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By Rob Verkerk PhD, ANH founder, executive & scientific director

Last Saturday Durk Pearson died. He was one of the pioneers of natural medicine – but really so much more than that, being a polymath.

Amongst Durk’s many endeavours, as a physicist, he developed guidance systems for cruise missiles; as a creative, he wrote screenplays for Clint Eastwood, such as The Dead Pool; as a longevity researcher, he kicked off the wellness revolution with his New York Times bestseller, Life Extension: A Practical Scientific Approach, and; as a freedom advocate, his case against the FDA, won on Appeal in the Supreme Court and brought by my colleague, now ANH-USA General Counsel, 'FDA Dragon Slayer' attorney Jonathan Emord, burst the doors open to a liberalised market for natural health products in which truthful structure/function claims could be made to inform consumer choice.

>>> Find out how Durk Pearson, Sandy Shaw and Jonathan Emord reversed the FDA’s clampdown on free speech and health claims

>>> Read our memorial to Durk Pearson

We ignore polymaths at our expense, and certainly the expense of future generations. Imagine if we’d ignored Aristotle, da Vinci or Turing?  Or, in the East, if the Han Dynasty had ignored Zhang Heng? Well, it’s now time to take heed of what Durk Pearson had been saying about medical freedom for over half a century. Durk said in an interview with Life Extension magazine back in 1998, “the price of liberty is vigilance.” While often attributed to Jefferson, it seems this is more likely an abbreviation of a segment from a speech made by Irish orator and politician, John Curran, delivered in Dublin in July 1790, where he said, “The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance”.

Let me stray no further and move our attention to the issue we face today with efforts to centralise control over human health. I can’t say it any other way: but this is stupidity. If I tried to be kinder, it would come out something like this: it is ignorant of the available facts, it is misguided, simple-minded, or lacking in judgment. But, in my view, the  adjective ‘stupid’ does the job just fine – it’s short and to the point. However, you can only come to this view when you are privy to a wider range of information – the kind of information that comes from taking a polymath’s view of the issue. Thank you, Durk.

Let me try now to explain below why I think it’s stupid, and why I think we should remain eternally vigilant in the face of all of the processes that are going on around us that are trying to convince governments, politicians (elected representatives, remember them?) and citizens (the people who should actually be in charge in democracies), that centralised, global power and control over human health and health information is the best thing to ensure our safety wellbeing, going forward.

What did we or didn’t we learn?

The COVID-19 pandemic brought to the forefront critical questions about global health governance. You might think this last year or so has offered an opportunity to consider carefully what worked or didn’t work. Sadly, of the big decision makers involved in the globally centralised control of the health agenda, these represent a precious few. Most have been much more interested in learning just how malleable the public might be when exposed to conditions that keep them in an extended state of fear. Or how far we go before we break, or, for that matter, refuse to comply. While all of this happens, we all get surveilled to within an inch of our lives, so our ‘masters’ already know what decisions we’ll make next time around, and who’ll be the real trouble makers. Count me in.

One now has to resort to academic publications to see that there is a growing body of research showing that in the face of a global crisis, authoritarian approaches are rarely either the most effective or the most equitable ways of improving health outcomes worldwide. So please acknowledge the disinformation implicit in the World Health Organization’s (WHO) efforts to justify the so-called ‘Pandemic Treaty’ in the name of ‘equity’.  

In the WHO’s own words, the ‘treaty’ would usher in a “new global system for pathogen access and benefits sharing (i.e. life-saving vaccines, treatments and diagnostics); pandemic prevention and One Health; and the financial coordination needed to scale up countries’ capacities to prepare for and respond to pandemics.”

>>> WHO ‘Pandemic Treaty’ text, as of 19 Sept 2024.

I want to go on to challenge the notion that this approach is the panacea for global health challenges. And I want to look a some of the evidence that shows shifting the loci of control over health away from individuals and communities, and putting it into the hands of unelected bureaucrats in the ivory towers of the WHO in Geneva, is the worse thing we could possibly do.

The evidence (for example, here and here) points to the fact that regional approaches, grounded in local contexts and community empowerment, offer a much more promising path toward a healthier future for a lot more people. But you won’t hear any of this from the WHO because it doesn’t mesh with its plans, and, please remember, we won’t get there if we drop our vigilance and sit on our backsides, because the globalists mean business.

Do you trust these people? (Source: WHO, Governments agree to continue their steady progress on proposed pandemic agreement ahead of the World Health Assembly, 10 May, 2024)

Democratic decay and the rise of authoritarianism

The COVID-19 “pandemic” catalysed authoritarianism in the so-called free world under the guise of public health measures. Governments and even private corporations stripped millions of their liberties with lockdowns, mask-wearing, social distancing, restrictions on movement, business and school closures, and—let’s not forget—mandatory or coerced vaccinations.

Individual liberties and the principles of democratic governance were set aside, ostensibly for the 'public good'. I have recently been educated on the real meaning of 'public good' by Jonathan Emord. In Jonathan's words: "public good,” like “public health,” is a fiction, of collectivist origin, arising from the Progressive Era here and the labor movement in England. It’s rot, pablum, opiate for the masses disguising partisan political moves to benefit those in power. So those terms I only use in derision." I am now wiser, as I hope you are too.

While these measures were often justified as necessary to control the spread of the virus, they also provided a convenient pretext for governments to consolidate power and suppress dissent. What made matters worse, while governments told the public they were “following the science”, retrospective analysis, such as that laid out masterfully by US journalist Sharyl Attkisson in her new book, shows otherwise. Or you might like to read the 113-page report just out from the US House of Representatives Energy & Commerce Committee that shows that the Biden-Harris Administration wasted $1 billion of taxpayers money on their phoney attack on so-called ‘misinformation’.   

Had this authoritarian approach been a winner, buy-in for more-of-the-same in a next-time-around scenario might make sense. But the whole thing was a spectacular disaster. Lockdowns, masks and genetic vaccines—contrary to all the promises offered—failed to stop transmission.

Research has shown that authoritarian regimes do not necessarily have an advantage over more liberal systems in managing pandemics. In fact, some studies, such as one from Oxford University that reviewed responsiveness across over 130 countries, suggest that countries with strong democratic institutions and a respect for human rights were better equipped to respond to the challenges of COVID-19. This is because open societies are more likely to have a free press, independent scientific inquiry, and transparent decision-making processes, all of which are essential for effective public health interventions. Less autocratic approaches that called for more personal responsibility, as per the Swedish model, also had higher rates of compliance.

Ironically, when one continues to hear justification for centralisation of power linked to a need for equity, authoritarian crackdowns often have the most devastating consequences on the most marginalized communities. Restrictions on movement and economic activity disproportionately impact those already living in poverty, while the erosion of civil liberties created a climate of fear and mistrust. These experiences underscore the importance of protecting human rights and democratic values, even in times of crisis. Repressive political regimes—whatever the circumstances—never had good outcomes for the majority.

The limitations of a top-down approach

The COVID-19 pandemic also exposed the limitations of a globalized approach to health governance. But yet governments and politicans are busily signing on the dotted line saying they want more of it. Despite the WHO’s mandate to promote global health, it’s done very little to help. Instead, it’s morphing increasingly into an unaccountable instrument run by unelected bureaucrats that fast-tracks the global distribution of diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines, while emerging as the ultimate arbiter of truthful health information in its mission to fight the quaintly-named infodemic. Do yourself a favour and shudder at the thought.  

Research shows us that a globalised approach to health often fails to consider the social, environmental, political, and economic determinants of health. These factors are typically the most influential on health and vary dramatically from country to country, region to region, and home to home. Copious evidence shows that a one-size-fits-all solution is not what is warranted should a new, highly transmissible and somewhat virulent bug, whether originating from a spill-over event from animal populations or made purposefully in a lab, were to afflict us again.

Rethinking the International Health Regulations

There are a whole battery of unproven or disproven assumptions that underpin the cousin of the ‘Pandemic Treaty’, the International Health Regulations (IHR) which were amended earlier this year. The IHR, which governs international responses to public health emergencies, has historically focused on the notion of containment, aiming to prevent the spread of diseases across borders. But this approach has never been shown to work when the transmission potential is high (i.e. in a pandemic), and it does the very thing the WHO and its supporters are claiming they want to resolve: it exacerbates inequalities between countries and encourages hegemony.

>>> Most recent package of amendments to the IHR (2005).

Everyone is going to be familiar with just how much of a failure a containment-centric approach was during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite efforts to restrict travel and impose quarantines, the virus quickly spread across the globe, highlighting the interconnectedness of our world. The focus on containment often led to the stigmatisation of certain countries and populations (remember, and were those stigmatised deserving of their treatment?), further undermining trust. Doctors who tried to save lives were attacked and struck from their medical registers. This was never about saving lives. It was all about gaining power and control. And that desire among the few has only strengthened since the end of the COVID-19 pandemic was declared in May 2023.

What have we really learned?

Taking into account what we should have learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, a more holistic approach to managing human health during times of significant infection pressure should, in my view, include at least the following 8 things:

  • Supporting individuals and communities to build physiological, psychological and immunological resilience
  • Ensuring scientific transparency in research
  • Safeguarding the adequate supply of quality foods, clean water and health products, especially ones that help enhance immunological health
  • Non-interference by governments and corporations and the full protection of individual rights and liberties
  • Eliminating government and big corporate coercion
  • Protecting national sovereignty to allow democracy to function and facilitate the required agility and democratically supported response to local conditions
  • Respecting accepted principles of medical ethics, notably autonomy, beneficence (doing good), maleficence (‘first do no harm’), and justice (including for those injured by coercive or mandatory government health policies).
  • Defend the option of an opt-out to the IHR and ‘Pandemic Treaty’.

None—yes, not one—of these are incorporated into the either the Pandemic Treaty or the amendments to the IHR. Worse still, the ‘war on misinformation’ that should be redefined as any form of speech or communication that does not comply with the WHO and its associated medico-industrial complex, is now a fixture of the WHO’s global powerplay. 

This is no time to be stupid. And let’s remember the call of so many, including Durk Pearson: let’s stay eternally vigilant, as the machine that is trying to muster control over our health tries its best to seize power that does not belong to them.

Critical timelines

The next meeting of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) to discuss the Pandemic Treaty runs between 4 and 15 November, followed by the 19-27 May 2025, the 78th World Health Assembly (WHA). On 1 June this year, a package of critical amendment to the IHR (2005) were adopted following the 77th meetings of the WHA.

We cannot engage in these meetings such are the workings of these supranational bodies. But we can influence them if we share our views. Please share this article widely, and we’ll keep you posted on outcomes of the November meeting of the INB. More than ever, remain eternally vigilant.

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