we hear in public health circles that "We need to restore faith in Public Health." He says, "I don't want to restore faith in public health." He said, "Public Health deserves to be distrusted." --Dr. Vinay Prasad of the University of California San Francisco
Our Enemy, Public Health | @ThomasEWoods pic.twitter.com/8eUY175YSp
— Mises Institute (@mises) October 31, 2024
01:40. Our topic today: when I heard that we were going to be Loosely basing the talks around the theme, "Our Enemy, the State," I came up with a title, "Our Enemy: Public Health," because, I think, since 2020, any thinking person is now aware with some of the problems with so-called, "Public Health." As a matter of fact, just days ago, Dr. Vinay Prasad of the University of California San Francisco was speaking about this theme we hear in public health circles that "We need to restore faith in Public Health." He says, "I don't want to restore faith in public health." He said, "Public Health deserves to be distrusted." Good man.
02:20. Public Health in general is an intellectual train wreck. It's a wholly politicized branch of so-called medicine that involves a seemingly endless series of false claims and ideological gobbledygook. I mean remember racism is a public health issue as justification for why otherwise you have to be locked in your house, but you can go out to protest what happened to George Floyd. No self-respecting discipline speaks or thinks that way. Now we should have denounced public health sooner and written books about it sooner, and I think before COVID we just didn't pay enough attention to it. We certainly weren't paying enough attention as much attention as it deserved. Now that's partially because its overreach wasn't quite so great in those days, but also because we have a lot to criticize. We have the Fed, we have the IRS, we have all the cabinet departments, we have civil liberties violations. I mean it's exhausting being us. You can't do everything. So let's not reproach ourselves too much. But beyond all this, they also want to impose their plans on you without having to deal with such mundane things as judges, courts, and laws. So, for example, you'll recall how unhappy Anthony Fauci was when a federal judge overturned the mask mandate on planes. By the way, the reason they were unhappy that the mask mandate on planes was overturned was not that they thought we'd all get sick. The reason was that they knew we wouldn't get sick. And then we'd start wondering, "I wonder what else has been pointless that they've been pushing on us." That is a very important question to start asking. But he was very unhappy . . . he said, "This is a matter for public health to decide and not properly a matter for the Judiciary." You know what, Tony, nobody actually consented to a dictatorship run by, I shudder even to think about it, public health officials, whose 24/7 barrage of false claims survives only because no mainstream media outlet bothered to question them.
04:35. Now let me read you a passage from a book you may not have read but whose author I am sure you know.
We believe that an insidious agenda is being pursued in the name of public health, the use of the coercive power[s] of the state by special interest groups who use health issues for two broad purposes. First, public health matters are a smoke screen to camouflage self-interested behavior, or what economists call rent seeking. Put simply, health activists lobby for legislation, primarily tax increases, that are earmarked for their particular causes and regulations at all levels of government that benefit them financially. Second, health issues are used to advance an ideological agenda, an agenda which without exception fosters an enhanced role for the state in every aspect of our lives and in our lifestyles. Every government bureaucrat is inherently an empire-builder, and fabricating public health scares has become an ideal technique for garnering political support for bureaucratic empire building, and increased budgets to alleviate the crisis.
05:50. Now the book in question is called From Pathology to Politics: Public Health in America, James T. Bennett and Thomas DiLorenzo, 2000, and it sounds like it was written last week, but, in fact, it was written a quarter century ago and it's co-author is our own Tom DiLorenzo. When Tom is not busy predicting the future, he is president of the Mises Institute.
After COVID and the magnifying glass we've had on public health establishment, we are much more aware of, shall we say, its Imperial intentions. And that it foolishly considers itself qualified to weigh in on every issue under the sun that might potentially impact Health but here is what Tom was already writing a quarter century ago about the American Public Health Association, APHA, I'll make a future reference to it, the trade association of the public health movement has used its resources to develop a platform for the promotion of government-controlled medical care, the abolition of the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, a governmental takeover of child care, and expansion of government's role in economic planning and other social and economic issues. The public health movement is no longer interested in primarily in the eradication of disease it claims to offer expertise on virtually every social issue from poverty to human rights.
So that has actually been going on for a long time. It didn't just start in the past 5 years now I have bad news Tom's book is out of print so you have to buy my book Diary of a psychosis which is available over on The Book Table I had to get a used copy for $40 so I got to sell a whole bunch of these just to break even.
07:50. Now several months ago, our Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared, "Firearm violence is a Public Health crisis in America that poses a serious threat to the health and well-being of our country." He then proceeded to lay out every debunked claim on behalf of gun control that you've ever heard, but as Tom pointed out in that passage just a moment ago, this is nothing new for Public Health. It's just that a lot of us haven't been paying attention. We haven't noticed because we've been busy.
Now let's take a brief look at the theme of APHA's annual convention in 1996. I guarantee you would much much rather be at the Mises Summer Institute than be at that thing. Their annual convention was called "Empowering the Disadvantaged: Social Justice in Public Health." Now was the keynote speaker a physician? Maybe a professor at a medical school something you might think would belong there? No, guess who the keynote speaker was. The president of the AFL-CIO, John Sweeney, told everyone there that he wanted them to "help us rejuvenate the labor movement." Now that is a bit far of a stretch to attach that to Public Health but that is what it's about, and incidentally, the conference also called for "radical redistribution of wealth," because "Living in an unjust society damages physical health." These people are crazier than you thought. Tom [DiLorenzo] also found in the August 1996 issue of Health Education Quarterly, widely circulated within the CDC, . . . this quotation, "Policy advocacy skills for creating social change must be provided to community groups rather than, for example, providing individuals with skills so that they can make better personal choices." So in the old days that was more or less what they thought their role was: we'll try to give you the information you need to be informed and make good decisions about your health. Well, what we need to teach now is how to agitate for political change.
One of the things that public health has claimed to really be oh-so concerned about is children, your children in particular. They care so deeply about them. Nothing concerns them more than the health of your children. Now I will say in parentheses there was a moment over the past few years when there was a desire to get parents on board with getting the COVID shots for their kids up insanely during that time. We began to hear a report, and this was echoed by the White House, by professors at Harvard, by the Surgeon General, everybody was repeating it, that COVID-19 was a top five killer of children.
From Pathology to Politics: Public Health in America https://t.co/MVlUmpsifw via @amazon
— St. Michael, the Archangel (@aveng_angel) December 7, 2024
