Late final November, President Donald Trump introduced Jim O’Neill as his nominee for deputy secretary of Well being and Human Companies (HHS), the place he would work underneath Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s decide for HHS secretary upon affirmation. As deputy secretary, O’Neill would primarily perform because the Chief Working Officer of the division, overseeing “the day-to-day operations of all sub-agencies” in addition to main “public well being emergency preparedness,” i.e. the federal government’s coverage responses to bio-terror occasions, pandemics, and so on. As well as, O’Neill would “oversee the event and clearance of HHS rules” and ostensibly be the primary implementer of the “Make America Wholesome Once more” (MAHA) coverage agenda.
Constructed on a promise to remove trade seize of public well being regulatory businesses and curb the affect of Large Pharma and Large Meals, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s MAHA motion performed an important position in funneling would-be Kennedy voters into the Trump camp. MAHA, in essence, granted the Trump marketing campaign a tinge of populist legitimacy amongst Covid period dissidents, which grew out of the shuttering of RFK Jr.’s impartial presidential run.
Nevertheless, O’Neill’s enterprise connections, each previous and current, in addition to his earlier statements on public well being coverage, strongly recommend that he’s not solely unlikely to implement the insurance policies that MAHA-centric voters predict, however that he might in reality pursue an agenda that stands in direct battle with the primary tenets of the MAHA motion. Particularly, he advocates reforming the FDA to decontrol and speed up the pathway from drug growth to legalization. This could notably support the biotech trade, which has lengthy struggled to get its merchandise authorised outdoors of an “emergency”-based deregulatory paradigm.
When contemplating the investments and board positions that O’Neill himself has made and held in biotechnology firms, this is able to possible embody mRNA merchandise that Kennedy and different MAHA influencers have spent years criticizing because the Covid-19 pandemic — a transparent contradiction between O’Neill’s views on public well being, and people which the MAGA base have been offered on the marketing campaign path.
Maybe standing in even starker distinction with MAHA rules, O’Neill presently sits on the board of an organization that’s presently pursuing the event of a neurotoxic substance as a “therapeutic” therapy for folks with Alzheimer’s illness (a neurodegenerative illness). Mockingly, that very same substance has lengthy been flagged by Kennedy and the group he co-founded, Kids’s Well being Protection, as one of many foremost causative brokers of their speculation for a vaccine-autism hyperlink and different continual situations suffered by many People, notably youngsters.
Along with O’Neill’s biotech connections, he additionally boasts important ties to the CIA-linked firm Palantir and its co-founder Peter Thiel. Palantir, notably, is endeavor thoughtful efforts to use a pre-crime paradigm to public well being occasions, primarily by way of its a number of important contracts with HHS that might enormously decide the character of the “public well being emergency preparedness” that O’Neill will instantly oversee. A number of of those contracts date again to the primary Trump administration, when Palantir performed a serious position within the military-run Covid-19 biosurveillance and vaccine growth / distribution program referred to as Operation Warp Velocity – a program that has been closely criticized by each Kennedy and the broader MAHA motion.
Certainly, Palantir has since additional entrenched its position inside the HHS equipment, most not too long ago by way of the CDC’s Middle for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics (CFA), a illness forecasting and mass biosurveillance program that Palantir runs important quantities of knowledge for.
Additionally not directly linked to this CDC effort is Invoice Gates, as the previous vice-president of the Gates-connected Cascade Funding agency, Dylan George, now runs the CFA. Importantly, the Gates Basis has important investments in biotechnology, an trade that notoriously faces strenuous regulatory difficulties in getting its merchandise by way of the usual Meals and Drug Administration (FDA) approval course of. In consequence, distinguished gamers within the biotech trade, together with Gates in addition to others like Trump surrogate Vivek Ramaswamy, have launched into an effort to dismantle the present regulatory paradigm and exchange it with one pleasant to “innovation,” or in different phrases, one with considerably much less rigorous requirements.
Limitless Hangout beforehand reported on the trade gamers tackling this downside on the worldwide scale, and plainly now, with O’Neill poised to be on the helm of “growth and clearance of HHS rules,” experimental biotech might lastly achieve the unfettered entry to the American promote it wants.
As this text will display, O’Neill himself additionally stands to profit financially if his desired regulatory mannequin is achieved, as do key members of Trump’s cupboard. Additional, given the pandemic preparedness mannequin of monitoring and growing preemptive countermeasures for pathogens with pandemic potential, in addition to the Large Tech surveillance that coincided with the distribution of the experimental Covid-19 vaccines, it seems possible that biosurveillance will play an important position in the way forward for the biotech market — particularly a deregulated one. Such a mannequin would notably profit the public-private surveillance infrastructure constructed up by the person who helped kickstart O’Neill’s personal sector profession, Peter Thiel.
But, O’Neill’s position within the now-decades lengthy effort to offer accelerated, deregulated paths to marketplace for experimental medication dates again to his time in public workplace, the place he served throughout the top of the now notorious Struggle on Terror. It was possible there that he first met George W. Bush’s HHS Secretary, Tommy Thompson, who applied the consequential Challenge Bioshield Act of 2004 — a bit of laws that marked a agency step ahead within the path in direction of “emergency” deregulation of medicine and vaccines.
O’Neill’s Early Forays in Public Well being: From Chicken Flu Panic to Challenge BioShield
After attending elite universities like Yale College and the College of Chicago, Jim O’Neill landed a job within the George W. Bush administration, first on the Division of Training after which at HHS. He started his new position on the finish of 2002 as director of the Speech and Editorial Division, the place he led the speechwriting staff for then-HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson and did the identical for the primary a number of months of the tenure of Thompson’s successor, Mike Leavitt.
The latter years of O’Neill’s tenure on this place are notably notable, as lots of Thompson’s and Leavitt’s speeches between 2004 and 2005 targeted on fearmongering over the specter of pandemic “chicken flu,” particularly H5N1, which have been later deemed overblown. A lot of the worry propagated by Thompson and others throughout this time about chicken flu have been notably based mostly on the doomsday predictions provided by the now heavily-discredited British epidemiologist Neil Ferguson of the Imperial Faculty London. A number of of Thompson’s speeches earlier than Congress, which O’Neill presumably helped write, demanded important funding for flu vaccine stockpiles and to assist vaccines change from conventional vaccine manufacturing strategies to “a brand new cell-based know-how.” Upon his resignation in December 2004, Thompson acknowledged that his best concern at the moment was chicken flu, which he known as “a extremely big bomb […] that would adversely influence on the well being care of the world.” Leavitt was much more efficient than his predecessor at inflicting worry within the public and thereby producing public assist for finally pointless flu vaccine and antiviral stockpiles. In accordance with O’Neill’s LinkedIn profile, a number of of the “main coverage addresses” he developed for each Thompson and Leavitt dealt particularly with “pandemic influenza.”
Though the fearmongering of Thompson and Leavitt together with different “specialists” was unwarranted, the panic their speeches and public feedback generated ensured that the U.S. authorities spent over $7 billion on combating the chicken flu “risk” by buying important portions of medicines like Tamiflu, an anti-viral produced by Gilead. Notably, Gilead’s former chairman was then-Secretary of Protection Donald Rumsfeld. Gilead’s inventory worth had dipped in 2003 earlier than the chicken flu considerations emerged, and when panic round chicken flu arose the corporate noticed its revenues quadruple. Rumsfeld offered a few of his Gilead shares when the fearmongering started, and he was estimated to have netted a minimum of $5 million. On the finish of 2004, his monetary disclosure report revealed that he nonetheless held $25 million in Gilead inventory.
A lot of these pre-emptive Tamiflu purchases for this “emergency stockpile” that have been by no means finally wanted (and justified utilizing defective modeling) have been made by way of the Biomedical Superior Analysis and Growth Authority (BARDA). A lot of the infrastructure for BARDA was constructed out by the 2004 Challenge BioShield Act’s authorization of $5.6 billion for the Strategic Nationwide Stockpile (SNS), which Thompson and his speechwriters closely advocated for. The Bush administration justified the passage of this laws partly by citing the hazards of the 2001 Anthrax assaults (a US military-linked false-flag tied to most of the identical individuals who finally helped create and profited from BioShield and BARDA). A few of these figures would additionally go on to guide the federal government response to Covid-19 underneath the primary Trump administration.
Past lining the pockets of Rumsfeld and Gilead by way of its mandate to create emergency drug stockpiles to thwart “bioterrorist” assaults, Challenge Bioshield additionally considerably superior the emergency deregulation pathway for unapproved medication—which notably saved Moderna from collapse throughout the Covid-19 pandemic 15 years later. Particularly, Challenge Bioshield granted the authorization of the “emergency use” of medicine which can be “not authorised, licensed, or cleared for business distribution” within the context of a possible or precise emergency.
Notably, O’Neill – after serving to to write down speeches that helped justify the creation of BARDA and the stockpiling of Tamiflu – joined the BARDA steering committee in 2006 and served in that capability by way of 2008, the timeframe when many of those questionable Tamiflu purchases have been truly made. A couple of months earlier than becoming a member of BARDA’s steering committee, O’Neill had been promoted to the submit of Affiliate Deputy Secretary and senior advisor to the Deputy Secretary in August 2005. Throughout that point he oversaw coverage for the CDC and labored on “emergency preparedness” and “homeland safety.”
Presumably on account of his utility to Thompson and his successor Mike Leavitt, O’Neill was once more promoted, this time to the submit of Principal affiliate deputy secretary of HHS in 2007, holding that place for near a yr. Once more, O’Neill performed an vital position in growing pandemic preparedness coverage and likewise targeted on advising the HHS secretary and deputy secretary on homeland safety, and in that capability “led particular initiatives associated to coverage and operations.”
After leaving the Bush administration, O’Neill turned concerned with Peter Thiel, who had beforehand helped the architects of mass surveillance throughout the Bush administration privatize its most controversial program, leading to what’s now the corporate Palantir. O’Neill started working as managing director at Thiel’s now-defunct Clarium Capital, a macro hedge fund that Thiel created shortly after promoting PayPal to Pierre Omidyar’s eBay in 2002. O’Neill, comparatively shortly thereafter, turned head of the Thiel Basis in 2009. There, he labored with Peter Thiel to create the inspiration’s Thiel fellowship, which helped kickstart the careers of now distinguished figures in army contracting (e.g. Palmer Luckey of Anduril), cryptocurrency and finance (e.g. Vitalik Buterin of Ethereum) and longevity-focused biotech (e.g. Laura Deming).
Round this identical time, O’Neill turned concerned with the longevity-focused SENS analysis basis, becoming a member of its board of administrators in 2010 – a submit he would maintain by way of 2021. O’Neill additionally served as SENS’ CEO from 2019 to 2021, the place he directed analysis targeted on curing age-related illnesses like Alzheimer’s. As might be famous once more later, SENS’ earliest and most vital donor was Peter Thiel.
As Clarium Capital’s fortunes waned within the aftermath of the 2008 financial disaster, Thiel teamed up with Ajay Royan to create Mithril Capital in 2012, with O’Neill serving as founding managing director. At this level, O’Neill left his submit on the Thiel Basis to work full-time at Mithril. Whereas at Mithril, O’Neill oversaw present Vice President J.D. Vance, who joined Mithril in 2016 as a junior investor and left the agency in 2018. Whereas at Mithril, O’Neill dealt with important investments in some notable biotech firms in addition to investments within the Thiel co-founded Palantir, which – as beforehand talked about – controversially contracts with HHS and vital HHS sub-agencies with main implications for public well being, privateness and future pandemic response. O’Neill left Mithril in 2019, the identical yr that the agency got here underneath FBI investigation for monetary misconduct (these allegations, nonetheless, targeted largely on agency co-founder Ajay Royan). 2019 was additionally notably the yr that one of many firms Mithril had backed, uBiome, additionally got here underneath FBI scrutiny, later leading to its founders being charged with well being care fraud conspiracies.
O’Neill’s Connections to the Biotech Trade
Throughout O’Neill’s tenure in a prime place at Mithril, the enterprise capital agency invested in a number of important biotech firms. These embody uBiome, which was additionally backed by Andreessen Horowitz and the Sam Altman-run Y-Combinator. The corporate was based in 2012 “to sequence the microbiome,” permitting sufferers to “discover their microbiome” by way of the corporate’s microbial genomic take a look at and their possession of the “largest microbiome database on the earth.” The corporate’s collection B funding was led by 8VC, the enterprise capital agency created by Palantir co-founder and Thiel affiliate Joe Lonsdale. The corporate was later caught overbilling sufferers, pressuring them to take a number of checks when it was pointless, and likewise pressuring docs to approve checks, together with for sufferers with no signs. The FBI raided the corporate’s workplaces in 2019. In 2021, the co-founders have been every charged with greater than 40 felony counts, together with healthcare, securities and wire fraud.
One other biotech firm backed closely by Mithril throughout O’Neill’s time as managing director is Fractyl Well being, which Mithril started funding in 2014. Fractyl has been growing 2 merchandise, Revita – an outpatient process that modifies the liner of the colon to focus on weight problems and kind 2 diabates, and Rejuva – a “one-time gene remedy” concentrating on the pancreas meant to “allow sturdy weight reduction and long-term remission of sort 2 diabetes.” Neither of the corporate’s merchandise have been authorised by the FDA and scientific research on them have but to be carried out, regardless of the corporate having been in enterprise for over a decade — consultant of a typical development in biotech firms struggling to get medication by way of scientific trials.
The chair of Fractyl’s board is the co-founder of Mithril alongside Thiel, Ajay Royan. One other board member, Marc Elia, sits on the board of the Mithril-backed biotech agency Invivyd (previously Adagio Therapeutics). Additionally on the board of Fractyl is former U.S. Senator Invoice Bradley, who can be on the board of the Mithril-backed fintech and stablecoin-issuing agency Paxos. Bradley’s connections in tech additionally lengthen to figures adjoining to Jeffrey Epstein, as Bradley was notably affiliated with Ghislaine Maxwell’s husband Scott Borgerson and his agency Cargometrics—a satellite tv for pc surveillance firm that provides “distinctive information merchandise and [software] options broadly to the funding administration and maritime transport & logistics markets.”
O’Neill has additionally had a number of notable connections to different biotech corporations following his departure from Mithril in 2019. These embody Oisin Biotechnologies, the place O’Neill was a board observer from 2019 to 2021. Oisin develops therapies targeted on longevity and “age-related illnesses” that leverage a “new-non-viral supply know-how” they name Fusogenix Proteo-Lipid Car.
That platform “permits intensive extrahepatic biodistribution for each DNA and RNA payloads.” The Fusogenix platform was not developed by Oisin instantly, however by their accomplice agency Entos, which used the identical platform to develop a “Covid-19 plasmid DNA vaccine” in addition to a number of genetic therapies concentrating on weight problems. Entos has 4 accomplice organizations/firms — three of them are Eli Lilly, the Invoice & Melinda Gates Basis and Oisin. John Lewis, the founder and CEO of Entos, co-founded Oisin in 2016 and has lengthy served (and presently serves) because the Chief Science Officer of the corporate, additional revealing the shut affiliation between the 2 firms.
O’Neill turned concerned with Oisin by way of his management roles on the SENS Analysis Basis. Throughout O’Neill’s time on the inspiration’s board, SENS granted Oisin with an unlisted quantity of seed-funding from SENS.
Notably, throughout his time at SENS, O’Neill served on the SENS board with just a few vital Thiel-associated figures. These embody Blake Masters – a detailed Thiel affiliate who co-wrote a e-book with Thiel, served as COO of Thiel Capital and as head of the Thiel Basis – in addition to Kevin Dewalt. Dewalt maintained a place because the director of Strategic Alliances for the CIA’s enterprise capital arm In-Q-Tel from 2005 to 2008. Throughout that very same interval, Dewalt additionally labored with the Thiel-founded Palantir – particularly Palantir’s Stephen Cohen – to “deploy the corporate’s first AI product within the US Intelligence group.” Palantir’s earliest funder, apart from Thiel himself, was In-Q-Tel.
A few of these concerned in “longevity” analysis importantly imagine that AI and different rising applied sciences will play a big position in growing life-prolonging-tech. The SENS Analysis Basis focuses on longevity analysis and plenty of of its members, together with its founder, imagine that medical know-how is able to granting near-immortality to people, if not immortality itself. The muse’s first main donor was Peter Thiel, who has injected tens of millions into the inspiration since its inception.
In accordance with his LinkedIn, O’Neill has solely served on the board of administrators of 1 biotechnology firm, ADvantage Therapeutics, which he joined in March 2023. He continues to serve on the board, however will ostensibly recuse himself from that position if confirmed as HHS deputy secretary. ADvantage doesn’t reveal its board of administrators on its web site, and thus O’Neill’s involvement will not be seen there, however his place on the corporate’s board is famous of their SEC filings.
ADvantage as an organization focuses on neurogenerative illnesses, particularly Alzheimer’s. Their foremost product is a compound known as AD04, beforehand referred to as Alhydrogel. It’s an aluminum-based vaccine adjuvant (aluminum hydroxide) that has been used traditionally in human and animal vaccines, however ADvantage Therapeutics seeks to remodel this adjuvant right into a “therapeutic” for Alzheimer’s sufferers.
The origins of ADvantage as an organization, and the hunt to show AD04 into an Alzheimer’s therapy, date again to a research that examined a failed Alzheimer’s vaccine candidate known as AD02, produced by the Austrian firm AFFiRiS. Within the Part 2 scientific trial of AD02, the group that obtained the vaccine fared considerably worse than the management group. Each the management group and the group that obtained the AD02 vaccine obtained doses of the vaccine adjuvant AD04.
As a substitute of contemplating that the AD02 vaccine considerably worsened the outcomes of Alzheimer’s sufferers, they as a substitute concluded that the aluminum-based compound AD04 had truly made affected person outcomes considerably higher. That is even though aluminum toxicity has been studied as a factor in inflicting Alzheimer’s illness, as aluminum is a identified neurotoxin. As well as, impartial scientists outdoors the corporate didn’t share the conclusions of the AFFiRiS scientists. Whereas firm scientists claimed that the management group information confirmed “proof of illness modification”, different unaffiliated scientists argued that the information implied no impact in any respect, because the correlations noticed within the management group are additionally identified to “happen within the absence of therapy.”
Regardless of the shortage of knowledge or consensus suggesting that injecting Alzheimer’s sufferers with a identified neurotoxin would result in higher affected person outcomes, the AFFiRiS scientists doubled down and acquired the patent rights to AD04. They then teamed up with Agustin Fernandez, a Cuban-born film producer, and his enterprise accomplice Jeffrey B. Madden to create ADvantage Therapeutics to commercialize AD04 as a therapy for Alzheimer’s. Notably, the ADvantage web site notes that the preliminary AD02-AD04 research didn’t include information supporting using AD04 as a “therapeutic entity”, and that the corporate and its founders are unable to clarify how AD04 allegedly capabilities to scale back Alzheimer’s pathology.
Regardless of this admitted lack of proof, the corporate is conducting pre-clinical trials in parallel to the scientific growth of their AD04-based therapeutic as an try to shore up information that exhibits the compound has therapeutic potential. Nevertheless, elsewhere on its web site it treats AD04 as having handed Part 2 scientific trials (and coming into Part 2b), however this appears to be a deceptive reference to the unique AFFiRiS research, characterizing it as a research that was testing for the consequences of AD04. In actuality, the AFFiRiS research was a Part 2 trial for the failed AD02 vaccine, and was not a trial meant to check AD04.
Along with AD04, the corporate can be making an attempt to develop two different merchandise, AD09 and AD15. AD09 has an undisclosed mode of motion, however seems to be a mRNA product based mostly on the knowledge offered on the corporate’s web site. AD15 can be a mRNA product based mostly on the Klotho protein, which might cut back signs of getting old when over-expressed. The scientist who found the Klotho gene, Dr. Makoto Kuro-o, joined ADvantage as a member of its scientific advisory board in early 2024. As of late final yr, the event of AD15 was spun-off from ADvantage Therapeutics and into a unique firm known as Klothea.
In accordance with an organization press launch, O’Neill’s appointment to the board of administrators was aimed toward facilitating the approval of AD04, the aluminum vaccine adjuvant, in addition to its mRNA merchandise. Within the press launch, CEO Jeffrey Madden was quoted as saying “The addition of Jim to our Board of Administrators alerts the following stage of growth for our firm […] As we embark upon our confirmatory Part 2b research for AD04 in early Alzheimer’s illness, we’re lucky to have Jim’s skills and expertise to information us throughout this thrilling time.” Madden additionally acknowledged that “Jim’s deep experience in longevity will serve us nicely as we develop our mRNA know-how to struggle pathologies of getting old by advancing and sustaining the capabilities of klotho, which many contemplate the longevity gene. We’re growing platform know-how to create a pipeline of [targets] to deal with the commonest illnesses of getting old through the use of the klotho protein. We stay up for Jim’s steering on this space.”
O’Neill himself had excessive reward for the corporate’s AD04 product, stating that “AD04 has the potential to radically enhance the lives of tens of millions. I’m excited to collaborate with ADvantage to assist propel it ahead.” Even when he does recuse himself from ADvantage’s board of administrators upon affirmation, his prime position at HHS – the place he’ll oversee the elimination and creation of rules on the FDA and different HHS businesses – will surely place O’Neill able the place he may propel merchandise like AD04 ahead.
O’Neill’s enthusiasm for turning an aluminum adjuvant right into a therapeutic for a neurodegenerative illness clashes instantly with previous statements from incoming HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. For instance, in his e-book Vax-Unvax: Let the Science Converse, co-written with Dr. Brian Hooker, Kennedy characterizes aluminum adjuvants as dangerous to human well being and as one in all his main considerations with respect to vaccine security. As well as, the Kennedy-affiliated group Kids’s Well being Protection, along with publishing the aforementioned e-book by Kennedy and Hooker, has printed many articles over time warning of the hazards of aluminum vaccine adjuvants and have instantly linked vaccines containing aluminum with opposed vaccine negative effects, particularly in youngsters, in addition to the growing incidence in childhood autism charges. Limitless Hangout reached out to Kids’s Well being Protection for touch upon aluminum vaccine adjuvants and the try to commercialize one in all them as a therapeutic, however didn’t obtain a response previous to publication.
O’Neill’s important biotech connections don’t finish there. He served as a “international well being adviser” to Rational Vaccines, an organization that, based mostly on its founders and board, is deeply linked to ADvantage Therapeutics. The co-founders of ADvantage, former movie producer Agustin Fernandez and CEO of ADvantage Jeffrey Madden, additionally occupy vital roles at Rational Vaccines. Fernandez was the co-founder and is the present CEO of the corporate, whereas Madden sits on its board and is a lead investor.
The corporate is targeted on treating herpes, primarily by way of the creation of a herpes vaccine. It was awarded $2.8 million by the Nationwide Institute of Well being (NIH) to additional its herpes product growth, together with a take a look at that permits “routine population-based screening” of Herpes Simplex Virus (HSV) with increased sensitivity than different checks, and a vaccine to curb the unfold of herpes—which the corporate calls a “international pandemic.”
The corporate’s concentrate on herpes, nonetheless, has not stopped it from growing biotechnology for Covid-19. It’s presently growing a “serological assay” Covid-19 take a look at, which the corporate claims boasts increased sensitivity in comparison with presently accessible checks. That is apparently on account of its capability to check for “antibodies to most viral proteins,” versus a “single or small subset of viral proteins.” Rational Vaccines developed the blood assay know-how by repurposing its herpes checks, and is notably using the identical know-how behind their herpes vaccine candidate to develop a Covid-19 vaccine. In accordance with the corporate, they’re “within the strategy of adapting [their] HSV immunotherapeutic candidate, RVx201, to a viral vector format” with a purpose to “allow the event of a number of vaccine varieties, together with to SARS-COV-2.”
Whereas Rational touts its capability to repurpose its herpes vaccine know-how for different immunizations, the corporate’s lengthy and sordid historical past of unethical regulatory obfuscation paints an unsettling image of any future product it develops.
The questionable nature behind Rational Vaccines’ enterprise practices started earlier than the corporate’s inception. In 2013, the co-founder of the corporate, the late Southern Illinois College professor William Halford, administered doses of a shot that contained a virus he had created “at a Vacation Inn Categorical and a Crowne Plaza Lodge that have been a 15-minute drive from [his] SIU lab.”
Halford’s unconventional strategies continued within the years to come back, and importantly at Rational Vaccines itself. After he co-founded Rational Vaccines with Fernandez, he ran an offshore scientific trial from a home within the Caribbean Islands for the corporate’s herpes vaccine. Halford utilized American individuals, most of whom Rational Vaccines claims have been “People with herpes who have been flown to the island a number of occasions to be vaccinated,” as reported by Kaiser Well being Information. Nevertheless, the trials have been solely unmonitored — neither by the FDA or any institutional assessment board.
Robert Califf, Obama’s former FDA commissioner, instructed Kaiser Well being Information that “he couldn’t consider a previous occasion wherein American researchers didn’t arrange an IRB overseas.” Califf did observe, nonetheless, that doing so “could also be authorized.”
On a facet observe, Califf’s critiques of Halford’s trials seem odd, given Califf has spent a lot of his profession devoted to implementing the rules of the Fourth Industrial Revolution into public well being. Amongst these rules contain a deregulated drug growth course of that replaces the usual randomized scientific trial with a technocratic, “modern” strategy. Whereas Califf headed the Duke Scientific Analysis Institute, the institute co-founded an initiative which aimed to create extra “environment friendly scientific trials,” specifically by “maximally [leveraging] accessible scientific and nonclinical information, together with information collected by way of digital applied sciences, to reduce assortment of obligatory trial particular information,” or in different phrases, prioritizing using medical information collected outdoors of a scientific trial setting. As a substitute, the prioritized information on this mannequin could be extracted from novel sources (equivalent to digital applied sciences like wearables) and be “interoperable,” maximizing the capability for “all researchers and sponsors” to see and share that information.
Regardless of specialists slamming the experiment as unethical, Fernandez claimed that he knew of “people who skilled constructive outcomes from the vaccine,” successfully downplaying the harmful methodology used throughout the testing.
One in every of Rational’s most distinguished early donors, former managing director of Credit score Suisse Bartley J. Madden, was intrigued by Halford after listening to him discuss his work at a symposium at Southern Illinois College. In accordance with Wired, Madden “wrote a e-book known as Free to Select Medication, which argues that the FDA’s risk-averse strategy to drug approval will get in the way in which of innovation and retains life-saving medicines off the market.”
As he describes in his e-book, A Foundational Clarification of Human Habits, “The standard purpose of protected and efficient medication results in a relentless demand for ever dearer scientific testing calls for, sky excessive prescription drug costs, and, importantly, delayed entry to life-changing medical therapies. I argue that the suitable purpose is best medication, sooner, at decrease value. The important thing constraint is the massively costly (money and time) FDA scientific testing course of.” Fittingly, in Bart Madden’s eyes, “Halford embodied the a part of the good outsider tangling with the scientific institution.” Whereas Madden claims that he wasn’t conscious of the offshore trials on the time of his donation, his personal beliefs on regulation seem in keeping with Halford’s strategies.
Additionally notable is that Jeffrey B. Madden—CEO of ADvantage Therapeutics and distinguished investor in Rational Vaccines — is a board member and the Treasurer of Bartley J. Madden’s Bartley J. Madden Basis. Bart Madden beforehand labored within the US Military the place he was “concerned with categorized weapons growth/testing” earlier than his personal sector finance profession took off. Whereas a familial connection between the 2 doesn’t seem to have been established, the work of each has clearly intersected enormously by way of the world of biotech, an trade that might profit considerably from Bart Madden’s deregulated imaginative and prescient of drug growth.
Likewise, the regulatory evasion and security controversy didn’t cease O’Neill’s affiliate Peter Thiel from investing $4 million within the analysis, with the caveat that future testing adjust to FDA requirements. Whereas Thiel’s caveat signifies disapproval of Halford’s openly harmful strategies, Thiel does imagine rules stand in the way in which of progress. Because the Kaiser Well being Information story notes, Thiel beforehand mentioned that the FDA’s requirements are so cumbersome that “you wouldn’t be capable to invent the polio vaccine in the present day.”
Eliminating Efficacy Testing within the Identify of “Innovation”
O’Neill himself has lengthy echoed the deregulatory rhetoric of Peter Thiel, Bart Madden, Califf and others. In actual fact, O’Neill’s previous statements on rules could also be much more blatantly controversial than his contemporaries — searching for to remove efficacy trials altogether. He beforehand made these opinions clear on the Hyatt Regency in Santa Ana, California throughout a 2014 discuss for the SENS Analysis Basis:
“We must always reform [the] FDA in order that it’s approving medication after their sponsors have demonstrated security and let folks begin utilizing them at their very own danger, however not a lot danger of security…However let’s show efficacy after they’ve been legalized.”
This speech first got here underneath public scrutiny after it was reported in December 2016 that the primary Trump administration’s transition staff (of which Thiel was additionally an element) was contemplating O’Neill to go the FDA. O’Neill, on the time, was apparently deemed too controversial for the position and Scott Gottlieb was chosen as a substitute. Gottlieb joined the boards of Pfizer and the CIA-linked biomanufacturing firm Resilience shortly after his stint on the FDA concluded.
Notably, the present nominee to go the FDA, Johns Hopkins’ Martin Makary, has been deemed very pleasant to the biotech trade. Whereas Makary was a critic of Covid-19 lockdowns and another insurance policies, like vaccine mandates, he supported common masking and early doses of mRNA Covid-19 vaccines. He additionally criticized the FDA throughout Covid-19 for being too gradual to approve the “lifesaving” mRNA Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, arguing in a 2020 interview that the experimental vaccines ought to have been authorised after Pfizer and Moderna’s software submissions inside 24 hours. Mocking the FDA’s obvious dawdling on its assessment course of, Makary known as it “Operation Turtle Velocity.” Upon his appointment to go the FDA for Trump’s second time period, biotech trade leaders instructed STAT Information they felt reduction at Markary’s appointment, with one remarking we “dodged a bullet.” Different trade specialists quoted by CNBC shared related sentiments, with one stating that “we count on [Makary] will promote know-how/innovation in a means that provides some reprieve for those who [are] fearing a division extra aligned with completely different virtues.” In different phrases, plainly Makary and O’Neill are fairly aligned on deregulating the FDA drug/vaccine approval course of.
O’Neill’s feedback on the FDA, which he’ll oversee and enormously affect, finally match into his bigger plan to “[streamline] licensing and drug growth and lowering time and prices” — which he remarked “was an enormous curiosity” of his throughout his time at HHS. Given his proximity to the facilities of energy that performed an integral position in passing the consequential Challenge Bioshield Act of 2004, which licensed emergency use of unapproved medical merchandise, this curiosity comes as no shock. Notably, nonetheless, O’Neill’s advocacy on this context didn’t emerge from considerations of pandemic response or emergency conditions, however as a substitute from the will to make biotechnology extra viable, protected and enticing to buyers.
This curiosity in “streamlining” drug growth led him, per his personal account, to “shut down” an effort by the FDA to start out regulating In Vitro Diagnostic Multivariate Index Assays (IVDMIA), a type of biotechnology used to diagnose “illness or different situations,” or used to “treatment, [mitigate, treat or prevent]” a illness. O’Neill used this story to segue into his controversial proposal to remove efficacy checks of medicine solely, which he calls “progressive approval.” His requires deregulation have been met with applause from the gang of lecturers, businessmen and buyers current on the occasion.
O’Neill then proceeded to heap reward on the work of Richard Barker, founding director of Oxford’s Centre for the Development of Sustainable Medical Innovation, particularly his mannequin of “adaptive licensing.” In essence, Barker’s mannequin stands in direct battle with the primary rules of RFK Jr.’s MAHA agenda. Whereas MAHA seeks to separate trade from public well being businesses, Barker’s work focuses on infusing Large Pharma into the drug growth course of even additional. He proposes this as an answer to what he describes as an issue so extreme that it makes the present drug growth course of “not sustainable” — particularly, the alleged problem of these dealing with scientific growth being “fully remoted” from these dealing with the business facet of the method. He remarks that they continue to be “of their respective silos and report into completely different echelons of senior administration,” and that as a consequence, “there’s typically a serious disconnect between the scientific growth program and the gathering of worth information.”
Barker’s answer is one eerily just like Robert Califf’s aforementioned Fourth Industrial Revolution-inspired program at Duke. Barker believes that the utilization and assortment of an enormous array of “real-world information,” or information amassed outdoors of scientific trial settings by way of unconventional sources, will clear up this allegedly catastrophic downside. As Maddie Bannon described in her article on Robert Califf, real-world information “is collected from an unlimited array of sources together with digital well being data (EHRs) submitted by medical professionals throughout a physician or hospital go to, insurance coverage claims and billing information, medical product and illness registries, the affected person themselves (e.g. information submitted by way of an app), wearable units, cellphones, and social media.”
This information, Barker says, can tackle the division between the business and scientific sides of growth by integrating “worth within the design of the scientific growth, with an early crafting part involving the enter of regulators, payers, and affected person associations, in order to make sure the gathering of each scientific and worth information.”
Additional, he boasts that it could possibly jack up drug costs by using real-world information based mostly on the surveillance of sufferers “to assist set up the worth of the product.” This could allegedly clear up the issue of drug makers setting “the value as excessive as attainable originally of the method,” by permitting firms to constantly improve the value of a drug as they monitor its results in the actual world, utilizing “compelling real-world information” as their justification for worth hikes. In different phrases, Barker claims {that a} system must be in place to funnel mined biodata on to drug producers with a purpose to alter the worth of the product all through its time available on the market. Fairly actually, this concept would enable Large Pharma to instantly exploit the fragmented, data-mined components of their clients to domesticate important worth and capital—a seemingly techno-feudalistic iteration of healthcare.
But this isn’t the one finish Barker seeks to make use of this information in direction of. As well as, he believes that mass profiling of sufferers must be used with a purpose to “phase” communities “on a steady foundation” based mostly on their medical wants. He claims that this is able to allow the trade to attain its earnings based mostly on predicted, assured “outcomes” versus growing for quantity. O’Neill not too long ago expressed related priorities on X (previously Twitter) when he claimed that “Many People suppose we now have free markets in well being care. We don’t. A whole bunch of bureaucratic guidelines, perverse incentives, and opaque pricing make well being care dearer and fewer environment friendly than it must be. Suppliers of care are normally paid by quantity, not outcomes” (emphasis added).
This predictive, “final result”-focused use of knowledge would enable “merchandise to be prescribed to and utilized by the appropriate affected person phase,” in keeping with Barker. This line of pondering echoes the values of the mass surveillance based mostly pre-crime, counterinsurgency tradition that so most of the firms and figures surrounding Thiel pursue. It additionally bears placing similarities to Palantir’s Tiberius program that was used to distribute Covid-19 vaccines to AI-determined precedence populations as a part of Operation Warp Velocity — which the CDC’s Middle For Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics has since entrenched into HHS biosurveillance infrastructure.
Nevertheless, Barker goes even additional with this proposed technique; he believes that when contemplating sufferers, “the trade must concentrate on the behavioral elements which drive adherence, both as accelerators or decelerators. The purpose must be to gather proof as to methods to enhance adherence, and the train is complicated since there are a lot of forms of sufferers with completely different behavioral contexts and psychological boundaries” (emphasis added). The breadth of knowledge required to hold out such exact affect of habits would clearly be huge, and comes out of a long run army technique of weaponizing info.
This idea of using information amassed from mass datasets to govern and direct human habits dates again to J.C.R. Licklider’s time on the Superior Analysis Tasks Company’s (ARPA) Behavioral Science and Command and Management division within the early Sixties, earlier than the appearance of contemporary laptop networks. At the very least one in all Licklider’s “Behavioral Science” schemes was carried out underneath the auspices of ordinary army dealings, as his ARPA division deployed a challenge to review seemingly benign statistics of the Thai inhabitants “that sought to measure the physique measurement of a number of thousand Thai army personnel to help within the design of kit and uniforms.” Nevertheless, as Yasha Levine particulars in his e-book Surveillance Valley, past the physiological information the researchers collected, additionally they amassed info on the individuals’ ancestors, faith and their opinions on the king of Thailand. “The deeper goal,” in keeping with Levine, “was rooted in prediction and management.” Levine expounds on this concept by quoting Annie Jacobsen’s The Pentagon’s Mind: “If Thailand have been to change into a battle zone, ARPA would have info on Thai troopers, every of whom could possibly be tracked. Data — like who abandoned the Thai military and have become an enemy combatant— could possibly be ascertained. Utilizing laptop fashions, ARPA may create algorithms describing human habits in distant areas.”
Like Licklider’s technique of using information to manage the “outcomes” of probably rebel populations within the World South, Barker’s mannequin depends on pushing populations in direction of the specified outcomes of bureaucrats that “trial individuals” are possible unaware of. Each methods depend on the utility of seemingly impartial info to quell dissent, and finally manipulate (and even halt) what could be the natural selections of individuals.
As well as, O’Neill’s views on ending efficacy testing would possible show extremely helpful to the biotech trade, notably those who manufacture mRNA merchandise. Previous to the Covid-19 disaster, which facilitated emergency deregulation, mRNA merchandise struggled to get to market underneath the prevailing regulatory paradigm. That is largely as a result of most mRNA merchandise wrestle to be each protected and efficient, as growing effectiveness has tended to dramatically lower security whereas making certain security has tended to dramatically lower efficacy. Thus, eliminating efficacy trials would enable mRNA merchandise which have been unable to show each security and efficacy a a lot better probability at making it to market.
A telling instance of this persistent problem within the mRNA trade is the corporate Moderna. Previous to its Covid-19 product, Moderna couldn’t get a single mRNA product authorised for over a decade and struggled to even get its merchandise by way of animal testing. This problem for the corporate was largely based mostly on its lipidnanoparticle (LNP) supply system for mRNA. In accordance with reporting from STAT Information, this supply system “created a frightening problem [for Moderna]: Dose too little, and also you don’t get sufficient enzyme to have an effect on the illness; dose an excessive amount of, and the drug is simply too poisonous for sufferers.” Many main mRNA-focused firms, like Pfizer accomplice BioNTech and Vivek Ramaswamy’s Roivant, have wager closely on this identical LNP supply system regardless of its doubtful report, leading to quite a few authorized snafus associated to who precisely owns the rights to which elements of that supply system. It might be these kind of firms that might stand to profit essentially the most from O’Neill’s prior proposals to remove efficacy testing for vaccines and different merchandise, releasing them from long-standing considerations about their mRNA supply mechanisms.
O’Neill’s Proximity to Palantir and What it Means for HHS’ Strategy to AI
The merging of Large Tech, Large Healthcare and the general public sector are half and parcel to the emergency deregulatory framework that O’Neill seems to assist, each by way of his personal statements and his enterprise associations. It seems that O’Neill has dabbled in all three of those ever-harder-to-distinguish sectors. As this text has beforehand famous, biosurveillance works in tandem with accelerated drug growth, as the shortage of regulatory scrutiny in these contexts gives the right pretext to justify the surveillance of those that obtain the “experimental” medication. This notably occurred throughout Operation Warp Velocity. It simply so occurs that the federal government contractor on the entrance strains of this more and more pervasive trade is Palantir, which was co-founded by O’Neill affiliate, Peter Thiel. Thiel stays the corporate’s main investor. As well as, the VC agency of one other Palantir co-founder, Joe Lonsdale, is deeply linked to the CIA-linked agency that produces the mRNA for Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine, amongst others. Lonsdale has publicly praised O’Neill’s appointment as HHS deputy secretary, with O’Neill responding that Lonsdale has “enormously impressed me for a very long time.”
Whereas Palantir’s work with HHS dates again to a minimum of 2010, the information firm has change into more and more entrenched inside HHS, influencing coverage, useful resource allocation and extra because the Covid-19 pandemic. Palantir gained main contracts with HHS throughout the Covid-19 period, notably over the past yr of the earlier Trump administration. These included Palantir’s outbreak warning and wastewater surveillance system, HHS Shield, and its vaccine allocation program, Tiberius. The Covid-19 period FDA/Palantir program 21 FORWARD, which helped specialists look at how Covid-19 incidence charges may have an effect on the meals provide, has expanded into an important half of the FDA’s “meals provide chain disruption monitoring and disaster response.” The pre-crime operation turned predictive well being iteration of DARPA, ARPA-H, tasked Palantir final yr with working its core information infrastructure. But, arguably most significantly, in 2022, the 2 entities united a myriad of the Palantir and HHS/CDC biosurveillance packages collectively underneath the CDC’s “Frequent Working Image,” which goals to safe “sturdy collaboration throughout the federal authorities, jurisdictional well being departments, personal sector entities, and different key well being companions.”
Previous this pledge of CDC-Palantir unification was the announcement of the CDC’s Middle for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics (CFA) — a program devoted to finishing up, amongst different issues, the multi-sector purpose of the CDC’s Frequent Working Image. By way of a consortium of educational facilities, personal establishments and federal businesses all analyzing novel information sources, the CFA generates synthetic intelligence (AI) forecasts of illness outbreaks with a purpose to curate specified, focused coverage measures for particular communities/populations — purportedly to cease epidemics earlier than they happen.
As Limitless Hangout not too long ago detailed, the coverage implications for such a program could possibly be huge. For instance, the CFA’s information evaluation and extraction will inform insurance policies involving the “group migration” of people and/or populations; whether or not they’re deemed “excessive danger” or not (with continuing coverage instantly curated relative to a group’s/particular person’s purported “danger stage”); and key selections on medical countermeasures throughout illness outbreaks. To display the “focused” nature of this system, the CFA will possible think about a myriad of “social determinants” in dictating such coverage, together with race, geography, family crowding and even monetary information.
The fabric implications of CFA, subsequently, stand to be big — with Palantir guiding the ship, and Thiel’s affiliate Jim O’Neill overseeing all of it. The conflicts of curiosity are obvious. O’Neill’s historical past of injecting funds into Palantir itself and Thiel-backed initiatives will possible not stop at HHS, and given Palantir’s full integration into the company’s biosurveillance infrastructure, it could even increase. Such a risk turns into much more possible contemplating one of many architects of the HHS Shield system that Palantir manages, Kristen Honey, was not too long ago appointed HHS’ Chief Knowledge Officer.
Additional, past O’Neill’s connections to Thiel, his personal positions on AI make him prone to uphold and assist this predictive healthcare infrastructure. O’Neill has lengthy been a vocal supporter of the “synthetic intelligence-driven” healthcare system that CFA and Palantir are presently implementing, and which Large Tech, Large Healthcare and the Pentagon assist. On X, O’Neill responded to a tweet from a biotech government that known as for the widespread use of “autonomous AI” to chop healthcare prices with a flowery endorsement: “AI goes to change into important throughout authorities and throughout well being care….FDA and [Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services] will help docs and sufferers by supporting speedy adoption.”
This proclivity for AI has seemingly characterised one other new decide for Trump’s HHS. Meghan Dierks, the brand new HHS Chief Synthetic Intelligence Officer, beforehand acted as “the chief information officer of San Francisco-based well being care software program firm Komodo Well being.” It was there that she “spearheaded the event and analysis of AI-powered healthcare analytics instruments for all times sciences firms, healthcare practitioners, and affected person advocacy teams.”
Curiously, Komodo’s enterprise mannequin depends closely on using AI to faucet and interpret “real-world information” with a purpose to assist pharmaceutical firms navigate the “uncharted waters” of business drug launches. This navigational information comes from the large dataset the corporate has constructed “which ingests info from greater than 15 million new affected person encounters every day, capturing the anonymized experiences of greater than 320 million People by way of disparate medical claims, diagnostic labs, and prescription information units.”
This information involves life by way of its Healthcare Map, which “follows all the affected person journey by using analytics that go wider and deeper than some other information sources.” Nearly as if the corporate emerged straight out of Barker’s “adaptive licensing” options, the breadth of knowledge put to make use of by way of Komodo’s Healthcare Map “can uncover affected person populations that might profit from their remedy; pinpoint sufferers that aren’t being handled at the usual of care; [and] determine medical facilities almost certainly to recruit sufferers for scientific trials.” In different phrases, Komodo equips its shoppers to “phase” sufferers “on a steady foundation” based mostly on their focused medical wants — using, sharing and sure increasing big troves of knowledge within the course of.
Nevertheless, Komodo’s mass AI information interpretation capabilities don’t cease at drug launch help. Komodo will help with AI hospital administration, because it permits “payors and employers [to] higher perceive referral patterns and affected person flows, extra successfully handle danger swimming pools, and provide their members higher care.” It additionally grants “native and nationwide governments” predictive powers to “monitor outbreaks in actual time, higher estimate illness burden, and act extra swiftly on behalf of the general public.” The corporate’s whole mannequin bears a placing similarity in perform to the CDC’s Palantir-partnered CFA, which Limitless Hangout not too long ago reported on in nice element. Now, given Komodo’s connection to HHS by way of Dierks and its earlier initiatives with the CDC, the tech firm stands prone to be tapped by the CFA as a possible “information supply” for the CFA’s many AI-healthcare objectives.
In actual fact, this predictive infrastructure is deeply entrenched into different HHS / Palantir packages as nicely (past the CFA). For instance, the Palantir-partnered ARPA-H — which was initially pitched to the Trump administration as a pre-crime program earlier than its pivot into public well being underneath Biden — not too long ago chosen and awarded 4 completely different “groups” to “develop bioelectronic units to be implanted in sufferers by way of minor outpatient surgical procedure.” Whereas one staff “goals to create a ‘Dwelling Sentinel’ to measure key biomarkers within the physique and monitor their situation in real-time,” the entire groups “intention to develop an implantable ‘Dwelling Pharmacy’ programmed to ship therapeutic molecules to the affected person on demand for an prolonged interval.” Whereas ARPA-H pledges that the implantable chips will enhance the care of individuals with a myriad of continual situations, this invasive know-how additionally gives a brand new “novel” supply of “real-world information” for Palantir to make the most of.
The regulatory paradigm O’Neill seeks to implement will possible result in big beneficial properties for Thiel associates and Trump administration officers, starting from Roivant co-founder Vivek Ramaswamy, to biotech investor JD Vance, to O’Neill, and Thiel themselves. Additional, if efficacy trials are eradicated from the drug approval course of, biosurveillance will possible be deemed the required various with a purpose to “show efficacy after [the drugs have] been legalized,” justifying all the biosurveillance infrastructure constructed up by Palantir and its public sector companions.
Vaccine “Innovation” Appears Seemingly in New Trump Administration
Underneath O’Neill’s desired system, all the biotech trade at massive could be liberated from the regulatory hurdles that so typically block its most “modern” merchandise from attending to market. Maybe that is greatest demonstrated by distinguished mRNA and biotech proponent Invoice Gates’ latest praising of Trump. Gates, whom folks typically affiliate with the liberal facet of the political spectrum, acknowledged that he was “frankly impressed” with Trump after a “wide-ranging,” three hour dialogue with the present President wherein they mentioned Gates’ ambitions for international well being. They even each apparently obtained “fairly excited” when discussing the potential of fast-tracking a HIV vaccine in the identical method that Trump enabled with the Covid-19 vaccine.
Nevertheless, given Trump’s historical past with Gates throughout his earlier time period, Gates’ feedback aren’t stunning. For example, whereas Trump reduce funding and left the World Well being Group in 2020, his administration continued to fund the Gates-backed GAVI vaccine alliance to the tune of a three-year pledge totaling $1.16 billion by way of the alleged CIA-front group United States Company for Worldwide Growth (USAID). In April 2020, Trump lauded this partnership in a televised tackle to that yr’s World Vaccine Summit, stating “it’s nice to be partnering with [Gavi]. We are going to work arduous, we are going to work sturdy.” Notably, Gavi is without doubt one of the most distinguished funders of the WHO, together with the Gates Basis, and likewise co-led the WHO’s vaccine distribution program, COVAX, which “delivered almost 2 billion doses of vaccines” throughout the globe. Whereas Trump’s administration seemingly reduce ties with the WHO throughout this era, it nonetheless supported a minimum of one group essential to the WHO Covid response (i.e. Gavi).
As well as, the Trump administration itself arguably performed an important in Gavi’s COVAX, because it funded, by way of Operation Warp Velocity, a few of the foremost vaccines that COVAX distributed. Gates personally yielded colossal returns on his investments within the Covid-19 vaccines, which have been clearly aided by COVAX and the Trump administration’s fast-tracking of the vaccines themselves.
Gates’ latest feedback, together with the ties of O’Neill and Vance to the biotech trade, means that the Trump administration will allow the proliferation of mRNA vaccine know-how over the following 4 years. This notably signifies one other betrayal of the MAHA motion, because the Trump-brokered period of Covid-19 “vaccine innovation” not too long ago touted by Invoice Gates has been lengthy criticized by his incoming HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy. Certainly, in Kennedy’s e-book The Actual Anthony Fauci, RFK demonstrated the integral position Gates performed in Dr. Fauci’s “gradual the unfold, flatten the curve, await the jab” technique of stopping the pandemic — particularly, in a single occasion, by actually orchestrating “homicidal” research designed to kill scientific trial individuals taking Hydroxychloroquine.
As Kennedy detailed:
“Dr. Fauci, Invoice Gates, and WHO financed a cadre of analysis mercenaries to concoct a collection of almost twenty research—all using fraudulent protocols intentionally designed to discredit Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) as unsafe…
As a substitute of utilizing the usual therapy dose of 400mg/day, the 17 WHO research administered a borderline deadly day by day dose beginning with 2,400mg on Day 1, and utilizing 800mg/day thereafter. In a cynical, sinister, and actually homicidal campaign in opposition to HCQ, a staff of BMGF operatives performed a key position in devising and pushing by way of the exceptionally excessive dosing….
…Gate’s lethal deception allowed FDA to wrongly declare that HCQ could be ineffective at protected ranges.”
Kennedy made these allegations as a part of his bigger argument that the medical institution purposefully employed suspect and legally doubtful strategies to squander any probability that scientists may uncover low cost, available medicines efficient at treating Covid-19. This, he argued, allowed them to safe Emergency Use Authorization for the experimental vaccines. Based mostly on this account, Gates performed an important position on this grand scheme — committing medical “murder” within the course of.
RFK Jr.’s VP, Nicole Shanahan, mentioned on the marketing campaign path that she and RFK have been skeptical to endorse Trump as a result of he had but to acknowledge the failings of the vaccine-focused Operation Warp Velocity. Now, Trump is negotiating with one of the crucial distinguished perceived enemies of the MAHA motion, Invoice Gates, to enact the very same coverage for a minimum of one different vaccine.
To make issues much more sophisticated for MAHA voters, Gates will not be the one Large Tech government seemingly giddy in regards to the prospects of mRNA procurement underneath a Trump administration. Standing instantly by Trump’s facet on the White Home to announce the $500 billion AI funding, Stargate, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison made utopian guarantees in regards to the capability of quickly produced and customized mRNA vaccines to treatment most cancers, seemingly inflicting Moderna shares to surge. These vaccines could be created by way of AI, in keeping with Ellison — with information derived from AI-performed scans of affected person blood getting used to quickly develop these customized vaccines. Ellison’s feedback, and the context of him making them on the announcement of a multi-corporation AI infrastructure program, recommend others in Silicon Valley and Large Healthcare are equally excited for the prospects of “vaccine innovation” that seem poised to return in Trump’s second time period.
Such a risk can be supported by latest stories that Trump’s transition staff sidelined two prime Kennedy aides for his or her views on vaccines, with the Wall Road Journal writing that this growth “underscor[es] a cut up over immunizations within the ‘Make America Wholesome Once more’ motion.” Citing Trump and Kennedy associates, the Journal acknowledged that it appears extra possible than not that the incoming administrations’ HHS insurance policies “could have little do with vaccines.”
Additional underscoring the subversion of Kennedy at HHS is the latest appointment of Heather Flick, a former senior official at HHS throughout Trump’s first time period, to be Kennedy’s chief of employees. Whereas at HHS, Flick started because the division’s common counsel and finally labored her means as much as change into senior adviser to former HHS secretary Alex Azar. In accordance with a former FDA official, Flick is performing as “form of the Trump guys’ eyes and ears inside the division, too; it’s an important liaison and data supply…The chief of employees, they kinda lay down the regulation.” Certainly, one other former FDA official instructed Politico that the chief of employees’s position “may be very, very concerned in FDA enterprise and FDA work,” which means Flick will presumably play an vital position in drug regulation coverage. For the MAHA motion, that is particularly regarding given Flick’s vital position at HHS on the identical time that Azar declared Covid-19 an emergency and likewise contracted Palantir to run vaccine distribution and wastewater surveillance. This implies Flick could be extra pleasant to the pursuits of O’Neill than Kennedy.
O’Neill’s appointment to be deputy secretary at HHS as a minimum undermines the guarantees that the Trump marketing campaign made throughout election season to “Make America Wholesome Once more” voters. Extra possible, O’Neill’s place at HHS signifies the route the Trump marketing campaign will go in relation to public well being — specifically, that it’s going to totally embrace the objectives of the biosecurity equipment that grew out of the post-9/11, pre-crime, neoconservative Complete Data Consciousness program that Palantir quietly shifted into the personal sector. The biotech executives and buyers surrounding Trump stand to reap big earnings from this agenda. In actual fact, they might have it to outlive.
Touting RFK Jr.’s endorsement on the marketing campaign path might have subverted the possibility for crucial evaluation of Trump’s coverage positions (or lack thereof) on public well being and pandemic preparedness. In consequence, the MAHA motion presumably led many citizens who have been disaffected, betrayed and harmed by the insurance policies of Operation Warp Velocity again into the very arms of the person who touted and took credit score for them them within the first place. With RFK Jr. performing as the general public face of Trump’s HHS — all whereas essentially the most highly effective forces of the biosecurity agenda lurk within the shadows behind him — resistance to this agenda from inside the administration seems uncertain regardless of the hopes of the MAHA voting bloc.
