on the Bioethics of Experimental Vaccines and the ‘Ultimate Gaslighting’
In this episode, in The Epoch Times we sit down with mRNA vaccine pioneer Dr. Robert Malone to discuss questions surrounding the COVID-19 vaccines and repurposed drugs, as well as the bioethics of experimental vaccines .
Editor: This is part of the whole interview. We take up the intreview about 3 /4 through when the Interviewer Mr. Jekielek asks the following question.]
Mr. Jekielek: Robert, on top of everything else, you’re actually a trained bioethicist. You’ve already started addressing some of the ethical questions and conundrums around what’s happening or what you see happening. Give me the scope of this as we start finishing up.
Dr. Malone: Thank you for that, and for that lead-in. I personally think this is one of the most important topics, the bioethics of the use of an experimental medicine and experimental vaccine.
The genesis of this whole thought thread was a two-hour conversation with a Canadian physician a number of weeks ago, where he just poured his heart out about what he was seeing with his patients and what was going on in Canada. I was left saying, “Well, thanks for sharing this, but I can’t help you. I don’t have anything.”
I woke up that Sunday morning with an aha moment. I said, “I know what I can do for this guy. I can write a piece about bioethics, the bioethics of vaccination under emergency use authorization.”
So, I dug into the rich literature that exists, as well as federal law that goes back to The Helsinki Accords, and The Belmont report, and looked at what are the fundamental principles of bioethics as they relate to use of an experimental product.
So, point number one, just to summarize; you can find it in The Code of Federal Regulations. It’s referred to as the Common Rule. So, this is actually Federal Law. It’s not just the words that academicians agree to. The first thing is that an emergency use authorization product, which is what all these vaccines are, as well as many of the drugs, is an experimental product. It’s not yet licensed. So that’s point number one. They’re all experimental products.
Point number two; if you’re going to be administering experimental products to patients, that falls under clinical research, and medical research. And so, you have to follow the guidance for medical research. I mentioned the Common Rule is codified in the Code of Federal Regulations.
The first clause, importantly, in the Common Rule, is there has to be complete disclosure of risk. Intuitively, what that means is, when you buy a bottle of aspirin, you pull out this little piece of paper. You look at that, and you go, “Holy Moly, this aspirin is going to kill me.” If you read all the way through, it says it could cause heart attacks or gastric erosions. You look at that and you say, “Oh, I don’t know if I want to take that aspirin.”
But the truth is that the ones that are common are up at the top. We all take aspirin or Tylenol or some version of that. That’s the level of disclosure of adverse event risk that must be provided to patients participating in clinical research. That level of information, as we’ve just been discussing, is censored. It’s not available. So, we are not meeting the criteria for full disclosure of risk.
Second key principle is that that full disclosure has to be comprehensible and comprehended. Earlier on, I referred to Thrombocytopenia, and you said, “What the heck was that?” And I said, “Low platelets.” That’s a great example. The first one was scientific jargon that was incomprehensible to you. The second one you could understand. So, these risks have to be conveyed using language that people can comprehend.
Third key principle; you cannot coerce. You cannot entice. The patient or the subject has to freely accept the experimental medicine of their own volition. All this messaging about, “You must take the vaccine. You must take the vaccine because otherwise Aunt Mary could get infected.” All of this messaging that the vaccine is safe, and all the peer pressure that’s happening around the vaccine is coercion.
Now it gets even more florid with other nations. I don’t think we’ve done it here in the States, but Canada has. “We are going to give out ice cream cones to get the kiddies to come and take the jab.” That’s been done. That’s coercion and enticement.
Then there’s the last little codicil in all this. We call it the age of consent. So we here in the States generally agree that the age of consent is 18. If you are at or below the age of consent, you need to have approval or consent from your parent or guardian to take an experimental medicine. They act as your agent because you’re not able to provide consent by definition.
We cannot, by law, have infants, children, and adolescents receiving experimental products without authorization of their parents.
Now, listening to this, [one] might say, “Well, we have this special case of an epidemic, and we all have to get the vaccine.” Why do we all have to get the vaccine? What’s the logic behind that? What we’re told is, “We all have to get vaccinated so we will reach herd immunity.” That’s the logic.
The problem is that this is a fallacy. We have not even gathered the data to be able to calculate in these clinical trials what would give us herd immunity. What would herd immunity mean? It would mean that we have what’s called sterilizing immunity, or in some way, if we get infected, that we don’t spread it to somebody else. That means that we’re not producing virus and shedding virus.
Just today, the World Health Organization made an announcement clearly and unequivocally. You’ve got to start using masks because none of these vaccines are preventing infection. They’re preventing disease. They’re not preventing transmission. They may be reducing transmission, but by how much we don’t know. So, we can’t calculate what percent uptake is required to reach herd immunity if we could reach herd immunity with these vaccines.
There’s an underlying logic that’s been pushed out globally about why we have to take vaccine and how many of us have to take vaccine. It’s not actually supported by data. To my mind, that’s a problem. It’s gone all the way through this outbreak where key public health officials have felt comfortable substituting their opinion for evidence-based medicine.
That always has to happen at the start of an outbreak because there’s no data. Somebody’s got to have expert opinion. We’re past that point. We have a lot of data, and it’s time we start relying on evidence to make public health decisions. We’re not doing it.
To my eye, from bioethics, we appear to be failing to meet the Code of Federal Regulations and Federal Law, let alone fundamental precepts that go back to the end of World War II. We’re not providing full disclosure of risk. We’re not doing so in a way that’s readily comprehended by the public. And we are enticing, compelling, coercing, and otherwise not respecting the rights of the individual to choose what happens to their body.
In my mind, the bedrock we all have in Western society is the right to choose. The State does not own our body, particularly for an experimental product.
I argue that we’ve crossed a line. It’s a bioethical line. It may actually be Federal Law that we’ve crossed, inadvertently, I’m sure for all the best reasons. But if you go back, read the Nuremberg Code. What we’re doing is not aligned with fundamental principles. And as you know, this happens from time to time during war and crisis.
Cultures decide that it’s okay to bend the rules on some fundamentals of ethics, whether it’s torture or internment of populations. I believe they almost universally end up regretting it. So, I’m trying to responsibly, ethically, and with the credibility that I have in my CV, and because of my role in inventing this technology, to alert people that I believe that we’re pushing and crossing some key lines here that we really should be respecting.
Mr. Jekielek: Robert, we’re going to have to finish up shortly. I probably have about a few hours more worth of questions for you at this point. We’ll have to invite you back. Any final thoughts before we finish up for today?
Dr. Malone: Yes. If I can speak to your audience, like I said, it’s your body. My general recommendation is, in my opinion, these vaccines are saving lives. They’re saving many lives, particularly in the elderly. I get asked the question all the time, “Should I take this vaccine or that vaccine because I have this pre-existing condition or an autoimmune disease?”
My recommendation is that you know your body best, you and your medical care provider. You have the right to accept or not accept a vaccine product, particularly an experimental one. You make your own decision. I can’t advise you, in the end, neither can your physician completely advise you.
It’s up to you. It’s your body. It’s your choice. I strongly suggest that you take the time to get informed, do the best you can, and then make the decision that you think is right for you.
Mr. Jekielek: Robert, just before we finish up, is there a resource that you would recommend to be able to see the broader totality of the picture?
Dr. Malone: Unfortunately, there isn’t. I’m involved with a couple of different coalitions that are starting to build websites, particularly for helping inform university students that are returning to class, so that university administrators or others can use these as resources and point people to them, so that they can become informed themselves.
In the interim, there’s the WHO site website for vaccines. For COVID, there’s one that the CDC maintains. There’re the NIH recommendations for drugs, but all of these are lagging. They’re not right out at the front edge of the latest information. Understandably, they have to pass through a bureaucratic filter. And they often don’t link to the primary data, and people are just crazy hungry for information right now. So hopefully, that’ll come to pass over time.
Mr. Jekielek: And some people may be concerned that some of these very, very official sites might be following the approach that you’ve been describing in this episode. So they may be wondering, where can I look?
Dr. Malone: That’s exactly right. Many people were coming to my LinkedIn and Twitter feeds seeking that level of information and seemed to have been trusting me as a neutral arbiter of that information. Unfortunately, that is getting shut down. I was trying to do it through that vehicle, but I no longer have that channel. I really grateful to you at the Epoch Times for making it possible to reach people through this video medium, which many find more useful than reading a dry peer-reviewed academic paper. I don’t know what the answer is right now in a time when people are increasingly distrusting official public health.
Mr. Jekielek: On that note, we’ll definitely have you back again soon. Dr. Robert Malone, such a pleasure to have you on.
Dr. Malone: Thank you very much.
[Edited by Epoch Times:] This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
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