was what Enron did to California in 2000-2001. By taking advantage of recent deregulation of the state energy market, Enron was able to spike electricity costs by up to 20 times their normal amount, creating rolling blackouts and ultimately costing the state 40-45 billion dollars.
 More recently, PG&E (California’s primary private utility) was successfully sued for its role in numerous wildfires, including the 2018 wildfire (which was one of the largest and most devastating ones in history). The lawsuits were successful, and due to the billions it owed, in January 2019, PG&E declared bankruptcy.
 Note: although the lawsuits were successful (e.g., there was a 13.5 billion dollar judgement) almost none of that money has gone to the victims of the 2018 fire and as a result, the less affluent were the largest victims of it. Unless Hawaiians unite, I suspect something similar will happen here.
 Investigators with the California Public Utilities Commission found that there were systematic problems with PG&E’s oversight of the nearly 100-year-old power line that sparked the (2018) Camp fire.
 The lawsuit filed by the trust sought to hold the former executives accountable for not properly maintaining vegetation around electrical equipment and for not installing power shutoff equipment at the time of the 2017 fire. The suit also argued that the utility company did not properly update 100-year-old equipment in connection with the Camp fire.
 Now consider the charges against Hawaii Electric:
 The lawsuit filed Wednesday contends that since 2017, as Maui’s fire risks increased, Hawaiian Electric nonetheless paid out tens of millions in increased payments to shareholders every year.
 The plaintiffs accuse the utility company of years of inaction and negligence, and argue that it should have had plans in place to shut down power systems [so they can’t spark fires] before fierce winds blew across Hawaii.
 Note: Hawaii Electric had ample warning before the fires started that their power lines had a significant fire risk during the high winds and needed to be turned off.
 In explaining potential upgrades to its systems, Hawaiian Electric’s funding request last year specifies that California’s power shutoff plan is among electric industry strategies “used to mitigate wildfire risks until more robust preventive measures have been implemented in an area.”
 Watts, who said his team has been approached by hundreds of potential plaintiffs, said his lawsuit is aimed at preventing the islands from ever experiencing fires like this again. He said similar litigation in California has led to safety improvements and processes that have limited recent wildfire fallout, and that Hawaiian Electric was aware of those efforts.
 The lawsuit details multiple instances and documents [dating back years] in which Hawaiian Electric and public utility officials acknowledge the dangers of wildfires, and the potential for downed power lines and grid infrastructure to start them in areas where vegetation growth was not mitigated. The risks were outlined in Hawaiian Electric news releases, documents it filed to the state, and in its own expenditure plans,
 In one instance, a 2022  funding request  for $189.7 million from the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission to harden its power grid statewide, Hawaiian Electric said that the risk of its utility system “causing a wildfire ignition is significant.” Despite the request being approved, Hawaiian Electric did not act, the lawsuit alleges.
 “Unfortunately, for the residents of Lahaina, these proposed grid hardening expenditures were deferred,” according to the lawsuit filed Wednesday. The suit states the company hadn’t spent any funding on power pole upgrades or wildfire prevention in 2021, 2022 or 2023, nor had spent anything on hazard tree removals in 2021 or 2022.
 Since everyone is aware of the precedent set by the California wildfires, Hawaii Electric’s stock has already dropped by two-thirds, and it is very possible that like PG&E it will have to declare bankruptcy. My hope is that this will result in it becoming a public utility (so its revenue is used to restore the power grid rather than just making as much money as possible), but given Hawaii’s political climate, I am doubtful this will happen.

 Note: as you might have guessed, some degree of corruption appears to have impeded Hawaii Electric adopting a safer power grid (e.g., this article documents financial conflicts of interest between Hawaii Electric and Hawaii’s public regulators). This is similar to a longstanding problem in the medicine—the regulators responsible for approving or mandating dubious pharmaceuticals often have financial conflicts with the pharmaceutical manufacturer.
 Previous Disasters
 Large scale environmental disasters are often shown to be the result of a corporation being warned an existing practice had a high risk of causing the disaster, and the corporation then declining to spend the money (which was often not that much) needed to address the issue. Greg Palast’s Vulture’s Picnic shows how this has happened with many major disasters including the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill , the Fukishima nuclear meltdown , and BP’s “unprecedented” Deep Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill, which was due to a risky drilling practice that had caused an identical blowout in Azerbaijan 17 months beforehand .

Like the recent wildfire, all of these examples illustrate a longstanding problem with our current economic model that we also see in other areas like unsafe but profitable pharmaceuticals (e.g., the COVID-19 vaccines) being pushed onto the market. Since corporations shield officers of the corporation from liability for their conduct, there is no incentive for them to avoid reckless practices that inevitably lead to disasters.

Furthermore, due to political lobbying, the corporations being “too big to fail” and bankruptcy protections being available, in the rare case where something catastrophic happens and the corporation is found liable, it can still continue to make money for its shareholders. Hawaii Electric for instance was fully aware of the liability it faced for doing exactly what PG&E had done, but nonetheless completely ignored it. That proves the current penalties for this type of conduct are not sufficient to prevent it.
 What Caused the Wildfires?
 From looking at the available information, I feel certain the following are true:
•Some of the wildfires were sparked by downed electrical power lines.
•Fierce winds knocked the power lines over.
•Fierce winds made the fires spread rapidly.

However there are two things, I am much less sure of.

First, were those winds were due to the hurricane? In the interview with Dr. Malone at the start of this article, a very strong case is made that they could not have been due to the hurricane—something at least one mainstream outlet is now beginning to acknowledge. If the winds were not due to the hurricane, this is important for people to be aware of, as the mainstream media will almost certainly try to argue that it was and hence that Hawaii’s government had no culpability in what happened. Instead, it will simply be argued that Lahaina proved it is critical to continue our War Against Climate Change (which as a lifelong environmentalist, I believe has been extremely detrimental to the environmental movement ).

Second, I am unsure if all the fires were started by downed power lines, as numerous ones erupted over a very short time span, some started in areas without power lines, and I was told some of those locations were also far enough from the road that it is unlikely they were started by a cigarette being thrown out the window. For example, this video was recently shared with me by a reader:

 Assuming that is the case, it means the most probable explanation for some of the fires was deliberate arson, which becomes even more probable given that (as discussed in Dowd’s interview) Maui has a longstanding arson issue.

It’s less clear who the arsonists were, as locals have told me that amongst other things, cars will periodically be stolen, stripped of parts, and then set alight in a field to hide the evidence but it is also possible something more nefarious occurred that was deliberately intended to burn Lahaina down . When I looked further into this, I came across a report stating that a suspicious individual may have been seen in the same location where one of the fires later started, but since that witness was not confident in what they saw, I wasn’t sure what to make of it.
 Note: Wildfires also broke out on two other Hawaiian islands and may also provide an important part of the picture for what happened.
 What Turned the Fires into a Disaster?
 When disastrous events occur and root cause analyses are performed after the fact, a frequent observation is that numerous small errors compounded to form a catastrophe a situation analogous to that described by Murphy’s Law —“ Anything that can go wrong will go wrong, and at the worst possible time. ” Because of this, the normal goal of a root cause analysis to identify those errors and put policies and procedures in place so that they cannot happen again. Sadly, they typically do not get adopted until a major disaster (or multiple similar ones like California and then Maui’s wildfires) occur that prove their necessity.
 For example, in the infamous 1911 Triangle Shirt Waist Fire , 146 workers died because a variety of terrible policies were followed such as locking the exit door shut so workers would not attempt to take breaks during their shift (leading to them being trapped inside once the fire started and forcing many to jump to their deaths to flee the fire). Outrage at the disaster in turn led to fire codes and laws to protect laborers being implemented across the state of New York.
 In addition to Hawaii Electric making catastrophic blunders, Maui’s government did as well. Some of these are difficult to believe, but I am relatively sure all are true:

•Firefighters took a long time to respond to fires. I heard reports I deem to be credible that emergency services had to be repeatedly contacted (e.g., for over an hour) to respond to a fire that had started. Likewise, many believe Maui’s firefighters left Lahaina prematurely after extinguishing the initial blaze, which many suspect allowed it to reignite into a much more devastating blaze. Both of these indicate Maui had a systemic shortage of necessary fire fighting resources.
 •No warnings were sent out to people in Lahaina—either over cell phones or with the sirens (which are regularly tested to warn Hawaiians of a potential tsunami). Thus far, the government has not provided an acceptable explanation for this profound failure which killed a lot of people (currently it is being argued the sirens might have caused people to inappropriately flee to higher grounds). Because of these failures, many did not realize the fire was coming until their house was on fire.

•In Lahaina, one witness reported that electrical power went out and cell phone service switched to emergency calls only prior to heavy winds hitting the area (which in turn preceded the fires hitting the area). I still am not sure what to make of this, but it helps to explain why residents were unable to warn each other of the impending fire.

•The fire hydrants in Lahaina (and in Kula the other major fire site) stopped working.
Exactly why this happened is still unknown (e.g., its theorized that houses combusting depressurized the water system—although that has not typically been observed in fires).

•Maui’s deputy director for water resource management refused to release water to landowners near Lahaina after it was requested to the supply the firefighters . When the water was finally released 5 hours later, it was too late.
 •Police blocked the exits from Lahaina and refused to open them up when individuals attempted to flee the fires—as a result, only those who disobeyed the police officer, knew backroads to take, used a bicycle or fled on foot (e.g., to the ocean) survived. This is an incredible accusation, but multiple witnesses have attested to this on camera, and people I trust independently corroborated it.
 Note: This closure may have been in part due to a minor fire earlier in the day, or a fear of a downed power lines further down the road. The police officer who blocked the road trapping everyone in the fire zone stated that he did so because he was ordered to, which has made many suspect the police leadership made a catastrophic blunder (or worse).
 •Schools were closed because of the early morning fire near Lahainaluna High School. Many children may have thus been home alone while their parents were at work and not prepared to flee their homes when the fires arrived.
 If each of these is looked at in isolation, they could be explained by poor training or a general lack of competence. However, when viewed together, they become much more suspicious.
 Note: I also suspect the older construction of Lahaina (which may not have not been up to code due to having been grandfathered in) likely made it more vulnerable to a fire engulfing it. Likewise, many residents had no real understanding of wildfires and thus were not prepared to react quickly to the risks they were facing (as Dr. Malone explained, being inside one can be terrifying and disorientating, especially if you have no prior familiarity with them).
 Why is Lahaina Being Hidden From the Public?
 The fires started on the morning of August 8 and were essentially contained by the morning of August 10. At the same time, heavy restrictions were placed on who could enter Lahaina (initially no one could and then only residents could) and after significant public protest (along with a recognition the restrictions were not feasible), those restrictions were lifted on August 13. In parallel to this happening, a no-fly zone was enacted above Lahaina , making it impossible for drones to be flown that could see what was happening below (their default software prevents this).
 Because this happened, individuals attempting to bring supplies into Lahaina were blocked from entering, which resulted in many losing trust in the government and locals then bypassing the road blockade by bringing relief supplies in by boat.
 Exactly why the road closures happened is more debatable. The least accusatory explanation is that the government’s standard operating procedure is to close disaster sites down since that may prevent further injuries from occurring (e.g., due to toxic fumes), prevent looting, prevent obstructions to the search and rescue operations and prevent hysteria from breaking out at the disaster site (e.g., from someone seeing their house burned down). None of those appeared to be applicable in Lahaina’s case, but since the fire situation was overwhelming and confusing, the government may have just looked for the safety of following the SOP.
 The more accusatory explanation is that they wanted to hide the extent of the devastation from the public—a hypothesis supported both by the no fly-zone above Lahaina and the fact that while the roads have been opened, barriers were placed around ground zero (including near the highway) that make it impossible to clearly see what is occurring at the disaster site. As other commentators have noted in previous disasters (e.g., in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina) locking down the site appeared to have been done to prevent the public from learning about certain suspicious aspects of the disaster.
 In the case of Lahaina, I believe the most plausible reason why the site is being locked down is because the carnage and devastation there is really bad publicity for both the government (which wants a blank check to decide what happens to Lahaina after these events) and the tourism industry (which the economy depends upon).

For example, after the exit roads were closed, many people realized their only option for survival was to run to the ocean and jump in (which according to some reports required jumping through a layer of ignited ash on the water’s surface). Once there, they had to find an area that was not too hot (which required going far enough from the shore they could no longer stand and hence needed to tread water) but not too far away that they became hypothermic while simultaneously not suffocating from the smoke. At the same time this was happening, many had to watch their livelihoods burn down and help keep children from drowning. Ultimately, people were trapped in this nightmarish situation for 3-8 hours, and an unspecified number died. Since this happened, I’ve begun to hear (still unconfirmed) reports of dead bodies washing up on far away shores, which seems plausible given what happened.

Likewise, it is almost certain a large number of children unnecessarily died (e.g., because they were sent home without their parents earlier in the day). I suspect that because of how strongly their deaths will spur the public to action, there has essentially been radio silence on the issue—no estimate on the number of dead children has been announced and so far I’ve only seen one report viscerally discussing this (it mentioned that families were found inside their homes huddled together as the fires consumed them).
 At this point, 114 deaths have been confirmed, and 850 people have been reported missing (e.g., see this facebook group of individuals trying to locate lost loved ones and mauipeople.org which hosts google spreadsheet compiling the missing individuals). Given that Hawaii has a longstanding homeless issue (many states fly their homeless population to Hawaii), I suspect additional deaths also occurred in that population which never may be reported.
 What Needs To Be Done Now?
 Typically when disasters like this happen, the media works very hard to establish a narrative that then becomes fact (e.g., this was all climate change rather than gross incompetence). However, as Paul Deslauriers pointed out, in the early days of the event when people still have strong feelings about it, that is the best time to get an alternative narrative out that can remains part of the discussion far into the future.
 I believe the single most important thing to do is for a citizen’s commission to be established which independently investigates what actually caused the fires, what human errors led them to become devastating, and what policies need to be implemented so nothing similar happens in the future. In order for this to work, there has to be an independent panel (as the government will inevitably try to cover things up) that is both competent to objectively conduct the investigation and fully trusted by the local population. Although this is a lot to ask for, I believe the grassroots network in Maui is uniquely suited for this task and may be able to accomplish it, especially if the alternative media and costly lawsuits help to promote the commission’s findings.
 W. Edwards Deming is widely credited with rebuilding Japan after World War 2 into the economic power house it is today and hence is considered to be one of the most effective managers in history. A key point Deming made is that when things go wrong in industry, the error is typically not due to a specific person screwing up, but rather existing policies and procedures which made the screw up possible. In looking at the Maui disaster, it’s easy to want to blame a specific person (like those mentioned earlier in the article). Yet, at the same time, so many errors happened, in total, it suggests a general lack of competency and preparation for something like this rather than a single person being at fault (assuming the disaster was not deliberate—which is possible but in my eyes the less likely possibility).
 If that commission does ultimately come together, one idea I would like for them to seriously consider is adopting a resolution for part of the money from the inevitable lawsuits going towards funding the State of Hawaii buying a Canadair CL-415 “super scooper” aircraft. Typically when wildfires happen, resources are mobilized from a large geographical area to contain the fire, something which is simply impossible due to Hawaii’s island geography (and why Maui’s fire department rapidly became overwhelmed by the fires). Super scoopers fly over the water, filling a 1,400 gallon tank with water and then turning it into a fine mist which can be dropped on a fire and rapidly put it out (and given Hawaii’s proximity to the ocean do this at least a dozen times per hour).

 Although these aircrafts are expensive (around 30 million dollars) that is a drop in the bucket compared to the billions in damage from this fire and the billions which will come from lawsuits. Furthermore, it is an aircraft that can reach all of Hawaii, a single adequately maintained one should be capable of meeting the fire suppression needs of all the Hawaiian islands. However, I am less sure what the maximum wind they can operate at is and it is possible that once the winds reached 60-80 miles an hour in Lahaina, it would not have been possible to fully utilize the aircraft.
 More than anything else though, my hope is that these events remind the people of Hawaii of the importance of direct democracy and help to inspire a grassroots push to elect a local government the people can both trust and rely upon.
 Note: many people understandably are extremely upset with the mayor of Maui. Per my understanding, the local activist community supported his election because he had a reputation for being fair and honest in his dealings. Given the difficulty of having candidates like that make it to office, my hope is that these fires can lead to a collaborative relationship where the mayor is pushed to stick his neck out to do the right thing with the recovery effort of these fires rather than an antagonistic one where the mayor serves as a lightning rod for understandable outrage over what happened.
 Conclusion
 A year ago, an article was written which encapsulates much of the mission of this Substack. It discussed the history of propaganda, and shared that at the same time the science of modern propaganda came into existence, a major problem was facing American leadership—technology had made society complex enough that the general population could no longer understand much of what was needed to make society smoothly operate and thus the citizenry could no longer be relied upon vote for policies that were in the nation’s best interests.
 Two schools of thought then emerged. One argued that the educational system needed to be revamped so the population retained an understanding of how everything worked and thus the citizenry could be relied upon to vote for the best interests of society when accurate information was presented to them. The other camp argued that a group of competent experts who could understand that complexity should make the decisions needed to run society and then have the emerging propaganda apparatus trick the society into supporting those decisions and unifying behind the public good.
 Both sides had very strong feelings, but after the World Wars (especially the fear Hitler’s propaganda would conquer the world unless we beat it with better propaganda), the propaganda model “won.” Once that happened, a vertical model was developed where an effective (and manipulative) message would be concocted and then distributed to every media outlet in society. This for instance is why local “independent” news stations around the country are often observed to disseminate the exact same message ( this partisan montage is the clearest example I have seen but countless others exist too).
 The internet put a major wrench in that model because it made mass decentralized horizontal messaging possible. For example, Robert Malone now has more viewers than CNN, and for a relatively small cost (a lot of his and his wife’s time, travel, putting a simple studio together in their house and the help of volunteers) he is arguably providing a greater impact on the public than the $882 million CNN spends on operating expenses each year. Likewise, there are countless more people (e.g., me) who with no cost besides our time are periodically able to get highly impactful narratives out that change public opinion.
 This means the existing propaganda model of governance is rapidly becoming obsolete—if people in charge lie, they do not have anywhere near enough money to counteract citizens across the globe exposing their lies. As a result, propaganda is now accomplishing the opposite of its intended effect—rather than creating trust in the government and social cohesion, its repeated deployment is creating increasing distrust and division.
 In many ways, this mirrors the practice of medicine. Many doctors follow a paternalistic model where they decide (often by following corrupt guidelines ) what’s best for a patient and then use their authority (or the guideline’s authority) to pressure the patient into following that plan. Patients hate this, and especially since COVID and the interest in alternative medical narratives on the internet, patients are starting to demand physicians who work with them in a collaborative manner that explains what is going on in an understandable manner and then empower the patient to make the decision that best benefits them. From my own observations, it appears a lot of doctors don’t have the capacity to follow the collaborative model, but at the same time, many do and many more are being forced to by the economic pressures of the public demanding this type of care.
 Furthermore, no viable solution yet exists to overcome the internet facilitating horizontal communication that bypasses the vertical propaganda (be it medical or non-medical). Our leaders can’t cut off the internet entirely because too much of the economy now depends upon it, and any attempt to censor things online simply gets bypassed and increases interest in the censored message.
 As a result, we are now in a tumultuous situation. Those in power don’t want to let go of their ability to make decisions in secret that many might not agree with and then enact those decisions through vertical propaganda. Instead they are doubling down and using more and more extreme methods to control the society (e.g., the massive coordinated fear and censorship we saw throughout COVID-19 which again ultimately backfired and increased distrust in the central authorities).
 Like the authors of that article , I believe we instead need to seriously look at the second option; empowering our citizenry to understand the complexities facing us today and transparently presenting sensible options we can support in a mature and rational manner. My hope is that the world’s love for Maui and the egregious nature of the situation will force an honest conversation to be had on exactly what happened there.
 In conclusion, I would like to thank each of you for your help in bringing awareness to Maui’s situation and sharing articles like this with those who can benefit from hearing that alternative narrative. The key weakness of the vertical propaganda model is that it cannot overcome people who are united and talk to each other with open hearts—something the people of Maui are well known for.
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The American Board of Internal Medicine's Longstanding War On Doctors Is Escalating

The unholy alliance of industry captured high-impact medical journals, federal public health agencies, professional societies (ABIM, AMA, APHa etc), and most importantly, the state medical licensing boards directed by the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) are still going hard after us “dissenting” doctors. You know, those of us that very publicly called out the unscientific policies implemented by corrupted policymakers in a directed pursuit of profits and power. Their actions trying to silence us (and to scare other doctors from speaking out) are escalating.
 Recently, what I call the “misinformation committee” of the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) voted to strip Professor Paul Marik and myself of our Board certifications. To best understand why they would do this, I think it is important to review what the ABIM is, how it operates, and then detail their absurd attempt to paint us as misinformationists by using disinformation.
 Let’s trace my current relationship with the ABIM to today:
 At the end of my training, I became Board Certified by the ABIM in three specialties (Internal Medicine, Pulmonary Diseases, and Critical Care Medicine).
 What is the ABIM? Well, from this devastating article by Kurt Eichenwald, an accomplished corporate investigative journalist who did a devastating takedown of the ABIM and its officers in a Newsweek piece in 2015:
 The ABIM is a purported nonprofit that certifies new physicians as meeting standards of practice. Beginning in the early 1990s, the ABIM ordered certified doctors to be recertified, again and again. Without the ABIM seal of approval, lots of internists and subspecialists can't get jobs and can't admit patients to hospitals. So by taking advantage of that monopolistic power, the ABIM has forced hundreds of thousands of physicians to follow recertification processes that doctors complain cost them tons of money (paid to the ABIM), require tons of time (taken from families and medical practices) and accomplish nothing.
 In many doctor’s opinion, this cash grab of the ABIM by selling “certifications” is a corrupt farce. There is no evidence that certifying doctors in this highly costly way does anything to improve the quality of care delivered. The ABIM has not only refused to produce data showing the program improves patient care but also hasn't conducted any studies on that matter. In fact, the ABIM and its related organizations are:
 harming American medicine and diminishing the quality of scientific research, pushing physicians to close practices rather than wasting time on expensive and frustrating busywork, and forcing specialists to play a game of medical trivial pursuit. (Even Baron has admitted that he was tested for recertification on topics he never used in his practice.)
 But it sure does generate cash for ABIM executives. Note that Board Certification used to simply be a sort of “honor” denoting that the member passed a more rigorous examination in their specialty. That “honor” comes at a price though:

 Since I am (was?) Board certified in 3 specialties, lets do some math as this is what it costs me to re-certify every ten years:
 $1,430 for Internal Medicine
 $2,325 for Pulmonary Diseases
 $2,325 for Critical Care Medicine
 But wait, we are not done yet. These bastards were not making enough money with once-every-ten-year recertification exam fees, so they invented a new program of annual busywork education requirements which they called Maintenance of Certification (MOC) which costs you $220 every year for every certification (plus late fees if you forget). To wit, I went into my patient portal and discovered.. I owe them $480 for each of my certifications!

 And get this - that money essentially goes to ABIM executive salaries and pensions and other dubious private investments as described by Eichenwald where he details the insane lengths the ABIM goes to "hide” the compensation and pension data on its executives. What is worse is that ABIM certification has now been made a requirement of employment as a faculty member of academic medical centers and hospitals and is also a requirement to be on many insurance company panels (these actions further strengthen the control of doctor behavior).
 Doctors have started publicly slamming the group in industry publications. "ABIM is imposing on us an onerous and ill-conceived tool, one that most physicians agree is irrelevant," Dr. Karmela Chan wrote in Internal Medicine News . "I am glad this conversation is happening, because, frankly, the process was enough to make me want to quit being a doctor." Further, in a recent poll of 2,211 physicians conducted on a doctors-only website called Sermo, 97 percent of the respondents criticized recertification.
 Richard J. Baron, the ABIM CEO that sent letters threatening decertification to me and Paul, makes close to a million dollars a year, however that data is almost impossible to find due to the ABIM’s multiple attempts to obscure it as well as its spokespeople avoiding answering any inquiries on the topic. Here is a summary of Eichenwalds findings on the ABIM:
 In 2015, they were 5 months late in filing their publicly available financial report with the IRS ( that several journalists were very interested in ).

 The report is full of obfuscations and anomalies of reporting of not only the actual money earned by the executives, and particularly Baron, but his financial conflicts of interest are even better hidden.

 A big percentage of the ABIM’s millions was in the form of cash to one former employee.

 The ABIM in 2013 had 57 million against liabilities of 105 million - while Baron was going around saying that its assets are three times its liabilities ( this was a 100% lie. When I get to the ABIM’s response to our defense letter, remember that what liars do is.. lie).

 It lost $4.8 million on $55.5 million in revenues, no small feat and almost entirely due to a bloated payroll.

 It also claims it spends no money on lobbying while it spent between 100K to 160K annually to lobby Congress on Medicare and Medicaid ( another lie ).

 The data on top officers compensation is so obscured and fragmented, Eichenwald reported that he had found it much easier to discover executive compensation at Enron, Worldcom and Adelphia - all famous for lying on tax filings. Again no small feat ( to be one of the top corporate liars in the U.S ).

 Officers “double dip” - former CEO Christine Cassel got $741K from ABIM and $247K from the ABIM “Foundation” (slush fund for ABIM officials) and also got $219K in “other compensation” - totaling $1.2 million for one year. ( Nice gig if you can get it).

 But wait, we are not done. Cassel also got $504K in “deferred compensation” for a total of $1.71 million more that year (six times the median compensation for similar sized non-profits). Six times.

 Then there is this doozy of an article which came out this week in The Defender by Children’s Health Defense, detailing the ABIM CEO Richard Baron’s conflicts of interest:

 Some of the most disturbing reveals:
 “The head of a national medical organization who publicly called for doctors to lose their licenses unless they supported government narratives on COVID-19 treatments and vaccines concealed his relationship with a public relations firm whose client list also included Pfizer, Moderna and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
 Dr. Richard Baron, president and CEO of the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) is a client of Weber Shandwick, investigative journalist  Paul D. Thacker  reported on Wednesday.
 Note that I went after Weber Shandwick in my book, “ The War on Ivermectin” where I argue (without proof, although I believe that is coming because I know of a subpoena coming their way) that they created and launched the “Horse Dewormer PR campaign,” highlights of which was the famous FDA tweet and absurd Rolling Stone article:

 In late 2021, Baron publicly pushed for doctors who spread “misinformation” about COVID-19 and the vaccines to  lose their license and certification .
 Last year, Baron partnered with Weber Shandwick to propose a South by Southwest (SXSW) panel titled “ When Doctors Prescribe Misinformation .” The proposal was subsequently accepted and the  panel took place at SXSW  in Austin, Texas, on March 13.
 According to Thacker, “Weber Shandwick’s panel featuring Dr. Baron has been widely promoted by the PR firm’s employees,” including Sarah Mahoney, executive vice president, Healthcare Communications, Strategy & Planning for Weber Shandwick, who in a  LinkedIn post , wrote she “can’t think of a more important topic right now.”
 Although to the unawake the following may seem normal public health practice, but to those of us fighting agency capture by Big Pharma, it is absurd:
 The CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD) in September 2020 awarded Weber a $50 million contract “to promote the vaccination of children, pregnant women and those at risk for flu and increase the general acceptance and use of vaccines,” according to the PR firm’s website.
 Thacker said he believes much of what is labeled “misinformation” in medicine and academic research “is really just corporate PR,” and that “Congress needs to take a harder look at funding for ‘misinformation research.’ “
 Speaking of taking a harder look at where the funding is coming from for “misinformation research” and the ABIM, it turns out that.. we can’t. Why? Check out this tweet showing a clause inserted into the ABIM’s by-laws in 1998:

 But wait, it gets better, like way better. Also in their by-laws:
 Information that is disclosed will be kept confidential except to the:
 President and Chair of the Board;

 The chairs of the relevant Subspecialty Boards, Test-Writing Committees, and other Committees of the Board, members who serve on the relevant Boards and Committees, and staff working with the respective committees;

 The Conflict of Interest Committee members and Conflict of Interest Committee staff,

 except as required for the purposes of continuing medical education.
 So, basically, they can take money from any corporate entity and do not have to disclose it to anyone . Again, nice gig if you can get it.
 Back to the ABIM’s history: One of Eichenwalds more disturbing observations about the behavior of the ABIM:
 I can attest to the ABIM's pomposity. Starting with my first story about the ABIM, the organization usually has refused to acknowledge I even asked a question. The only other group to do that in my 30-year journalism career was a company that processed payments for child pornography websites. Plus, when I reported on the uprising by doctors, the ABIM ignored the facts and instead investigated me .
 Now lets fast forward to Covid. On July 29, 2021, the FSMB (this entity controls the state medical licensing boards, not the ABIM - at least on paper) issued a policy statement that “ Physicians who generate and spread COVID-19 vaccine misinformation or disinformation are risking disciplinary action by state medical boards, including the suspension or revocation of their medical license.”
 What is interesting is how fast and how rigidly the ABIM followed the FSMB’s lead and enacted their own misinformation policy despite the fact that, as my colleague Meryl Nass has pointed out:
 “suddenly claiming that using licensed drugs for COVID, criticizing federal policies for COVID or criticizing the value of COVID vaccines is unprofessional” gives the specialty board the right to revoke a certification— well, that was never part of its contract with me. So pulling my certification for issues that were never specified in the original contract is breach of contract.
 I think it would only be a breach if contracts, like our Constitution and the practice of medical ethics, were still “a thing.”
 The ABIM apparently liked the FSMB’s “misinformation policy” idea to attack dissenting doctors so much (or were told to like it) that 2 months later, they, along with their colleagues at the American Board of Pediatrics and the American Board of Family Medicine, issued a statement supporting the FSMB’s position, saying, “We all look to board certified physicians to provide outstanding care and guidance; providing misinformation about a lethal disease is unethical, unprofessional and dangerous.” (note that they seem particularly focused on Covid misinformation and not any other disease model or therapeutics. Do you think it could be because Covid vaccines and therapeutics opened immensely profitable markets to Pharma overnight?).
 Again from Meryl Nass (please subscribe to her Substack ):
 Furthermore, the processes the ABIM is using, as described by CEO Richard Baron, MD in his podcast with the New England Journal of Medicine are procedurally unfair. Dr. Baron earns $1 million/year to threaten doctors for a crime that does not exist. Baron, notably, refused to specify where the line was between misinformation and genuine disagreement in that podcast, though he seems to have no difficulty at all drawing the line when it comes to licensees who speak publicly about how to manage COVID. In a truly Orwellian effort, the ABIM and the ABIM Foundation have dedicated the year to ‘building trust’ in medicine.”
 In what I suspect was the ABIM’s first enforcement of their shiny new policy, they go after Peter McCullough, Paul Marik, and myself.. on the same day (May 26, 2022) with a letter quoting numerous public statements we made, implying that we needed to defend the substance of such statements with supporting data or risk losing our certifications.
 “Game on” I thought, looking forward to the exercise of “debating” scientific data with the ABIM. However, our FLCCC lawyer, Alan Dumoff pointed out that the ABIM’s policy and procedures state that the process of accusing a member of misinformation requires that they first provide evidence to us that what we said was inaccurate. So, we wrote back, pointing out to the ABIM their brazen “error” (yeah right) in not complying with their own policy and procedures.
 “Nonsense” they wrote back (in short). Their logic was truly shocking - they say that the fact they provided the substance and references to my public statements means they did their duty (rather than their providing references that would refute my statements which is what their policy states they need to do).
 You can read their brazen, illegitimate, dismissive response here:

 This letter above demonstrates the unchecked power they have - they alone determine whether they are following their own policy which they so clearly were not. What did I say about liars before?
 Anyway, rebut them we did. We wrote a 76 page treatise with 175 references, 11 exhibits, and 22,000 words, marshaling and weaving numerous data sources to support all our public statements that they had a problem with. May it enter the historical record here (I think you Covid vaccine and ivermectin data geeks will find the letter impressive).
 We sent that letter over 6 months ago… and finally got an answer a few weeks ago. To understand the misinformation committee’s response, note this statement from an editorial written by Baron where he tries to give examples of misinformation:
 A whole range of statements with which many — or even most —physicians might disagree would therefore not trigger our disciplinary process. On the other hand, when someone certified by the ABIM says something like “the origin of all coronary heart disease is a clearly reversible arterial scurvy” or “children can’t spread Covid” or “vaccines don’t prevent Covid deaths or hospitalizations,” we are not dealing with valid professional disagreement; we are dealing with wrong answers.
 That last sentence is critical as Baron literally is saying that the ABIM gets to determine what is a valid professional disagreement versus a “wrong answer.” Good to know, especially in regards to the fact that the narrative that “ vaccines prevent Covid deaths or hospitalizations” was strongly refuted in our initial response letter.
 This issue about drawing a line between misinformation and genuine disagreement is a critical one. From our letter of appeal written by our lawyer Alan Dumoff:
 Threshold Issue: What Standard Distinguishes Legitimate Differences of Professional Opinion and Misinformation
 We disagree with the Committee’ s interpretation of the data, which we address below, but the initial question is by what standard the American Board of Internal Medicine (“ABIM” or “Board”) evaluates evidence to determine that disagreement with consensus generally, and regarding controversial matters around COVID-19 policy specifically, rise to the level of actionable misinformation. The Board’s policy recognizes the right to legitimate debate, which requires it not merely show evidence supporting a consensus view but that it demonstrate that these professional disagreements are not legitimate but outright misinformation.
 If not grounded in an articulated standard, at the very least, the Board must demonstrate that the views at issue are false by citing the fallacies in the actual substance of the evidence provided, not simply by critiquing a few isolated studies divorced from the totality of evidence . Resting solely upon citations to mainstream publications while substantially avoiding the evidence in our Submission, and our detailed critiques of these publications does not provide a basis for the Board to take action against my clients.
 A diplomate’s medical positions must be plainly erroneous to merit sanction. Departure from consensus is hardly unusual and by itself insufficient. While the Sanctions Notice gives the appearance of having done so, the Committee did not directly engage the numerous imperfections in the mainstream approach Drs. Kory and Marik’s have pointed to in substantial detail. The Committee has not engaged the evidence submitted and demonstrated it is illegitimate, only that it departs from the consensus, that is insufficient to support a sanction.
 The point is that the ABIM appears absurdly obsessed with getting doctors to spout only consensus opinions. This is literally unprecedented in science. From Michael Chrichton the author:
 I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had . Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.
 I love that last line so much it bears repeating, “ If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.”
 Now, let’s look at their response to our 76 page letter teeming with supportive data for our statements. Can read their letter in its entirety here but I thought I would just pull the most illustrative sections:
 ..the CCC ( i.e. misinformation committee ) concluded that your statements about the purported dangers of, or lack of justification for, COVID-19 vaccines are false and inaccurate because they, too, are not supported by factual, scientifically grounded, and consensus driven scientific evidence. In fact, the overwhelming body of factual, scientifically grounded, and consensus-driven evidence – at and since the time you made those statements – shows that the COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective for children and for adults
 I have heard of the term “evidence-based medicine (EBM)” which is what I practice, but not “consensus driven science” (completely new invention - pernicious indeed). I actually adhere to the original definition and conceptual framework envisioned by the founders of evidence based medicine which was incredibly well detailed by my friend “A Midwestern Doctor” in their brilliant recent post “What Happens To Doctors Who Innovate”.
 Anyway, they then listed a few published, peer-reviewed papers supporting their point, blissfully un-acknowledging of the fact that the high-impact journals have been systematically censoring pretty much all negative analyses of the vaccine campaign’s impacts while publishing nothing but positive reports with cherry-picked and/or fraudulent data - so there is no way for the truth about vaccines to win in scientific debates my friends.
 The high-impact journal censoring of adverse vaccine data is identical to their censoring of dozens of positive trials of ivermectin, something I extensively detail in the chapter called “The Journal Rejections of Positive Ivermectin Studies” in my book.
 It gets even better - they next argue against my claims of lack of safety of the vaccines by, get this, referencing proclamations by the WHO and CDC. They ignore all the immense data to the contrary that I submitted while of course being willfully oblivious to the fact that the CDC and WHO are fully Pharma captured agencies:
 Moreover, the vaccine safety data overwhelmingly ( overwhelmingly? ) contradicts your statements about vaccine risks. See, e.g., Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Safety of COVID-19 Vaccines,” https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/safety-of-vaccines.html (updated March 7, 2023) (reporting that “Adverse Events (Serious Safety Problems) Are Rare,” and that “[t]he benefits of COVID-19 vaccination outweigh the known and potential risks”); World Health Organization, “Safety of COVID-19 Vaccines,” https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/safety-of-covid-19-vaccines (March 31, 2021) (stating that “[b]illions of people have been safely vaccinated against COVID-19,” that “mRNA vaccines [for COVID-19] have been rigorously assessed for safety, and clinical trials have shown that they provide a long-lasting immune response”).
 The paragraph above should enter the historical record.. somewhere. That will NOT age well. The only thing more absurd to contemplate is whether they know they are lying in their letter or if they are simply referencing propaganda that they themselves swallowed whole? In a way, the former might be more acceptable to me at this point.
 Their opinion on how I got ivermectin wrong was similarly brazen - they ignored all the meta-analyses (historically considered the strongest form of data, a fact they seem to have willfully avoided) in favor of listing a handful of trials where ivermectin was s upposedly found ineffective, relying mostly on citing “the Big 6” (what I named the chapter describing the fraud behind the 6 largest, Pharma-conflicted and most publicized trials on ivermectin). This was 100% unsurprising.
 Check it out:
 First , the CCC concluded that your statements about the safety and efficacy of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine as treatments for COVID-19 are false and inaccurate because they are not supported by factual, scientifically grounded, and consensus driven scientific evidence (there it is again).
 Susanna Naggie, M.D., M.H.S., et al., “Effect of Ivermectin vs Placebo on Time to Sustained Recovery in Outpatients With Mild to Moderate COVID-19,” 328 JAMA 1721 (2022), https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2115869 (finding in a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled study with 1,800 participants that “[a]mong outpatients with mild to moderate COVID-19, treatment with ivermectin, compared with placebo, did not significantly improve time to recovery,” and that “[t]hese findings do not support the use of ivermectin in patients with mild to moderate COVID-19”);
 I laughed out loud when they led their argument with the Naggie trial funded by the NIH as it contained the most brazen fraud of the Big 6 Pharma Ivermectin trials. All you need to know about the trial is that they moved the primary comparison endpoint of the trial.. in the middle of the trial. They moved the main comparison from symptoms at Day 14 to Day 28. Note that changing endpoints in the middle of a trial is a supposed never event. Except the same trick was pulled in the Remdesivir trial.
 Anyway, in a presentation by Naggie, in this secondary endpoint, you can see that ivermectin was superior at Day 14 t o a high degree of Bayesian “statistical significance” but the “statistical significance” was not reached at Day 28 (I use quotes around statistical significance because it is an erroneous concept when doing Bayesian statistics but that is what they did anyway when they pre-specified a threshold of above 0.95 as “significant”). Can anyone tell me why they moved the endpoint to Day 28 in the middle of the trial:

 With this brazen maneuver (and many others) it allowed Naggie et al to publish this conclusion: “these findings do not support the use of ivermectin in patients with mild to moderate COVID-19.” Not-so-fun fact: Naggie also sat on the NIH covid treatment guidelines committee where she voted to not recommend ivermectin right before she and her University received tens of millions.. to study ivermectin in Covid. You want more? She also owns stock in a competitor to ivermectin (monoclonal antibodies for Omicron) and has received money from numerous other Big Pharma companies including Gilead. Lets get back to the letter…
 Rather, the CCC seeks to accomplish precisely what you assert ABIM should be doing: seeking to “further the professional integrity of medicine by encouraging evidence-based debate” (emphasis added).
 Indeed, as set forth in ABIM’s False or Inaccurate Medical Information policy, physicians have an ethical and professional responsibility to provide factual, scientifically grounded, and consensus driven scientific evidence (there it is again). As discussed above, by touting the effectiveness of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine as COVID-19 treatments and casting doubt on the efficacy and safety of COVID-19 vaccines with such seemingly authoritative statements, you have made statements that are inimical to ABIM’s ethics and professionalism standards for board certification.
 In light of all the evidence and circumstances, the CCC determined to recommend that your board certification be revoked.
 There is only one silver lining here. One - the impending loss of my certifications does not affect me materially because I have a private fee-based practice due to my need for complete autonomy and lack of restrictions in empirically treating the vaccine injured with various repurposed and alternative therapeutics. I thus cannot and will not accept insurance, and secondly, my academic career is over - no longer will I ever enter back into the system of medicine.
 About the only opportunity this whole attack has created is one where I get to defend myself on appeal in a debate with three academic white coats of their choosing. Bring. It. On.
 Although the outcome of the debate is assuredly pre-determined, I know it will satisfy a deep yearning many of us dissidents have had for going on 3 years now - to debate someone, anyone, anywhere. Crush them with data. Make ‘em look silly although I will be the only one who knows it happened. It will let me vent my disgust at how they have widely disseminated corrupted scientific evidence and policies while simultaneously ignoring the clinical observations and expertise of frontline doctors who have treated thousands of actual Covid patients.
 I will then toss in a little lecture about how RCT’s have long ceased to be a credible means of proving anything in science given that in modern medicine only “Big RCT’s” count and that all “Big RCT’s” require such massive funding that the bias of the funders outweighs any objectivity such trials can profess to attain. I will also remind them that throughout modern medial history, the findings of RCT’s and retrospective observational trials are identical, yet academia has been taught to systematically ignore observational trials. Reason: only massively funded entities can conduct a “Big RCT” while any committed clinician willing to give up nights and weekends can conduct an observational trial. Pharma cannot allow research to be conducted that they have no control over - so they took over the journals and medical school curriculums which now literally teach that observational controlled trials can only be considered “hypothesis generating” and thus their results should not be acted on. Nonsense.
 I will also remind them that they are violating international law and human, civil, and political rights as argued by Meryl Nass in another of her excellent post s regarding her own persecution by her state licensing Board:
 International law is on our side. A total of 172 countries are parties to the I nternational Covenant on Civil and Political Rights:
 According to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19,
 "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."
 According to the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights ,
 "Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.”
 And the Nebraska Attorney General protected doctors and pharmacists in Nebraska from their Boards, explicitly allowing them to prescribe HCQ and IVM. His opinion is a tour de force, which goes into detail about why the CDC, FDA and NIH guidelines are contradictory, unscientific and should not be followed. It should be cited in every case.
 I also plan on reminding them that the FDA got its ass handed to them in court last week during a hearing of Paul Marik, Mary Tally Bowden and Robert Apter’s suit against the FDA. From an Epoch Times article on the hearing:
 “FDA explicitly recognizes that doctors do have the authority to prescribe ivermectin to treat COVID,” Ashley Cheung Honold, a Department of Justice lawyer representing the FDA, said during oral arguments on Aug. 8 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit.
 The statements “don’t prohibit doctors from prescribing ivermectin to treat COVID or for any other purpose” Ms. Honold said.
 “FDA is clearly acknowledging that doctors have the authority to prescribe human ivermectin to treat COVID. So they are not interfering with the authority of doctors to prescribe drugs or to practice medicine,” she said.
 So, if the FDA recognizes we have the authority to prescribe ivermectin, then assuredly we are allowed to have the opinion that it is a valid therapy. However, the ABIM will not allow an ABIM certified physician to publicly express this opinion or recommend this practice. Maybe the ABIM should have a little chat with the FDA?
 The nonsense doesn’t end with the ABIM, as they are only one prong of this campaign. How is this for some comic relief, published last week in one of the top journals in the world where they found that almost all the Covid misinformation in the U.S on social media can be traced to 52 doctors.

 I was honored to discover that yours truly made the list! In their quoted examples of misinformation in Table 4, I have taken the liberty of owning up to the posts attributed to me, all of which I stand by to this day:

 The comic relief of this article comes from the fact that the authors decided that what constituted mis-information in Covid were the beliefs that:
 The virus was concocted in a lab (true), natural immunity is equal or better than vaccine immunity (true), ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine are effective (true), the vaccines are ineffective, toxic and lethal (true, true, and true), that federal agencies were working directly in the service of Pharma (true) etc. I hope we never forget this absurdity of a peer-review paper.
 I think I will finish with this excerpt from a recent Wall Street Journal Op-Ed touching on the Missouri vs. Biden case where the administration is being sued for its systematic censoring of U.S citizens on social media by every intelligence and health agency in our Federal government :
 This is where the decision of U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty sheds light. His detailed recounting shows a Washington energetic in protecting Americans from Covid opinions, expertise and claims that conflicted with its own, at a time when it served politicians to show they were trying to save Americans from encountering a virus that couldn’t be avoided. When government has a message to deliver, especially when the political stakes are high, it won’t be content just to push its own message, it will try to silence others .  Fighting back  will always be necessary. The only surprise in our age is how thoroughly the “liberal” position has  become  the pro-censorship position (that last line is a doozy).

 P.S I just want to say thanks to all my subscribers, especially the paid ones! Your support is greatly appreciated as it allows me to devote what is often large amount of time I spend researching and writing my posts, so again, thanks. - Pierre
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Summary: The ABIM's history proves their present actions are political/financial and not scientific. They are making examples of us "dissenters" to scare the rest of the country's docs to keep quiet.


A survey of my religious community asked if our attitudes or views about govt had changed because of covid. This is what I wrote.

One caveat to keep in mind: This was written to the people conducting the study, so there were things that were ‘strategically’ worded (or left out altogether).
 (*I made a few cosmetic edits mostly to translate a few Hebrew phrases I used & fix a couple of grammar errors I noticed afterwards.)
 I used to regard the government as extremely inept/incompetent, fairly corrupt, and facing incentives that pushed agencies/officials to be generally inept & corrupt.
 Now, I regard the government as fundamentally evil on par with any other classical murderous sociopathic regime -- something that the pandemic exposed. (To be absolutely clear, this is not a Nazi comparison, they were far beyond a 'classical' evil murderous regime.)
 1. The US government went out of their way to suppress, sabotage, and destroy every effective covid treatment, which by itself caused hundreds of thousands of deaths if not millions around the world (the US agencies are extremely influential for the rest of the world). Unfortunately, there were a few prominent doctors who were actively complicit in this, including one who lied under oath in an affidavit submitted on behalf of his hospital in a lawsuit brought by a covid patient’s family to allow them to give Ivermectin to the patient. Among other things, this doctor claimed that there had been NO clinically discernible improvement after the first round of Ivermectin was administered to the patient, which was patently false as was described in an affidavit by an outside physician who *detailed the specific clinical improvements that were documented in the patient’s medical records from that hospital*. I personally know the physician who wrote this affidavit & can attest that he is not a liar. The patient ultimately died amidst the court wrangling.
 2. Furthermore, the other covid policies - lockdowns, facemasks, etc - were some of the most evil & pernicious policies ever implemented by a society that considers itself to be ethical - the death toll from the lockdowns itself exceeds the genuine death toll from covid disease (which itself was only significant because of the suppression & denial of treatment as stated above). These society-upending policies lacked any supportive evidence before they were implemented. It is now well-documented that cloth/surgical facemasks do not reduce the spread of covid at all, and even the various types of N-95 masks are utterly useless in the hands of the general population.
 Key gov officials including Fauci actually admitted that they never took into account the myriad harms that such policies would inflict on society, which is not an ‘oversight’ – the least horrible possibility is that they had no regard for carnage caused by their policies, which is genuinely evil.
 3. The covid vaccines - funded, marketed, mandated by the govt - were barely effective for maybe a few months at most, but caused a significant amount of death & severe life-altering injuries. (I am a medical researcher who has done a lot of prolific work in this area, including compiling 3300+ case report studies documenting various covid vaccine injuries/deaths in the formal academic literature, and analyzing mortality data from ~million death certificates which we obtained from several states containing all their deaths from 2015-present). The govt is STILL denying that there were any deaths associated with the mRNA vaccines at all (!!!). The government tried to dehumanize unvaccinated people, and largely succeeded according to polling showing that a significant % of people if not outright majorities held a variety of shocking views about unvaccinated people including that they were selfish, stupid, a danger to society, should be forcibly confined to their homes, have their children taken away, be relocated to “quarantine facilities” (granted which usually has many severe deficiencies in methodology & integrity to be sure). This sort of demagoguery is historically exactly how a society is groomed to accept genocide of a minority group or faction within society.
 The death toll from the covid vaccines in just the US is probably somewhere between 100,000 - 300,000 *deaths*, and maybe more (this is based on excess mortality analyses, federal govt FRED economic databases, insurance data, & survey study data). Because of the shockingly poor quality of US data & studies, it is very difficult to sort out the various causes of excess death (covid disease, covid policies, covid vaccines) or to get a firm idea of how much excess death there is (there are numerous Simpson's Paradoxes in play, and calculating pull-forward effects involves a lot of modelling assumptions that are by definition *assumptions* about a variety of epidemiological possibilities/scenarios)
 4. The government prosecuted the most significant & consequential censorship regime in the history of any Western country, which besides for the widespread carnage it caused (this isn't just because of people being deprived of medical information such as treatment possibilities or how to procure different drugs like Ivermectin or HCQ, but encompasses all sorts of things that you wouldn't think of, such as suicides by people suffering from various conditions who were disconnected from their support groups when Facebook deleted the group & the personal accounts of its members), it also demonstrates that the govt has no regard for the rule of law or legal norms whatsoever, and believes in a radical “ends justifies the means” with no clear limitation.
 5. The US govt is now acting like a dictatorial regime to define the positions of its political opposition as a "terrorist threat" (e.g. parents protesting school boards, religious Catholics, Latin mass adherents, advocates for gun rights, parental rights, etc., opponents of covid & other governmental policies, people who are skeptical of the official "man-made climate change" orthodoxy, et al).
 6. The US govt is furthermore persecuting political dissent (if you pay attention to the actual Jan 6 criminal prosecutions, the vast majority of defendants did not do anything remotely violent or even illegal, but were held without bail for years in unique prison conditions among a bevy of clear violations of basic legal rights).
 7. The US govt is not only endorsing, marketing, and using its considerable power to impose the barbaric ideology of a litany of sexual deviancies that are nihilistic & depraved even beyond what was ever attributed to Sodom -- the US govt is forcing institutions to implement demented wicked barbarism like the psychological, physical & hormonal mutilation of children as "gender affirming" care by withholding some types of federal funding for even schools or hospitals that refuse to allow men in the women's bathrooms (or provide said 'medical care' if relevant). This is quite literally a modern-day incarnation of Moloch.
 8. Furthermore, the US govt is now deliberately & willfully trying to impoverish its own citizens & deprive them of many products that have become staple amenities in society (such as air conditioning, gas stoves, cars, etc etc etc etc). To properly flesh this out and demonstrate the 'willful/deliberate' nature of this would require a lengthy analysis of numerous decisions, statements, & actions of the relevant people/agencies that is beyond the scope of this "comment". I mention this here only because it is one of the standout egregious dimensions of the cold-blooded wickedness that is the weltanschauung of the govt today.
 9. The govt as a general entity is a pathological liar that if it were an actual person they would lack any shred of credibility. (Most people unfortunately have a very delusional idea of how politics “works” – they have no idea about what goes on behind the scenes, how “deals” are made, how various “groups” or “nonprofits” influence govt policy or decision, and so on.)
 ****
 In a general sense, the govt is a diabolical evil institution that is more concerned with pushing twisted ideologies, mutilating children & persecuting political dissent; but the govt is willing to kill millions in pursuit of whatever political or other objectives they are trying to achieve.
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