case report
The claim that Elon Musk might be “killing millions” sounds like hyperbolic rhetoric, but it is an entirely predictable mathematical projection of his policy choices. Peer-reviewed global health modeling showed that the systematic dismantling of USAID—spearheaded by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—will result in over 14 million preventable deaths by 2030, millions of whom are children. By freeze-framing and terminating programs that provide life-saving vaccines, malaria bed nets, and HIV therapeutics, these actions have directly triggered the resurgence of entirely controllable diseases.
Hard to believe?
See for yourself; here is the abstract of the paper published in the Lancet:
Background: Official development assistance (ODA) accounts for the majority of humanitarian and development assistance in the world’s most vulnerable countries and has played a pivotal role in advancing global health. We aimed to comprehensively evaluate the impact of ODA funding on mortality across the past two decades, and to project the potential consequences of current defunding trends.
Methods: We conducted an integrated retrospective evaluation and forecasting analysis using longitudinal panel data from 93 low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs). First, we estimated the association between ODA per-capita funding and mortality outcomes from 2002 to 2021 using a two-ways fixed-effects multivariable Poisson regression model with robust standard errors, adjusted for all relevant demographic, socioeconomic, and health-system covariates. We then assessed age-specific and cause-specific effects, performing extensive sensitivity and triangulation analyses to test the robustness and causal interpretation of results. Finally, we integrated the retrospective impact estimates into validated country-level microsimulation models to forecast mortality under three defunding scenarios up to 2030: a business-as-usual trajectory, a severe defunding scenario, and a mild defunding scenario.
Findings: Higher ODA funding levels were associated with a 23% reduction in age-standardised all-cause mortality (rate ratio [RR] 0·77; 95% CI 0·70-0·85) and a 39% reduction in under-5 mortality (0·61; 0·49-0·75). ODA funding was associated with large mortality declines in major communicable diseases: 70% for HIV/AIDS (RR 0·30; 95% CI 0·24-0·39), 56% for malaria (0·44; 0·35-0·56), 56% for nutritional deficiencies (0·44; 0·30-0·65), and 54% for neglected tropical diseases (0·46; 0·36-0·59). Significant reductions were also observed in mortality from tuberculosis, diarrhoeal diseases, lower respiratory infections, and maternal and perinatal causes. Forecasting analyses projected that ongoing reductions in ODA funding could, under a severe defunding scenario, result in 22·6 million (95% uncertainty interval [UI] 16·3-29·3) additional deaths across all ages by 2030, including 5·4 million (4·1-6·8) among children younger than 5 years. Under a mild defunding scenario-defined as a continuation of current downward trends-the projected excess deaths would be 9·4 million (95% UI 6·2-12·6) overall and 2·5 million (1·8-3·2) among children younger than 5 years.
Interpretation: ODA funding has played a decisive role in reducing preventable mortality across LMICs over the past two decades, and the abrupt withdrawal of this support threatens to cause millions of avoidable deaths, reversing decades of progress in global health.
Funding: RF Catalytic Capital and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation.
Attempting to shield Musk from the moral indictment of these deaths by hiding behind bureaucratic complexity is a cop-out. Musk is not a passive advisor suggesting minor budgetary trims; he has aggressively engineered and celebrated the destruction of these aid mechanisms on his public platform, explicitly branding the defunding of life-saving infrastructure as “clipping waste.” When an individual wields unchecked power to eliminate interventions with legally and medically proven survival rates, the line between “efficiency” and institutional negligence disappears. He is fully aware of the survival benefits of these programs, making the choice to dismantle them a calculated acceptance of mass mortality.
While defenders argue that epidemiological models deal in macro-statistics rather than localized causality, this defense elides the nature of modern accountability. Musk cannot hand-select which specific child dies of malaria, but he did hand-select the budget line that funded their treatment. Pretending this is just a structural or collective government failure sanitizes the reality: a single billionaire used his leverage to treat global survival infrastructure like an unprofitable corporate acquisition, making him materially and morally responsible for the human body count that follows.
In March 2025, a federal judge ruled that DOGE’s effort to dismantle USAID likely violated the Constitution and ordered restoration of access to key systems, saying USAID had been effectively eliminated. That matters because it weakens any claim that the dismantling was merely speculative or rhetorical: courts have already treated the shutdown effort as legally serious.
For a deeper look into the systemic impact of these specific health program suspensions and the firsthand accounts of how these funding disruptions unfolded on the ground, you can watch this France 24 Interview with a USAID Whistleblower.
Internal HHS and CDC communications leaked by the US Senate HELP Committee expose a truly scary crisis of institutional integrity. Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. systematically dismantled evidence-based public health infrastructure to implement his personal, ideological and dangerous agenda. This was not merely a shift in administrative policy; it was an aggressive, top-down politicisation of science that directly compromised public safety.
It is now clear that less than 24 hours after his confirmation on 29/30 January 2025 – in the midst of a severe flu season that had already claimed 16,000 lives, including 68 children – Kennedy issued a direct mandate to halt active flu vaccine public service advertisements. Internal communications from HHS Director of Communications Andrew Nixon explicitly confirm this “was a direct ask from Secretary Kennedy.”
The institutional damage caused by Kennedy’s actions extends far beyond suppressed messaging into structural purges. In fact, it seems likely that Kennedy committed perjury. During his confirmation hearings, Kennedy misled lawmakers regarding his intentions to restrict vaccine access and his past anti-vaccine interventions. Once in power, his chief of staff enforced an “absolute need for political review” over career scientists. Kennedy subsequently fired the entire 17-member Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), replacing them with people with strong anti-vaccine views. When career CDC Director Susan Monarez resisted rubber-stamping these politically motivated recommendations, Kennedy fired her, triggering a wave of high-level resignations among the agency’s top medical officers.
The leaked emails also confirm that Kennedy bypassed standard scientific clearance protocols to dispatch handpicked researchers into confidential CDC databases. This was a deliberate attempt to weaponize raw public health data to manufacture evidence for a spurious vaccine-autism link that has been thoroughly debunked by global longitudinal studies involving millions of children.
By substituting ideological loyalty for empirical evidence, the US administration has compromised the foundational mechanics of medicine. When a federal health agency is forced to prioritize dogma over data, the ultimate cost is inevitably paid in preventable human disease and death.
The conclusion: Kennedy has likely committed the serious crime of perjury, has shown to be a danger to our (the damage can quickly spread beyond the US) health, and in my view has to be removed from office asap.
An interesting case-report caught my eye. Here is its abstract:
Background:
Advanced Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is generally regarded as a stage of irreversible functional decline. Psilocybin is known to transiently alter large-scale brain network dynamics and to induce plasticity-related mechanisms in preclinical models, yet clinical data in advanced dementia remain lacking.
Case presentation:
We report the case of an octogenarian Japanese-American woman with a 10-year history of Alzheimer’s disease, including 5 years of marked hypofunction and predominantly monosyllabic speech. Baseline features included chronic urinary incontinence, executive dysfunction, dysphagia, dependent mobility, flat affect, and severe reduction in spontaneous communication. The patient received 5 g of orally administered psilocybin-containing mushrooms (Enigma strain). The acute phase was marked by autonomic activation, clinically suspected hyperthermia, profuse sweating, and a prolonged deep sleep-like state. Approximately 19 h post-administration, spontaneous autobiographical speech emerged. Over subsequent days and weeks, functional improvements included restoration of urinary continence, improved ambulation, autonomous dressing, increased emotional responsiveness, sustained social interaction, contextual memory retrieval, preserved working memory for social context, and spontaneous conversational engagement.
Conclusion:
This case documents transient multidomain functional improvement in advanced Alzheimer’s disease following psilocybin administration. The findings do not imply disease reversal but suggest that residual functional capacity may persist in late-stage neurodegeneration and may become transiently accessible under specific neuromodulatory conditions.
Of course, causality cannot be established with a case-report; the findings are therefore hypothesis-generating only. Plausible alternative explanations for the observed outcome include:
- Natural fluctuation in dementia severity or a transient “plateau” of improvement unrelated to psilocybin.
- Caregiver expectancy and observer bias, given that the same people who administered the intervention also documented the improvements.
- Confounding medical events (e.g., resolution of infection, metabolic correction, medication change) that were not systematically ruled out.
- Regression to the mean or random variation in functional status.
The lack of an objective endpoint (biomarker or imaging confirmation) of Alzheimer’s disease further weakens internal validity. Mixed pathology (vascular, Lewy body, frontotemporal) could produce different patterns of fluctuation and response. The absence of objective endpoints introduces subjective interpretation. “Autobiographical speech,” “improved continence,” and “better mobility” were not defined operationally or measured quantitatively.
The authors propose a plausible but speculative hypothesis: psilocybin’s disruption of the default mode network (DMN) and promotion of global functional integration may temporarily restore cross-network connectivity, allowing residual but inaccessible function to become expressed. This is consistent with psychedelic effects on network flexibility and DMN disruption, as well as with the idea that late-stage neurodegeneration may leave residual functional capacity that is normally inaccessible. However, the paper provides no neuroimaging, no electrophysiological data, and no direct evidence of network changes. The mechanism thus remains a hypothesis.
Still, the report does raise a question worthy of proper investigation: can psychedelic neuromodulation unmask residual function in late-stage neurodegeneration?
The Nazi’s sterilisation programme aimed at preventing Germans from reproducing who were deemed to be of inferior genetic make-up. It is well-known, and dozens of books have been published about it. In contrast, the ‘LEOPARD LILY PROJECT’ has been almost forgotten. Even though it also was about sterilising large groups of people, it had a very different overall aim.
The porject can be traced back to an Austrian dermatologist named Dr. Adolf Pokorny. Pokorny had encountered a scientific paper detailing animal experiment involving Dieffenbachia seguine (commonly known as the Leopard Lily or “dumb cane”). The juice of this tropical plant could be administered secretly to nonconsenting victims and was assumed to cause permanent sterility without affecting the capacity to work.
Pokorny recognized the dark potential of this botanical property. In his letter to Himmler, he explicitly proposed using Leopard Lily to secretly sterilize “three million Bolsheviks” and other populations in Eastern Europe. Pokorny’s vision was calculated and ruthless: by rendering the inhabitants of occupied territories infertile, the Third Reich could exploit them as slave labour for a single generation. Once that generation aged and died, the population would naturally become extinct, leaving the land cleared for German colonization.
The primary reason this unproven botanical theory was taken seriously at the highest levels of the Nazi command rests on the unique obsessions of Heinrich Himmler. The SS leader was deeply fascinated by alternative medicine, occultism, and pseudoscience. He harboured an intense distrust of mainstream academic medicine and actively promoted natural, herbal remedies.
Captivated by Pokorny’s letter, Himmler bypassed conventional, rigorous scientific channels, assigning high-ranking SS bureaucrats and doctors to fast-track the cultivation of the plant and initiate medical experimentation. However, to operationalize the project, the SS faced an immediate bottleneck: Leopard Lily is native to tropical climates, and Himmler did not possess enough of the plant to extract toxins at a mass scale. Huge, specialized greenhouses were commissioned, and efforts were made to cultivate the plant under controlled conditions within Germany. Yet, the project collapsed under the weight of its own scientific flaws and the changing tides of World War II. The plant could not be grown in quantities large enough to fulfil Himmler’s genocidal dream.
Following the collapse of the Third Reich, the details of the project were brought to light during the Nuremberg Doctors’ Trial (1946–1947). Dr. Adolf Pokorny was placed in the dock alongside prominent Nazi medical war criminals. Pokorny was one of the few to be acquitted by the tribunal. What then became of him remains a mystery.
The very last paragraph of my new book reads as follows: “The story of the Leopard Lily project can serve as a reminder of the dangers caused by unholy alliances of pseudoscience, ideology, immorality, and political power. These dangers have not ended with the Third Reich. If the book can contribute to reducing the risks of future recurrences, it was worth the effort of writing it.”
Having narcissistic tendencies, e.g. bragging or making yourself the center of attention, are normal, if they occur only occasionally. However, Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) is different. With NPD, symptoms are more severe, occur regularly and in different situations and environments, and make relationships with others challenging.
The 9 most common symptoms of NPD are the following:
- Grandiose sense of self-importance.
- Preoccupation with fantasies of success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love.
- Belief that they are “special” and should associate only with high-status people or institutions.
- Need for excessive admiration.
- Strong sense of entitlement.
- Interpersonally exploitative behaviour, using others to achieve their own ends.
- Lack of empathy, with little recognition of others’ feelings or needs.
- Envy of others, or belief that others are envious of them.
- Arrogant or haughty attitudes and behaviours.
Now, let’s consider a person who is almost constantly in our minds, mainly because he makes the headline news practically every day:
DONALD J TRUMP.
Does he perhaps display any of the above-listed symptoms? Let’s find out by going through them one by one and citing concrete examples**:
- Trump displays grandiose sense of self-importance regularly and to an extreme degree. Example: in August 2019, he told reporters, “I am the chosen one”.
- Trump displays preoccupation with fantasies of success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love regularly and to an extreme degree. Example: he said he was “always the best athlete” before his first presidential physical in January 2018.
- Trump displays his belief that he is “special” and should associate only with high-status people or institutions regularly and to an extreme degree. Example: in his 2018 rally line about the “elite,” he said, “We’re the elite… We’re the super-elite”.
- Trump displays a need for excessive admiration regularly and to an extreme degree. Example: according to a 2026 analysis, he has a “relentless demand for exaltation,” wants “praise, admiration, and accolades,” and even accepts honors that critics said were meant for others.
- Trump displays a strong sense of entitlement regularly and to an extreme degree. Example: he defended accepting a luxury Boeing 747 from Qatar by saying it would be “stupid” to turn down a “free plane,” and the aircraft was reported to be intended for his use as Air Force One.
- Trump displays interpersonally exploitative behaviour, using others to achieve their own ends regularly and to an extreme degree. Example: in the border detention context, he “exploits his power” and “leverages cruelty strategically,” especially in policies that harmed vulnerable migrants and children.
- Trump displays lack of empathy, with little recognition of others’ feelings or needs regularly and to an extreme degree. Example: the family-separation policy at the US border, which causes severe suffering, while Trump continues to treat it as a political instrument rather than a human tragedy.
- Trump displays envy of others, or belief that others are envious of them regularly and to an extreme degree. Example: he has repeatedly made unverified claims about his inauguration crowd size, television ratings, and rally attendance, frequently comparing them directly to Obama’s numbers in an attempt to prove he is more widely loved
- Trump displays arrogant or haughty attitudes and behaviours regularly and to an extreme degree. Example: While accepting the party’s nomination in Cleveland, Ohio, Trump delivered a dark assessment of the US, describing a nation plagued by rising crime, economic decay, and international humiliation. After spending a large portion of the speech detailing these systemic crises, he uttered (in grammatically wrong English): “Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.”
So is Trump suffering from NPD?
Judge for yourself.
I guess he is not suffering from but enjoying it!
___________________
And what is the solution? Treatment of NPD can be difficult because people with NPD may not feel therapy is necessary, so progress often depends on motivation and a good therapeutic fit. There is no effective drug treatment and talking therapies are usually recommended. In Trump’s case, removal from office would obviously be an acutely necessary measure.
__________________
**I am sure you know of much better examples (the coice is truly vast); feel free to cite them in the comments.
Many commentators have wondered what the bothches on Trump’s hands might be and whether they signify some sinister cause. The White House medical updates and Trump himself have attributed the bruising to a combination of factors:
- Frequent Handshaking: Both Trump and his physician have claimed that shaking hands with thousands of people causes minor soft-tissue trauma.
- Aspirin Use: His medical team disclosed that he takes daily low-dose aspirin as part of a routine cardiovascular prevention regimen, which thins the blood and allegedly increases the likelihood of noticeable bruising from minor bumps.
- Venous Insufficiency: Medical disclosures have also noted a diagnosis of chronic venous insufficiency which allegedly can contribute to bruising.
In my view, these official explanations are a good example of the BS that comes out of the White House these days. The marks Trump regularly displays on his hands are most likely actinic purpura, also known as senile purpura, or solar purpura, or Bateman’s purpura. This is a common and completely benign condition that causes easy bruising on the hands and forearms of older adults. First described by Bateman in 1818, this dermatosis presents as dark purple, irregularly shaped blotches on photo-exposed areas, particularly the dorsal surfaces of the hands and extensor aspects of the forearms. Despite its somewhat alarming appearance, actinic purpura has no health consequences and does not indicate systemic disease.
The condition affects approximately 10 per cent of people over age 50, with prevalence rising to around 30 per cent after age 75. It is painless and occurs more frequently in men than women and is strongly associated with fair skin tones and cumulative lifetime ultraviolet exposure. The prevalence increases exponentially with advancing age, reflecting the progressive nature of the underlying pathophysiological changes.
Actinic purpura results from increased fragility of superficial capillaries due to atrophy or damage of dermal connective tissue. Chronic ultraviolet radiation degrades collagen and elastin fibres, weakening the structural support for blood vessels. Ageing contributes through skin thinning and changes in fat distribution that bring vessels closer to the surface. Various medications exacerbate the condition, including corticosteroids, aspirin, warfarin, clopidogrel, and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. Minor trauma, such as negligible bumps, scratching, or poking, readily ruptures these fragile vessels. The brown pigmentation that occasionally persists after resolution results from haemosiderin deposition from lysed red blood cells.
Patients present with flat red lesions that progress to purple and then darken over time. The lesions are typically painless and non-tender, persisting for one to three weeks before resolution. They may leave permanent brown pigmentation and recur chronically with lifelong reappearance of new lesions. The differential diagnosis includes bleeding disorders, vasculitis, vitamin C deficiency, and drug-induced purpura. Actinic purpura is associated with by normal coagulation and platelet function, absence of inflammation, and confinement to photo-exposed skin areas.
The condition has no health consequences and is not associated with systemic disease or blood dyscrasias. It does not herald severe bleeding elsewhere and has no systemic implications. Crucially, actinic purpura is not associated with coronary or cerebral artery fragility, bleeding disorders, or internal vascular disease.
No specific treatment is required because the condition is self-resolving. Preventive measures include daily sunscreen application, protective clothing to prevent further photodamage, moisturisers to maintain skin suppleness, protective arm clothing to minimise trauma, and reducing topical steroid use on thin skin areas. Citrus bioflavonoids taken twice daily reduced lesions by 50 per cent in 70 seniors in a 2011 study that has not been independently confirmed. Vitamin C supplementation is only helpful if deficiency exists, with no benefit in non-deficient individuals.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the U.S. Health and Human Services secretary, is demanding that the journal Toxicology Reports explain in detail why it removed a 2021 paper he has cited in support of his anti-vaccine stance. The study had concluded that “While the findings in this paper are not proof of an association between infant vaccines and infant deaths, they are highly suggestive of a causal relationship.”
In his letter to the editors, Kennedy accuses the journal of suppressing research linking vaccines to sudden infant death. However, the evidence reveals quite clearly that Kennedy is not seeking transparency but rather attempting to bully a peer-reviewed journal that correctly identified fatal methodological flaws in a paper Kennedy continues to promote.
The removed study claimed to link vaccines to infant deaths using data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). The journal removed the paper because VAERS is a passive reporting system that cannot establish causality. Any conclusion claiming vaccines cause deaths from such data is therefore not valid. The editors determined the methodology was seriously flawed and that the author’s responses to critiques were unsatisfactory. Consequently, the paper would mislead readers and harm the public. In this situation, it would have been unethical NOT to retract!
Kennedy’s demand for a “full explanation” ignores that the journal had already provided a clear, evidence-based removal notice. He wants to know who reviewed the paper and what standards were applied, yet these are standard peer-review procedures. Framing a legitimate scientific correction as censorship reveals Kennedy’s disregard for science and evidence-based medicine. As HHS secretary, he is responsible for protecting public health, yet he continues to cite fraudulent research that contradicts established scientific consensus on vaccine safety.
The story is reminiscent of the ongoing conflict over the landmark Danish vaccine study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. It tracked over 1.2 million children born in Denmark between 1997 and 2018. Exploiting a natural experiment created by evolving national immunization schedules, researchers analyzed the dose-response relationship of aluminum adjuvants. The study found no evidence linking increased cumulative exposure to an elevated risk of 50 chronic pediatric conditions, including neurodevelopmental, autoimmune, and allergic disorders.
Despite its massive scale and rigorous design, Kennedy labeled the research a “deceitful propaganda stunt” and demanded its retraction. However, Kennedy’s criticisms rely on data misrepresentation and a fundamental misunderstanding of epidemiological methodology. First, Kennedy cherry-picked non-significant supplementary data, falsely claiming a 67% increased risk of Asperger’s syndrome. In reality, the finding had a wide confidence interval, lacked statistical significance, and completely vanished when researchers analyzed the full follow-up data. Second, Kennedy objected to the lack of a completely unvaccinated control group. Experts counter that the unvaccinated cohort (1.2%) was too small to measure rare outcomes accurately and would introduce severe confounding bias due to differing family lifestyles. Finally, Kennedy levelled inaccurate claims of financial corruption against Denmark’s Statens Serum Institut, a public research body that had long since divested its vaccine manufacturing arm.
The medical community has firmly rejected Kennedy’s attacks. The journal refused his retraction demand, and independent experts have defended the study as the strongest available evidence of vaccine aluminum safety. After all, aluminum salts have been used safely for a century, and vaccine-derived amounts are eclipsed by daily environmental and dietary intake.
The inescapable conclusion is that Kennedy’s campaigns are not about accountability or about promoting scientific rigor; they are about promoting his dangerous type of misinformation. His continued advocacy of pseudoscience exposes his commitment to ideology over evidence, a truly dangerous stance for anyone leading the nation’s health agency. It is high time, I feel, that he gets sacked before he does any more lasting damage to public health in the US and beyond!
When – about 14 years ago – it was my turn, I looked forward to retirement: endless sleep-ins, zero airport security lines for lectures at distant places, no more struggling to keep awake at boring meeting, and a calendar so beautifully blank it belongs in a modern art museum. I looked forward to the complete absence of so-called peers – mostly people who had no idea about my research – criticising or trying to influence my work. And even more I rejoiced in the prospect of having no university administrators needlessly complicating my life, while taking a big chunk of my research funding for the benefit.
When you retire as an academic, you genuinely believe you’ve escaped the university rat race – only to soon realize you’ve just been traded to a different league with much worse perks. Suddenly, your mornings are dictated not by an alarm clock, but by a relentless, self-imposed to-do list. You’re busier than ever, while operating alone and on a budget that makes your old expense-account days feel like the reign of Louis XIV.
Of course, not all academics keep on working after retirement. Some manage to just drop everything from one day to the next thinking they will now look after the garden, trimm roses, walk the dog, etc. I know many who have chosen this type of approach to retirement. For a few months, it all seems to go fine. Then they realise the increaingly painful emptiness and lack of purpose. More often than not, a low mood creeps in, followed by depression and/or taking to the bottle (perhaps this is why the Exeter medical school gave me a set of huge [and apparently expensive] wine glasses as a leaving present?).
No, staying active and doing what one likes must be the secret of remaining sane after retirement – at least for me. So, I rolled up my sleeves and got on with it. I started this blog (thanks Alan) where I have now published well over 3000 posts. I also began writing colums for newspapers – in English, German and French, to make it a bit more interesting. And then I got into books; this turned out to be more fun (and far less money) than expected. Since retiring I so far managed an average of about one per year – 16 to be precise, and currently three more in the pipeline.
Yes, I do keep myself busy, but this approach does unquestionably have its surprises. The real shocker, is the devastating loss of infrastructure. Yesterday you were a visionary leader; today, you are your own secretary, IT department, mailroom clerk, travel agent, and administrative assistant – and frankly, your staff is frightfully incompetent! There is nobody to filter out annoying requests, meaning you are fully exposed to every crank on the planet. Your former co-workers no longer do the knuckle work of the research, so things get slower and slower. Technical assistance is nowhere to be found; when the printer jams or the Wi-Fi malfunctions, you are on your utterly incompetent own. Every little task takes hours or days. You’ve traded business casual for sweatpants or shorts, but the “hassle” didn’t disappear; if anything, it becomes bigger and bigger. It just rebranded itself as a full-time, unpaid internship where you are both the demanding boss and the disgruntled employee.
But am I not supposed to enjoy life during retirement?
I promise you, I do that too!
Some friends keep asking me whether I don’t want to finally retire for real, relax and be happy.
“What do you mean?”, I respond.
“Well, you know, do what you really like.”
“But that’s what I am doing!”
It is true – honestly.
I am productive because I am content – and not the other way round.
Dr. Toby Rogers, a political economist and fellow at the libertarian Brownstone Institute, ignited a firestorm in March 2026 when he declared the current childhood vaccination program “one of the greatest crimes in human history” (“libertarian” refers to someone who advocates for extreme individual liberty—particularly freedom from government mandates and regulations—believing that the state should be minimized and that individuals should have absolute autonomy over their own bodies, property, and choices without state coercion).
Rogers’ 2026 statement is not an isolated outburst but the culmination of years of vaccine skepticism. After his partner’s son was diagnosed with autism in 2015, Rogers abandoned his original doctoral focus to study autism’s causes, reviewing nearly 1,000 studies over four years. He concluded that vaccines are the primary driver of the autism epidemic. The overwhelming scientific consensus, however, is that vaccines are safe and that autism’s rise stems from improved diagnosis, broader criteria, and complex genetic and environmental factors unrelated to immunization (see the plethora of previous posts on this subject). His PhD thesis, The Political Economy of Autism, and subsequent publications have been widely criticized by the scientific community. Its methodological flaws include:
- selection bias,
- cherry-picking,
- inclusion of weak studies,
- dismissing robust epidemiological research.
Rogers’ 2026 statement elevates personal conviction and contested research over scientific rigor and public health reality. Rogers argues that children receive too many vaccines too early, warning of “cumulative effects” on developing immune systems. Yet the Institute of Medicine has found no evidence of major safety concerns with the current childhood immunization schedule, and the National Academy of Sciences has repeatedly affirmed that vaccines are safe and effective. Rogers dismisses the 22 major studies confirming vaccine safety as “worthless” because they lacked a true unvaccinated control group—a standard that is both ethically impossible and scientifically unnecessary given the massive population data demonstrating vaccine safety over decades.
Rogers’ evidence relies heavily on a handful of independent studies to support his claims. These studies have been criticized for small sample sizes, selection bias, failure to control for confounders, and methodological flaws so severe that some of Rogers’ co-authored papers, such as “Autism Tsunami,” were retracted from peer-reviewed journals. His claim that vaccinated children have dramatically higher rates of autism and chronic disease rests on research that has not withstood independent replication or scrutiny by mainstream scientists. By contrast, the scientific community’s confidence in vaccine safety derives from massive, longitudinal studies involving millions of children, rigorous clinical trials, and decades of population surveillance.
Rogers’ credibility is compromised not least because he is a regular contributor to Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine organization founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that has a long history of spreading debunked claims. Roger’s testimony before the US Senate Subcommittee on Investigations in September 2025, titled “How the Corruption of Science has Impacted Public Perception and Policies Regarding Vaccines,” tried to position him as a whistleblower exposing “flawed science.” In reality, it relied on the same flawed studies and conspiracy narratives that have been repeatedly discredited by the scientific community.
Rogers receives funding from several anti-vaccine and libertarian organizations, though specific salary figures are not publicly disclosed :
- Brownstone Institute is a libertarian think tank founded by economist Jeffrey Tucker that promotes vaccine skepticism, “medical freedom,” and opposition to public health mandates. The institute is funded by libertarian donors and provides fellowships to researchers who align with its ideology.
- Children’s Health Defense is explicitly an anti-vaccine organization led by Mary Holland (CEO) and founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The organization has illuminated funding sources through IRS 990 filings, showing it raised millions of dollars and pays researchers, speakers, and staff. In Rogers’ Senate testimony, he explicitly stated: “Since then I’ve continued my research with Children’s Health Defense, as an independent journalist, and as a Fellow at Brownstone Institute”.
- Rogers also appears at MAHA Institute conferences (Make America Healthy Again), which is aligned with HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s movement and features speakers from anti-vaccine organizations including Children’s Health Defense.
Rogers’s financial ties to anti-vaccine organizations create clear conflicts of interest. His research supports the organizational mission of Children’s Health Defense and Brownstone Institute, and his income appears tied to producing content that aligns with these organizations’ anti-vaccine advocacy. The political economy of Rogers’ work is thus ironic: while he critiques the “political economy of autism” and government response, his own research is funded by private organizations with clear ideological and financial incentives to promote vaccine skepticism.
Rogers is not a medical doctor. He has a doctorate in political economy from the University of Sydney and a Master’s in public policy. He holds no medical degree or formal training in medicine, immunology, epidemiology, or vaccine science. His expertise is in political economy, not medical or vaccine research, which means his claims about vaccine safety and autism lack the scientific credentials required to make authoritative medical assertions.
During outbreaks of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD), public health organizations like the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) combat “infodemics”, i.e. surges of false information and unproven so-called alternative medicine (SCAM) polluting social media (Bedrosian et al., 2016; Fung et al., 2016; Obol & Nzedibe, 2024). Because these SCAMs are ineffective and frequently dangerous, authorities issue warnings against their use. Here are just a few of the many claims that can be found:
- Bathing in or drinking hot, highly saturated saltwater solutions can sweat out or kill the Ebola virus (Fung et al., 2016). Public health agencies strongly advise against this practice. It does nothing to prevent or treat EVD and can cause severe illness and death from acute hypernatremia (Vijaykumar et al., 2019).
- Solutions containing silver nanoparticles act as powerful natural antimicrobials capable of neutralizing the Ebola virus inside the body (Fung et al., 2016). The WHO has explicitly stated that Nano Silver is an unproven compound with no demonstrated efficacy against Ebola. Authorities recommend avoiding these products, as silver accumulation can cause irreversible organ damage and a condition called argyria (which permanently turns the skin blue/gray).
- Consuming large quantities of specific botanical items, such as raw onions, ginger, or alligator peppers, can stave off infection (Nsoesie & Oladeji, 2020). These “natural cures” possess no therapeutic effects capable of stopping viral replication of the filovirus family. Relying on them creates a false sense of security, which delays life-saving, evidence-based triage and supportive care (Fridman et al., 2025; Nsoesie & Oladeji, 2020).
- Ebola has been attributed to spiritual curses or witchcraft that can only be reversed by traditional spiritual cleansing (Bedrosian et al., 2016). Public health organizations work alongside local communities to pivot away from these practices. Delaying medical intervention to seek traditional spiritual healing drastically increases community transmission and prevents patients from receiving SOTA antiviral therapies and fluid replacement, lowering survival rates (Obol & Nzedibe, 2024).
- A homeopath market “e-remedies” online, claiming that the “energy signature” of a remedy could be digitized into an audio file (Moffitt, 2018). He claimed that listening to a specific, hissing MP3 file could stimulate the body’s immune system to fight off Ebola. This prompted an investigation by the Medical Board of California into the doctor’s license for promoting unscientific and unproven online remedies (Moffitt, 2018).
- Some chiropractors claim that spinal manipulations can prevent Ebola infections, because misalignments interfere with the nervous system. Since the nervous system coordinates the immune responses, these misalignments weaken the body’s ability to recognize and destroy the Ebola virus (Terry Chiropractic Boulder). People “have nothing to fear but fear itself” regarding outbreaks if they keep their spines properly aligned to maximize their natural innate immunity. Global public health authorities and mainstream scientific institutions strongly reject these claims. There is zero credible scientific evidence demonstrating that manual spinal manipulation enhances immune competence or protects an individual against Ebola (Côté et al., 2020).
Ebola infection requires immediate, professional medical treatment. Treatments include monoclonal antibody therapeutics along with intensive supportive care. Relying on internet remedies significantly delays proper clinical treatment and increases the risk of mortality.
References
Bedrosian, S. R., Young, E. C., Smith, L. A., Cox, J. D., Manning, C., Pechta, L., Telfer, J. L., Gaines-McCollom, M., Harben, Kathy, Holmes, Wendy, Lubell, K. M., McQuiston, J. H., Nordlund, Kristen, O’Connor, John, Reynolds, B. S., Schindelar, J. A., Shelley, Gene, & Daniel, K. L. (2016). Lessons of Risk Communication and Health Promotion — West Africa and United States. MMWR Supplements, 65(3), 68–74. https://doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.su6503a10
Fridman, I., Boyles, D., Chheda, R., Baldwin-SoRelle, C., Smith, A. B., & Elston Lafata, J. (2025). Identifying Misinformation About Unproven Cancer Treatments on Social Media Using User-Friendly Linguistic Characteristics: Content Analysis. JMIR Infodemiology, 5, e62703. https://doi.org/10.2196/62703
Fung, I. C.-H., Fu, K.-W., Chan, C.-H., Chan, B. S. B., Cheung, C.-N., Abraham, T., & Tse, Z. T. H. (2016). Social Media’s Initial Reaction to Information and Misinformation on Ebola, August 2014: Facts and Rumors. Public Health Reports®, 131(3), 461-473. https://doi.org/10.1177/003335491613100312
Moffitt, M. (2018). State doubts Los Gatos doctor can cure ebola with hissing MP3 files. SFGATE. https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/dr-bill-gray-medical-license-homeopathy-treatment-12954925.php
Nsoesie, E. O., & Oladeji, O. (2020). Identifying patterns to prevent the spread of misinformation during epidemics. Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review. https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-014
Obol, S. J., & Nzedibe, O. (2024). Critical perspective on infodemic and infodemic management in previous Ebola outbreaks in Uganda. Frontiers in Public Health, 12. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2024.1375776
Terry Chiropractic Boulder. (2014). Hold On Ebola: How Bolstering Your Immune System Can Help You Avoid Disease. https://terrychiropracticboulder.com/blog/hold-on-ebola-how-bolstering-your-immune-system-can-help-you-avoid-disease/
Vijaykumar, S., Jin, Y., & Pagliari, C. (2019). Outbreak communication challenges when misinformation spreads on social media. Revista Eletrônica de Comunicação, Informação e Inovação em Saúde, 13(1). https://doi.org/10.29397/reciis.v13i1.1623
