"…real science is all about critically appraising the evidence for somebody else’s position.”
Dr. Ben Goldacre, Epidemiologist
While the vaccinated and unvaccinated are being pitted against each other, the real problem affecting all of us is being ignored.
We’re not just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, we’re arguing about who should sit where.
It doesn’t matter what “side” we’re on if we’re not addressing the fact that the ship is sinking.
The real problem lies with the broken system of scientific publication.
In his powerful and prescient TED Talk from 2012, Dr. Ben Goldacre talks about the systemic problem of publication bias:
“…the phenomenon where unflattering data gets lost, gets unpublished, gets missing in action.”
Real science requires full disclosure and rigorous debate.
Being wrong, or having a negative result when you expected a positive, in an integral part of the scientific process, which I wrote about HERE.
But we, the vaccinated and unvaccinated, are not getting the full picture.
“This problem of negative results that go missing in action is…so prevalent that it cuts to the core of evidence-based medicine.”
It is impossible for any of us to give informed consent when we don’t have the full breadth of information.
Why do doctors sometimes prescribe unsafe medications?
I’m not cynical enough to believe that they’re all on the take.
Here’s the more likely explanation:
“About half of all trials are buried [and] positive findings are twice as likely to be published.”
Like us, doctors aren’t fully informed.
As Dr. Goldacre, author of Bad Science and Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients says...
“This is a cancer at the core of evidence-based medicine.”
We need to stop judging and blaming each other for our personal health choices and start holding the real culprits to account.
We need to demand full disclosure of the facts from all trials, so that we can choose.
And choosing is a fundamental freedom.
In a cost/benefit analysis, which both doctors and patients must always do in making decisions about drugs, surgery, or even relatively benign health protocols, we must weight the risks.
But we can only do so if we know what they are.
None of us would ever want to be forced into taking a drug or having surgery that we didn’t want and would never consent to.
That is a nightmare scenario that The Nuremberg Code aims to prevent:
“The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. This means that the person involved should have legal capacity to give consent; should be so situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, overreaching, or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion; and should have sufficient knowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved as to enable him to make an understanding and enlightened decision.”
Does this sound like the principle we’re operating under, especially as it pertains to C-19 vaccines?
Do most people even know that they are part of the clinical trial of an experimental vaccine?
It’s chilling that we now need a reminder not to forget what happened in 1930s Germany.
And yet people are being shunned, shamed, and punished for choosing to wait for the clinical trials to be over before making the decision about whether or not to get this experimental vaccine.
People are being pressured at work, lotteries are being created, and even children, who can’t possible have the “legal capacity,” are being manipulated into being vaccinated.
In our fear-based decision-making, we have lost perspective.
And we are losing our way.
The scientific ship will sink if we do not course correct.
We need to stop arguing over where to sit and instead stand up for our right to informed consent.
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