As shown in my previous article here, the supposed French ‘Pfizer Law’, which social media got so excited about last week, makes no mention whatsoever of mRNA vaccines and could certainly not be used, under any reasonable interpretation of the text, to criminalise criticism of them. But this is not to say that it has nothing to do with the COVID-19 response and the criminalisation of medical dissent. It has everything to do with the latter. But the actual target of the law is not vaccine criticism, but rather the touting of alternative therapies, as personified by Didier Raoult, the specialist in infectious diseases from Marseille who famously promoted the off-label use of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19.
The law is, if anything, an ‘anti-Raoult law’.
This was evident in the debates in the French National Assembly which preceded the vote on the legislation. Thus, Olivier Véran, who was the French Minister of Health from 2020 to 2022, during the official course of the COVID-19 pandemic, took the opportunity to launch into a tirade against Raoult, denouncing him as a “guru” and a “charlatan” and insisting that “the misuse of hydroxychloroquine has taken far more lives than it has saved”. Véran recently returned to the National Assembly as a deputy following a cabinet reshuffle.
Véran also did indeed make a link with vaccination. Alluding to Marseille’s central La Canebière boulevard, he asked, “How many sick people in France will refuse a protective vaccine because they are locked in their false beliefs by the ambiguous statements of the charlatan of La Canebière?” This recalls the original context in which the off-label use of drugs like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin first became an issue, since if effective treatment for COVID-19 were available and acknowledged, after all, no emergency or ‘conditional’ authorisation of experimental vaccines against it would have been needed.
But note Veran’s reference to people who are already sick. This reflects the wording of the relevant section of the legislation, which, as discussed and reproduced in my previous article, refers to persons already “suffering from a medical condition” and hence has no relevance to vaccination of healthy people against potential disease.
But why would someone who is already sick need the protection of a vaccine? Véran’s formulation appears to allude to the most common current recommendations for the use of COVID-19 vaccines in Europe, i.e. strictly for ‘at-risk’ populations like the elderly or persons who are immunocompromised due precisely to an existing medical condition.
This is in fact the only conceivable circumstance under which, given the wording of the legislation, someone might indeed incur criminal liability by advising against, for instance, vaccination against COVID-19: namely, if the advice is given to someone who is already suffering from a different illness and for whom, according to “the current state of medical knowledge”, not being protected against COVID-19 could have serious consequences.
But since there are many who appear to be determined to somehow salvage the original false reports on the so-called ‘Pfizer law’, let it be noted that even in this circumstance there would be nothing to prevent a medical practitioner or anyone else from still advising against the use of a specifically mRNA vaccine. Non-mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, like Novavax and Valneva, are also now available in the EU.
Véran’s use of the term “guru” to refer to Raoult is particularly significant and by no means accidental. As likewise discussed in my previous article, the legislation in question is in fact devoted to “sectarian tendencies”, but its effect is precisely to extend the notion of a “sect” to non-religious contexts.
Thus, the law is commonly presented as an initiative of Sabrina Agresti-Roubache, a sub-ministerial member of the French Government, and Agresti-Roubache has coined the expression “gurus 2.0” to describe the phenomenon it is supposed to combat. “More and more small groups and ‘gurus 2.0’ are federating real communities of followers online,” she warned in her speech to the National Assembly the day before the vote.
Agresti-Roubache would again take the floor the next day, after Véran’s speech, but she would say nothing about Raoult. And then it was the turn of Marine Le Pen of the opposition National Rally (the former National Front), who would vigorously defend him. “So, let’s talks about Professor Raoult,” she began. “Tell me: weren’t there some ministers who were treated by Dr. Raoult? … Wasn’t there a President of the Republic who went to pay homage to Professor Raoult? And now you’re dragging him in the mud.”
What member of the Government was Le Pen referring to? Well, believe it or not, none other than the Sub-Minister for Citizenship Sabrina Agresti-Roubache! In March 2020, Agresti-Roubache fell sick with Covid and was treated by Raoult with hydroxychloroquine. Agresti-Roubache, who is from Marseille, was still a private citizen at the time. She credited Raoult’s treatment with making her symptoms disappear virtually overnight!
A contemporaneous interview with Agresti-Roubache on the topic can be found here. Three weeks later, French President Emmanuel Macron would make a surprise visit to Raoult at the professor’s hospital in Marseille, afterwards describing him as a “great scientist”.
Robert Kogon is the pen name of a widely-published journalist covering European affairs. Subscribe to his Substack and find him on Bluesky.
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In the UK, ultimately this lies at the feet of the PM and his inner cabinet of 3. They set SAGE and its sub-groups in motion, and now use that structure to hide behind ‘the science’ to justify all their outrageous policies.
However I doubt it has its roots just in the UK. I strongly suspect there has been a great deal of collusion between the ‘five-eyes’ countries. But this is just the implementation arm of the GlobCap block seeing the opportunity to influence events in support of their disruptive aims to engineer biosecurity and ‘climate emergency’ fascist totalitarianism across the angosphere and much of europe.
What chance do the brave individual scientists who speak out against this tyranny? The ‘health’ scientists are now experiencing the same threats endured by physicists . metereologists, engineers etc who speak out against the warping of the real scientific method by the ‘climate heating’ mob.
GlobCap see $trillions to be made by furthering a new resource contrained capitalism on the world. Disruption for them is good. The tragedy is that instead of computers and the internet helping humans share and develop knowledge, those same tools are now indispensable to the people shaping this dysopia.
After 30-40 years of infiltration by the Frankfurt School everyone in academia/medicine/science knows to keep their heads down if they wish to retain their funding, job or career.
The next step requires individuals to denounce peers and colleagues for being insufficiently zealous in their promotion of the preferred ‘The Science’.
Memories of Chairman Mao and his little red book!! Who would have thought it of an organisation where the guiding principle is ‘First, do no harm’? Anybody who doesn’t put doctors and academics on pedestals.
Fantastic article. Well done Lucy Johnston, well done Michael Curzon, Well done the Express, and well done Toby for posting it.
I hope it will mark a turning point, but I have become such an entrenched pessimist in the last 12 months that I have my doubts.
The UGLY truth about the Covid-19 lockdowns – Nick Hudson, co-founder of PANDA, demolishes the whole narrative. 26 March 2021.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80Vz7tZLuBI
That vid is brilliant – watched it this morning
It really is brilliant. So sick of the lies! I love these champions of the truth. Strongly recommend watching and sharing it as it succinct and full of logical reason. (Reason is still out there somewhere). Love it!
I have it on my watch list for later
Better than brilliant. Johnson should be nailed to the wall of the cabinet office and made to watch it. He should then be asked if he understands it then his 2 evil undelings, Gove and Hancock(who are nailed to the floor), should be asked why they are accepting all the garbage spewed out by SAGE
Thanks for the link. A must watch that I will share.
It comes as a surprise to those who’ve done their best to comply to realise that every one of the main dimensions of this event is untrue. No prior immunity, everyone susceptible. Asymptomatic transmission. Masks. Lockdown. PCR testing. ‘Vaccines’. Variants & immune escape. Top-up vaccines.
The entire thing is a racket run by totalitarian lunatics, who sincerely believe that the planet will be a lot better off for them & their descendants if you’re not on it.
Who exactly established this climate of fear?
I would suggest it has been the government itself, via the propaganda unit run out of the Cabinet Office, with a great deal of help from the media and Big Tech, thanks to the government’s determination to use Ofcom to prevent the media from questioning any aspect of government policy.
We taxpayers are paying our own money to have our own government wage an information war against us.
Does that make you angry?
I am absolutely livid.
I’ll see your ‘livid’ and raise you an ‘incensed’.
I can picture your puce face in my mind’s eye.
The question becoems how to stop paying taxes. We sceptics deserve a state of our own, there is no excuse for paying for one we don’t consent to living under, we need to work out how to deprive them of the money they are snatching.
Exactly this. At first I ascribed all the stupidity & later the malevolence to SAGE. I now believe it’s directed by a handful of characters in Whitehall & their small subset of SAGE coconspirators. Taking a further step back & it’s clear that it wasn’t China who cooked this up, but the US & U.K.
It’s known as ‘fascism’.
The interesting thing is that it is the scientists supporting the government narrative who are guilty – I don’t know of any of the better scientists quoted above who have indulged in the same ad hominem behaviour.
… and that places the truth of the case where it belongs. Only weak scientists with conflicting interests will subvert proper evidence and debate. Only those with no evidence or case will indulge in such tactics.
I rest our case.
P.S. : It all has little to do with the Frankfurt School or the debates over climate change.
Riding hobby horses just dilutes analysis.
It’s the ingrained mindset.
No it’s not. It’s just another bit of recondite (and pretty tedious) philosophy amongst many.
I always shave with an Occam … and there are much more parsimonious explanations. The Frankfurt School stuff wouldn’t register as a factor in these minds at all – not even indirectly, which is what you are, I think, imagining.
There are no ‘debates’ over climate change. Exactly the same techniques are used as they have with covid. Computer models which over 25 years have never even come close to outcome, yet are used as ‘facts/data’ ignoring reality. And all opposition to these views are supressed, the terms ‘denier’ etc are used in the same sort of psyop. Exactly the same forces are behind it as are behind the covid scam.
‘Critical Theory’ teaches that science, like other forms of knowledge, has been used as an instrument of oppression, they caution against a blind faith in scientific progress, arguing that scientific knowledge must not be pursued as an end in itself without reference to the goal of human emancipation.
So you are dead wrong with your PS.
“Exactly the same techniques are used as they have with covid”
You haven’t been paying attention if you think that – beyond the fact that it has become a dominant paradigm. But that doesn’t make it ‘the same’ or using the same ‘forces’ and the same ‘psyop’. The data, history and emergence is very different, and much more complex (the Covid myths can be easily taken apart with simple spreadsheets).
As to ‘Critical Theory’ as a major issue – it’s observably not the case that it is, although it is one of the outcomes of a recognition of the social/ideological components of knowledge.
As said – distracting hobby-horses, not useful relationships; just ammunition for the ‘conspiracy theory’ attacks.
sophomaniac
Please, Rick, when giving your own individual opinion, don’t dress it up as if you speak for everyone.
I’m sorry but these people that sit by and watch what is happening and don’t speak out should hang their heads in shame. This country and its people are being destroyed by this madness and anyone who thinks their job is more important than that, I don’t know what to say…. ‘Evil only happens when good people do nothing’
Off topic, Daily Mail reports on Police in Barnsley failing to contain a Kill The Bill protest.
A viewer reports otherwise
The Daily Mail alarmist headline.
Another viewer suggested it was like a massive game of ‘tag’ and asked if anyone can join in, I know I would !
This was originally a wholly anti-lockdown protest, I live in West Yorkshire and followed its organisation and development on Telegram. Yes a few KtB folk were there, as you’d expect, but that wasn’t its main purpose.
Thanks for the confirmation Fiona.
I’m afraid the United Kingdom is not a nice place to live these days. The UK Government has deliberately embarked upon a programme of terror, fear and intimidation, against its own citizens. Why else would the SAGE committee have behavioural ‘scientists’ among its ranks, and a revolutionary member of the British Communist Party.
But the buck stops with Johnson, Hancock, Whitty, Vallance and Ferguson. Each and every one of them needs to be held accountable for what they have done. Describing their actions as ‘Crimes Against Humanity’ is not too strong when summing up their deeds.
I so agree!
And me. I have got to a point now where if I could identify somewhere reasonably free-ish I’d sell everything I own and go there – if I could get there of course, past all the fines and testing bureaucracy
It’s is incredibly worrying how both the stasi has mobilised without any official coordination to put down opposition, and how those who have built careers on dedication to scientific endeavour just roll over when confronted with it. They need to step out of the shadows now. I don’t know what they are waiting for? For the stasi to allow them at some point the freedom to speak negatively about government policy? It’s not happening. Every moment they allow themselves to stay silent, they only corrupt themselves more.
Where is the integrity in any of this?
Also, are these unnamed rebel scientists rocking up for the vaccines? At what point do they actually take a stand?
The ‘covid’ scientists, are they all connected to WHO, like Whitty?
We all know the climate of fear is deliberate . Some know why.
Here’s a good interview with Knut from 23/03 with some much needed common sense.
https://odysee.com/@yabba:e/–The-Lockdowns-Are-Creating-a-New-Virus.-Then-We-Have-a-New-Epidemic.–%E2%80%94-Dr-Knut-Wittkowski-:1
As a peripheral observation, articles such as this suggest to me that there is a groundswell of opinion building up, bitter and all the more determined for the wrongs it has suffered.
When the backlash against this shitshow finally reaches critical mass it is going to be very powerful indeed.
Those pushing this garbage are, in the fullness of time, going to pay.
TNJ I so do hope so. Some days it is hard to be optimistic.
With a few honourable exceptions, academics have always been cowards.They have always rolled over, for Hitler and Stalin and Franco and every other totalitarian bully.
There’s a brilliant, but chilling story by C S Forester called ‘The Physiology of Fear’ which illustrates the sort of thing an academic is capable of when his mind has been sufficiently corrupted by Fascism. Recommended.
This is a brilliant piece that I will copy to those who can’t see that there has been no debate. I remember when technology first developed emailing and folk were kindly warned to think before posting. Then along came social media and teenagers (for whom I believe, it was initially developed) began being brazen with their non face-to-face contacts. That’s where we are at now….. professional adults whether politician, science boff or whoever, acting like teenagers. If they would only stop with the name calling and worse and return to professional courtesy and debating real science (and the real science of debate). Oh the irony of a technology that makes communication easier!
What would be interesting would be a similar article telling us what is happening behind the scenes in the msm
Yes! I’d really be interested to see that especially behind the veil of The Guardian and the BBC.
How sad that scientist and academics are behaving so badly towards those who challenge government policy and narrative. But unfortunately that stance is reflected in the wider society too. People who don’t listen to another viewpoint only their own cannot be very confident in their own thinking. It’s only by challenging what we do think and making adjustments we can make progress and move forward.
Now where do we see exactly the same type of anti-science behaviour to shut down any criticism of the “consensus” claimed by activist computer modellers, gullible and funding focussed “scientists” and their captive government lapdogs? Anyone?
Has Blair been given a place on the Health ID committee?
This is a great essay from The Covid Physician, which discusses many of these points and demolishes them one by one: https://tcp.art.blog/2021/03/24/bipolar-corona-politics-positive/
what a great article – I wish that doctor was my GP
I have copied and pasted this to my MP. He is a rabid lockdowner and as he constantly reminds us, a committed Christian.
I have pointed outaccording to his beliefs he will eventually meet the ultimate judge and be found wanting.
I read the that there are many instances of very dubious “science” sold or forced on a gullible public; space prevents me from explaining further but if readers surf the net for “Biopsychosocial”, “Unum US”, “Unum UK”, “Aylward”, “DWP”, “ATOS”, “Work Capacity Assessment”, a very nasty can of worms will eventually be revealed – and it could have been written by Michael Crichton or John Grisham. Just one example of how “experts” can distort, dissemble, con and manipulate unsuspecting people for their own ill gotten gain. Due to my personal experiences with the subjects in inverted commas I became and remain 100% sceptical on many matters, including lockdown as with all readers here.
It was Michael Crichton who wrote (in the context of climate hysteria) that if anyone tells you the science is settled then they have their hand in your pocket
Maybe we can persuade Ms Soma Sara to concoct a website (‘Everyone but Lockdownsceptics Invited’?) where dissidents being abused, harrassed, cancelled can emote (evidence not required) so the Met can deploy some of its shock troops (currently, urm, abusing Lockdown sceptics) to investigate these bullies?
“while senior NHS staff have been threatened with disciplinary measures for questioning the Government approach online or in the media.” if only this extended to the telling of barefaced lies by certain nhs matrons.
What a great article. We have watched the suppression, smearing and censoring of world renowned scientists over the past year. Of course it is unacceptable. The frightening thing is it is being done by colleagues, university heads, NHS senior managers and last but not least the MSM. Lockdown sceptics and other individuals/groups such as Pan Data, Hart, and so many many others have provided us with an alternative and provided the sanity needed to get through this. Thank you.
And in amongst this toxic atmosphere our Government want us to take a new vaccine. In the end this vaccine technology may turn out to be fantastic but how can people like myself, seeing the scientific discourse being censored, trust and make informed decisions? This taken with the deliberate promotion of fear, leave me unable to make a judgement about a new medication. I don’t feel our government have the populations best interests in mind. I do not trust them and for this they have only themselves to blame.
It seems quite ridiculous that our biggest public institution, the NHS is full of fear and intimidation driven by our own Government’s threats, senior management and bribery. These people and their organisations are a disgrace. Personal ego and self interest and greed before duty to the people they are supposed to serve. Drain the swamp.