"I am accused of “unbalanced” reporting, making “unsubstantiated claims”, making “assertions that lack empirical support and not citing references from the peer-reviewed medical literature. I dispute that assertion, but, then again, I am writing essays that are not for professionals in a medical context. Therefore, being an essayist, extensive documentation is not required."

Gary Kohls HAS made unsubstantiated claims, and he is not merely "ACCUSED OF " making unsubstantiated claims! he has often cited the slander of others in order to conduct a systematic campaign of defaming and malighing the careers of two prominent Doctors--Dr David Gorski and Dr. Paul Offit. Those who doubt this "fact," need only refer to Gorski's article in the February 21st, 2019 issue of Reader, in which Dr. Gorski directly proves that comments that were attributed to him by Kohls were actually written by a commenter on a forum of one of his articles. This commenter, uses the screen name (g724). And Gorski also provides a link to his comments which can be found on his Respectful insolence blog, as well as the date they were posted--April 20th, 2012. So, If you doubt these facts simply read Dr. Gorski's response in the Feb. 21st article of Reader, titled: "DISINFORMATION OF FACTS"

As far as Kohls self exoneration of his slanderous comments, his rationale for making them leans heavily on the claim that, since he is not writing professionally or in a medical journal, he should not be helds to the same standards of proof that professional researchers are expected to meet--what a convenient alibi! Kohls seems to thinks that he is not expected to be honest or factual when dissing learned professionals like Gorski and Offit? But when he pedals falsehoods to the rest of we plebeians, the truth does not matter? Furthermore, Kohls is damn lucky that he has not yet had his pants sued off for his malicious attempts to discredit and defame two Doctors who have dedicated their lives to alleviating the suffering of others!

Yes, Kohls has provided plenty of quotes from supposedly knowledgeable sources--many of whom have records of making unsubstantiated facts and reprehensible slurs aimed at dedicated professionals of dedicated like Gorski and Offit. And Kohls has directly insulted both of them in a most unprofessional way by stating in bold type that:"TWO OF THE MOST DEVIANT AND ABUSIVE INTERNET TROLLS ARE PRACTICING US DOCTORS"

Readers can view this quote as well as other nasty things said by Kohls in his Feb. 14th 2019 article in reader, titled: "INTERNET TROLLS, DISINFORMATION AGENTS AND BIG VACCINE."

ANOTHER THING THAT kOHLS DOES NOT SEEM TO UNDERSTAND IS THAT, ANYONE CAN USE SOURCES WRITTEN BY UNETHICAL AND IGNORANT PEOPLE, BUT THAT DOES NOT PROVE THAT WHAT IS SAID BY THEM IS REALLY TRUE. Yet Kohls idolizes such sources while vilifying the proven and accredited sources used by Gorski and Offit.

ONe might sum up Kohl's misinformation, disinformation, and outright lies, as stemming from a (we versus them) mentality which for instance makes a big deal of facts such as Gorski's--being a consultant to big pharma, has "built a career and a fortune defending vaccines"--and is somehow a criminal for pursuing an honest and useful vocation.? Be that as it may, such accusation do not automatically support the idea that Gorski is nefarious, and instead simply affirms that Offit has decided to dedicate his life and career to seeking to alleviate the suffering of his fellow men --just as being a self professed whistleblower and antagonistic commenter dedicated to vilifying big pharma and exposing a supposed plot which he contends involves virtually everyone in the healthcare industry at all levels--including family doctors--who he implies don't give a damn if their patients die from vaccines since they are all only in it for the money??

In closing, let me just mention one of Kohl's shining achievements in the pursuit of slander, in which he claims that Dr. Gorski was a willing collaborator with an extremely unethical and greedy Dr. named (Dr. Farid Fata)--a criminal oncologist who diagnosed healthy patients as needing unnecessary therapy for their cancers, and in the process deliberately billed them for illness they did not have--while simultaneously defrauding Medicare out of millions of dollars! To answer that ridiculous charge. here is what Gorski said--"As far as I know Fata was a private oncologist who ran a chain of clinics in the Detroit suburbs. He never had privileges at Karmanos (the cancer center where Gorski works), and never practiced here." Furthemore Groski had these choice word to say about Fata--"Dr. Fata is evil (and yes he is evil). The truth is that I've personally never met Fata, or communicated with him, much less work with him. More importantly, I have nothing but contempt for the man, as I have related in the past. I am glad he is in prison. If there was anyone who richly deserved being in Prison for a long, long time, it's Fata." Furthermore Gorski has stated--"Dr. Fata is universally despised by every oncologist I know who has heard of him, as well he should be!"

So Gary, if you will, please explain how you can publish scandalous material about award winning Drs. while claiming that Gorski is in league with someone like Fata, and them be offended when those of us who know the facts, become angered by your libelous slander? Your usual trope seems similar to that of President Trump's-- you portray yourself as the poor victim of unethical Drs. and researcher who seek to discredit your every word--even though you rely on sources, who often have checkered pasts of their own, and are not supported via quality peer-reviewed research?

Thousands of research paper are published every day, and many of them are published (for a fee) by predatory publishers which have never been approved of by genuine scientists--so the sources you use, are what make all the edifference! Yet when someone like Offit financially benefits from ground breaking research which saves millions of lives belonging to those who were former victims of Rotavirus, you portrayed him as being unethical just for dedicating himself to lengthy research and sharing an intellectual patent for helping discover a vaccine used to defeat a deadly disease?

There is no truth to the idea that, in order to do honest research individuals must be completely unmotivated by any money they recieve, Researchers do not need to live in caves or forgo all material rewards in order to develop ground breaking cures that save millions of lives! And none of them are motivated so ruthlessly by money that they would willingly recommend unsafe vaccines with the intention of profiting over the deaths of children? So if you expect to get a free pass for using faulty research and issuing slanderous insults--think again!!

Instead of saying, "Be that as it may, such accusation do not automatically support the idea that Gorski is nefarious, and instead simply affirms that Offit has decided to dedicate his life and career to seeking to alleviate the suffering of his fellow men " I should have said this instead:

"Be that as it may, such accusation do not automatically support the idea that Gorski is nefarious, and instead simply affirms that Offit and he have decided to dedicate their lives and career to seeking to alleviate the suffering of their fellow men,"

And instead of saying,

"Yes, Kohls has provided plenty of quotes from supposedly knowledgeable sources--many of whom have records of making unsubstantiated facts and reprehensible slurs aimed at dedicated professionals of dedicated like Gorski and Offit..."

I should have said:"Many of whom have records of using unsubstantiated facts, and reprehensible slurs, aimed at dedicated professionals like Gorski and Offit!...

Please excuse any other obvious grammatical mistakes I've made.

I won't argue with your testimony about the love and care provided to your son by Dr. Kohls but any professional virtues he displays do not automatically make him correct concerning each an every medical decision.

It's of course true that some mental patients do eventually overcome the need for medications, but one can also respond to the love and care of doctors who respect and practice science based medicine too, and who do not arbitrarily force thier patients to take any particular drug.

Today there are multitude of medications used to treat the symptoms of psychosis and long lasting mental illnesses, and each patient is encouraged to try differnet ones, before deciding to use those that affect them positively. However, all of them come with side effects like any other drugs, and the process of finding the right one often takes some time. but in that context, I have never heard of any doctors saying, "You must take this medicine, or that medicine?"

Remember also that although your son was lucky, there are many patients who do rely on particular medications just to stay grounded in the real world, and to many of them psych drugs represent a much needed aid.

Since Kohls is fairly old like myself, I would guess he started his practice during the 1960s when few effective psych drugs even existed, and psych drugs consisted mainly of concoctions like thorazine and Valium, many of which were used in desperation and then found not to be safe of suitable for many mental patients--and the industry made that discovery.

Also, realize that there are few, if any, psychotherapists today who deny the effects of trauma on mental health or who deny the power of a compassionate and loving therapist. But they take into account both mental and physical aspects at play in mental illnesses and know very well that love and support will never be denied as far as making any individual psychologically healthy.

Dr. Kohls also does a disservice to records kept by the CDC, and the FDA etc. whose members have long kept recorded of the ravages and spread of infectious diseases, and have conclude that BOTH improved healthcare and sanitation, as well as the use of effective vaccines have literally delivered a one two punch, that has made some infectious diseases virtually non-existent! However, what should bother us the most, is the fact that people like KOhls not only vilinize big pharma, but even those at every level of the healthcare industry- such as dedicated family practitioners whom Kohls portrays as not giving a damn whether babies live or die--as long as they can make money. Forgive me if I say so, but that idea is first class BS!

Safety, what safety?

Phil, do you get paid by Democrats to write this? In Phil’s world, only his fascist progressive government is allowed to possess firearms.

gay

Great article Phil, you nailed it right on, thank you and keep up the good work.

Pep, do you really want to live in the world Phil is promoting, where the government gets to tell you that 2+2=5 and if you say it is 4, you go to jail? That's where people like Phil are leading us.

ERM, when physicians were murdering women by not washing their hands before delivering, the consensus peer reviewed 'science' of the day concluded that dirty hands didn't caused deaths in mothers... and then the profession jailed or worse the people that suggested that washing hands saved lives. If vaccine practices have been causing problems for the last 50 or more years, do you expect people to believe that the "medical industry" would admit it.. especially in the days when the AMA is still pushing a low fat diet when it's been proven fat is better for you than carbs and sugar?

Sorry, AHA

Are you there ERM? Your industry does not have a very good track record admitting guilt, as stated above with just a few examples, why would you think discerning people would trust it and you on vaccines?

In the age of the Internet, streaming video, sophisticated expert systems, and VR, is a brick and mortar prison the correct paradigm for education, or do we continue to implement the same failed system that puts students and staff, staff who generally stopped caring about education long ago, in harms way? Perhaps the way forward can’t be seen by a system mentally crippled by the short-sightedness of teachers unions. Maybe we’re better off scrapping the system and starting over. If we did, in terms of who gets helped and who gets left behind, would it make a difference? Those people who are responsible would get their kids educated, and those that weren’t wouldn’t, just like today, the main difference being that we don’t mix the good kids with the bad in a brick and mortar prison.

If you’re making scrambled eggs, or any eggs for that matter, heat up the pan before you cook the eggs. It’s that easy.

There was also a time when those having epileptic seizures were thought to be possessed by demons, until modern science found clear physical causes for their maladies. There was also a time when early colonists in Salem were put to death as witches, merely on the say so of some spoiled kids who thought it would be fun to tell lies about others. In each case, when scientific knowledge was able to debunk outrageous superstition, thoe in salem learned that bizarre truth. And, scientist themselves are the first to admit that many of their theories change over time. But after being able to replicate the results of new research, that becomes another story.

But how do these things compare with accusations hypothesizing a cruel conspiracy conducted by virtually every nurse, doctor, researcher and company executive in the vaccines and drug industry? Proving a conspiracy always relies on known facts, and does not depend just on subjective analysis. All one has to do, to launch a conspiracy theory, is include a few facts and then embellish them with false claims and anecdotal evidence designed to arouse the suspicions and distrust of others---and of course, by repeating falsehoods over and over again!

In this sense, many of Gary's claims are not factual and are based on conjecture about what the evidence means i.e if one is simply opposed and ridiculed by others, that does not mean that one is being persecuted by neo-nazis. So how Gary simply discard hundreds of years of solid research that is continually building on what was known before? How can you compare the millions of lives that have been saved with vaccines for polio, measles, and rotavirus etc. even though these facts have been documented for many years!--the only thing you can do is to rely on the mistaken assumption that vaccines were used and therefore must be to blame, even though millions of sufferers can attest to the good that vaccines have brought? You probably think that facts about vaccines are deliberately distorted to give a false impression about their usefulness. But perhaps, Just as a grieving parent is understandably angry about their child's death soon after being vaccinated, and desires someone to blame, you too are eager to find someone or something to blame for your own personal tragedies--and for example, forgetting that your child was given vaccinations at a time that paralleled the age when small children begin to develop Autism. in order to reject that idea, you then must deny all the studies which have disproved any causal relationship existing between Autism and vaccines. For example, the double blind study in Denmark involving half a million children, half of which were given MMR injections, and half of which were not--which ultimately revealed that the rate of developing autism was exactly the same in each group--those who developed autism were virtually the same among those who were vaccinated and those who were not given vaccinations!

its one thing to base results on the very small number of children in Wakefield's study, but a sample containing a dozen children cannot compare to one with 500,000 participants which was absolutely doable in a country like Denmark which keeps meticulous records of its citizens from the cradle ot the grave.

Then there is the fact that analogy you used depends on a false equivalency between personal hygiene and the cures brought about by modern biochemistry, immunology, and vaccinology--none of which is concocted by family doctors or medical specialists?

Then of course, where does that example come from? I have never heard that lack of hygiene alone allows butchers and quacks to murder women? The fact is that abortion butchers killed women in many differnet ways, but washing one's hands is not the only factor to blame. But if that was formerly a prevailing attitude among physicians, what made them change thier opinions?--pseudo-scinece? superstition? or just because they read it somewhere? Nope, it was due advancements in medical science that sometimes come about slowly, but which are not based on correlations that prove causation. Using your reasoning, you might as well point out that at one times, women were killed by being exposed to fat men belching after sunset. Even if you witness that happening 50 or more times, it would be foolish to base an entire theory on something so unscientific and so unproven! Then again, if you simply modify your statement a little and say that not washing hands was probably (one) factor in the deaths of women seeking backroom abortions you would be right! After all, doctors today clearly recognize the role of hygiene and a sterile environment in which to perform operations. Thats why they scrub vigorously and use masks and surgical gloves to operate. However hygiene is obviously not the only factor involved in successful surgery--just as handwashing is not.

Firstly, It's not my industry! I'm just an ordinary retired person from a middle class background, who was part of the vaccination programs of the 1960s. Myself and my friend ran the gamut of infectious childhood disease and survived, while elsewhere many children suffered for lack of vaccinations.

No I am not brainwashed, I lived through that era and experienced none of the vile conspiracies which you want to believe. If you are a Millennial, or even a Gen X, you have no such background--you grew up hearing the idea of vaccine activists who convinced you that they alone know the truth behind the so called vaccine conspiracy? Beliefs about conspiracies can grip many of us who have a distrust of government and of doctors to begin with. I only wish you would see the real story rather than the sensationalized anti-science circus you have come to believe.


there must have been at least a thousand kids in my school district, all of whom were vaccinated and which none of us developed serious complications form our shots. Perhaps your too young to remember the clear benefits of vaccines. So when you are fed bogus information about them, you are more inclined to accept them.


Secondly I can only right what I believe are the facts and I am not interested in seeking an audience which trusts me. Trust the doctors, the research and the track records of vaccines. thier the experts, I am only using my personal experience and research in support of them--and I will never convince anyone to accept facts unless they themselves become aware of them!

Since it is late, In my haste I forgot to place several paragraphs in quotation marks, and I cannot find a way to properly edit. However if you open the link I provided before my opening remarks, you can open it and confirm them for yourself.

https://www.dr-rath-foundation.org/2017/11/ignaz-semmelweis-ignored-rejected-ridiculed-by-the-medical-orthodoxy-then-proven-to-be-right/ They weren't butchers and quacks, they were mainstream physicians. You're a clown if you don't know about Ignaz Semmelweis. His is the story of anyone who has pushed back against the consensus science of the day. Surely the vaccine problems are nuanced, but they are there, but nobody will learn anything when people like you continue to deny there might be a problem.

My children were given vaccines vs. chickenpox. Like you, I received far fewer vaccines than they did. My only point is that perhaps this isn't a black and white issue.

Perhaps Harry, but the Green New Deal is a but too far in the central planning direction, don't you think?

Information taken from the following website;

https://www.techtimes.com/articles/3610/20140220/new-ob-gyn-guidelines-discourage-c-sections-encourage-waiting.htm

OK, I looked up the issue you brought up and found that you seem to be spinning it unfairly in a way that needlessly denigrates doctors. Here are some important sections in the article linked to above;

“Laboring women will have no choice but to push for at least two hours before they can opt for a Cesarean delivery, longer if they are giving birth for the first time."

"The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine have issued new guidelines governing both the doctor and the patient's decision to deliver via Cesarean section.”


"Evidence now shows that labor actually progresses slower than we thought in the past, so many women might just need a little more time to labor and deliver vaginally instead of moving to a cesarean delivery," said Aaron B. Caughey, MD, of The College's Committee on Obstetric Practice, which developed the recommendations. "Most women who have had a caesarean with their first baby end up having repeat cesarean deliveries for subsequent babies, and this is what we're trying to avoid. By preventing the first cesarean delivery, we should be able to reduce the nation's overall cesarean delivery rate."

“Mothers who have delivered a baby before are recommended to push for at least two hours, while first-time mothers need to push for at least an hour more. Forceps or other methods to assist with vaginal delivery are recommended before eventually considering a Caesarean section."

"Doctors were also told not to automatically decide to perform a Caesarean section just because the baby seems very large, or when the babies are in the breech position.”

“Recent studies also seem to be in support of vaginal childbirth. A review of 12 trials that involved over 15,000 women revealed that mothers are less likely to need a Caesarean delivery if they receive "continuous one-on-one support during labor and delivery," and are generally more satisfied with the birth experience."

"A different study that included over 62,000 women showed that there seems to be a broader range of time for normal labor, which drastically influences how and when doctors decide to deliver the baby via Caesarean section.”

Because-- "The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine has issued new guidelines governing BOTH THE DOCTOR AND THE PATIENTS DECISION TO DELIVER VIA CESAREAN SECTION.

"The rise in the incidence of Caesarean deliveries could be attributed to many different factors. Some women and doctors see Caesarean sections as more convenient because they can be scheduled in advance, albeit MORE EXPENSIVE DOCTOR'S FEES DO NOT DRAMATICALLY RISE WITH CESAREAN SECTIONS but a 2013 Truven Health Analytics Marketscan Study says that insurers pay out twice as much for it, because of a longer hospital stay and more medication needed."

How do we know that Doctors are not making these calls only for their own convenience?—because the new guideline that they follow were set in response to new knowledge of the risks C sections!

"For pregnant women with health risks, delivering their baby via Caesarean section is the better option. However, for mothers who are healthy, pose no health risks, and first-time mothers, delivering vaginally is the method that is recommended, encouraged, and enforced."

"The fact is that BOTH MOTHERS AND DOCTORS HAVE SOMETIMES THOUGHT THAT A C SECTION WAS MORE CONVENIENT, BOTH FOR THE MOTHER AND HER DOCTORS. However the new guidelines are the result of research which shows delivering with a C section can increase infant deaths—still many mother prefer not to endure excessive labor, and BOTH THEY AND THEIR DOCTORS ALSO THOUGHT C SECTIONS ARE MORE CONVENIENT AND EASIER ON MOTHERS."


BTW, where did these new guidelines come from?--the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, which BTW, is a renowned medical organization, and thus recommends these new guidelines for Obstetricians and Gynecologists!!

It's really pretty bizarre to believe that this issue resulted merely because greedy doctors thought only of themselves?—particularly because the
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine is itself, composed of Doctors and researchers!!

I would guess that you consulted an anti vaccine (or (anti too many vaccines) website, and you decided to let what you read there influence your preconceived view.--which is the only way you can continue to believe that virtually all doctors, nurses, researcher, and long standing government agencies, are deliberately recommending the use of drugs and vaccines which kohls claims are "WHOLLY OWNED SUBSIDIARIES OF BIG PHARMA??--OH REALLY?