Just 11% of ‘Flu’ Cases Are Caused by Influenza. No Wonder the Vaccines Don’t Work
By Dr Carl Heneghan and Dr Tom Jefferson
To recap what we have written so far. We have seen that good data do not support the idea that there is only one viral respiratory agent around, that its name is influenza (A or B) and that influenza causes mayhem around winter time every year.
In our Riddles series, we reported on the multiple logical gaps in germ theory. We often cite the failure to infect volunteers during challenge studies at the MRC Common Cold Unit when conditions are ideal for such an infection. A proportion of quarantined volunteers with no history or laboratory evidence of recent influenza illness were not infected by squirting viruses up their nostrils.
Other modes of transmission have not been studied with modern molecular diagnostics, so we are left with the evidence from the kissing and poker games studies to try and understand precisely how these bugs infect or activate (wake up).
There are several problems with understanding precisely what is going on. First, the clinical similarity between influenza-like illness (ILI, a syndrome caused by 200-odd known and X unknown microorganisms) and influenza (caused by influenza A and B) makes it easy to play on the F word “flu”. According to the media and politicians, everything is “flu”, but what do they mean by this term? You cannot identify a particular pathogen by its symptoms, as they are all the same.
In any year, relatively few cases of influenza-like illness are caused by influenza viruses and, as such, would be amenable to prevention by specific vaccines. The two – influenza and non-influenza ILI – are not clinically distinguishable, and even periods of known higher influenza virus circulation are not predictive, as other organisms (such as rhinoviruses, RSV and parainfluenza viruses) are co-circulating.
To understand the microbiology of all this, consider ILI cases (the F word) as a yearly pie, which shows just 11% (77 of 700) of ILI cases actually being caused by the influenza virus.
We explained this in one of our earliest posts.
Data from the control arms of studies in our Cochrane review and proportional epidemiology studies (PIE) are likely to yield reliable data because they are designed to follow those up with symptoms and test them. You can also check the comings and goings of these agents in our Week in Numbers series, which shows that most of those tested with symptoms are not due to influenza.
The second problem is that no one knows the precise burden of influenza morbidity or mortality, as no surveillance system is capable of routinely distinguishing influenza and influenza-like illness, and no one carries out routine autopsies to identify a microbiological cause of death. So, guesswork rules. This explains, in part, the wildly inflated CDC estimates, which not even Dr. Fauci believed.
These simple biology facts are seldom mentioned by physicians and the media, who are instead told that current measures (e.g. vaccination) are sufficient to control the problem, although no one quite knows the size of the problem, and few understand its multiagent nature.
Add the fact that influenza viruses mutate continuously, and by vaccinating, you are essentially chasing a moving target: you begin to understand why auntie, who had been vaccinated against the F word, still gets the F word.
For politicians, the value of this ignorance and confusion is great. By referring to “flu” and their yearly prevention programme with “flu vaccines”, they are seen to have acted and fixed the problem, especially if they can bolster their nonsense with a dollop of extra cash for health services. The cash, as you well know, does not come from their pockets.
It remains to be seen whether the public will smell a rat as they are suddenly pressed into influenza, Covid and RSV vaccines: “Wait, was there not just a single agent five years ago? Where have the other two come from? Are there others? What? There are? Does it mean everyone will be vaccinated against 60 more bugs in a few years?”
A critical evaluation of vaccine effects is complex as systematic reviews show the studies are often of poor quality. There is a lack of randomised controlled trials of sufficient duration and too small a sample size to detect an effect on serious outcomes (such as hospitalisation and death). That is the observation which fits the evidence: a small sample size means they are comparatively rare events.
As a consequence of the poor evidence base there is an over-reliance on non-randomised studies and models, which, as you know, can be made to tell you just about anything you want. For example, some widely referenced non-randomised studies in people aged 65 years or older systematically report an implausible sequence of effects, with trivalent influenza vaccines apparently effective for the prevention of non-specific outcomes, such as death from all causes, but not for the prevention of influenza or death caused by pneumonia and influenza.
The bulk of evidence (hundreds of thousands of observations) comes from poor quality, large, retrospective, data-linked cohorts in which data had been collected for other purposes (usually reimbursement). Twenty-two out of 40 retrospective cohort studies published up to 2006 failed to report either vaccine content, degree of antigen matching, or both, making generalising from these datasets an arduous task.
So how do we know about these problems? Because, unlike the media, politicians, lobbyists and influencers, we read and assessed these studies before deciding that they were simply not worth the effort. We kept them on in our updated Cochrane reviews as legacy appendices.
To finish off we now come to another set of questions.
- In a similar situation, how are decision makers justifying pushing the yearly mammoth undertaking of influenza vaccination?
- Why have influenza vaccines played such a prominent role in the last two decades?
- Does this dubious and costly enterprise apply to Covid vaccines?
In the next installments, we will see the justification CDC and friends gave for their actions and provide evidence that everything is not going well – we are being fleeced.
This post was written by an old geezer who’s been working on this for three decades and hopes that the content of posts like these will be his legacy. The other old geezer just shakes his head.
Dr. Carl Heneghan is the Oxford Professor of Evidence Based Medicine and Dr. Tom Jefferson is an epidemiologist based in Rome who works with Professor Heneghan on the Cochrane Collaboration. This article was first published on their Substack, Trust The Evidence, which you can subscribe to here.
My Warning to Australia on the Cancer Risks of Covid Vaccines Did Not Go Unheeded
I have just returned from a month touring New Zealand and Australia, talking to doctors and other medical professionals who have been badly impacted by their national and state governments’ appalling responses to COVID-19, their lockdown and mandatory-treatment policies and the impact of the vaccines. As part of this tour I spent a day in the Australian National Parliament talking to Senators and other politicians. This was all sponsored by generous donations to the Australian Medical Professionals Society (AMPS) and the New Zealand doctors’ Speak out for Science group (NZD-SOS).
The overwhelming response to my questions was how these top-down Covid-related policies and decisions had destroyed the careers of good and honourable doctors – doctors who’ve been punished for sensibly treating early Covid symptoms, for refusing vaccination on the grounds they had already been vaccinated, and finally for refusing to give vaccine booster jabs to people who had clearly had an adverse response to the first injections.
The scale of this dictatorial savagery I saw was beyond belief. Paul Collits’s article ‘Hunted and hounded – Australia’s dissenting doctors‘, published by TCW in December 2021, describes the tip of an iceberg.
In the U.K. we narrowly escaped mandatory vaccines in the NHS thanks to last-minute interventions with scientific advisors, though care workers did not, leading to significant losses in that already overstretched sector. But New Zealand and Australian health services have been devastated by the loss of doctors, nurses and paramedics who rightly refused to have a vaccine for a non-lethal disease. This has led to severe shortages, a huge loss to the profession, the evidence for which is overwhelming, the Sydney Morning Herald reporting almost 1,000 New South Wales healthcare workers sacked or quitting after refusing to be vaccinated.
This, the Australians have tried to correct, in true NHS style, by urgently recruiting staff from overseas, from not only the U.K. but also many countries that cannot possibly match the standards of care given by the thousands of doctors and paramedics excluded from working by the greatest piece of lethal ideology of my lifetime.
I was accompanied on this tour by Dr. Paul Marik, Chair of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance in the USA and the first doctor to successfully use ivermectin to treat Covid. He is also credited with giving an in-depth analysis of the early data that led to the approval of the Pfizer vaccine – his analysis showing that the published data tried to hide the fact that 42,000 people suffered SAEs (serious adverse events) and 1,220 people died. (How the FDA came to approve this genetic insert in spite of a warning that any drug associated with 50 or more deaths should be immediately withdrawn is simply mind-boggling.)
There is no doubt Australia and New Zealand suffered even more than we did in the U.K. They found themselves under tin-pot dictators like ‘Mad Dan’ Andrews, the former Premier of Victoria (now gone but not disgraced), dictators who competed with each other in the imposing of totalitarian measures. Without doubt the lockdowns imposed in New Zealand under Jacinda Ardern and in Victoria under Dan Andrews eclipsed even those the Scots suffered under Nicola Sturgeon.
I met doctors who had been punished for treating ill or symptomatic Covid patients with sensible drugs and measures (like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine) from early on, treatments for which the authorities refused approval despite the expert advocacy, from early 2021, of doctors such as the senior pathologist Dr. Robert Clancy.
What doctors were clearly required to do, and did do instead, was to follow guidelines similar to those in the U.K. This was to leave their patients untreated until extremely ill, when calling an ambulance became a necessity, and when patients were hospitalised to hasten death with inappropriate ventilation or midazolam or, even worse, FDA-approved remdesivir, which is extremely expensive and significantly increases the chance of dying with renal failure induced in survivors of Covid including those which the drug did not kill when given for the Covid symptoms! No wonder they dubbed it “Rundeathisnear“!
Worse, the many doctors I spoke to had to endure mandatory vaccines themselves, as this was the rule in all medically related professions, transport and hospitality and any occupation receiving monies from the Government.
During my tour I also spoke to a pilot who had refused the vaccines mandatory for Qantas pilots and lost his job as a result only to observe over 100 vaccinated pilots suffer career-destroying side-effects and associated dangerous situations on the flight deck (echoing concerns Virgin Australia pilots reported in 2022). He told me there had been a rise in crashes in single-seat fighters in several air forces, as reported here – something flagged as a particular problem for the USAF – and also a 1,700% rise in military pilots reporting medical incidents.
I also became aware of the former Qantas pilot Graham Hood (Hoodie), who has gone public on this issue and presented much of this data in his talks and podcasts, which you can access here.
While we were there we reviewed all the local data in New Zealand and Australia which showed there were no excess deaths from Covid and the epidemic of excess deaths occurred only following the vaccine rollout. The earliest excess deaths to emerge involved heart attacks, clots and strokes, first highlighted by Dr. Aseem Malhotra across mainstream media in the U.K. as vaccine-induced deaths in the U.K.
The fact so many such deaths occurred in the under-44s was even more disturbing, given that they had zero chance of dying from Covid; unless already seriously ill they should never have had the vaccine.
The Australian data confirmed my original observation made in my St. George’s melanoma clinic that the boosters are clearly involved with cancer relapse. Sadly, such relapse is no longer confined to melanoma but is being seen in all tumour types as tumours present later (i.e., being more aggressive and advanced) and in younger patients.
We reviewed all the scientific evidence that mRNA vaccines can theoretically induce cancer in at least 10 different ways. What this has revealed is that the mRNA vaccines do not as promised disappear in days but can integrate into cells and induce cancer. Indeed, I have just on my return spoken to someone in Australia who has identified the vaccine DNA, from a vaccine of six months ago, in a tumour mass removed at operation. This in addition to all the other early reports, including those by Ryan Cole, of identical observations.
Our joint opinion is that all mRNA vaccines must now be banned. Fortunately five Senators and the town council of Port Hedland, Western Australia, have all agreed with the presentation I sent them. The outcome, their call for the suspension of all Covid vaccines, made the trip extraordinarily worthwhile.
My remote video presentation was just part of a two-and-a-half-hour expert session on the potential health risks posed by synthetic DNA contamination, including the dangers of genomic integration, cancer, hereditary defects and immune-system disruption.
There is a consensus among all the doctors and scientists we met that there is a pressing need to work together to detoxify this spike poison in the vaccinated. Fortunately this may be possible, a significant reduction in damage being reported following treatment with a number of readily accessible natural products including vitD3, bromelain, low-dose naltrexone (LDN) and ivermectin. But we urgently need trials to measure circulating mRNA spike protein before and after treatment with these products singly and in combination.
If I were CMO I would order this tomorrow.
Angus Dalgleish is an expert in immunology and Professor of Oncology at St. George’s Hospital Medical School, London. This article was first published in TCW Defending Freedom.
Southport ‘Attacker’ Charged With Having Al-Qaeda Manual
By Will Jones
Teenager Axel Rudakubana who is awaiting trial for the murder of three young girls in Southport has been charged with possession of a military study of an Al-Qaeda terror training manual, as well as producing ricin, a well-known poison. The Telegraph has more.
Axel Rudakubana, who is charged with carrying out a knife attack at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in July, is accused of producing ricin – a biological toxin – and keeping a handbook made by the terrorist group.
The manual, a PDF titled ”Military studies in the jihad against the tyrants: The Al-Qaeda training manual’ and the poison were found during a search of his home, police said.
At a press conference in Liverpool, Merseyside Police said the events of July 29th have not been declared a terrorist incident because no motive has been established.
Chief Constable Serena Kennedy said: “At this time Counter Terrorism Policing has not declared the events of July 29th a terrorist incident.
“I recognise that these new charges may lead to speculation. The matter for which Axel Rudakubana has been charged under the Terrorism Act doesn’t require motive to be established.
“For a matter to be declared a terrorist incident, motivation would need to be established.”
Mr. Rudakubana, who is 18 but was 17 at the time of the attack, is charged with the murders of Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice Dasilva Aguiar, nine.
He is also charged with the attempted murder of yoga class instructor Leanne Lucas, businessman John Hayes and eight children, who cannot be named for legal reasons, and with possession of a knife.
Born in Cardiff to Rwandan parents, Mr Rudakubana’s identity was revealed after a judge lifted a reporting restriction after an application made by the press.
The attack sparked widespread protests and disorder across the country which had been fuelled by speculation online about the attacker and his motives, including inaccurate claims that he was an asylum seeker.
Violent riots saw dozens of police officers injured, wheelie bins set alight and police vehicles set on fire.
Worth reading in full.
Conservative MP and leadership candidate Robert Jenrick has criticised the apparent withholding of information from the public. He wrote on X:
The public had a right to know the truth straight away. I am seriously concerned that facts may have been withheld from the public. Keir Starmer must urgently explain what he knew about the Southport attack and when he learned it.
Reform leader Nigel Farage has said: “Perhaps I was right all along.” He adds that the Crown Prosecution Service has said that more will come out in the trial, but it seems we aren’t allowed to know that for another several months.
Stop Press: The Free Speech Union has put out a statement about this, claiming that some of the prosecutions over the summer of people for allegedly saying ‘Islamophobic’ things about the Southport attack on social media may now be unsafe.
Has the BRICS Summit in Kazan Seen the Multipolar World Come of Age?
By Tilak Doshi
The optics for the US-led “rules-based global order” could not have been poorer in media coverage of the BRICS summit held in Kazan, Russia last week. Two-and-a-half years after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, media headlines gave the lie to the constant refrain of President Joe Biden, his Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and other Western leaders that “Russia is increasingly isolated”.
On the day the summit opening, the headlines declared:
Bloomberg: ‘Putin Hosts BRICS Leaders, Showing he is Far From Isolated’
CNN: ‘The West Wants Putin Isolated. A Major Summit he’s Hosting Shows he’s Far From Alone’
Time: ‘Hosting BRICS Summit, Russia Shows it is no Pariah’
Perhaps just as humiliating for those in the Western alliance celebrating Russia’s isolation was the decision by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to attend the Kazan summit, despite the fury expressed by Ukrainian leader Zelensky, evidently because the meeting was just too large and important to ignore.
The Kazan summit is the largest foreign policy meeting in Russia ever, with Vladimir Putin welcoming leaders from 24 countries and delegations from a total of 32 nations last Tuesday. This included all the BRICS+ leaders (except for Brazilian president Lula who suffered an injury and could not travel) as well as those of Turkey (a NATO member) and Vietnam.
BRICS and the Russia Sanctions
The acronym BRIC was coined by Goldman Sachs economist Jim O’Neill in 2001, informing investors about a group of rapidly growing emerging markets (Brazil, Russia, India and China) and their potential to challenge the economic dominance of the developed economies of the G-7. The first formal summit of the group was held in 2009. South Africa joined in 2010 and BRIC became BRICS. The Kazan summit is the first meeting of the group since it expanded earlier this year to include Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia and Iran (“BRICS+”).
The G-7 group is relatively homogenous and acts as a geopolitical bloc under a US leadership committed to a “rules-based order” under the post-war international financial system. In contrast to the G-7, the BRICS+ countries are a diverse bunch, politically, economically and ideologically.
The two largest members of BRICS, China and India, have had frequent border disputes interspersed with lethal flare-ups over the past several decades. However, after four years of negotiations since the last border flare-up and just ahead of the Kazan summit, India and China reached an agreement on military disengagement along their disputed areas of control and held bilateral talks in Kazan. This is a significant step toward reducing frictions between the nuclear-armed neighbours.
The relationship between the Sunni states Egypt and UAE on the one hand and Shia Iran on the other hand can only be described as tense, reflective of the millennia-old divide in the house of Islam. This was alleviated by the Saudi-Iran rapprochement in diplomatic relations last year as part of a Chinese-sponsored initiative. This would appear to have reduced tensions across the Middle East, although the current Israel-Iran conflict complicates the regional order.
While intra-member tensions inevitably exist in such organisations, the anti-Russia sanctions imposed in the wake of the Ukraine war provide a common purpose to the BRICS+ countries. This was put across bluntly by China’s Global Times in August 2022: “The thought the U.S. may move to grab anybody’s assets who refuses to obey Washington’s dictates is truly unnerving, which is now inducing more countries to diversify their reserve assets away from U.S. dollars.”
The all-out economic warfare – imposed by the Western alliance on Russia in February 2022 after the latter launched its “special military operation” in Eastern Ukraine – was meant to devastate the Russian economy, collapse the rouble and possibly lead to regime change with the ouster of President Putin. Despite the pressure of sanctions, Russia was the fastest growing economy in Europe in 2023, logging GDP growth at 1.5%, compared to the EU’s 0.8%, Germany’s anaemic 0.1% and the UK’s 0.4%. The World Bank recently listed Russia as the world’s fourth largest economy in PPP terms.
For countries outside of the Western alliance, protecting their freedom to trade with a commodity superpower such as Russia is as important as ensuring they don’t become the next victims of a globalising West wielding its dominance in international financial institutions. Most countries outside the U.S.-led “collective West” – over 80% of the global population – have not participated in the anti-Russia sanctions because they don’t want to be pawns in global rivalry between a hegemonic West and the principal targets of its geopolitical ambitions: Russia and China.
The “stunning show of unity” in the U.S. and Europe over the Russia sanctions means little for most governments in the rest of the world who are intent on navigating what looks like a rapidly bifurcating world economy. Membership of the BRICS+ group is likely seen as the best geopolitical hedge in a world forever changed by the U.S.-led financial sanctions on Russia.
The BRICS Agenda to Reform the Global Financial System
The Kazan Declaration issued after the summit states: “We underscore the need to reform the current international financial architecture to meet the global financial challenges including global economic governance to make the international financial architecture more inclusive and just.”
China’s President Xi Jinping provided an interesting backdrop to the declaration when he told Putin last year following their Moscow meeting that: “Right now there are changes – the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years – and we are the ones driving these changes together.”
In his speech to the Kazan summit, Xi said :
The current developments make the reform of the international financial architecture all the more pressing. BRICS countries should play a leading role in the reform. We should deepen fiscal and financial cooperation, promote the connectivity of our financial infrastructure, and apply high standards of financial security. The New Development Bank should be expanded and strengthened. We must ensure that the international financial system more effectively reflects the changes in the global economic landscape.
Much has been written on “de-dollarisation” in the BRICS’ quest for reforming the Western-dominated Bretton Woods financial system. The dollar accounts for 47% of all international trade transactions utilising SWIFT (the interbank messaging system), followed by the euro at just over 22%. The dollar share of foreign exchange reserves has steadily declined from over 70% in 2000 to around 55% in July 2024. But even though there has been a relative decline in U.S. global economic dominance and in the dollar, the latter remains the most important currency by far for trade, investment and national reserves.
There are no serious alternatives to the deep and liquid U.S. debt market that can absorb the world’s central banks’ savings. While gold can serve as a good hedge in times of crisis, it earns no interest. De-dollarisation of global savings and investments is a long-term project, notwithstanding aggressive rhetoric from some of the BRICS+ members.
Dependence on a single currency and a centralised financial architecture (the Bretton Woods system) is here to stay for the foreseeable future even if the BRICS+ group makes progress on setting up an alternative to SWIFT and in promoting intra-BRICS+ trade via the use of national currencies and currency swaps.
However, the U.S. and its allies will not find it as easy to weaponise the dollar and access to the global financial system against large countries in the “global South” as they did in 2022. The Kazan summit has seen the multipolar world come of age.
Dr. Tilak K. Doshi is an economist, former Forbes contributor and a Fellow (non-resident) of the Global Research Institute, University of North Carolina. Find him on Substack and follow him on X.
End of the Road for EVs as Sales Slump Around the World
By Will Jones
The electric revolution appears to be running out of road as global EV sales slump in recent months for three top manufacturers amidst public resistance to the new technology. The Mail has more.
Despite growing steam long-term, Elon Musk’s Tesla saw quarterly EV sales fall from a peak of 484,500 in Q4 2023 to just 386,800 in the first quarter of 2024.
Meanwhile, Chinese car manufacturer BYD – the world’s largest seller of electric vehicles – saw global EV sales crash earlier this year.
In the first quarter of this year, it sold just over 300,000 EVs – dramatically down from 526,000 in the final quarter of last year.
Similarly, German carmaker Volkswagen sold 239,500 EVs in Q4 2023, but only 136,400 the following quarter, although sales recovered to 180,800 in Q2 this year.
It comes as Volkswagen has been forced to close three of its factories and slash jobs, partly due to a slower-than-expected transition to electric vehicles.
Worth reading in full.
NHS Tells Staff That Women are “Transphobic” if They Do Not Want to Share a Toilet with a Transgender Colleague
By Will Jones
Women are “transphobic” if they do not want to share a toilet with a transgender colleague, NHS staff have been told. The Mail has the story.
Mandatory training introduced in August for NHS England employees also claimed that “people” rather than women or mothers become pregnant and take maternity leave.
Another passage suggested that it is discriminatory for nurses or doctors to pray for unwell patients.
Women’s rights campaigners wrote to NHS Chief Executive Amanda Pritchard to criticise the “partisan and ideological” training and demand that it be amended earlier this month.
Last night, after being contacted by the Mail, the NHS admitted that it has since withdrawn the training module and that it will be replaced “in the next few weeks”.
The 23-page document – titled ‘Equality, Diversity, Inclusion and Human Rights Skills’ – stated that “all staff, including off payroll workers, are obliged to complete the modules”.
The training manual, which included five “case studies”, required staff to answer 10 multiple-choice questions to test whether they are discriminatory.
In one section headed “transphobic colleague”, it gives an example of a member of NHS staff who does not wish to share a bathroom with a trans person.
The document states that this is “not acceptable” and that asking whether trans staff can instead use gender-neutral or disabled toilets could constitute “illegal harassment”.
It adds: “It is always an individual’s choice to use whichever facilities match how they identify.”
The document was shared with the Mail by an NHS worker concerned about the training but who said they were under pressure from bosses to complete it.
The whistleblower revealed: “Passing this training is required in order to progress your pay and career, and ultimately even to be employed by NHS England.”
Worth reading in full.
Other Countries Are Taking the Health Risks of 5G and Wireless Radiation Seriously. Why Isn’t the U.K.?
Momentum is building in the campaign to try to protect children from harmful smartphone use. Earlier this year, Miriam Cates MP led a lively debate on this subject, while the Education Committee led an inquiry entitled, ‘Screen Time – Impacts on Education and Wellbeing’. The grassroots movement, including Smartphone Free Childhood, Safe Screens and others is gathering pace. The latter organisation is in fact actively supporting MP Josh MacAlister’s Safer Phones Bill launched earlier this month, which aims to “make smartphones less addictive for children and empower families and teachers to cut down on children’s daily smartphone screen time”.
The dangers of smartphone use are clearly serious and encompass addiction, harmful content, exposure to sexual abuse and bullying, disruption of learning, behavioural changes through the habits adopted and the loss of previously normal childhood activities and social interactions. The movement hails Jonathan Haidt as the “world’s leading voice” on the damage caused to children by a phone-based childhood. Haidt identifies the damage as an “adolescent mental health crisis”.
The diagnosis, therefore, is overwhelmingly one of psychological damage. What I find astounding, however, is that with the exception of Safe Screens, no-one has mentioned the effects on children’s health of the wireless radiation signals emitted by smart devices, Wi-Fi or phone masts. All appear to assume that the only issue is the way children interact with screens along with the harmful social media content.
Why are we not hearing the other side of the story? The belief that wireless or radio-frequency radiation (RFR) is safe is promoted in the media too. A case in point is the recent Guardian article about the WHO systematic review concluding that mobile phone use is not linked to cancer, but not mentioning other reviews, which reached the opposite conclusion. A previous Guardian article promoted the view that 5G is safe, though it relied only on the naturally biased statements of telecoms’ chiefs from EE and Vodafone. Another one belittled the problems suffered by those with electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS) and in 2019, the BBC Reality Check Team concluded that 5G would be safe, quoting the U.K. Government, the WHO and the International Commission on Non-Ionising Radiation Protection (ICNIRP), whose safety exposure guidelines are followed in the U.K.
Yet, a little longer ago, the risks of wireless radiation were taken more seriously. In 2007, a Panorama programme looked at the health risks of Wi-Fi in schools with electronics expert Alasdair Philips. A Government leaflet from 2011 stated: “The U.K. Chief Medical Officers advise that children and young people under 16 should be encouraged to use mobile phones for essential purposes only, and to keep calls short.” And on another page the Government recommends that “excessive use of mobile phones by children should be discouraged”. This was based on the recommendations of the Stewart Report produced in 2000 by the Independent Expert Group on Mobile Phones.
So why has there been no campaign to publicise the risks of mobile phone use and other RFR-emitting devices, especially for children? Instead, the opposite happened: the Government, through the now defunct British Educational Communications and Technology Agency, promoted the use of wireless technologies in schools, so that now there is hardly a school without them. During the lockdown the Government wanted every child to use a laptop, hardly any of which would have been hard-wired via ethernet cables.
Research on specific harms to children from wireless technology had been presented to MPs in December 2017 by Dr. Sarah Starkey, neuroscientist, when she gave evidence to the Early Years Inquiry. She emphasised the fact “that effects are seen in animal studies indicates that the radiofrequency signals themselves can have adverse effects, and it is not just children or young people accessing social media/internet through mobile devices, or time spent looking at screens”. She cited evidence from human and animal studies showing “effects on development during pregnancy, effects on children and young people, on brain development, fertility and increased risk of cancers”. Examples discussed included ADHD, DNA damage, reduced memory and attention and the alteration of electrical brain activity. Why does no-one appear to have heard about this?
Naturally the question arises, “What is actually going on?” Is it possible that only one side of the debate is being presented to the public? If so, why? Or is the issue that we are all in denial about possible harms to health, because none of us can live without our smartphones and so shut our ears to potential issues?
To try to get an answer to these questions, I will consider briefly two recent pieces of research, stating broadly that there is no link between mobile phone use and cancer. One is the large cohort study, Cosmos, and the other a systematic review carried out by the WHO’s EMF project.
The Cosmos interim paper, published in March 2024, concluded, “Our findings to date, together with other available scientific evidence, suggest that mobile phone use is not associated with increased risk of developing these tumours.” However in August 2024 a group of scientists representing the recently formed International Commission on the Biological Effects of Electromagnetic Fields (ICBE-EMF) published a paper recommending that the Cosmos authors retract their conclusion, due to serious methodological problems.
They also pointed out that: “COSMOS was partially funded by the telecommunications industry in three countries, Finland, Sweden and the United Kingdom and that despite the authors’ claim that a ‘firewall’ agreement ensured ‘complete scientific independence’, the study design was negotiated with Ericsson prior to adoption of this agreement.” Further details of this conflict of interest are detailed by the Swedish Radiation Protection Foundation, which also states that “The study was carried out by researchers with a long tradition of dismissing health risks from mobile phone radiation” and that several of them were members of ICNIRP, a further conflict of interest.
Coming to the WHO systematic review and meta-analysis, published in August this year, this looked at 63 studies and concluded that exposure to wireless radiation (RF) from mobile phones or phone masts is unlikely to cause brain cancer or childhood cancer and that occupational exposure may not cause brain cancer.
Coming to quite a different conclusion, Dr. Joel Moskowitz from the University of California published a similar review in 2020 based on 46 of these studies, which found “significant evidence linking cellular phone use to increased tumour risk”. On his own webpage, Moskowitz lists many concerns about the way the 2024 WHO review was conducted and mentions five other studies from 2016 and 2017, which did show a causal link between mobile phone use and cancer. Since the publication of the WHO review, a South Korean study published this month found “significantly elevated risks for three types of brain tumours when examining tumours on the side of the head where cell phones were held” according to Moskowitz.
It therefore seems absolutely clear that there is no scientific consensus that RFR is safe for human health. But who should we believe? Professor John Frank in his article ‘Electromagnetic fields, 5G and health: what about the precautionary principle?‘ makes it clear that there are wide fluctuations in safety exposure limits put into practice globally and states that the guidelines suggested by ICNIRP are so lax, because ICNIRP members do not believe that damage can occur to human health unless body tissue is heated by RF radiation. This appears to be the main difference between ICNIRP members and the many scientists who say that damage occurs below the heating threshold. ICNIRP is recognised as “an official collaborating non-state actor by the WHO” and membership is by invitation only to the like-minded.
The non-scientist is still left with the problem of which side to believe. The Court of Appeal in Turin, however, made short work of this problem, confirming that there was a causal link between an acoustic neuroma and a worker’s use of the mobile phone, because it decided to give less weight to scientific evidence involving conflicts of interest. The judges wrote in this important judgment: “Indeed, the Tribunal recognises that telephone industry-funded scientists, or members of the ICNIRP, are less reliable than independent scientists.”
I am including a link to the English translation of this judgment, which should be essential reading for anyone interested in the question of whom to trust in this debate.
Returning to the WHO systematic review, Microwave News, run by Dr. Louis Slesin, maintains that the same small interconnected group of people involved in the WHO EMF project, ICNIRP and SCENHIR, have a long history of maintaining the no-risk narrative. He states: “In short, the new (WHO) systematic review is an ICNIRP production.” More detailed information on the conflicts of interest involving ICNIRP and WHO EMF project authors can be found in this 90-page document by two MEPs, the late Michèle Rivasi and Professor Klaus Buchner.
This year, several other WHO systematic reviews have been published and again have been severely criticised with requests for retractions from scientists. The critiques are here (effects on pregnancy and birth outcomes), here (effects on tinnitus etc.) and here (effects on oxidative stress).
I imagine that most people would agree with the Turin Court of Appeal, that conflicts of interest may call into question scientific conclusions and indeed the Physicians’ Health Initiative for Radiation and Environment (PHIRE) has identified ways in which research can be biased or corrupted.
It is, however, still difficult to understand why the media would not give us both sides of the story, especially when so much is at stake. Could it be that there is financial gain for them in supporting the narrative of the telecoms companies and the WHO? Or, I wonder if the recent BBC Panorama programme following youngsters, who had given up their smartphones for a week, can give us a clue? It ended, rather lamely, by asking one of the mothers whether she would support a ban on smartphones for youngsters. She replied that she wouldn’t, as she was on it all the time herself.
In other words, adults would appear to be as addicted as children to their smartphones and cannot imagine life without one. When I reveal that I don’t possess one, people wonder how I manage. Well, usually quite easily. I wait until I get home to go online and am happy not to be distracted by a phone when I am out. It just involves a little extra advance-planning. Because I am aware of the health risks, I use a wired landline and an ethernet-wired computer. I also had my smart meter removed. Luckily, I am semi-retired, as a working environment with the inevitable Wi-Fi would not suit me.
How to use technology in a safer way is one of the topics to be discussed at an important scientific conference next week. Alasdair Philips from the 2007 Panorama programme will answer questions on this topic.
This conference, on November 9th in Forest Row, East Sussex, is entitled, ‘Wireless Radiation: the Elephant in the Classroom’ and will discuss research showing how children’s health is impacted by wireless radiation, as well as highlighting effects on wildlife. Expert international speakers include the American epidemiologist and toxicologist Dr. Devra Davis and U.K.-based expert in electromagnetic hypersensitivity Dr. Erica Mallery-Blythe. In addition, Deborah Fry will relate a personal story. The booking link gives further information.
It is to be hoped that U.K. campaigners seeking to protect children from the negative effects of smartphones will also inform themselves about the effect on health of radio-frequency radiation, just as the recent Macron Commission report on Children and Screens has done. Section 2.1.4 of the report, to be found from p.32 onwards, deals with those effects mentioning tumours, endocrine disruption and cognitive effects among others.
Unless Wes Streeting is about to inaugurate a new era, we can expect the U.K. Government to take no responsibility for this issue. In fact, the committee (COMARE) supposedly reporting (but actually not) to Government on health effects of RFR only has a “watching brief”, which no doubt means accepting the findings of the WHO reviews without question. Is that really good enough for the British people?
News Round-Up
- “Southport ‘attacker’ charged with having Al-Qaeda material and making ricin poison” – The Free Speech Union news blog offers some useful advice about what you might get into trouble for saying on social media about the latest revelations in the Southport murder case.
- “Tories accuse police of Southport ‘cover-up’” – The two Conservative leadership candidates have accused the police and the Government of withholding information about the Southport attacker amid claims of a cover-up, reports the Times.
- “We deserve to know the full truth about the Southport massacre” – The authorities need to be honest with the public – and with the families of the three innocent victims of the Southport massacre, writes Allison Pearson in the Telegraph.
- “U.K. and other countries ‘actively’ helping Hamas by funding UNRWA, Israel claims” – Israel has accused the U.K. and other UNRWA funders of “actively helping” Hamas, claiming the agency is compromised by terrorist infiltration, reports inews.
- “Starmer condemns ‘gravely concerning’ UNRWA ban as Israel faces international backlash” – Keir Starmer says he is “gravely concerned” over Israel’s decision to ban the main Palestinian aid agency from the country, reports the Telegraph.
- “U.K. could halt Israel arms sales after UNRWA ban, minister hints” – Development Minister Anneliese Dodds has hinted that Britain could suspend more arms sales to Israel if its ban on the UN’s Palestinian aid agency operating within Gaza and the West Bank goes ahead, according to the Telegraph.
- “CNN guest pulled off air for making Hezbollah pager jibe” – A panelist was kicked off CNN after he told Mehdi Hasan, “I hope your beeper doesn’t go off” while discussing Trump’s recent New York City rally, says Newsweek.
- “Zimbabwean killer allowed to live in U.K. under ECHR because of illicit love child” – A Zimbabwean jailed for killing a man in a car crash has been allowed to remain in the U.K. under the ECHR after it was discovered he had an illicit love child, reports the Telegraph.
- “Labour will neuter Parliament in the name of modernity” – Starmer’s quest to sweep away “outdated practices”, i.e., the English constitution, risks ending proper parliamentary oversight, warns Madeline Grant in the Telegraph.
- “Budget 2024: business warns Rachel Reeves of ‘perfect storm’” – Business leaders warn they face a “perfect storm” in the budget as they are hit by more taxes, higher wage bills and the cost of implementing Labour’s overhaul of workers’ rights, according to the Times.
- “Reeves replaces portrait of Nigel Lawson with Communist Party co-founder” – Rachel Reeves has swapped a portrait of Margaret Thatcher’s Chancellor for one of a founding member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, reports the Express.
- “Badenoch ramps up media appearances amid ‘low Tory leadership voter turnout’” – Kemi Badenoch says she is ramping up her media appearances in the final days of the Tory leadership contest because “people aren’t turning out to vote”, according to the Telegraph.
- “‘My plan to win back power for the Tories’” – In the Spectator, Kemi Badenoch sets out her plan to revive the Tory party’s electoral prospects.
- “Russia carries out test for ‘massive’ nuclear strike on West” – Vladimir Putin has staged a mock nuclear war, launching scores of missiles capable of unleashing a “massive” strike in a stark warning to the West, reports the Mail.
- “Reeves to make Bank of England put climate change and growth on equal footing” – Rachel Reeves is expected to call on Threadneedle Street to reinstate climate change as one of the Bank’s key priorities, reports the Telegraph.
- “Health Secretary says he changed his mind on assisted dying over poor NHS palliative care” – The Health Secretary has told MPs he will vote against the Bill to legalise assisted dying over concerns that the poor quality of palliative care in the U.K. will make people feel they have no choice by to euthanise themselves, according to the Independent.
- “Lucy Letby barrister banned from Thirlwall Inquiry” – Lucy Letby’s barrister has been banned from attending the Thirlwall Inquiry, despite concerns that erroneous statements about the nurse are going unchallenged, reports the Telegraph.
- “Federal Covid Inquiry finds vaccine mandates had biggest negative impact on public trust” – Australia’s Covid Inquiry reveals that extreme health restrictions and secretive decision-making have tanked public trust. Apparently, we need experts and a federal inquiry to state the bleedin’ obvious, writes Rebekah Barnett on her Substack.
- “Covid handouts are to blame for male worklessness, says former Trump secretary” – In an interview with the Telegraph, President Trump’s former Commerce Secretary says that welfare payments given to furloughed staff during the pandemic were a “disease” that is now driving male worklessness.
- “BMA attack on Cass review was ‘based on blog’, Scotland’s Chief Medical Officer says” – Scotland’s Chief Medical Officer says that a British Medical Association attack on the Cass review into child gender services was based in part on a blog that lacked scientific credibility, reports the Telegraph.
- “Give white children more money in Monopoly to teach racism, councils say” – Councils have advised parents that white children playing Monopoly should be given more money and less jail time to teach them how privileged they are, says the Mail.
- “Wokism is just beginning” – Millennials, zoomers and elites remain firmly on the side of DEI and cancel culture, warns Nathan Cofnas on his Substack.
- “Flag-burning is free speech. Get over it” – The Trumpist calls to ban flag-burning reveal the Right’s snowflakery, says Tim Black in Spiked.
- “The hard truth: Americans don’t trust the news media” – In the Washington Post, owner Jeff Bezos announces his paper will no longer endorse presidential candidates.
- “Journalism dies in lockstep” – The reaction to the Washington Post and LA Times’s decision not to endorse a presidential candidate reveals how entrenched partisanship and biased reporting have overshadowed genuine journalism, says Heather Mac Donald in City Journal.
- “What does ‘fascism’ actually mean?” – The term ‘fascism’ is now so overused that it has lost all its meaning, writes Andrew Doyle on his Substack.
- “‘I’m going to shoot myself’” – On X, the latest Downfall parody shows Hitler lighting up as a futuristic projector reveals Nazi rallies thriving under Trump – until he notices all the Jews in the crowd.
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