The Importance of Taking a Vacation from the News

Arthur Schopenhauer's words to the wise about obsessing about the "news."

The art of not reading is a very important one. It consists in not taking an interest in whatever may be engaging the attention of the general public at any particular time. When some political or ecclesiastical pamphlet, or novel, or poem is making a great commotion, you should remember that he who writes for fools always finds a large public. — A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short.

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The Statin Scam

Here's something Pharma won't emphasize to you or your doctor:

"[S]tatins have a very high rate of injury. For example, the existing studies find between a 5-30% rate of injuries,19 and Dr. Malhotra, having gone through all the existing evidence estimates that 20% of statin users are injured by them.

Likewise, statins are well known for having a high percentage of patients discontinue the drugs due to their side effects (e.g., one large study found 44.7% of older adults discontinue the drugs within a year of starting them, while another large study of adults of all ages found 47% discontinued within a year)."

What follows is an excerpt from an article by "A Midwestern Doctor," a Substack I follow closely:

Despite decades of statin use costing approximately $25 billion annually in America alone, heart disease remains the leading cause of death, suggesting the cholesterol hypothesis that drives statin prescriptions is fundamentally flawed

Studies show that lowering cholesterol with statins does not reduce heart disease, and yet these findings are ignored while statin guidelines are created by experts paid by pharmaceutical manufacturers

Malcolm Kendrick’s clotting model provides a superior explanation for heart disease: atherosclerotic plaques result from repeated damage to blood vessel linings which the body repairs with layers of clots.

The medical establishment dismisses widespread reports of statin injuries as “nocebo effects,” paralleling how COVID-19 vaccine injuries were dismissed as “anxiety,” despite extensive evidence corroborating the injuries.

The actual causes of heart disease—fine particulate matter from pollution and cigarettes, lead exposure, chronic stress, and endothelial damage—receive minimal research funding because effective interventions cannot be patented and sold as expensive pharmaceuticals like statins.

Read the article for numerous links on this issue.

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Jeffrey Sach: Trump Lies that the US Needs to Wage War Against Iran

Once again, Jeffrey Sachs is spot on:

Trump's entire framework is completely phony and it's completely phony because Iran did not want nuclear weapons. They signed an agreement that there would not be nuclear weapons and then Trump ripped it up. Now, why did he rip it up in 2018 and why was there a standing ovation in Congress? Because this is Israel's policy, because Congress and the White House are owned by radical, militant, crazy Zionists in Israel, Bibi, Netanyahu, Smotrich, Ben Gvir, who want a war with Iran, and Trump is a puppet here. He does not have an independent capacity. Maybe he's not bright enough. Maybe he's blackmailed. We don't understand entirely, but the standing ovation reflects the Zionist lobby in the United States. This is Israel's war, and like so many of America's wars, they're trying to bring us into their fight, which is not our fight, when I say so many of our wars, the United States has been drawn by Israel into the wars in Iraq, in Libya, in Syria, across the Middle East. These are not wars for American security. They're not even wars for Israel's security. They're wars for Israel's hegemony in the region. They're wars by Israel to take out any opponent in the region or any counterweight in the region. So the United States tasked the CIA to overthrow the Syrian government. That was Obama that started that one. Trump continued it. Trump even said, I put the current leader of Syria into power. Yeah, that's a CIA operation. It was Israel that got the United States to go to war with Libya in 2011 leading to the next 15 years of chaos in that country. It is Israel that got the United States into the Iraq war in 2003. This is all so thoroughly documented at this point that that was not a war under mistaken pretenses of weapons of mass destruction. That was a PR campaign to justify Bibi's war.

And the reason why it's most likely that Trump will attack is the following: The American people don't want it. The Iranians have said they don't want nuclear weapons. The regional leaders have said, Don't go to war. Other leaders around the world, President Putin, President Xi and others have told the United States that is a terrible idea. The Joint Chiefs of Staff have told Trump this is a terrible idea. Trump's political advisers have told Trump this is disastrous because the American people don't want this. But that's all on one side. The other side is Bibi, is Israel, is Miriam Adelson, who else? We don't know exactly why, but this is the point. Trump is being overwhelmingly advised by everybody, by his military, by leaders in the region, by his political advisors, and not the least by the American people: don't do this. But it's so strange and discouraging. There isn't an honest word that comes out of Washington because of this Zionist lobby right now. And there is was no coverage whatsoever, by the way that when Rubio said a couple of weeks ago, look, we need a broad-based negotiation, and the Iranians said two days later in a speech in Doha by the foreign minister, yes, here's a path to peace, The two state solution, a state of Palestine, Israel, mutual respect, peace. That wasn't even picked up in our newspapers. [We] are subject to mass propaganda. And Trump lied every word that we just watched, and the Congress stood up and applauded him. But that's for a reason. That is the chokehold on American politics that this Zionist lobby has right now. And we need to break that chokehold for our own security.

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MAHA Roundup by “A Midwestern Doctor”

For several years, I have enthusiastically subscribed to the Substack of "A Midwestern Doctor," titled "The Forgotten Side of Medicine." It is a link-rich environment for getting one's bearings on the many health care and public health issues distorted by Pharma $ and entrenched bureaucratic dogma (visit today's article for the links). I highly recommend following this Substack.  Today's issue includes a recap of the many successes of the MAHA movement spearheaded by RFK, Jr.:

  • Cutting the mandatory vaccine schedule in half and making many previously required vaccines optional after a discussion with your doctor. Given that the CDC never removes vaccines from the schedule, my initial hope was that, when Trump broached removing the newborn hepatitis B vaccine from the CDC schedule, there was a small chance it would actually happen. Which resulted in a lot of people, myself included, waging a lengthy campaign to increase the chance that would happen. Despite that, I was initially very worried that it wouldn’t happen due to the resistance, and I patiently waited for a CDC announcement. However, out of nowhere, instead of just doing that, they cut the schedule in half (which was quite extraordinary).

    Note: one of the key arguments used in lawsuits opposing this vaccine schedule is that requiring doctors to discuss the merits of vaccinating before vaccinating patients is too time-consuming in practice—which is an excellent metaphor for the issues with the medical system.

  • Fixing the food pyramid so that unhealthy food is no longer glorified, while healthy foods are prioritized. Ironically, this required flipping the pyramid upside down (again an excellent metaphor for the health care system), resulting in a real-life enactment of a 2014 South Park episode that Kennedy’s team then slightly altered for a viral post

  • Reversing the demonization of healthy animal fats and bringing attention to the danger of seed oils.

  • Getting the food industry to agree to phase out artificial food dyes (as synthetic dyes cause a variety of issues, including behavioral problems) and to create a viable pathway for companies to use natural dyes correctly.

  • Begin closing the GRAS loophole, which has long been used to get a variety of unsafe and untested chemicals into the food supply.

  • Announced an upcoming MAHA inquiry into baby formula safety and ingredients, focusing on potential toxins and health impacts (which as I showed in this May 2025 article, was critical to do and easy to fix by reversing a few bad regulatory policies).

  • Highlighting the links between Tylenol and neurological developmental disorders (discussed further here).

  • Shutting down gain-of-function bioweapons research being practiced throughout the United States, and from what I’ve heard in the near future globally as well.

  • Begin drawing attention to the dangers of water fluoridation so it can be phased out (a critical topic I still have not had time to write about, other than its role in causing osteoporosis) and beginning the phase out of mercury dental fillings by announcing they would be phased out of the Indian Health Service by 2027 (which is likewise another critical health topic I have not yet had time to cover).

  • Defeated the pesticide immunity provision (Section 453), something I like many others tried to oppose (e.g., see this article), but thought would likely pass due to how much influence the agrochemical sector has.

  • Implement a variety of federal policies to subsidize only healthy practices and lower prices (e.g., greatly lowering drug prices, changing Medicare reimbursements to prioritize practices that promote health, and making food stamps no longer cover or subsidize junk food). Implemented major HHS restructuring, including a 20% workforce reduction and consolidation into a new chronic disease-focused agency, reducing bureaucratic influence.

  • Begin rolling back television pharmaceutical advertising by reinstating the advertising restrictions Clinton eliminated.

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Julian Assange Discusses a Significant Cause of War

In this 2011 statement, Julian Assange discussed a significant cause of war:

One of the hopeful things that I've discovered is that nearly every war that has started in the past 50 years has been a result of media lies.

The media could have stopped it, if they had searched deep enough, if they hadn't reprinted government propaganda, they could have stopped it. But what does that mean?

Well, that means, basically, populations don't like wars, and populations have to be fooled into wars. Populations don't willingly and with open eyes, go into a war. So if we have a good media environment, then we'll also have a peaceful environment. But our number one enemy is ignorance, and I believe that is the number one enemy that everyone is not understanding of what is actually going on in the world. It's only when you start to understand that you can make effective decisions and effective plans.

Now question is, who is promoting ignorance? Well, those organizations to try to keep them secret, and those organizations which distort true information to make it false, or misrepresentative. In this latter category, it is bad media. It really is my opinion that the media in general are so bad, we have to question whether the world wouldn't be better off without them all together. There's some very, very fine journalists and we work with many of them. And some fine media organizations. The vast majority are awful and are so distortive to how the world actually is, the result is we see wars, and we see corrupt governments continue on.

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