In October 2020, three contrarian medical professionals published The Great Barrington Declaration to great applause by the pro-business, anti-closure crowd. One of them, Jay Bhattacharya, now runs the NIH.
Things are not going well under his watch. Last week, he was grilled in front of Congress about the $18B in proposed cuts to NIH funding. This happened a day after over 300 people under his guard published The Bethesda Declaration, a document filled with issues occurring under Bhattacharya's leadership.
Derek discusses this new declaration and listens in on the Congressional hearing.
The Bethesda Declaration
An Uproar at the NIH
The Disappearing Funds for Chronic Diseases
Show Notes
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In October 2020, three contrarian medical professionals published the Great Barrington Declaration to great applause by the pro-business, anti-closing business crowd.
This makes sense as it was sponsored by the American Institute for Economic Research, which is a libertarian free market think tank with deep ties to the Koch network.
The document was an ode to herd immunity with one basic principle in place.
Let COVID-19 rip and call the weaker members of the herd, provided that Americans can get back to shopping and working.
Sure, yes, the authors made some concessions about protecting the most vulnerable, but that's not how it was received or how it's been treated since.
The WHO and other public health bodies immediately came out and noted the dangers of this prescription.
Today, however, the three authors continue to claim that they've been vindicated, though they never really explain why.
They cite declining vaccination rates, which is ironic given that they were part of the misinformation gang that helped push anti-vax narratives into the public's eye.
What they're really celebrating is the ascension of the anti-science Trump administration and its elevation of RFK Jr. to the highest public health office in the nation.
Tagging along with Bobby is one of those authors, NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya.
We've covered Jay often over the years.
Most recently, Julian and I breaking down his latest appearance on Barry Weiss' softball podcast.
I'm talking about him again because just last week, a new document was pushed into the public consciousness, and it is known as the Bethesda Declaration.
For those unfamiliar, Bethesda sits just northwest of Washington, D.C. and is where the NIH headquarters are located.
The declaration is so named because 92 NIH researchers and 250 of their colleagues endorsed the document, though this last tranche did so anonymously due to fear of retaliation, which really sucks.
Because the whole point of the transparency of all of the agencies under HHS should mean that people within it should not fear losing their jobs if they speak up when they see a problem.
But I don't blame them.
Bobby Kennedy Jr. and his HHS cronies promised transparency, but they also promised gold standard science, and they have not delivered anything of the sort.
On June 7th, Bobby accused Wall Street Journal journalist, you know, that liberal rag, Liz White of, quote, faithfully reciting Big Pharma's talking points and, quote, parroting defamation against David Gere, the man that Bobby put in charge of researching a connection between vaccines and autism.
He's leading the study that is about the cause of autism, but we know where this is going to lead.
Gere was disciplined by Maryland regulators over a decade ago for practicing medicine without a license.
Along with his now-late father, the two men treated autistic children with Lupron, which is a drug that's normally used to chemically castrate people.
In Kennedy's eyes, the gears were really part of a medical vendetta, his words.
Then you have Marty Macri and Vinay Prasad.
Julian and I also recently covered their new FDA podcast, which they promise opens the black box at the agency.
Meanwhile, comments are turned off of their YouTube channel, which is where their podcast lives.
And then there's the focus of today's episode once again, Jay Bhattacharya, who is another free speech warrior who, according to the signers of the Bethesda Declaration, has been ignoring their protestations to the actions that he's taken thus far, citing his dedication to protecting political interests over human safety and the stewardship of public resources.
On the same day that the Bethesda Declaration was published, this was last Monday, a week ago, and I wish I was making this shit up, Andrew Huberman published a four-and-a-half-hour podcast with Bhattacharya entitled Improving Science and Restoring Trust in Public Health.
This is pretty ironic, given that Kennedy also fired 17 members of the CDC Vaccine Advisory Panel that day, known as ACIP.
Way to restore trust.
We can be pretty sure that at least one of those researchers will be replaced with David Geer or the many David Geers of the anti-vax world.
There's just so much shit going on.
I'm Derek Barris and you're listening to a Conspirituality bonus episode, the Bethesda Declaration.
If you're able to support us financially as independent media creators, we would really appreciate your support to unlock this full episode.
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And then I'll briefly play a few clips of Bhattacharya responding in front of Congress.
He was hauled in last week because he's calling for $18 billion in NIH cuts, and some Congress people were not happy about that.
If you came for an analysis of the Huberman conversation, sorry, you are on your own.
I did watch some of it.
My God, I'm not doing four and a half hours, although I might have to depending on how all this goes.
All right, let's get into it.
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