Caroline Ellison Admits She and Sam Bankman-Fried Conspired to Mislead FTX Investors and Customers

December 23, 2022

Caroline Ellison Admits She and Sam Bankman-Fried Conspired to Mislead FTX Investors and Customers

Gateway Pundit | Dec. 23, 2022

Sam Bankman-Fried’s ex-girlfriend Caroline Ellison, Alameda CEO, pleaded guilty to charges of fraud and conspiracy.

According to US Attorney Damian Williams, Caroline Ellison is cooperating with prosecutors in the Southern District of New York.

The SDNY also charged FTX co-founder Gary Wang with fraud.

In a separate complaint, the SEC charged Ellison and Wang with securities fraud.

Caroline Ellison admitted she and Sam Bankman-Fried conspired to mislead FTX investors and customers.

Ellison said her former company Alameda had access to FTX’s cash which ultimately afforded her an unlimited line of credit with no oversight.

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December 23, 2022

Pelosi’s Office Was Directly Involved In Failed Jan. 6 Security, Texts And Emails Reveal

Zero Hedge | Dec. 23, 2022

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office was directly involved in the Capitol security plan – in which officials said they had been “denied again and again” when asking for resources necessary to protect the building complex during the the Jan. 6, 2021 riot.

According to a trove of text and email messages made public Wednesday by House Republicans, the Capitol was left vulnerable on Jan. 6 as a result of failures by Democratic leadership in the House as well as law enforcement officials in the Capitol Police, who let concerns over the “optics” of armed officers and National Guardsmen take precedent over an appropriate level of staffing given the obvious protests which were about to occur.

The report, compiled by GOP Reps. Rodney Davis, Jim Banks, Troy Nehls, Jim Jordan and Kelly Armstrong, covers the results of months of investigation surrounding the events of Jan. 6, which the Democrat-led J6 Committee failed to conduct, Just the News reports.

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December 23, 2022January 2, 2023

Merry Christmas to All “Licensed” Professionals and Businesses

Note from Eddie: Share this with all licensed professionals everywhere, particularly in California and Gov Newsome’s latest shenanigans. Here is the link to the printable PDF (opens new tab). Thank you!
https://annavonreitz.com/merrychristmas.pdf

By Anna Von Reitz

A license by definition is official permission to engage in activities that would otherwise be illegal.

Have you stopped to consider — what is illegal about driving, owning a dog, conducting a business, providing health care services as a physician, nurse, dentist, pharmacist, or other health care professional, or acting as a Counselor of Law? What is illegal about getting married???

It should be obvious to anyone who stops and thinks about it for five seconds that no such “licensing requirements” can apply to an American in a free country. So what is going on here?

Usurpation and obfuscation.

And who are all these people running around carrying clip-boards and claiming that you “must” have a license or permits for activities that have never been subject to regulation since the founding of this country?

The only things that any Federal Subcontractor, Agency, or Franchise has authority to regulate are: interstate sale, manufacture, or transport of alcohol, tobacco, and firearms, interstate commerce (defined as business between incorporated entities across state borders) — and their own internal affairs and citizenry, that is, their own employees.

These people with the clip-boards and demands are all acting — whether they know it or not, as “Federal citizenry”, and Federal Citizens are the ones who have to be licensed and permitted and regulated. They are the ones subject to “Administrative Law” —statutes, ordinances, regulations, codes — as opposed to Public Law, and for regulating their own business affairs and issuing permits and licenses among themselves, according to the Public Policies of the corporations that employ them.

I have a friend here in Alaska who I dearly cherish, an old War Horse in this particular “War of Identities”, and a new friend in the Cause who both spontaneously, within 24 hours of each other, brought forward this case citation:

“The acceptance of a license, in whatever form, will not impose upon the licensee an obligation to respect or to comply with any provision of the statute or with the regulations prescribed that are repugnant to the Constitution of the United States.” [Emphasis added]

W. W. Cargill Co. v. State of Minnesota, 180 U.S. 452 (1901)

Or, to put it another way, the rules, ordinances, statutes, codes, regulations and mandates governing any corporation, together with those Public Policies any corporation may impose on its employees or vendors providing services to the corporation and its employees, is still subject to the Public Law (in particular, the Constitution).

Whether you are “licensed” or have a “permit” or not, you are never required to say or do anything in conflict with (or trespassing against) the guarantees owed to Americans.

So, if Americans are owed the right to freedom of speech, for example, whether they are licensed or not, no corporation’s internal administrative law can be invoked to censor them. Or invade their privacy. Or dictate

Corporations, including the American Medical Association, and the American Bar Association, have to respect the Constitutional Guarantees owed to their American employees, vendors — that is, licensees, customers, and agency subcontractors. And no “licensee” can be forced as a condition of their licensing to violate any aspect of the Constitutions.

Doctors? Lawyers? Police? Code Compliance Officers of all kinds? CEO’s of corporations large and small? Are you listening?

The Constitutions limit the activities of these foreign Federal Subcontractor corporations, aka, “persons” on our soil. And any licenses issued by these corporations to their separate citizenry (employees) or licensees (vendors) cannot be used to evade their limitations imposed by the Constitutions.

You, acting as a Licensee (Vendor supplying services to them or for them) cannot be coerced in any manner to violate the Constitution by any licensing agreement or regulation.

CEO’s who impose on their employee’s financial privacy and collect taxes from Americans under False Presumptions and who coerce their American employees to obey mask mandates, etc., are in violation of the Constitutions.

And it’s a far more serious offense to be in violation of the Constitutions than to be in violation of Public Policy. And no Policy Maker can subourne you to violate the limitations of the Constitutions.

Exercise your conscience with impunity and immunity.

Mask mandates? No can do.

Coercion, threats of losing employment? No can do.

Threats of losing your license? No can do.

Threats of “investigations”? No can do.

December 23, 2022

Was Mesolithic Doggerland the Inspiration for the Legends of Atlantis and The Flood?

The theory that Mesolithic-Doggerland was the source of the legends of Atlantis, The Flood and creation is, of course, speculative but does contain certain compelling points, especially in terms of context. Plato said that Atlantis laid beyond “beyond the Pillars of Hercules,” or Gibraltar in the Atlantic. Doggerland was located in post Ice Age North Sea well outside of the Mediterranean. However, as a bird flies, Doggerland is much closer to Greece than more far-placed Atlantic locations that have been offered up.

Mesolithic Doggerland was not a “civilization”; but for that epoch, it was quite advanced and was situated on some of the best real estate in Eurasia.

Plato is known to have freely borrowed some of his allegories and metaphors from older traditions. Written in 360 B.C., Plato (428-347 B.C.) introduced Atlantis in “Timaeus.” The dialogues claim to quote Solon, who visited Egypt between 590 and 580 B.C. They state that Solon translated Egyptian records of Atlantis. Arguably, Atlantis and The Flood would have represented a major collective memory passed down from an epic event. But what event?

Adding to the mystery comes a revelation that up to 70 percent of British men are related to the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamen, geneticists in Switzerland said. Did a group of Doggerlander descendants make their way to Egypt, end up ruling and, most certainly, taking their epic memories with them?

Plato also described Doggerland accurately from what we know today, saying that the Plain to the South-Southwest dominated the sea by a vertical drop, and that at the other side of the drop (North and East), the Plain went down in a gentle slope.

More color and a good match came from Diodorus Siculus, a Greek historian of the first century B.C., sourcing Hecateus of Miletus, the first geographer of the fourth century B.C., states:

“Hecateus and a few others claim that, beyond the country of the Celts, there is in the Ocean an island no smaller than Sicily. It stretches Northwards and is inhabited by the Hyperboreans. They are so called because they live beyond the lands where Boreas, the North wind, blows.

Doggerland, now submerged under the North Sea, was the “True Heart of Europe” in the Mesolithic, according to Richard Bates of the University of St. Andrews. It was a paradise for that era, with the populations multiplying and doing very well. It would have been one of the larger and prospering human populations of Europe.

Lakes lapped gently in the marshes, rivers winding their course through lush landscapes of grasses and bushes. Food was plentiful. The waters teemed with fish and shellfish, birds nested in the reeds, berry bushes covered the banks. There were many rich villages of country folk, the meadows furnished ample nutriment to all the animals both tame and wild. Timber of various sizes and descriptions was abundantly sufficient for the needs of all and every craft. Doggerlanders were fishermen and would have been skilled at making functioning seaworthy boats.

Image result for doggerland

After the Ice Age receded, populations migrated from the Iberian Refugio and moved into this prime real estate stating about 8,000 B.C. In the context of the next several millennium, life was much more advanced and comfortable than their Ice Age ancestors or others scattered around Europe who barely survived. For about two millennium, Doggerland had a good run by any standard.

The Flood Story

Gradually, as the ice melted, the North Sea rose and Doggerland was inundated. It was gradual at first, and the inhabitants constructed dykes to preserve their fertile lands. Plato referenced dykes.

There was an abrupt 0.25- to 0.5-meter sea-level jump sometime between 6300-6200 B.C., marking the effects of the catastrophic melt-water release from Lake Agassiz that triggered the so-called “8200 calBP” cold event around the Atlantic (e.g. LeGrande 2006; Clare, et al). Lake Agassiz was an ice dam lake in Canada. It would have poured into the Hudson Bay and raised the sea level of the North Atlantic.

At this point, with decades of lead time and the lands shrinking, the Doggerlanders began to resort to boats for shorter relocation trips to the European and British coasts.

Next, and within +/- 100 years after the Agassiz inundation, a giant ice dam that once spanned roughly from Dover to Calais and retained a lake to its Northeast catastrophically failed, resulting in yet a second flood that opened the English Channel.

Within another 100 years, the mother of all floods hit from the Storegga Slide (Norway) tsunami. Three epic floods over a few hundred years at the location of the best real estate in Mesolithic times would all but guarantee flood, lost civilization and Ark voyage legends of a most memorable kind.

The map at left shows Doggerland as a massive plain in about 7500 B.C. The map at right shows the residual island about 6200 B.C., after the English Channel opened up and just before the mega-tsunami hit. Notice that besides Dogger Island, there are a string of good-sized islands in the English Channel and North of the Rhine. Additionally, low-laying land that once jutted out into the North Sea and attached to England would have been inundated.

On one autumn day about 6000 to 6200 B.C., the men of the Mesolithic had just retired to their winter quarters when one of the greatest catastrophes in European history crashed down upon them. If any event qualifies as an epic flood in pre-history, this was it.

From “Doggerland Lost“:

“The end came in a flash: 8 to 10 meter tsunamis raced through the North Sea. In the sea bottom in front of the coast of Norway, huge masses of mud slid down a 1000 meter slope – an event known as the Storegga Slide – and gave rise to the enormous waves.”

In their work, Jon Hill and his colleagues reconstructed the past landscape of Doggerland on their computers.

“Large parts of Doggerland were then less than five meters above sea-level. The fate of the island proved a lucky break for the coastlines behind them: Doggerland acted as a wave-breaker, so that the German North Sea coast, the Netherlands and Southern England were exposed to tsunamis of only one meter.”

The chart shows the various impacts that sent Doggerland to an Atlantis style watery grave, including the tsunami and mother of floods transpiring in hours. The tsunami manifested itself as a giant wave on the coastline and an unusually extensive flood in the interior.

This does not necessarily imply that all were killed immediately — although given the likely rapidity and scale of the event, a significant number of people would almost certainly have been caught and drowned by the inexorably cold and rising waters, while many others would have been displaced. Productive coastal areas would have been devastated, shellfish beds destroyed and covered by sand, together with any fixed fishing facilities. Any stored food meant to last over the winter may also have been lost (cf. Spikins 2008), with subsequent starvation among survivors.

The final abandonment of the remaining remnants of Doggerland as a place of permanent habitation by Mesolithic populations was rapid as well as epic. The idea that the survivors would have left on boats and barges to the coast of England is likely. An island-hopping evacuation to the less-impacted modern-day Low Countries and French coast would also have been in the works. An entire population would have had to renew and relocate.

Doggerland: far more advanced than previously thought.

One of the larger northwestern European paternal haplogroups R1b1b2a1a (mine) is associated with many DNA samples taken from the Dogger Banks. Today, this Doggerlander gene is found in England, the Low Countries, Denmark, Southern Norway and coastal France, where it reaches levels of one-third of the modern population. In pre-modern migration times, say 1500 A.D., it would have been even higher.

Fourth century historian Ammianus Marcellinus, relying on a lost work by Timagenes, a historian writing in the first century B.C., who writes that the Druids of Gaul said that part of the inhabitants of Gaul had migrated there from distant islands: “The Drasidae (Druids) recall that a part of the population is indigenous but others also migrated in from islands and lands beyond the Rhine.” (Res Gestae 15.9) Note: The Rhine enters the North Sea in southern Netherlands.

Welsh: “The lake of Llion burst, flooding all lands. Dwyfan and Dwyfach escaped in a mastless ship with pairs of every sort of living creature. They landed in Prydain [Britain] and repopulated the world” (Gaster, pp. 92-93).

Scandinavian: “Oden, Vili, and Ve fought and slew the great ice giant Ymir, and icy water from his wounds drowned most of the Rime Giants. The giant Bergelmir escaped, with his wife and children, on a boat made from a hollowed tree trunk. From them rose the race of frost ogres. Ymir’s body became the world we live on. His blood became the oceans” (Sturluson, p. 35).

Celtic: “Heaven and Earth were great giants, and Heaven lay upon the Earth so that their children were crowded between them, and the children and their mother were unhappy in the darkness. The boldest of the sons led his brothers in cutting up Heaven into many pieces. From his skull they made the firmament. His spilling blood caused a great flood which killed all humans except a single pair, who were saved in a ship made by a beneficent Titan. The waters settled in hollows to become the oceans. The son who led in the mutilation of Heaven was a Titan and became their king, but the Titans and gods hated each other, and the king titan was driven from his throne by his son, who was born a god. That Titan at last went to the land of the departed. The Titan who built the ship, whom some consider to be the same as the king Titan, went there also” (Sproul, pp. 172-173).

The stories, tales and legends of such a monumental flood and displacement would have spread all over Eurasia, and even elsewhere, as a universal collective memory. Sea levels were rising globally during this era, and the Black Sea also experienced a flooded coastal zone. Indeed, variations of the flood accounts are found in many locations, religions and cultures, not just Sumeria and the Bible (see full list). But the 6000 B.C. Storegga Slide and outcomes would have been the epic mother of all events.

December 23, 2022

Health Tips From the Godfather of Vitamin D Research

Bruce Hollis, Ph.D., professor of pediatrics at the Medical University of South Carolina, discusses vitamin D’s anti-inflammatory potential, which makes it useful for supporting optimal health throughout your lifespan
A vitamin D-focused anti-inflammatory regimen may successfully manage cluster headaches
The regimen involves a high loading dose of 600,000 to 800,000 IU of vitamin D spread over six to 12 days, followed by 10,000 IU a day of vitamin D3, adjusted as needed to keep vitamin D levels near 80 ng/mL
GrassrootsHealth recommends a vitamin D level of 40 to 60 ng/ml for optimal health and disease prevention
Higher levels of 60 to 80 ng/ml may be even better — and in some cases a level upward of 100 ng/mL appears safe and beneficial, especially for cancer, cluster headaches and autoimmune conditions
It’s best to optimize your vitamin D levels via sensible sun exposure, but if this isn’t an option for you then daily vitamin D3 supplementation may be necessary

Visit Mercola Market — **Advertisement**

Bruce Hollis, Ph.D., professor of pediatrics at the Medical University of South Carolina, has published more than 200 papers on vitamin D. In their interview, above, Craig Stewart refers to Hollis as “one of the godfathers of vitamin D research”1 — and he’s not wrong. Many are aware that vitamin D plays a role in numerous diseases, from acute respiratory tract infections to cancer.2

Less known is vitamin D’s anti-inflammatory potential, which makes it useful for supporting optimal health throughout your lifespan. Stewart is using a vitamin D-focused anti-inflammatory regimen to successfully manage his cluster headaches. It involves a high loading dose of 600,000 to 800,000 IU of vitamin D spread over six to 12 days, followed by 10,000 IU a day of vitamin D3, adjusted as needed to keep vitamin D levels near 80 ng/mL (200 nmol/l).3

“It is my hope sufferers will watch this and realize it is a safe and effective treatment option and everyone realizes the importance of maintaining physiological levels of Vitamin D,” Stewart said.4 Indeed, if you’re not yet aware of your vitamin D levels — and optimizing them to health-protective levels — this video is for you.

Hollis is an adviser to GrassrootsHealth Nutrient Research Institute, a nonprofit public health research organization dedicated to moving public health messages regarding vitamin D from research into practice.

GrassrootsHealth recommends a vitamin D level of 40 to 60 ng/ml for optimal health and disease prevention. However, higher levels of 60 to 80 ng/ml may be even better — and in some cases a level upward of 100 ng/mL appears safe and beneficial, especially for cancer. According to Hollis:5

“The 40 to 60 ng/ml (100-150 nmol/l) of 25(OH)D is basically based on normal physiology, OK? So prevention of cancer … mitigating the effect of covid, what have you … it’s not pharmacology. What I mean by that is if people have … cluster headaches or they have active cancer, that’s not normal physiology. That’s pharmacology.
So under those conditions the need to boost vitamin D higher is probably therapeutic. Now for a normal person — somebody who doesn’t have any pathologies — 40 to 60 to 70 nanograms is probably a good place to be. But for people who have afflictions — autoimmune afflictions, headaches, active cancer like prostate cancer — then that’s a different ball game, and then you need to maintain much higher levels.”

In New Zealand and many other countries, a vitamin D level of 20 ng/mL to 40 ng/mL (50-100 nmol/l) is considered optimal, while levels as low as 10 ng/mL (25 nmol/l) are only described as a “mild deficiency.”6 Research shows much higher levels are needed to reap all of vitamin D’s therapeutic potential.

For instance, a 53% increase in COVID-19 infection rates was found among people with vitamin D levels below 20 ng/mL compared to those with levels of 55 ng/ml (138 nmol/l) or higher.7 8 So why aren’t more governments worldwide advocating for people to boost their vitamin D? Hollis explained, “The government in New Zealand, Europe, where ever you are, the official bodies do not recognize that vitamin D has any function beyond skeletal effects.”9

For instance, Ministry of Health of New Zealand states only, “Adults that don’t get enough vitamin D can develop bone weakness and increased risk of fracture”10 — ignoring the many other health detriments of vitamin D deficiency. “They don’t believe it has any effect on cancer. They don’t believe it has any effect on autoimmune [conditions]. They don’t believe that it has any effect on your cluster headaches … they call that anecdotal,” Hollis said.11

It’s best to optimize your vitamin D levels via sensible sun exposure, but if this isn’t an option for you then daily vitamin D3 supplementation may be necessary. There is no one-size-fits-all dose when it comes to optimizing vitamin D levels, however. Many factors influence the blood level of vitamin D that you’ll attain from supplementing.

Body weight is one factor. “Does the vitamin D get sequestered into the fat tissue so it’s not available?” Hollis said. “Nobody knows. But what we do know is people who are heavier, who have greater body mass indexes (BMIs), have to push the intake levels higher to achieve a given level of 25(OH)D in their blood.”12

Vitamin D supplementation must also be balanced with other nutrients, namely vitamin K2 (to avoid complications associated with excessive calcification in your arteries), calcium and magnesium. Regarding magnesium, Hollis notes that blood tests to measure it are “next to useless.” Since you cannot accurately test for it, he recommends taking 400 milligrams of magnesium daily.

When he started doing this, it boosted the efficiency of the vitamin D he was taking. “Basically, taking the same amount of vitamin D, it [magnesium] pushed my levels about 25 nanograms higher, which is substantial.”13 For the average person seeking to optimize their health with no underlying conditions, Hollis recommends a minimum daily vitamin D intake of 5,000 IU if you don’t have access to sunshine.

Personally, I haven’t taken any vitamin D for 15 years. I walk nearly every day at solar noon on my local beach. Additionally, every week I remove 60 ml of my blood and since I have an IV in I take 3 grams of magnesium chloride IV. Magnesium is a cofactor that helps your body make vitamin D. This is why I believe I was able to reach 100 ng/ml (250 nmol/l) of vitamin D this year. That was in August and in December it dropped to 68 ng/ml.

Daily vitamin D3 supplementation, without any other therapy, was also effective for psoriasis, a 2022 study published in Clinical Immunology Communications revealed.14 Six cases were followed, involving daily vitamin D3 doses of 30,000 IU to 60,000 IU over a period of two to six months, followed by lower daily maintenance doses.

Two patients with severe vitamin D deficiency were also given a one-time loading dose of 600,000 IU. The patients were monitored to prevent hypercalcemia, and within two to six months, “complete control of psoriasis was observed.”

Hollis wasn’t surprised by the results. “I did this for my sister 10 years ago,” he said. “She suffered with ectopic eczema, psoriasis. She couldn’t wear shorts. She had scars on her legs. I said, ‘Do this,’ [take vitamin D], and she hasn’t had a problem in the last 10 years.”15 Why isn’t this standard treatment? Hollis continued:16

“If you send something like this to the New England Journal [of Medicine] or Lancet or JAMA, they send it right back to you without a review. They don’t want to know this information. They would say it’s anecdotal, it’s not real. You need to do a randomized, controlled trial. Now think about this … who’s going to pay for that?
There’s no money. It’s not a drug. There’s no money to be made. Those trials are never going to be done, and so you will have to settle for these types of [observational] studies.… The drug companies don’t want you to know this. I mean, my sister … went through every cream and every steroid treatment … but you never saw treatment results like this.”

Hollis sent the psoriasis/vitamin D study to his physician and said, “Physicians need to have guts. If you have patients like this, you’ve got to step up and do this stuff.”17 Thermal injury and critical illness also influence vitamin D levels, with many such patients being found vitamin D deficient.18

Stewart had a significant burn injury to his face and found his vitamin D levels, which were 96 ng/mL (240 nmol/l) a week before the accident, had fallen to the mid 50s two weeks after. “In trauma, vitamin D levels fall rapidly,” Hollis said. “There’s all sorts of reasons why that happens, fluid loss … tissue injury, but it definitely is a real phenomenon.”19

To get an idea of the magnitude of vitamin D’s importance, roughly 10% of our genes respond to the active form.

From ancient times, when people around the world had reverence for the sun, to the use of solariums to treat illness in the early 20th century, Stewart noted, “We’ve come full circle now to understand the biology, the complexity of this process by which the body grabs hold of that molecule. It’s made in the skin and takes it through … various metabolic processes to arrive at a point where it’s influencing DNA.”20

In a study published in Scientific Reports,21 Michael Holick and colleagues found that varying doses of vitamin D3 led to broad changes in gene expression. Specifically:22

600 IU/day — Upregulated 86 genes and downregulated 76 genes
4,000 IU/day — Upregulated 188 genes and downregulated 132 genes
10,000 IU/day — Upregulated 800 genes and downregulated 489 genes

Hollis explained the significance, considering most physicians would only recommend the lower end — 600 IU a day, or less:23

“So 600 IUs per day is what any physician — if you go in and say I want to take vitamin D — and/or government organizations, they’re going to say, ‘Well, that’s what you need.’ Then the next one is 4,000, and they’re going to say well that amount you … could become toxic and then 10,000 a day, they’re going to go crazy.
They’re going to tell you you can’t take that … but the truth of the matter is you look at these genes upregulated, downregulated … you can determine which gene clusters for a given process are affected by this …
[At] 10,000 units a day, where your blood levels would be probably 60 to 80 ng/mL, which are certainly normal human physiology for sun-enriched environments — not how we live today — but look at the number of upregulated and downregulated genes compared to …what they are at 600 IU.
To me that that indicates the top one [600 IU] would indicate the body’s functioning in a deficient fashion. These genes aren’t being utilized, whatever they’re doing, whether they’re protecting you against autoimmune attack or they’re protecting you against actual immune function … preventing hyper immune attacks during COVID, whatever.”

The only way to determine how much sun exposure is enough and/or how much vitamin D3 you need to take is to measure your vitamin D level, ideally twice a year. The D*Action Project by GrassrootsHealth is a cost-effective way to do this, while simultaneously progressing valuable research.

To participate, simply purchase a D*Action Measurement Kit and follow the registration instructions included. Once you’ve confirmed your vitamin D levels via testing, remember to retest in three to four months to make sure you’ve reached your target level.

If you have, then you know you’re taking the correct dosage and/or getting the right amount of sun exposure. If you’re still low (or have reached a level above 80 ng/ml), you’ll need to adjust your dosage accordingly and retest again in another three to four months.

As mentioned, data from GrassrootsHealth’s D*Action studies suggest the optimal level for health and disease prevention is between 60 ng/mL and 80 ng/mL, with higher levels recommend for certain conditions like cancer and autoimmune disease. The cutoff for sufficiency appears to be around 40 ng/mL. In Europe, the measurements you’re looking for are 150 to 200 nmol/L and 100 nmol/L respectively.

I strongly recommend getting your vitamin D from proper sun exposure if at all possible. In addition to raising vitamin D, sunlight provides numerous other benefits, the most important of which is the creation of melatonin in your mitochondria from the near infrared wavelengths. If you’re not able to get out in the sun regularly, however, vitamin D supplementation may be necessary.

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December 23, 2022

Roche Flu Medication Fraud Stole Billions

A whistleblower lawsuit has been filed against drugmaker Roche over influenza medicine Tamiflu
The suit alleges the company made false claims and misrepresented studies, causing the U.S. government to stockpile $1.5 billion of the drug for use during potential pandemics
The whistleblower lawsuit alleges that Roche knew Tamiflu was ineffective at fighting influenza pandemics but went ahead and “masterfully marketed this drug to fill Roche’s coffers at taxpayer expense”
The lawsuit was filed under the False Claims Act by Dr. Thomas Jefferson, who has been questioning Tamiflu’s effectiveness since 2009
Because the False Claims Act mandates payment of triple damages along with civil penalties, Roche could face a judgment in excess of $4.5 billion

A whistleblower lawsuit has been filed against drugmaker Roche, alleging the company made false claims and misrepresented studies, causing the U.S. government to stockpile $1.5 billion of its influenza medicine Tamiflu (oseltamivir).1

The lawsuit was filed by Dr. Thomas Jefferson, a researcher associated with the Cochrane Collaboration research network, under the False Claims Act, in which individuals may file suit on behalf of the government. Jefferson has been questioning Tamiflu’s effectiveness since 2009.

The lawsuit, which was unsealed in September 2019, alleges Roche duped the U.S. government into stockpiling Tamiflu while mispresenting its effectiveness. According to the Houston-based Lanier Law Firm, which filed the suit:

“The lawsuit claims the drugmaker’s scheme involved publishing misleading articles falsely stating that Tamiflu reduces complications, severity, hospitalizations, mortality and transmission of influenza.
The company then used those articles to aggressively market the drug to the government for pandemic use. Relying on the supposed truthfulness of Roche’s claims, federal and state governments spent about $1.5 billion to stockpile Tamiflu to combat influenza pandemics.”2

Antiviral drugs like Tamiflu are still recommended by government agencies like the U.S. CDC,3 despite long-standing studies questioning their effectiveness and safety.

At one point, the World Health Organization even classified Tamiflu as an “essential” medicine even though scientists like Peter Doshi, Ph.D., had already begun to question whether it worked any better than Tylenol.4 By 2015 several researchers were questioning the risk-benefit ratio of the drug,5 and it was ultimately downgraded by the WHO in 2017.6

In July 2017, WHO moved Tamiflu from a “core” essential medicine to a “complementary” drug, which is used for those that are less cost effective.7 (To clarify, a correction to the article was published in November 2017, saying the drug was still on the essential list, but “downgraded.”8)

In a BMJ editorial, Mark Ebell, professor of epidemiology at the University of Georgia, called the move “far too late” and described a multisystem failure that allowed Tamiflu to become a blockbuster medication.9 According to Ebell:10

“Oseltamivir (Tamiflu) was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 1999 for the treatment of uncomplicated influenza within 48 hours of the onset of symptoms. The manufacturer’s press release stated that the drug was studied in two randomised trials enrolling a total of 849 patients with influenza and reported a 1.3 day mean reduction in the duration of symptoms.
The drug was described as safe, with less than 1% of patients discontinuing it because of adverse effects. It was approved by the European Medicines Agency in 2002. On the basis of these limited (and ultimately revealed as incomplete) data, governments acted.
Concerned about a possible outbreak of avian influenza, as well as the H1N1 pandemic in 2009, the UK government stockpiled oseltamivir at a cost of over £600m (€680m; $770m) from 2006 to 2014. Similarly, the US government has spent over $1.5bn stockpiling the drug, based on recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).”

Examples of system-wide failures that let Tamiflu slip through regulatory cracks included a failure to publish all available evidence and make that data available at the individual patient level, along with a failure of recognizing the limitations inherent to observational data.

It wasn’t until repeated requests from The BMJ were honored that data from unpublished trials were released to researchers, revealing the true extent of Tamiflu’s effectiveness — or lack thereof.11

In the BMJ review of Tamiflu it’s found that Tamiflu shortened the duration of flu symptoms by less than a day, specifically, by just 16.8 hours, and did not affect the number of hospitalizations.12 In exchange for this very modest benefit, Tamiflu caused nausea and vomiting and increased the risk of headaches and renal and psychiatric syndromes.

“The trade-off between benefits and harms should be borne in mind when making decisions to use oseltamivir for treatment, prophylaxis or stockpiling,” the researchers added.13 What’s more, in a Cochrane Review of the data on both Tamiflu and Relenza (zanamivir), another antiviral drug, Jefferson and colleagues noted:14

“Based on our assessments of the regulatory documents (in excess of 160,000 pages), we came to the conclusion that there were substantial problems with the design, conduct, reporting and availability of information from many of the trials … We identified problems in the design of many of the studies that we included, which affects our confidence in their results.”

Further, the review noted that the drugmakers’ proposed mechanism of action, which suggests the drugs work via a multisystem and central action, does not fit with the clinical evidence they reviewed. Any beneficial effects of the drug may have occurred due to lowering levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines or via depressing the central nervous system, not by actually inhibiting the replication of the influenza virus.15

Tamiflu and Relenza are part of a group of anti-influenza drugs called neuraminidase inhibitors, which work by blocking a viral enzyme that helps the influenza virus to invade cells in your respiratory tract.

The problem is that your nervous system also contains neuraminidase enzymes essential for proper brain functioning, and when blocked with these dangerous drugs, severe neurotoxicity may ensue, especially in the infants and children whose blood-brain barrier has not yet developed sufficiently.

Serious side effects include convulsions, delirium or delusions and suicidal behavior. In January 2020, an Oregon woman warned that her son experienced hallucinations while taking the drug, telling a news outlet, “He was saying that everything was going fast and that everything was in fast forward. He was hearing voices. He was seeing things. He was crying and grabbing his head and it was really scary.”16

The boy’s pediatrician said the hallucinations were due to Tamiflu, and Dr. James Shames, Jackson County medical health director, likewise stated, “Psychiatric symptoms are more unusual. It wasn’t even recognized until after the drug had been released and they started doing further studies. It does look like it occurs more commonly in children.”17

In another report, a 6-year-old girl in Texas also had hallucinations while taking Tamiflu and even tried to jump out of a second story window.18 A 16-year-old boy with no prior suicidal thoughts or depression also committed suicide less than 24 hours after taking the drug, which his parents believe is what caused the suicide to occur.19

Japan banned the use of Tamiflu in children and teens in 2007, after cases of teenagers trying to jump from apartment building windows while taking the drug. In 2018, the country lifted the ban, but still said the relationship between Tamiflu and the unusual actions is unclear and patients should be warned of such side effects.20

Corruption has surrounded Tamiflu from the start. Former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was made the chairman of a company called Gilead in 1997. While drug company Roche manufactured Tamiflu, it was developed by Gilead decades ago, and they gave Roche the exclusive rights to market and sell the drug in 1996 (an agreement they attempted to terminate in 2005).21

Rumsfeld held major portions of stock in Gilead and was reported to have made more than $5 million from selling shares of the company around the time of the bird flu hoax in 2005. Rumsfeld was on the board of Gilead between 1988 and 2001, and when he left to join the Bush administration he reportedly retained a large shareholding (worth $25 million or more).

Roche also engaged in extensive lobbying to influence countries to stockpile Tamiflu, including in Denmark. In a 2018 review published in the Journal of Public Health, researchers investigated how members of Denmark’s pandemic planning committee experienced lobbying efforts by Roche, noting:22

“Roche promoted Tamiflu using two arguments: that the procurement deal had to be signed quickly because the drug would be delivered on a first-come, first-served basis, and that Denmark was at heightened risk in the event of a major influenza outbreak because it had a smaller Tamiflu stockpile than other countries.
One informant pointed to how Roche ‘toured’ Denmark and neighbouring countries to ratchet up the volume of Tamiflu stockpiles. Interestingly, and in line with this allegation, in March 2005 Roche sent an official letter directly to the Swedish Minister of Health and Social Affairs (and copies to the Director Generals of the National Board of Health and Welfare and the Crisis Management Agency) that exactly repeated these two arguments …
Furthermore, Roche practised tactics that included both lobbying through direct contact and lobbying through a seemingly independent third party, i.e. the DSI [Danish Health Institute].
In addition, some interviewees suspected third party lobbying via colleagues. The DSI was established by the public sector to conduct independent research, yet it still agreed to act on behalf of the company — quite a disturbing finding.”

The whistleblower lawsuit alleges that Roche knew Tamiflu was ineffective at fighting influenza pandemics but went ahead and “masterfully marketed this drug to fill Roche’s coffers at taxpayer expense,” Clayton Halunen of Halunen Law said. “This is precisely the type of corporate behavior the False Claims Act is designed to stop.”23

Because the False Claims Act mandates payment of triple damages along with civil penalties, Roche could face a judgment in excess of $4.5 billion. Attorney Mark Lanier, of Lanier Law Firm, added:24

“As alleged in the complaint — Tamiflu does not do what Roche promised. Roche hid this fact for many years by selectively citing its studies and suppressing the data about Tamiflu. The company utilized lobbyists, key opinion leaders and ghostwriters to promote Tamiflu with a deceptive promise to governments fearful of an influenza pandemic.”

Even in the face of such damning evidence, Roche still attempted to have the courts dismiss the suit. They weren’t successful, though, and a Maryland federal judge formally denied it in September 2020.25

While Roche is on trial for fraud, the fact remains that Tamiflu is likely to do little to help in the event you or a loved one comes down with flu, and it could end up causing harm. Prevention is a far better option, and along these lines vitamin D testing and optimization has been shown to cut your risk of respiratory infections, including colds and flu, in half if you are vitamin D deficient.26 27

In my view, optimizing your vitamin D levels is one of the absolute best respiratory illness prevention and optimal health strategies available. Influenza has also been treated with high-dose vitamin C,28 and taking zinc lozenges at the first sign of respiratory illness can also be helpful.

Following other basic tenets of health, like eating right, getting sound sleep, exercising and addressing stress are also important, as is regularly washing your hands — sound advice for staying healthy not only during flu season but also year-round.

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