Medical Journal Censorship Is The Proximate Cause of the Covid Vaccine Catastrophe

In this post, I want to further the historical record of massive censoring actions by medical journals on the unprecedented adverse vaccine data of the Covid vaccines. A Midwestern Doctor, my colleague and friend, has done a masterful job of detailing that history in regard to small pox, polio, HPV and many other aspects of childhood vaccines . Never forget the Cutter incident , where officials covered up the fact they were distributing contaminated and deadly polio vaccines:
 The Cutter incident was one of the worst pharmaceutical disasters in US history, and exposed several thousand children to live polio virus on vaccination . [3] The NIH Laboratory of Biologics Control, which had certified the Cutter polio vaccine, had received advance warnings of problems: in 1954, staff member Bernice Eddy had reported to her superiors that some inoculated monkeys had become paralyzed and provided photographs. William Sebrell, the director of NIH, rejected the report. [4]
 The censoring of Eddy’s report led to:
 120,000 doses of polio vaccine that contained live polio virus.

 40,000 children recipients developed abortive poliomyelitis

 56 developed paralytic poliomyelitis—and of these, 5 children died from polio

 exposures led to an epidemic of polio in the families and communities of the affected children, resulting in a further 113 people paralyzed and 5 deaths.

 Thus, censorship of adverse vaccine data is not new but the deadly impacts of the polio vaccines is nowhere near the scope and scale of the current mRNA vaccine catastrophe.
 Of those who, like me, started studying the dangers of Covid gene therapy “vaccines”, many then moved on to learn about the rest of the childhood vaccine schedule by reading “ Turtles All The Way Down: Vaccine Science and Myth .
 That book exposes decades of censoring of both the acute and chronic illnesses caused by the ever-expanding CDC schedule with its pragmatic but unscientific clumping of numerous vaccine administrations on a single day, an intervention that has never been tested for safety. That book also exposes the biggest myth about vaccines which is that deaths from the illnesses they protect against had been nearly eradicated through improvements in sanitation and hygiene (and antibiotics) before the vaccine for that particular disease was even developed! Note the corresponding decrease in TB and Scarlet fever mortality, two diseases for which there is no vaccine to date:

 My first post on this topic of censoring adverse vaccine data began with exposing the media and the result of their censoring - e.g. the story of my meeting with a “system pathologist” who did not know what the spike protein was (interestingly, that was one of my most popular posts to date).
 In this post, I will detail how the toxicity and lethality of the mRNA vaccines has been suppressed through pervasive academic medical journal censorship.
 A brilliant Substack post on this same issue was just written by Nicholas Hulscher, MPH on Peter McCullough’s Substack on November 1 (this post has been in draft form for a long time and I was working on it this weekend when I came across his article).
 He tells the story of several papers that have been unfairly retracted in violation of retraction guidelines. One paper he highlighted was his own which was titled “A Systematic Review of Autopsy Findings in Deaths after COVID-19 Vaccination.” It was removed from The Lancet’s preprint server , probably because of its conclusion: “ A total of 240 deaths (73.9%) were independently adjudicated as directly due to or significantly contributed to by COVID-19 vaccination.”

 The case of his retracted paper provides an example of a tactic used by what he calls “the Cartel” (the International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers ). He cited this article from September which details a recent lawsuit filed against the Cartel for “tremendous damage to science and the public interest.”
 Since the rollout of the Covid mRNA “vaccines" numerous papers have been published showing tight, temporally associated increased rates of diseases and/or deaths associated with it. They have nearly all been retracted. Meanwhile, absurdly flawed or statistically manipulated papers concluding safety and efficacy ( even in pregnant women ) have been published in high impact journals.
 Remember the absurd Lancet “ mathematical modeling study ” which claimed the campaign saved 20 million lives? Is that why excess mortality started to worsen across the world in 2021 and persists today? Interestingly, one exception to the censoring of negative vaccine studies is case reports of injuries - those they have let through by the thousands. At last count some months ago, my colleague Ashmedai who writes “ Resisting the Intellectual Literati ” had compiled over 3,600 case reports of illness and death caused by the mRNA vaccines. This is, as Paul Marik would say, “truly astonishing” for any medical product. Unheard of in fact. Almost 4,000 reports of injuries, many of them serious or fatal, and the campaign just rolls on?
 In the article “ The Disinformation Playbook ,” by the Union of Concerned Scientists they describe 5 tactics used by the pharmaceutical industry to “counter science inconvenient to industry interests.” The first tactic is called “the Fix” and is described as below:

 Does that aptly describe what I wrote about above? Know that the article was published in 2017, long before Covid. But at the time, they cited 4 case studies where companies from different industries did the above:

 In each case, industry actions caused an immense amount of deaths, the most quantifiable being Merck’s Vioxx scandal whereby they hid and suppressed evidence of massive amounts of heart attacks and strokes. One shocking detail about the Vioxx case was when one expert’s testimony in court described the number of deaths from Vioxx as “equivalent to 4 jumbo jetliners crashing every week for 5 years.” Let that sink in for a second.
 Merck also attacked doctors trying to call attention to that fact, another Disinformation tactic called “The Blitz”).

 I am personally familiar with the Blitz via my “advocacy” (ugh) of ivermectin in Covid leading to endless major media and social media attacks as well as the revocation of my Board certifications and the loss of several jobs.
 Merck ended up paying $4.85 billion to settle the criminal and civil claims. However, they had annual sales of $2.5 Billion in the approximately 5 years leading up to that. So, a win for Merck?
 Lets start by asking the question, “How does Big Pharma control medical journals?” Answer: with money! One of the main ways that Pharma money influences the journals is via the purchasing of; 1) advertising and 2) “reprints.” Big money. But the influence doesn’t start or end there. They also pay for:
 Funding of clinical trials - journals rely on these trials to publish studies

 Ghostwriting -they employ ghostwriters to write up studies so as to hide association

 From my Brave Browser AI response to the question “How profitable are medical journals?”

 Ultimately, all that Pharma money undoubtedly leads to… Editorial control. One example was published by the former Editor of one of the top journals in the world, the British Medical Journal (BMJ), where he includes this anecdote and cartoon:

 First know that these journal censoring actions equally applied to the suppression of efficacy of early treatments. I know this firsthand from my own experience publishing my ivermectin review paper in early 2021 when, after passing through three rounds of rigorous peer review by three high-level government scientists and a clinical expert at Frontiers in Pharmacology , it was retracted with nearly no explanation.
 What happened was that after my paper was accepted, weeks and weeks passed without it being published (it was an online journal and I had paid the publishing fee to make it “open access.”) Meanwhile, during those weeks, I was watching more people die of Covid than at any other time in the pandemic (winter 2021).
 When I finally “lost it” by threatening a journal representative in an email that I would go public with an accusation of scientific misconduct against the journal, the editor of the special issue on Covid (Robert Malone) was quickly informed by the Editor in Chief that the paper was being retracted based on an anonymous 3rd party peer reviewer who recommended retraction because “the data did not support the conclusions.” We were never given a copy of this review. It was the first paper to be retracted amongst me and my co-authors in a cumulative 120 years of academia and publishing. When they later went further and retracted Robert Malone’s papers, he and the other editors of the issue resigned as detailed in the below article .

 In hindsight, it was a naive idea to put together a special issue on “the use of available drugs in Covid” given that available, repurposed drugs are the Achilles heel of the entire pharmaceutical industry. Although I republished it some months later, the damage to humanity and to my reputation was already done. Good times.
 According to the website Retraction Watch , there are currently 450 papers on Covid-19 that have been retracted. The vast majority of retracted Covid-19 papers after the mRNA campaign roll-out had “negative conclusions” and some were even retracted off of pre-print servers.
 Know that the stories behind each retraction are nearly identical to my own with ivermectin above. Essentially, a paper with data and/or analysis which concludes grave harms from the mRNA jabs gets submitted, passes peer review, and soon after publication, the editorial team concocts some story of “concerns” with the analysis and retracts it.
 As per the Disinformation tactic called “the Fix”, journals also employ other methods like simply rejecting such papers, or, more devastating is when they “hold the paper hostage.” What does that mean? Basically, in academia, the scientific publishing Cartel mentioned above has a rule that you cannot submit to more than one journal at a time to avoid duplicate peer review (which is voluntary and would consume excessive time among peer reviewers).
 The problem is that peer review takes months, so journals sometimes delay that process maliciously before eventually rejecting the paper. At that point, many months have passed (and even more will be required to submit to another journal and undergo a 2nd peer review). Thus, the “delayed” findings can no longer impact policy or knowledge during critical periods like a pandemic. Once and if eventually published, oftentimes the policy (i.e. mass mRNA vaccination) has already been implemented and the data does little to reverse it. This practice is actually one of the issues that the lawsuit against the science journal Cartel is about.
 This tactic was deployed repeatedly in the case of the most effective drug against Covid, a medicine called proxalutamide. My close friend and colleague from Brazil, Dr. Flavio Cadegiani, had his wickedly positive, large, high-quality, double-blind placebo controlled studies held hostage by three different high impact journals, causing years to go by before publication. I chronicled his story in a Substack series I wrote called “ The High-Impact Medical Journal Editors Harassment Of The World's Leading Clinical Researcher of Repurposed Drugs in the COVID Pandemic. ” Here are the links to Part 1 , Part 2 , and Part 3 . If you read that series of posts, you will come to the awful realization that, like with the cases of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, millions died around the world as a result of the suppression of the data showing proxalutamide’s incredible efficacy in Covid.
 A more recent example of a paper being “held hostage” is that of a clinical shedding study where the authors exposed an unknown number of unvaccinated women to women recently mRNA vaccinated to assess whether the exposed women would develop typical vaccine adverse effects. Since I have not been able to read the paper, I don’t know how many women were exposed or what the method of exposure was, but I was informed by a colleague that they were told there was a significant number of unvaccinated women who developed typical side effects of the mRNA vaccines after close exposure to women who were recently vaccinated. I learned from one of the authors that the first journal they submitted to held the paper hostage for about a year before rejecting and now it is undergoing a more rapid review and publication with a “friendlier” (i.e. lower tier) journal. She is optimistic it will be published soon. We will see.
 In regard to the vaccines, one of the earliest and most memorable retractions was the VAERS analysis by Jessica Rose and Peter McCullough showing massively increased rates of myocarditis caused by the Covid jabs. You have to go to the Wayback machine to find it here .

 In the case of Jessica and Peter, the editor did not even give a reason, they just claimed they had a “right to do it” so they did. Shocking. The Retraction Watch website’s summary of the case is here . Worth a read.

 An even more shocking fact about retracted Covid papers is that, like Jessica and Peter’s paper, in 32% of cases, the journal.. gave no reason for the retraction. What? How is that possible or allowed? Further, not one retraction of the vaccine papers in this post met the COPE guidelines for such an action.

 More recently, a comprehensive review of the data from the original trials as well as numerous data sources subsequent to the rollout was published. Take a look at the authors, you might recognize some of their names:

 The paper rightly concluded with this sentence:
 “We urge governments to endorse a global moratorium on the modified mRNA products until all relevant questions pertaining to causality, residual DNA, and aberrant protein production are answered.”
 What is weird about the subsequent retraction is that soon after it was originally published, one of the journal editors was interviewed about the paper and was asked whether “the track record of the authors concerned him.” His answer at that time:

 The editor even took a shot at other journals:

 This editor literally called out other journals for censoring their work solely based on the supposedly negative (“anti-vax”) reputations of some of the authors (e.g. ad-hominem attacks). However, despite that one editor’s original supportive answer, the journal quickly backtracked and retracted the paper based on a list of easily disprovable “concerns.” Retraction Watch also published a review of the case here .
 However, what is little known is that co-author Steve Kirsch shared with me privately the (truly shocking) physical evidence he has which proves that the paper was retracted not on its merits (or supposed lack thereof) but rather was driven by an ad-hominem attack on the authors by several of the journal’s editorial team . The retraction was thus the result of a strong pro-vax personal bias on the editorial team and not the result of scientific flaws.
 Another retraction was this paper by Jiang and Mei in Viruses where they found that spike protein (what the mRNA encodes for) impairs DNA damage repair in vitro. The NIH illegally redacted (not retracted) all 490 pages regarding discussions of the paper. It goes deep folks:

 Although we are reviewing retractions, we can’t forget about rejections. One of the first papers in the world which found a tight association between vaccination rates and excess mortality was this paper by the expert statisticians Pantazatos and Seligmann:

 I met Herve Seligmann on a Zoom conference call and he informed me that after 30 different rejections they stopped trying to publish. It still sits on a pre-print server today.
 Another doozy of a retraction was the Mead et al paper below:

 Peter McCullough, on his Substack wrote:
 Mead and co-workers  found themselves at the center of a controversy when Springer Nature CUREUS Journal of Biomedical Sciences retracted their paper calling for global market withdrawal of mRNA vaccines. The retraction violated the COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics Guidelines) for retraction and became a news story garnering even more attention. Other papers continued to cite Mead creating a stinging reverberation for Springer who was hoping to silence the paper.
 Now epidemiologist  M. Nathaniel Mead and six co-authors  have punched back by republishing the manuscript divided into two parts for a greater depth of data and analysis on the safety and theoretical efficacy of modified mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. In Part I, Mead discloses censorship of the first paper by the  Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex , a working syndicate that is hell-bent on suppressing any scientific information on COVID-19 side effects.
 It is a good time to remind you that it wasn’t always this way and other approaches to “problematic” or “controversial” papers exist. Traditionally, that is done with critics writing “letters to the editor” which are published along with the defense of the criticisms from the authors. However, this new normal of censoring, although unethical, sometimes leads to massive publicity and republication with greater amplification of the message—precisely what the  Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex  is trying to squelch.
 Another memorable retractions was the below paper by Walach et al ., ‘ The Safety of COVID-19 Vaccinations- We should Rethink the Policy.’ The main finding of the paper found: “For three deaths prevented by vaccination we have to accept two inflicted by vaccination.” Following its 24 June 2021 publication in Vaccines , several of the editors of the journal resigned in protest .

 Even though this paper was successfully published later, Dr. Walach’s University immediately terminated him… in a tweet?

 Retraction Watch reviewed the case here . Interestingly, the same author had another paper retracted because it reported that children’s masks trap too-high concentrations of carbon dioxide. Apparently the Cartel did not like that one either.
 Another memorable retraction was that of Ronald Kostoff whose aptly titled paper “Why are we vaccinating children against Covid-19?” was retracted by Toxicology Reports after he had the courage to conclude that “ there are five times the number of deaths attributable to each inoculation vs those attributable to COVID-19 in the most vulnerable 65+ demographic.” Even worse, he stated publicly that he “fully expected” the criticism and that the “real-world situation is far worse than our best-case scenario.” Whoa.

 Another memorable retraction was the Skidmore paper where his analysis of survey data concluded the below:

 The study went viral on Twitter after its publication which very quickly led to its retraction. Rebekah Burnett, a journalist, wrote a Substack post about the case which is both incredibly sad and predictable. This section stuck out:

 I have to say though that the wall of censorship among journals may be beginning to show some cracks, recently penetrated by my two colleagues Jim Thorp and Peter McCullough with this alarming paper:

 Although it is impressive that such a damning paper against the safety of the Covid-19 vaccines was published, two caveats are that; 1) it was literally just published (Nov. 24) so there has been little time to mobilize against it yet and 2) it was published in a journal that I have never heard of before.
 Another light at the end of the tunnel is the famous Cleveland Clinic paper which showed that the more Covid vaccines you received, the more often you got Covid. Recall this damning figure:

 It was finally published in Open Forum Infectious Disease here .
 Know that this post has been in draft form for probably a couple of months. The last draft I had was going to end with the following “spark of optimism:”
 Despite all of the above, I think that the dam of censorship against adverse mRNA vaccine science may be breaking, and potentially breaking rapidly. I say this based on the below paper published last week in the British Medical Journal of Public Health. Note that BMJ is one of the top journals in the world:

 I think this paper is historic in that the authors (all from the Netherlands) reported on the correlatyion between vaccination rates and massive excess mortality measured in 47 “western” countries (N. America, Europe and Australia) during the pandemic. Note this conclusion is almost identical to Pantazatos and Seligmanns paper above which was rejected from 30 different journals.
 Their rationale for doing the study:
 Insight into the excess death rates in the years following the declaration of the pandemic by WHO is crucial for government leaders and policymakers to evaluate their health crisis policies. This study therefore explores excess mortality in the Western World from 1 January 2020 until 31 December 2022.
 Some of the key findings from their study:
 Excess all-cause mortality in 47 countries of the Western World from 2020 until 2022 was explored, with a total of 3,098,456 excess deaths recorded.

 Excess mortality was registered in 87% of countries in 2020, 89% in 2021, and 91% in 2022 ( Ed: Why did excess mortality become more prevalent in 2022 when Covid became so much milder and lockdowns had ended? )

 "For children aged 0–19 years, the Infection Fatality Rate was set at 0.0003%.  This implies that children are rarely harmed by the COVID-19 virus."

 "During 2021, when not only containment measures but also COVID-19 vaccines were used to tackle virus spread and infection, the highest number of excess deaths was recorded: 1,256,942 excess deaths (P-score 13.8%)."

 "Excess mortality has remained high in the Western World for three consecutive years, despite the implementation of COVID-19 containment measures and COVID-19 vaccines.  This is unprecedented and raises serious concerns."

 One sentence in the discussion section also caught my eye:
 Autopsies to confirm actual death causes are seldom done. You don’t say.
 Other damning statements appeared that “we” have been trying to enter into public discussion for years now:
 Previous research confirmed profound under-reporting of adverse events, including deaths, after immunisation.

 Consensus is also lacking in the medical community regarding concerns that mRNA vaccines might cause more harm than initially forecasted.

 French studies suggest that COVID-1 mRNA vaccines are gene therapy products requiring long-term stringent adverse events monitoring.

 Although the desired immunisation through vaccination occurs in immune cells, some studies report a broad biodistribution and persistence of mRNA in many organs for weeks.

 Batch-dependent heterogeneity in the toxicity of mRNA vaccines was found in Denmark.

 Simultaneous onset of excess mortality and COVID-19 vaccination in Germany provides a safety signal warranting further investigation.

 Despite these concerns, clinical trial data required to further investigate these associations are not shared with the public.

 These are, to me, shockingly honest and powerful concerns raised in one of the top journals in the world.
 Now, unsurprisingly and in keeping with the theme of this post, as soon as that paper was published, all hell broke loose, best summarized by the investigative journalist Sonia Elijah on her Substack here .
 Briefly, what happened next was that The Telegraph wrote an article with the headline: “ Covid vaccines may have helped fuel rise in excess deaths .” It got serious attention, apparently triggering 68 media outlets to follow suit.
 Next, the research center affiliated with 3 of the 4 authors quickly issued a statement trying to distance itself from the publication. This is a copy of the letter form Sonia’s post (her bolding):

 This then caused the BMJ to issue an “expression of concern” as follows:
 The integrity team and editors are investigating issues raised regarding the quality and messaging of this work. The Princess Máxima Centre, which is listed as the affiliation of three of the four authors, is also investigating the scientific quality of this study. The integrity team has contacted the institution regarding their investigation.
 Readers should also be alerted to misreporting and misunderstanding of the work. It has been claimed that the work implies a direct causal link between COVID-19 vaccination and mortality. This study does not establish any such link. The researchers looked only at trends in excess mortality over time, not its causes. The research does not support the claim that vaccines are a major contributory factor to excess deaths since the start of the pandemic. Vaccines have, in fact, been instrumental in reducing the severe illness and death associated with COVID-19 infection.
 So they respond with .. lies. Oh well.
 And that folks, is how you get to the terrible state of modern Science as graphically depicted below:

 As you can see above, although a “red asterisk” of data might occasionally appear in the peer-reviewed literature, the vast majority are kept out and that is how you have an entire globe running on a fraudulent and extremely dangerous (lethal in fact) “scientific consensus.”
 I will end here with the last few paragraphs of the BMJ paper. Again, at the risk of repeating myself, after 4 years of immense scientific and media censorship, to read the below in a high-impact medical journal is, to me, promising for the future of Science:
 In conclusion, excess mortality has remained high in the Western World for three consecutive years, despite the implementation of COVID-19 containment measures and COVID-19 vaccines. This is unprecedented and raises serious concerns . During the pandemic, it was emphasised by politicians and the media on a daily basis that every COVID-19 death mattered and every life deserved protection through containment measures and COVID-19 vaccines. In the aftermath of the pandemic, the same morale should apply. Every death needs to be acknowledged and accounted for, irrespective of its origin. Transparency towards potential lethal drivers is warranted. Cause-specific mortality data therefore need to be made available to allow more detailed, direct and robust analyses to determine the underlying contributors. Postmortem examinations need to be facilitated to allot the exact reason for death . Government leaders and policymakers need to thoroughly investigate underlying causes of persistent excess mortality and evaluate their health crisis policies .
 I am heartened by the fact that the authors conclusion above is nearly identical to the conclusions of me and Mary Beth Pfeiffer’s multiple Op-Ed’s on the excess mortality and rising cancer rates associated with the Covid vaccine campaign:

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Summary: Here I document the brazen censoring behaviors of numerous major medical journals attempting to prop up the "safe and effective" narrative despite mountains of evidence to the contrary.


The Evolution And Validation Of The Metabolic Theory Of Cancer

In my last post of this series on cancer , I summarized the history of the scientific discoveries which led to the current consensus theory on the cause of cancer which is called the Somatic Mutation Theory (SMT). I concluded by presenting evidence from the Human Genome Project and The Cancer Genome Atlas Project that emerged in the last 15 years which paradoxically, instead of confirming its validityy, instead contradicted it.
 I suggest you read that first post on the SMT before delving into the current post which traces the history and evolution of the competing, and in my and other’s opinion, more scientifically valid theory called the Metabolic Theory of Cancer (MTOC). Please know that this post was highly informed by the amazing books by Travis Christofferson ( Tripping Over the Truth or what I will reference below as TOTT), Thomas Seyfried ( Cancer As a Metabolic Disease ), and Siddhartha Mukherjee ( The Emperor of All Maladies ). I ask those authors for forgiveness if I mis-referenced or failed to reference statements made below as I wrote much of it from memory and notes.
 My other cancer posts are:
 The History Of My Newfound Interest In Treating Cancer

 The Prevailing Scientific Theory Of Cancer Has Been Overturned

 The Scientific Basis For The Somatic Mutation Theory Is Invalid

 If you have not read the previous posts, I will quickly review and summarize the conceptual foundation of the two competing theories so you can better understand this post.
 SMT adherents believe that cancer arises solely from direct DNA damage, i.e. carcinogens cause mutations in the DNA contained in the chromosomes in the nucleus. These mutations then drive the cell to adopt “cancerous” properties, of which there are 8:
 1.     it stimulates its own growth
 2.     it evades growth suppressing signals
 3.     it resists cell death (apoptosis)
 4.     it enables replicative immortality
 5.     it induces the ability to grow new blood vessels to further tumor growth (angiogenesis)
 6.     it spreads to distant sites (metastasis)
 7.     it evades the immune system
 8.     it has a “reprogramming of energy metabolism”
 Meanwhile, MTOC adherents believe that cancer results from injury to the mitochondria (the energy forming unit of the cell which is in the cytoplasm). They focus on the fact that all cancer cells, instead of using oxygen to make energy, rely on glucose for energy, something that occurs only when mitochondria are damaged.
 Injured mitochondria then send signals to the nucleus which both disrupt the cell’s DNA monitoring and repair mechanisms as well as turn on genes which cause cancer (oncogenes). The main concept to understand is that MTOC researchers posit that unless there are damaged mitochondria, cancer will not result. SMT adherents largely ignore the role of the mitochondria in causing a cell to become cancerous and instead obsessively focus on the DNA mutations they find.
 However, SMT adherents (i.e. all of modern oncology) really have no explanation for, nor do they address in a coherent manner the fact that all cancer cells predominantly utilize glucose for energy instead of oxygen. They think it a curious finding without importance, simply a “consequence” of cancer and not a cause.
 This finding has always been a problem for the SMT (except if you ignore it as literally nearly all of modern cancer research does). What argues very strongly against SMT as the origin of cancer is the fact that the metabolic defect above is present in all cancer cells while mutations are not universal. Further, many different cancers can arise from many different mutations, and many cells within a single tumor can vary in the number and type of mutations. Hardly universal to the cancer cell.
 However, up until the last thirty or so years, no-one knew why cancer cells universally relied on glucose instead of oxygen to produce energy.
 HISTORY AND EVOLUTION OF THE METABOLIC THEORY OF CANCER
 Where do we begin? Well, with Dr. Otto Warburg of course! Warburg was a German doctor and biochemist who started studying cancer in the 1920’s and ended up winning the Nobel Prize in 1931 for his discovery that cancer cells were unique in that they switched from using oxygen as their primary source of energy to almost exclusively relying upon glucose, a feature known as “the Warburg Effect.”
 Know that the Warburg Effect is literally what PET scan technology is based upon and PET scans are the predominant imaging means that all oncologists use for diagnosing, monitoring, and identifying the location and/or spread of cancer. In PET scanning, the radiologist infuses radio-labeled glucose into patients who then undergo full body scanning which produces an image of the body where “bright spots” indicate areas of high glucose uptake, i.e. pinpointing the location of the cancer. Thus, PET scans literally identify cancer based on the Warburg Effect.
 So, one might expect that oncologists readily acknowledge that cancer cells survive on glucose which would lead them to universally recommend a ketogenic diet to their patients (when a patient goes into ketosis after strictly following such a diet, the fuel available to cells is no longer glucose and instead they begin to burn fats called ketone bodies. Cancer cells (with some rare exceptions) cannot use ketone bodies for fuel and thus such an approach “starves the cancer cell” of energy and thus it dies off. Problem: I have had a number of patients tell me that when they asked their cancer doctor what they should be eating, they are told “whatever you like.” Hmm.
 Warburg’s discovery led to a vexing question, “since metabolizing glucose to make energy is much less efficient than using oxygen, why would cancer cells, which require a lot of energy to behave cancerously, rely on glucose as an energy source even in the presence of oxygen?”
 That is the question that Warburg was never able to answer in his lifetime. The other problem with Warburg’s discovery was that it somehow never gained a critical mass of researchers inspired to study it’s implications further. Scientists were somehow unmoved by the importance of the discovery, with one prominent one saying in 1928, “even if Warburg is right, it does not explain why cancer cells grow,” a criticism which remained throughout his life until he died in 1970.
 Another missed opportunity for the cancer research community to revisit Warburg’s work was when Cyril Darlington in 1948 surprisingly found an anomaly of the SMT in that he discovered that carcinogens that were the most damaging to DNA were not the most effective at causing cancer (weird). X-ray’s gave the signal in that at low doses they caused chromosomal damage but did not cause cancer. At high doses they caused cytoplasmic damage (where the mitochondria are) and that was when they began to cause cancer. Darlington was the first researcher who came closest to highlighting the implications of this observation in regards to the Warburg Effect, however over time, his observations were somehow forgotten!
 Then, in 1953, a discovery was made which further (but erroneously) cemented the SMT while pushing the MTOC further into oblivion. And that was when Watson and Crick made one of history’s greatest scientific breakthroughs - identifying the structure of DNA. After that discovery, most cancer research became almost singularly obsessed with the SMT or, as the National Cancer Institute (NCI) states “cancer as a genetic disease.”
 Later, in 1976, the final blow to the MTOC was dealt when one of the world’s leading cancer researchers, Dr. Sydney Whitehouse, published an extremely popular paper where he claimed that there was no evidence that mitochondria in cancer cells had altered structure or function. He called the metabolic injury theory as being causative of cancer “too simplistic” for serious consideration given that no-one had found cancer initiation or survival by faulty respiration and high glycolysis.
 THE METABOLIC THEORY OF CANCER SILENTLY GAINS TRACTION
 Starting in 1979 and over the next 30 years, the work of a small group of researchers would culminate in the identification of all the pieces of the metabolic theory puzzle that Warburg had first uncovered.
 First and foremost was Pete Pedersen in 1979. From TOTT, “as a cancer researcher, he felt almost alone in considering energy metabolism as important to the cancer problem.” His work eventually produced two major pieces of evidence for the MTOC:
 He developed techniques to study the mitochondria and found that cancer cells had both a lower number of mitochondria but they also appeared different – they were smaller and had numerous structural abnormalities, missing membranes, and abnormalities in their protein and lipid content (contradicting Sydney Whitehouse’s 1976 paper above).
 This brought up a paradox though - how does inefficient energy production from damaged mitochondria “help” a cell to be so “energetic” i.e. to now be able to divide uncontrollably, grow, spread, invade, resist apoptosis etc. It would be like building a race car with the faultiest, most inefficient engine you could find. Didn’t make sense.

 Pedersen’s next discovery was his finding that that cancer cells contained large amounts of a rare form of an enzyme called hexokinase which controls how much glucose is metabolized by a cell (normally as glucose is metabolized, it inhibits hexokinase which then causes less glucose metabolism in a negative feedback loop). But Pedersen found that of the four forms of hexokinase, the rarest one was present in large amounts and that this particular form ignored the inhibitory signals and instead acted by essentially “flooring the glucose gas pedal.” As Christofferson wrote, “it was like a beat up old jalopy that has its gas pedal glued to the floor – so it can only run at break neck speed.” (a different car analogy :)

 Pedersen also discovered that hexokinase affects the signaling for apoptosis (programmed cell death). Know that apoptosis is critical for life as the body must constantly renew, so billions of cells must die each day for billions to replace them. If apoptosis is inhibited, the cell begins to act cancerously.

 Thus Pederson’s research into hexokinase ended up providing explanations for two of the characteristics that are universal to cancer cells, i.e. glucose metabolism and lack of apoptosis (recall that mutations are not universal to every cancer cell, and although mutations are very common, they often vary between cells of the same tumor so cannot explain why the cell is behaving cancerously).
 Without jumping too far forwards, many of the repurposed drugs and nutraceuticals that we have been using at The Leading Edge Clinic in our complementary cancer protocols have signaling mechanisms which directly stimulate apoptosis. Even more importantly, the medicines we use do this selectively to the cancer cell (unlike chemotherapy which leads to indiscriminate killing of both healthy and cancer cells).
 Pedersen dealt yet another blow to the SMT when he discovered that carcinogens that were better at damaging mitochondria were better at causing cancer than those that damaged chromosomes (building upon Darlington’s work above from 1948).

 Pedersen also found that viruses can infect and use mitochondria. Recall that one of the theoretical pillars supporting the SMT came from Varmus and Bishop’s discovery that RSV could insert into DNA and cause cancer, a finding which further cemented the idea that cancer originates in the chromosomes. However, Petersen later found that RSV could infect the mitochondria of chicken cells! The “error” which led Varmus and Bishop’ss argument to prevail over Pedersen’s was the overlooked fact that many viruses are capable of causing cancer but not in the way RSV supposedly does.

 Basically, the work of Pedersen and Darlington found that 3 common cancer transforming agents (chemical carcinogens, radiation, and viruses) could damage both the mitochondria and the DNA in the nucleus. So, based on the work of Pedersen, it remained to be determined which “damage” is more important in causing cancer?
 So, although Pedersen took Warburg and Darlington’s work much further towards a coherent MTOC, unfortunately, as Christofferson wrote “the larger research community continued to ignore Pedersen’s work as being important or foundational.”
 THOMAS SEYFRIED AND THE METABOLIC THEORY OF CANCER
 Thomas Seyfried was a biochemist and geneticist who was a leading basic science researcher of a rare category of diseases caused by “gangliosides” (a category of fats found in cell membranes). Ganglioside diseases are caused by defects in the enzymes that break them down which causes them to accumulate and typically lead to death by the age of 4.
 Around 2000, Seyfried was approached by a small drug company that had found a molecule that inhibited the formation of these gangliosides. While Seyfreid was doing studies on the molecule, one day he fortuitously decided to give it to mice with tumors. What he found was that it slowed the growth of the tumors! He informed the company who then became very excited because the potential market for their molecule went from minuscule to massive .
 From TOTT: But Seyfried also noticed that the mice given the drug lost a lot of weight. So, again on a hunch, Seyfried did an experiment where they used a control group of mice that they forced to lose the same amount of weight. They found that the effect of the drug disappeared in that now both groups showed an equal reduction in the growth of the tumors! This is how he discovered that it wasn’t the drug working against tumors but it was the caloric restriction which occurred in both groups. The company was obviously disappointed and immediately pulled their funding of his research.
 So, Seyfried discovered that caloric restriction slowed tumor growth. Here is where it gets scary. He hypothesized that current cancer drugs were working the same way, i.e. the patients receiving them may be simply eating less food from loss of appetite and that may be the mechanism behind the way they worked?
 Lo and behold, he began testing known anti-cancer drugs and found many of them were indeed working this way , e.g. Imclone’s Erbitux, the drug from the Martha Stewart insider trading case). A quote of his from the time, “Many of these drugs were doing nothing but making the mice lose their appetites and it was the reduced calories that had the anti-tumor effect.”
 From TOTT: He then “moved backward” by looking into the metabolism of cancer, despite never having heard of Warburg. He quickly discovered Warburg’s work which led him to Pedersen’s 1978 review which Seyfried referred to as a “masterpiece.” Then he found the work of Darlington. He also gave a lot of credit to Carlos Sonnenschein and Ana Sota who had compiled “a blistering attack “on the gene theory (i.e. SMT) of cancer, with their 1998 paper called The Society of Cells: Cancer and Control of Cell Proliferation, “ they did a magnificent job of showing the inconsistencies of the gene theory.”
 Although Pedersen discovered the metabolic reasons why cancer cells relied on glucose and also why cancer cells did not undergo apoptosis, in his words, he was still unable to “ establish whether mitochondrial function is essential to transform a normal cell to a cancerous one. ”
 Seyfried then developed a hypothesis that mitochondria, when damaged, must be sending a signal to the nucleus which then altered the expression of cancer causing oncogenes (i.e. an epigenetic signal). Problem is that epigenetic signals are very difficult to study.
 Know that mitochondria, besides creating the energy needed in order for the cell to survive, also regulates many other important functions like cellular division and differentiation, programmed cell death (apoptosis), heme and steroid synthesis, and iron metabolism. To perform these, mitochondria use signals to direct the nucleus all the time.
 Also know that most of the genes in the nucleus that respond to mitochondria sit at signaling hubs and therefore dictate multiple operations such as cell division and angiogenesis (growth of new blood vessels). Seyfried termed this signaling from mitochondria back to the nucleus as the “retrograde response” and felt that if the mitochondria were damaged, it must be sending signals that allow for uncontrolled proliferation, (i.e. cancer) and he felt it likely did so by “turning off” the DNA repair mechanisms, thus allowing mutations to develop and the cell to become cancerous. In essence, he felt strongly that mutations in the DNA occurred downstream from mitochondrial damage.
 How to prove this? It turns out, he didn’t have to because researchers had already done so in the 1980’s yet the world had paid little attention to their studies (heck the original researchers themselves did not understand the importance of their findings). It was Seyfried who dug up the studies and used their findings to essentially prove his hypothesis.
 THE NUCLEAR TRANSFER EXPERIMENTS
 What Seyfried discovered was that back in 1980, two different research groups (one at the University of Vermont and the other at Texas Southwestern), performed a series of technically simple experiments whose results held profound implications to proving the metabolic cause of cancer.
 Briefly, what the group in Vermont did was they took the nucleus of a cancer cell and transferred it into a normal cell whose nucleus had been removed (something Warburg could never have done in the 1920’s). They called this cell a “recon” (reconstituted) cell. If mutations to DNA caused cancer then the recon cell which now had a nucleus from a cancer cell should become cancerous no? Conversely, if mitochondria were the proximate cause of cancer, the normal mitochondria in the recon cell should then prevent it from behaving cancerously.
 So what did they find? Recon cells were transplanted into sixty-eight mice and they found that only a single mouse developed cancer over an entire year. The healthy mitochondria must have “silenced” the mutations in the DNA!? Now, although they knew this contradicted the prevailing dogma (SMT), the problem was they did not have an understanding of the metabolic theory of cancer at the time so they were unable to explain their findings sensibly.
 Next, the Texas group confirmed the Vermont groups’ results by also performing the same experiment in ten mice. None of the mice developed cancer. But they went further by investigating whether the transfer process itself could be the explanation for why the new cells did not behave cancerously. Here, they transplanted nuclei from a cancer cell.. to another cancer cell and then put that into mice. Seven out of the eight mice developed cancer! So it wasn’t the transfer itself which led to the Vermont groups result.
 They then did another experiment which blew the whole case wide open. They reversed the Vermont experiment and took mitochondria from a cancer cell and transplanted it to a normal cell. 97% of the mice developed cancer. They had effectively proven the cause of cancer – damaged mitochondria, not damaged nuclei.

 Although the above was the conclusion in their paper, the problem was.. their claim was ignored. The NCI made a decision that their experiments merited no further exploration (as per TOTT). The NIH study committees they approached “would not entertain such an idea at the time” as they were focused on genetics and were not about to reverse course completely. Welcome to “Science” folks. Warren Schaeffer of the Vermont team later lamented that he too “was stuck on the genetic origin theory” which confounded him at the time. Later, when he learned about the MTOC, he reflected nostalgically (from TOTT):
 “Also at the time, I was not aware of the metabolic research even though I was familiar with Warburg (I spent the greater part of my PhD research work using the Warburg apparatus). However, putting that together with our work should have caused us, in RETROSPECT , to delve further into the earliest research involving mitochondria. Where was Seyfried when we could have used him?
 So, if Seyfried had not dug these studies up, they would have been forgotten. Seyfried instead rightly recognized that “the origin of carcinogenesis resides with the mitochondria in the cytoplasm and not with the genome in the nucleus .”
 Although Seyfried discovered the above missing pieces to the puzzle simply through a medical literature search, he also did research which contrasted the MTOC with the SMT when he studied the one drug which supposedly validated the SMT and that drug was the famous Gleevec which treats a specific from of chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML).
 Gleevec has been held up as the crown jewel product developed through applying the SMT to research, a drug which comes from a class of cancer drugs called “targeted therapies,” i.e. these are drugs which are designed to target a specific genetic mutation. Targeted therapies have long been heralded as a “paradigm shift in cancer drug development” and as “proof of principle” that the SMT of cancer was the right starting point when designing any cancer therapy. Know that CML is a cancer thought to be caused by a defect on a specific chromosome and the defect is present in every CML case.
 Briefly, the chromosomal defects in CML form a new “hybrid” gene called ABR-BCL which is stuck in an “on” position such that it produces a large amount of a specific enzyme called a tyrosine kinase. Over many years and across several labs, researchers worked to find a “kinase inhibitor” which would counteract the effect of this overactive gene. The drug they found, called imatinib (Gleevec), led to a complete remission in 53 of the first 54 patients it was tested on!
 Per TOTT, no other cancer therapy would have such a profound impact on the field (and the supposed validity of the SMT) and oncologists even refer to pre-Gleevec and post-Gleevec eras. They had literally discovered a non-toxic cure for a cancer by targeting the product of a mutation! The main caveat is that CML is unique amongst cancers in that it is homogenous in terms of the mutation that drives it whereas most other cancers “display a hurricane of genetic chaos.” Thus it vastly oversimplifies cancer given that the vast majority of cancers are too complex to apply a Gleevec model to them. Christofferson argues that its success directed researchers “down a perilous path.”
 Here is the amazing thing though. Although Gleevec seemed to validate the SMT, many overlooked the fact that the chromosomal defect causing CML could also be found in a lot of people without the disease! So, something else was needed to cause the cancer! Further, 20% of advanced cases died even with Gleevec treatment.
 Here is where Pedersen and Seyfried noticed that Gleevec had a mechanism of action which actually converged with the MTOC. Simply, the BCR-ABL gene also activated a signaling pathway (PI3K/AKT) which also gets activated by damaged mitochondria ! This pathway is what causes the cell to dramatically increase glucose uptake and use . When you block ABR-BCL, you are also blocking the glucose uptake pathway signal, thus restoring oxidative metabolism, i.e reversing the Warburg effect ! The one targeted drug out of the seven hundred they tested in CML was later found to exert its effect via a metabolic pathway? Coincidence? I think not.
 Now convinced of the validity of the MTOC, Seyfried then focused his research first on caloric restriction and then on restricting carbohydrates (i.e. glucose). When carbs are sufficiently restricted (ketogenic diet), the body no longer makes glucose and instead makes an alternative fuel from fat called ketone bodies. Ketone bodies can only be metabolized using oxygen and require healthy mitochondria to do so. Cancer cells do not have this option, so he reasoned that a ketogenic diet would selectively “kill” cancer cells and not normal cells! “Starve” the cancer?
 What is now known about ketogenic diets is that they have been shown to positively impact a range of neurological diseases including epilepsy, Parkinsons, Alzheimers, ALS, and brain trauma. Further, ketone bodies appear to preserve and even restore damaged mitochondria!
 Seyfried kept researching caloric restriction and ketogenic diets and found they were;
 1)    Anti-angiogenic – stopped tumors from producing new blood vessels
 2)    Pro-apoptotic – facilitated orderly cell death
 3)    Anti-invasive – less metastases in mouse models
 4)    Pro-aerobic metabolism- it turns down the P13K/AKT pathway which promotes glucose metabolism
 Basically, everywhere he looked the diet “pushed back” on every biochemical process which causes a cell to behave cancerously. He then tried what he called the “R-KD” diet (restricted calorie ketogenic diet) on one woman with glioblastoma after her tumor was resected with surgery. Her next few MRI’s showed no evidence of any tumor but then the patient relaxed the diet and less than three months later, the cancer was back. Numerous studies have since supported the beneficial impacts of a restricted and/or ketogenic diet in cancers of the breast, brain, colon, pancreas, lung, and prostate. Studies also show that the same diet also lessens the side effects of chemotherapy. In addition, other studies have shown the diet also potentiates the effects of chemotherapy. Patients who do R-KD and radiation or chemo do better then either one alone.
 Ultimately it is Thomas Seyfried who deserves the credit for compiling all the pieces which make up what he coined “The Metabolic Theory of Cancer.” Know that until Seyfried, nobody had been able to complete the theory that began with Warburg’s first observation of aerobic fermentation and finished with Weinberg’s six (later eight) hallmarks of cancer. Seyfried has stated that the MTOC (summarized in his 2012 book “Cancer As a Metabolic Disease”) consists of:
 1)        A fusion of Pedersens review
 2)        The work of Sonnenschein and Soto
 3)        His own work on the damaged lipids of tumor mitochondria
 4)        His study on the effects of R-KD diets on tumor growth
 5)        A massive literature search which uncovered the nuclear transfer experiments
 6)        His background in genetics which enabled him to evaluate the inconsistent and contradictory data from The Cancer Genome Atlas Project.
 You would think that after the publication of his papers and books, the National Cancer Institute as well as leading researchers across the world would have shifted focus no? That unfortunately (and predictably - science is stubborn and resists correction) didn’t happen but laypeople noticed. He became a bit of a media star, featured on radio shows and high-profile blogs. He gave lectures at medical conferences where he received standing ovations!
 Anecdotal cases of cancer patients employing metabolic therapies began to pop up – some with stunning results. His work and insights were getting out there, but not from the “ top down via academia but from the bottom up ” through patients, physicians, and the handful of academics who noticed.
 As Seyfried wrote in the forward to Christofferson’s book:
 “Metabolic therapies will be more effective and less toxic than the current gene-or-immune based therapies, and have the potential to significantly improve quality of life and long-term survival for millions of cancer patients worldwide.”
 Travis Christofferson wrote the following in his final Chapter, Where Do We Go From Here:
 We have not been at this very long at all. The first chemotherapy was developed in the middle of World War II. By letting highly toxic substances flow through the veins of patients, cancer cells are preferentially (to a small degree) killed off, highlighting that they are more vulnerable than healthy cells. If scientists have mischaracterized the origin of cancer, then we have lost three decades trying to target mutations that are in fact only a side effect rather than the motor driving the disease. If cancer is metabolic, we are just getting started, and real progress should be quick to follow. We will find more ways to push the sick cells over the edge.
 As Per OTT, a cosmologist named Paul Davies was hired by the NCI to help break the stalemate in our understanding and treatment of cancer. In 2015, he wrote:
 “A major impediment to progress is the deep entrenchment of a 50 year-old paradigm, the so-called somatic mutation theory. . . . If cancer is caused by mutations, so the reasoning goes, then maybe subtle patterns can be teased out of petabytes of bewildering cancer sequencing data. . . . Never has science offered a clearer example of a preoccupation with trees at the expense of the forest. ”
 CONCLUSION
 As alluded to by Christofferson, the sad reality of this entire topic is that cancer research and drug development have been almost exclusively driven by the SMT and that is likely why, despite Nixon’s War on Cancer which began in 1971, currently:
 deaths from cancer have increased 9 percent since 1950

 From Paul Marik’s Cancer Care book :
 As of 1997, the overall contribution of curative and adjuvant cytotoxic chemotherapy to 5-year survival in adults was estimated to be 2.3% in Australia and 2.1 % in the U.S.

 5-year cancer survival rate has only increased from 63% to 68% over the last 25 years (1995 to 2018).

 Over the past 15 years, the improvement in overall survival by new cancer therapies is a meager 2.4 months.

 Advances in all experimental treatment approaches has led to an improvement in overall survival of 3.4 months over the last 30 years.

 Further, in the past few decades researchers and funders have been obsessively focused on “targeted therapies” which try to focus on correcting or inhibiting the products of specific mutations. How are targeted therapies doing?
 Dr Fojo, head of the Experimental Therapeutics Section at the NCI’s Center for Cancer Research said in 2013:
 “A conservative estimate of the number of targeted therapies tested in patients with cancer in the past decade was seven hundred, yet no patients with solid tumors have been cured by targeted therapies over that time period. Zero is the number of targeted therapies that have prolonged survival by one year, when compared to conventional treatment.”
 Christofferson’s book reviewed the history of two famous targeted therapies:
 Avastin for metastatic colon cancer (later breast cancer as well). It was approved based on its ability to shrink tumors yet it had no impact on extending overall survival. One year of therapy = $90,816. When added to standard of care (paclitaxel), it more than doubles the chance of significant toxicity.

 Herceptin for HER-2 positive breast cancer also was approved for shrinking tumors however this did end up having an impact on survival, but quite modest (2.9% improvement in overall survival at 4 years, median survival of 4.8 months longer). Costs $70,00 a year.

 From Paul’s Cancer Care Book:
 “This data suggests that despite the billions of dollars spent on cancer therapy, the “traditional” approach has largely failed; alternative, less expensive, less toxic, and more effective therapies are urgently required.”
 This is where the more recent work of Dr. Paul Marik comes in. “Tripping Over The Truth” inspired Paul to begin working on a project where he reviewed over 2,000 studies on the metabolic mechanisms of hundreds of repurposed medicines and thousands of nutraceuticals as well as other metabolic interventions to treat cancer (i.e. diet). He then created a compendium of repurposed medicines and nutraceuticals that have either been tested in cancer trials or have been used in treatment by practitioners (mostly in other countries where cancer is treated using more diverse tools and approaches than in the U.S. ) Then, based on the depth and breadth of their respective in-vivo, in-vitro, and clinical evidence bases, he assigned graded recommendations for their use in cancer (i.e. strong, weak, and insufficient evidence).
 His work is what not only inspired my interest in cancer, but also led to our designing of a prospective observational trial to study the impact of adding combinations of metabolic therapies to current standard of care approaches. With my partner Scott Marsland, we quickly built a complementary cancer care practice and have become a study site where we see patients in all 50 states (and even in other countries).
 Just as our clinic responded to what I believe is the greatest unmet medical need in the world, that of treatment for mRNA vaccine injury syndrome and/or Long Covid, we are also now responding to the horrific explosion in cancer timed with and in the wake of the mRNA campaign, most expertly and recently detailed by The Ethical Skeptic here . A couple of recent graphs from that post:

 Ultimately, the MTOC and SMT lead to very different therapeutic approaches. Personally, I believe they should both be employed in a “complementary” fashion as we do at our Leading Edge Clinic and in our multi-center study – we do not advise patients to forego standard of care approaches but instead add metabolic therapies in synergy, complementary to the care they already receive.
 However, we have also treated some patients who have “exhausted” conventional standard therapies, e.g. some patients come to us because their treatment was stopped either for ineffectiveness or toxicity and they are then only offered comfort care. To date, the results have been mixed in those patients, but we have seen some responses that have been quite dramatic. Here are two PET scans of a recent patient of mine with metastatic lung cancer, the left was taken in June after diagnosis, the right was a follow-up in September (look only at the lung fields, the remaining “spots” in the abdomen represent physiologic uptake):

 Official Report:”near complete resolution of prior metastatic and pleural disease.”
 Although dramatic, I have to say that a number of similar late-stage patients have failed to respond. We desperately need to lean more about why some respond and others don’t. It is my hope that our cancer care study will help start answering that question. Either way, I believe it is time for the NCI and NIH to focus much more on the MTOC in its research funding. If Bobby gets in to HHS, it will be something I hope that I and others can try to influence.

 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: For the past 70 years the Somatic Mutation Theory (SMT) guided all research and treatment in cancer. Why are so few aware that it was overturned 15 years ago by the Metabolic Theory of Cancer (MTOC)?


Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP)

Aly Burt, RN runs the Safe and Sound Protocol at the Leading Edge Clinic . She can be found on social media at Uprooted Healing:
 What was life like for you before the pandemic?

 I was a thriving active 32 year old working as a nurse. I was dancing, rock climbing, hiking, backpacking, skiing. I was spontaneous, fun, and social. I laughed all the time. I was laid back but strong. I’d gone through a lot in my life, but always learned how to make each downfall a season and continue forward in finding happiness.
 How did things change?

 When I got vaxxed my life flipped upside down. It started with respiratory issues that worsened no matter what I tried. Then I was having heart palpitations, tachycardia, high blood pressure, dizziness, vertigo, confusion, headaches, heat and cold intolerances. And then I started not being able to walk on my own. I got really depressed and anxious. I thought I was dying. I lost a lot of friends and felt incredibly alone. My fiancé stood by my side and this has been hard on him as well. I eventually couldn’t work and he had to work 2-3 jobs to keep us afloat. I stopped being that fun, loving, happy girl and I felt like I was a burden to everyone around me. I was also developing some sensory issues. I think I’ve always had a sensory processing problem on a mild level, just in relation to ADHD. But when I got vaxxed, my mild sensory feelings went to an entirely new level. One I couldn’t manage. I used to be cuddly and affectionate and I started hating to be touched. Even a  hand on the shoulder would send fire through my body. Any loud noise would put me into fight or flight for days it seemed. My anxiety would snowball and I would often feel like I couldn’t control it. I would change my clothes multiple times a day.
 On top of all of that, I couldn’t regulate my temperature. I would wake up soaked from night sweats and then would be freezing because I was wet. Then I’d take a hot shower and then would flush all over and feel like I was overheating so then I’d get out and stick my head in the freezer and feel like I was still really hot. It was a constant battle to regulate my temperature. Restricted clothing started to bother me. Certain textures. Wool sweaters. Forget about it. No chance I’d survive wearing that. It would bother me sensory wise but would also shoot pain throughout my body. I don’t know how to explain it. I was irritable and would have anger outbursts which was out of character for me. I felt like a completely  different person. I understand now how dysregulated my nervous system was.
 What have you learned about yourself in the process?

 So much. I’ve learned how strong I am. I learned that it’s ok to find out who your friends are when you’re going through it. I learned how to constantly mourn. You have to constantly live in that state because it isn’t something that’s in the past. Sometimes I’m in denial and I think I can eat bad food and drink alcohol and then I don’t respond well and I get angry that I’m dealing with this. Then cry and get depressed and kind of get some of that emotion out and then I can accept it. And make the most of the situation. And then I’ll have a bad flare day and the whole cycle repeats itself in various ways. I’ve learned to say no when it’s in my best interest. I’ve also learned what I can’t do and how to live with that. I can’t do anything physical. I can’t go to social events like I used to. If I do, I generally have to rest the entire day before and think through everything. Anticipate what might happen so I’m prepared if my body doesn’t respond right. As of right now I can’t have my own babies. That’s been one of the toughest pieces of all of this. I’ve always wanted to be a mom and it’s not looking good. But on the flip side I’ve learned how to get back up quickly, how to take punches and let them roll off. I’ve built a new kind of confidence and learned about a whole new world of healthcare I didn’t even know existed. The truth of healthcare I should say. I’m a lot easier to please. The small things make me happy now. I’ve learned to be grateful even when I feel low and like I’ve lost everything. But also that it’s ok to be angry and sad about it as well. And I’ve learned how to regulate my emotions. I’ve opened up an entirely new and beautiful page of my life by learning about the nervous system and doing the Safe and Sound Protocol.
 What do you do now?

 I run the Safe and Sound Protocol at Leading Edge Clinic . Healing with this program is unlike anything I’ve done so far on my recovery journey. It doesn’t feel like another pill you have to stare at and hate and then force yourself to take it. It’s being kind to your body, understanding it, and learning to love it again. It’s rebuilding a relationship with yourself. The new you. The old you is still there. She might be hiding but she’s there. And she learns to accept that new form of you that you now live with. The part of you that’s sick can grab the hand of the strong part of you and balance. Music is healing in and of itself. That to me is worth every penny. But you’re not just listening to music. You’re listening to filtered middle frequency music. The sounds we naturally need to hear to regulate our nervous system. You learn exercises to reset your vagus nerve. This can help with digestive issues since your vagus nerve is responsible for rest and digest. It can help lower your heart rate, decrease headaches, dizziness, anxiety, sensory issues. It sounds a little out there to some people. But it really isn’t. It’s using what your body already has, reminding it how to balance with the middle frequencies and then regulating on its own. There’s no device you have to wear. Having these tools not only helps you right now with your current symptoms, but also gives you what you need to prepare for more to come if needed. Obviously we need to stay hopeful and we are trending in the right direction. Hopefully we won’t have more health issues happen. But the truth is those of us that are vaccine injured or have long haul have dealt with a tremendous amount of trauma. Physical and emotional. And it’s not something that just goes away. Your body holds onto that trauma whether we like it or not. So addressing it and giving your body what it needs to release that will help you for the rest of your life. It also gives you a piece of control. So much has been taken from us so being able to control your nervous system is a superpower and having that kind of knowledge, along with the music, gives you some control back. And that’s worth a lot for me.
 Can you tell us about the Safe and Sound Protocol? How did it originate? What are some of the principles behind it? What does it look like practically speaking?

 Dr. Stephen Porges is the founder of the Safe and Sound Protocol. He basically was trying to access the vagus nerve by using surgical implants or devices to kind of reach the vagus nerve with stimulation. Over time, he realized that the nervous system actually responds to social cues, so, what if we take a non-invasive approach to this and use what our body already has known and see how it responds? I think originally he was trying to develop the program to help patients with autism and then it turned into patients in general who have sensory issues or trauma. The principles behind the Safe and Sound Protocol are to help with emotional regulation, enhance social engagement, and reduce auditory sensitivities. You’re ultimately using middle frequency sounds to give your body repeated cues of safety. Reteaching your body that it’s safe.
 Why can’t I just do it by myself?

 It’s important to have someone that is trained to be able to guide you through the filtered music. I have to pay attention to body language, know what exercise to do when, how to help patients navigate through obstacles and titrate up at the right time. I’ve been trained and have struggled doing it on my own because I can’t see how I’m responding. You also need co-regulation. Having that is a crucial part to success. Which basically means you’re doing the listening therapy in a safe environment with someone that feels safe that is supporting you and helping you. It gives your body another cue of safety that you can’t necessarily give yourself.
 How much does it cost? How does that compare to other providers? Why would you say it’s worth the price?

 The cost is normally around $4,000 in other clinics. We are charging $1,250. There are roughly 15 sessions that go into this program. I do think it’s worth the price. I wouldn’t be doing this program if I didn’t think there was benefit to it. Being vaccine injured myself, I’ve spent a lot of money on my care over the years and it doesn’t always work right for your body. As we know, everybody’s different so I’m usually pretty reluctant to do something new unless it’s worthwhile. And addressing my nervous system was what I felt like the next step should be in order for my body to continue to heal. In my opinion, your body needs to be able to have some level of homeostasis in order for those next steps of healing to happen. But we can’t just automatically tell our body to do that. We can’t think our way to safety. We have to go through a process to get there.
 Here is an example that I’ve used in the past. Think of an ice cube. Originally it was in water form and someone took it and put it into an ice mold and put it in the freezer. It’s now in the freeze state. In order to get out of that freeze state, you have to take the ice mold out of the freezer and let it melt until it becomes water again. The ice cube can’t grow legs and get itself out of the freezer to get to that state. It has to be helped. If you look at our bodies, you know we’re meant to be in homeostasis and have a regulated nervous system. But then somebody comes along with the vaccine or Covid ( or any trauma ) and essentially put you into that freeze mode. In order to get your body out of that mode, you have to go through a process and be given queues of safety ( filtered middle frequencies ). And then your body can begin to melt and get you back to being regulated. And it does take time. When an ice cube is melting, it’s in a weird in between state of being part frozen and part melted swirling around and not quite to the state it’s intended to be. It’s the same with our body. You have to give your body the space and time to be able to get to that place of regulation and to feel safe again.
 What is your vision for doing this work into the future?

 I would love to see all of our patients take a giant step forward in their healing journey by doing this program and be able to guide other people to healing. I would love to see this as a mass movement in humanity. That we all understand our nervous system and normalize regulating it. Help each other get there, that the common goal is to be regulated. I think it would drastically reduce anxiety and depression in this country. I would love to do this for kids one day too. I think it is helpful for kids- especially the ones who have received pediatric vaccines. The Safe and Sound company also has a ‘focus program’ and I’d be really interested to see if that program helps with brain fog and I would love to dabble into that in the future.
 What advice do you have for people who are considering SSP but may not be able to afford it at the moment?

 My advice would be to try to save up if you can because it’s crucial for healing your body. When the nervous system is disregulated, it puts a road block up in allowing your body to fully heal. If you don’t address it, you’re not going to reach your goals. In the meantime, while you are saving, there are exercises that you can do that can be really helpful. I do a lot of exercises on my social media if you want to follow me! Please follow me actually, because I think I’m getting shadow banned because I talk about my vaccine injury lol. It’s called Uprooted Healing: @ uprooted_healing on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok . I don’t love TikTok, but it’s easier to reach people and my goal is to educate people about safe and sound, but also about vaccine injuries. I think there’s still a lot of people out there that don’t realize their health issues are related to the Covid vaccine or Covid in general. I also talk about different ways I’ve removed toxins from my life, different recipes, mocktails, etc. But anyways, there’s so much more that goes into regulating your nervous system than just doing those exercises. It’s a good start, but you have to have those filtered middle frequencies in order to really heal. The music therapy is what you’re paying for. That’s not something that you can get anywhere else. It’s a one-of-a-kind program. But in the time that you’re saving up to be able to do it, I would start doing some of the exercises that I have on my social media. I also would recommend reading a book called Accessing The Healing Power of the Vagus Nerve by Stanley Rosenberg . I think if you have a lot of questions around what this program is that book would be really helpful.

Summary: A discussion with Scott and Aly about healing the vagus nerve and autonomic nervous system through SSP.