YES, WE CAN

We’d love sooo much to exterminate you ssccccientifically !

Feser on Heisenberg on Act and Potency

In my view, the most important question in the ID-Darwinism debate is this: what do we mean by design? All participants in the debate agree that living things manifest design of some sort; Darwinists assert that the design is unintelligent, the product of ateleological genetic variation and natural selection. ID proponents assert that design implies an intelligent source. Philosophers of an Aristotelian and Thomist stripe assert that teleology pervades nature, but insist that a proper understanding of teleology entails a metaphysical understanding of nature (hylomorphism) that differs from the metaphysical presuppositions of most ID advocates, who generally accept (implicitly if not explicitly) the mechanical view of nature shared by materialists.

In my view, we need to integrate our understanding of the obvious design that is manifest in biology with the teleology that is evident in all of nature. We need a “unified theory” of teleology in nature that intrinsically explains the obvious design in living things as well as the obvious teleology in scientific “laws” and in all natural change. That integration necessarily will come from the “teleology” camp; Darwinist “ateleology” is an impoverished philosophical mistake that persists only when it not made explicit. The ID-Darwinism debate is rapidly eroding materialist credibility, not only because of the strength of the ID arguments, but because ID proponents have forced materialists to state clearly what they believe. Candor is incompatible with materialist ideology; Darwinists are angry in large part because they’ve been forced to explain themselves.

Can a teleological understanding of nature of an Aristotelian sort bring together the seemingly disparate strands of modern science? Philosopher Ed Feser suggests that a hylomorphic understanding of quantum mechanics, which intrinsically depends on a teleological view of nature, provides a coherent framework on which to understand some counterintuitive aspects of quantum mechanics. His source for this insight is Werner Heisenberg, a pioneer in the development of quantum theory.

Feser notes that, unlike many contemporary scientists like Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne, Heisenberg was philosophically literate, and he understood that classical philosophical notions are essential for an understanding of nature. Heisenberg saw that the “strangeness” of quantum mechanics was merely strange to the modern mind; classical Aristotelian notions such as act (the actual manifestation of a property) and potency (the potential, but not actual, manifestation of a property) anticipated many of the seemingly counterintuitive findings of quantum mechanics.

Heisenberg:

One might perhaps call [the statistical nature of quantum theory] an objective tendency or possibility, a “potentia” in the sense of Aristotelian philosophy. In fact, I believe that the language actually used by physicists when they speak about atomic events produces in their minds similar notions as the concept “potentia.” So the physicists have gradually become accustomed to considering the electronic orbits, etc., not as reality but rather as a kind of “potentia.” …The probability wave of Bohr, Kramers, Slater… was a quantitative version of the old concept of “potentia” in Aristotelian philosophy. It introduced something standing in the middle between the idea of an event and the actual event, a strange kind of physical reality just in the middle between possibility and reality…The probability function combines objective and subjective elements. It contains statements about possibilities or better tendencies (“potentia” in Aristotelian philosophy), and these statements are completely objective, they do not depend on any observer; and it contains statements about our knowledge of the system, which of course are subjective in so far as they may be different for different observers…If we compare [the quantum mechanical relationship between matter and energy] with the Aristotelian concepts of matter and form, we can say that the matter of Aristotle, which is mere “potentia,” should be compared to our concept of energy, which gets into “actuality” by means of the form, when the elementary particle is created.

 

Feser notes that Heisenberg’s understanding of Aristote’s notions of potency and act is not precisely correct in several ways, but he points out that Heisenberg understood that classical hylomorphic understanding of nature anticipated some of the “counterintuitive” aspects of quantum mechanics.

Feser:

In any event, it is clear that what Heisenberg is defending is a core thesis of [Aristotelian-Thomist] philosophy of nature, namely that we cannot make sense of the physical world behaving as it does without attributing to its basic components inherent powers which point beyond themselves to certain (often as yet unrealized) ends – a thesis that, as I have noted before, contemporary writers like Ellis, Cartwright, Molnar, and other “new essentialist” philosophers of science are starting to rediscover.

In my view, we are in the midst of a philosophical revolution. Like the materialist ‘Mechanical Philosophy’ revolution in the 18th century, the 20th and 21st century philosophical revolution is driven by contemporaneous advances in science. It began with quantum mechanics in the early 20th century, is now shaking the foundations of biology, and in time will cast aside simplistic materialist theories of the mind.

It is a corrective, really, to a banal philosophical mistake– the assertion that nature was a ‘machine’, a system of passive matter organized by externally-imposed laws and comprehensible without reference to inherent essences and teleology. The strangeness of quantum mechanics has a simple explanation: ‘mechanical system’ is a woefully impoverished paradigm for nature. Nature is not a machine composed of passive parts acted on by external agency. Science is revealing that intrinsic essences and teleology pervade nature. Materialistic ‘mechanism’ as a philosophical system (if one can call a transparent mistake a ‘system’) leaves nature inherently incomprehensible. Materialistic Mechanical Philosophy is a philosophical system that creates philosophical problems; it doesn’t, and can’t, explain nature. Neither quantum mechanics, nor biology, nor the mind can be understood in the materialist paradigm.

Phillip Johnson is right: the debate about Darwinism is a philosophical debate. It is a debate about the metaphysical basis of science. This much about the denouement of the debate is clear: materialism and mechanism are dying. They are under siege from many fields of science– from physics, from biology, from neuroscience. Its replacement is as of yet unclear, but an application of classical Aristotelian-Thomist philosophy to a 21st century understanding of nature (New Essentialism) is underway. It is a cogent and even elegant approach to understanding nature, and I believe that it has much to offer for our modern understanding of biology. It is quite compatible with ‘evolution’ understood as biological change over time and stripped of crude Darwinist metaphysics. New Essentialism may provide the insight into biological design that Darwinian materialism has utterly failed to provide.

Michael Egnor

WHEN WILL THEY LEARN?

The 1930s has become the sole object lesson for today’s monetary policy. Over the past 12 months, the Federal Reserve has increased the monetary base (bank reserves plus currency in circulation) by well over 100%. While currency in circulation has grown slightly, there’s been an impressive 17-fold increase in bank reserves. The federal-funds target rate now stands at an all-time low range of zero to 25 basis points, with the 91-day Treasury bill yield equally low. All this has been done to avoid a liquidity crisis and a repeat of the mistakes that led to the Great Depression.

Even with this huge increase in the monetary base, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has reiterated his goal not to repeat the mistakes made back in the 1930s by tightening credit too soon, which he says would send the economy back into recession. The strong correlation between soaring unemployment and falling consumer prices in the early 1930s leads Mr. Bernanke to conclude that tight money caused both. To prevent a double dip, super easy monetary policy is the key.

While Fed policy was undoubtedly important, it was not the primary cause of the Great Depression or the economy’s relapse in 1937. The Smoot-Hawley tariff of June 1930 was the catalyst that got the whole process going. It was the largest single increase in taxes on trade during peacetime and precipitated massive retaliation by foreign governments on U.S. products. Huge federal and state tax increases in 1932 followed the initial decline in the economy thus doubling down on the impact of Smoot-Hawley. There were additional large tax increases in 1936 and 1937 that were the proximate cause of the economy’s relapse in 1937.

In 1930-31, during the Hoover administration and in the midst of an economic collapse, there was a very slight increase in tax rates on personal income at both the lowest and highest brackets. The corporate tax rate was also slightly increased to 12% from 11%. But beginning in 1932 the lowest personal income tax rate was raised to 4% from less than one-half of 1% while the highest rate was raised to 63% from 25%. (That’s not a misprint!) The corporate rate was raised to 13.75% from 12%. All sorts of Federal excise taxes too numerous to list were raised as well. The highest inheritance tax rate was also raised in 1932 to 45% from 20% and the gift tax was reinstituted with the highest rate set at 33.5%.

But the tax hikes didn’t stop there. In 1934, during the Roosevelt administration, the highest estate tax rate was raised to 60% from 45% and raised again to 70% in 1935. The highest gift tax rate was raised to 45% in 1934 from 33.5% in 1933 and raised again to 52.5% in 1935. The highest corporate tax rate was raised to 15% in 1936 with a surtax on undistributed profits up to 27%. In 1936 the highest personal income tax rate was raised yet again to 79% from 63%—a stifling 216% increase in four years. Finally, in 1937 a 1% employer and a 1% employee tax was placed on all wages up to $3,000.

Because of the number of states and their diversity I’m going to aggregate all state and local taxes and express them as a percentage of GDP. This measure of state tax policy truly understates the state and local tax contribution to the tragedy we call the Great Depression, but I’m sure the reader will get the picture. In 1929, state and local taxes were 7.2% of GDP and then rose to 8.5%, 9.7% and 12.3% for the years 1930, ’31 and ’32 respectively.

The damage caused by high taxation during the Great Depression is the real lesson we should learn. A government simply cannot tax a country into prosperity. If there were one warning I’d give to all who will listen, it is that U.S. federal and state tax policies are on an economic crash trajectory today just as they were in the 1930s. Net legislated state-tax increases as a percentage of previous year tax receipts are at 3.1%, their highest level since 1991; the Bush tax cuts are set to expire in 2011; and additional taxes to pay for health-care and the proposed cap-and-trade scheme are on the horizon.

In addition to all of these tax issues, the U.S. in the early 1930s was on a gold standard where paper currency was legally convertible into gold. Both circulated in the economy as money. At the outset of the Great Depression people distrusted banks but trusted paper currency and gold. They withdrew deposits from banks, which because of a fractional reserve system caused a drop in the money supply in spite of a rising monetary base. The Fed really had little power to control either bank reserves or interest rates.

The increase in the demand for paper currency and gold not only had a quantity effect on the money supply but it also put upward pressure on the price of gold, which meant that dollar prices of all goods and services had to fall for the relative price of gold to rise. The deflation of the early 1930s was not caused by tight money. It was the result of panic purchases of fixed-dollar priced gold. From the end of 1929 until early 1933 the Consumer Price Index fell by 27%.

By mid-1932 there were public fears of a change in the gold-dollar relationship. In their classic text, “A Monetary History of the United States,” economists Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz wrote, “Fears of devaluation were widespread and the public’s preference for gold was unmistakable.” Panic ensued and there was a rush to buy gold.

In early 1933, the federal government (not the Federal Reserve) declared a bank holiday prohibiting banks from paying out gold or dealing in foreign exchange. An executive order made it illegal for anyone to “hoard” gold and forced everyone to turn in their gold and gold certificates to the government at an exchange value of $20.67 per ounce of gold in return for paper currency and bank deposits. All gold clauses in contracts private and public were declared null and void and by the end of January 1934 the price of gold, most of which had been confiscated by the government, was raised to $35 per ounce. In other words, in less than one year the government confiscated as much gold as it could at $20.67 an ounce and then devalued the dollar in terms of gold by almost 60%. That’s one helluva tax.

The 1933-34 devaluation of the dollar caused the money supply to grow by over 60% from April 1933 to March 1937, and over that same period the monetary base grew by over 35% and adjusted reserves grew by about 100%. Monetary policy was about as easy as it could get. The consumer price index from early 1933 through mid-1937 rose by about 15% in spite of double-digit unemployment. And that’s the story.

The lessons here are pretty straightforward. Inflation can and did occur during a depression, and that inflation was strictly a monetary phenomenon.

My hope is that the people who are running our economy do look to the Great Depression as an object lesson. My fear is that they will misinterpret the evidence and attribute high unemployment and the initial decline in prices to tight money, while increasing taxes to combat budget deficits.

Arthur B. Laffer

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Jerry Coyne and Aquinas’ First Way

Jerry Coyne and Jim Manzi have been mixing it up lately over the religious implications of evolution. Coyne asserts, quite rudely at times, that evolution disproves the existence of God. Manzi disagrees, and asserts that theism is compatible with evolutionary science.

I’ve had a blog discussion or two with Manzi, and he’s a thoughtful courteous interlocutor. He doesn’t believe that intelligent design is a legitimate scientific inference (so he’s not perfect), but he is logically rigorous and very well informed on scientific matters as well as on the broader philosophical issues. He believes that evolution, understood as an algorithmic process by which populations of organisms change over time, is compatible with belief in God. He asserts that evolutionary science does not demonstrate that atheism is true. He’s right.

Jerry Coyne is another matter. Coyne’s manner is sarcastic and supercilious, or at least as supercilious as one can get without relevant literacy. Coyne is an evolutionary biologist of the first rank, but that is where his competence ends. His arguments against the existence of God are embarrassing, and, like the arguments of Richard Dawkins and other New Atheists, are eliciting a backlash among intellectuals who have at least a modicum of philosophical and theological education. I don’t claim for myself any more than a marginal competence — an amateur’s competence — on such matters, but in refuting Coyne, that’s all that’s necessary.¹

Coyne:

Oh dear. This chestnut [Aquinas’ First Way] is so old that it’s fossilized. And the answer to this claim hasn’t changed for decades: why is God any more an “uncaused cause” than is the universe, or the “physical laws” themselves? God is always called the “uncaused cause” without further explanation, but that simply won’t do. If He was an uncaused cause, what did He do before creating everything? Hang around twiddling His thumbs? The people who make this argument are claiming, in effect, that God is by definition an uncaused cause, but we can properly ask “What caused God?” with exactly the same tenacity that theists ask “What caused matter?” And why is God exempt from having a cause, but matter or physical laws are not? This is just sophistry. Faitheist philosophers are always telling us that we don’t grasp the subtleties of theological argument, but that won’t wash here….

Aquinas’ First Way is an elaboration of Aristotle’s argument for the existence of an Unmoved Mover. It is traditionally called the Argument from Motion, but “motion” is the traditional Aristotelian word for what we moderns call change. Motion, meaning translation in space, is only one very limited meaning of classically understood “motion,” which refers to any kind of change (e.g., a change in color, a change in shape, a change in temperature, etc.).

The Argument from Motion is based on the observation that all change involves the transition from possibility (“potency”) to actuality (“act”). That is, when something changes, it moves from a state of potency for a certain attribute to a state of actuality for that attribute. An acorn is in potency for an oak tree (it is potentially an oak tree). When it becomes an oak tree, it is in act for an oak tree. It’s essential to note that “potency” means that the substance does not posses that attribute, it merely can, under the right circumstances, posses it. No thing can simultaneously be in potency and in act for the same attribute.

When something changes (“moves”), it goes from potency to act with respect to that attribute. But, by definition, a substance cannot change itself, because it lacks the attribute — it is in potency, not actuality. It can’t give itself what it doesn’t have. This is the basis for Thomas’ famous dictum:

“That which is moved is moved by another.”

It is logically necessary that everything that changes is changed by another. When a substance changes, it begins in potency (without the attribute) and ends in actuality (with the attribute). It cannot give itself the attribute, because, by definition, it is initially in potency for that attribute and doesn’t have it to give. It must be changed (moved) by another.

Thomas’ observation is a commonplace. An acorn becomes an oak tree (the actualization of its potency) by the action of radiant heat from the sun, energy and matter from the soil and the air, etc. A tree falls because of the wind. A grass fire is ignited by lightning. Everything that changes is changed by another.

Yet, Aquinas (and Aristotle) noted that the proximate cause of the change (the sunlight, the chemicals in the soil, the wind or lightning) is, generally speaking, itself in a process of change, of transitioning from potency to act. And each change in nature was itself generally the result of change in another substance, and so on. Natural change of this sort is a layered hierarchy of changes — a hierarchy of transitions from potency to act.

The salient question is: can this hierarchy of change — this hierarchy of transitions from potency to act — go on to infinite regress? To understand the answer to this question, it is first important to understand the difference between a series of causes that is accidentally ordered and a series that is essentially ordered.

An accidental series is a series of causes extended in time; it is not essential to the continuation of the series that any of the prior causes remain in existence. The classic example of an accidentally ordered series of causes is a father begetting a son who begets a son who begets… and so on. Aquinas pointed out that this kind of casual series can go on to infinite regress (or at least there’s nothing self-contradictory about it).

But that is not the only kind of change. There are changes — causal series — that are ordered in priority, not in time. That is, there are causal series in which each of the causes must be in existence for the series to be actualized. For example, I use a hammer to hit a nail. The nail changes because it is hit by the hammer; the hammer changes because my hand moved it; my hand moved because my muscles contracted; my muscles contracted because of biochemical changes in my muscle cells; the biochemistry in my muscle cells changed because of action potentials in my nerves, etc.

This kind of casual series in which the series depends on the continuing existence of each component is called an essential series. The components of an essential series depend on the simultaneous existence of prior components. If one one member of the series doesn’t exist (the nerve in my arm is cut), then all of the subsequent changes cease. Aquinas (and Aristotle before him) observed that, for an essential series, infinite regress of potency-to-act is not possible.

This is why: in an essentially ordered series of changes, each change depends simultaneously on a change from a prior member of the series. If all members of the series were merely in potency, but not in act, the series could never get started, because potency means lack of actuality. No subsequent “down-the-line” member of an essentially ordered series has independent causal power of its own. So an infinite essentially-ordered series of changes is impossible, because without a first act, it is merely potency (not actuality) all the way down, and nothing could get started. An essentially-ordered causal series must begin with act, not potency. There must be a first member of the series that is in pure act, without potency, or the essential series — the change — would not occur at all. The First Mover in the series must be itself unmoved, because if it were moved — that is, if it went from potency to act — it would necessarily be moved by another, and then wouldn’t be the first member of the series. An essentially ordered casual series must have a First Mover that is itself unmoved.

It’s important to point out that Aquinas (and Aristotle) assumed an eternal universe for the purposes of the Argument from Motion. The First Mover is necessary for each and every essentially ordered series of changes in nature. The First Mover is necessary for change occurring at each moment. The argument is unrelated to the Big Bang; as noted, Aquinas assumed (for the sake of the First Way) that there was no temporal beginning of the universe. The argument works irrespective of whether or not the universe had a beginning in time.

The only way to explain change in the natural world is to posit the existence of an unmoved First Mover. Aquinas goes on (in Summa Contra Gentiles and Summa Theologica) to draw out in meticulous detail the necessary attributes of the First Mover, and he demonstrates that it is logically necessary that the First Mover have many attributes (simplicity, omnipotence, etc) that are traditionally attributed to God as understood in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The Argument from Motion is rigorous, and I have merely summarized its salient points, but it is straightforward once the premises are established. It is a very powerful argument. Yet I am not here proposing that Aquinas’s First Way is irrefutable. I believe that it is valid, but thinkers much smarter than I am have debated it for millennia, and still debate it. It is disputed; it has certainly not been refuted. It is a very strong argument, and it has engaged the best philosophers for a very long time.

Enough with philosophical rigor; let’s get back to Coyne. He asserts:

Oh dear. This chestnut [Aquinas’ First Way] is so old that it’s fossilized. And the answer to this claim hasn’t changed for decades…

 

The philosophical debate on the Argument from Motion (“this chestnut”) has been ongoing for two and a half millennia (since Aristotle). Coyne, for reasons that are obscure, seems to think that the definitive answer was given “decades” ago. Coyne again:

… why is God any more an “uncaused cause” than is the universe, or the “physical laws” themselves? God is always called the “uncaused cause” without further explanation, but that simply won’t do. If He was an uncaused cause, what did He do before creating everything? Hang around twiddling His thumbs?…

Coyne doesn’t understand the argument. Aquinas assumed an eternal universe; the First Mover is necessary for all essentially ordered change in the natural world at every moment; it depends not at all on a moment of creation in time. The argument is of course equally valid in a universe with a finite past, but assumptions as to the eternal or finite nature of the past have no bearing whatsoever on the argument. The First Mover is necessary for change at all moments in time; the First Mover is logically necessary once the nature of change is carefully understood.

Furthermore, contra Coyne, the conclusion that a First Mover is logically necessary to explain change in the natural world is the denouement of extraordinarily detailed “further explanation”; in Summa Contra Gentiles, Aquinas devoted hundreds of pages of meticulous philosophical reasoning to the explication of the argument. Coyne again:

The people who make this argument are claiming, in effect, that God is by definition an uncaused cause, but we can properly ask “What caused God?” with exactly the same tenacity that theists ask “What caused matter?”

Coyne can indeed ask what caused the First Mover with “tenacity,” but not with cogency. The logical conclusion of the Argument from Motion is that the First Mover can’t be “caused.” The First Mover is pure actuality. The First Mover cannot move from potency to act (i.e., “be caused”) because it has no potency. Matter (substance) is caused because it has potency; it’s not pure actuality. It changes, and thus it is a mixture of potency and act. Matter (substance) cannot be the First Mover, because it’s not pure actuality. Coyne:

And why is God exempt from having a cause, but matter or physical laws are not? This is just sophistry.

Coyne doesn’t understand the Argument from Motion. The natural world needs a cause that is pure act because an essentially ordered series requires a First Mover that is Itself unmoved. This isn’t sophistry — it’s a detailed logical argument that Coyne doesn’t understand.

Faitheist philosophers are always telling us that we don’t grasp the subtleties of theological argument, but that won’t wash here…

The Argument from Motion was originally made by a pagan (Aristotle), not a “faitheist philosopher.” It has been held by countless thinkers representing an enormous range of metaphysical persuasions. It is an argument that depends entirely on philosophical, not “theological,” premises. And if you make a modicum of effort to understand it, it’s not particularly “subtle.” It’s routinely mastered by freshmen in Introduction to Philosophy courses.

There have been brilliant atheists (Hume, Russell, Quine) who have struggled with the profound philosophical issues raised by Aquinas’ Five Ways and by a host of other demonstrations for the existence of God. Their contributions warrant respect, but they have never successfully refuted the classical arguments. These powerful and elegant demonstrations of the necessary existence of a First Cause have been set aside by stipulation, not by refutation. It is merely fashionable to deny them. Yet this denial isn’t a denial of the truth of the arguments; it’s a denial of philosophical rigor. It’s a sneer. It now seems that our materialist intelligentsia’s understanding of classical philosophy has degenerated to the point where public intellectuals like Coyne can make arguments that would embarass a teenager in a first semester philosophy course.

Coyne doesn’t understand the Argument from Motion. His arguments are too uninformed to even be sophistry. He’s all spittle. But there are people who do understand, and they’re taking notice. Thanks to the high public visibility of New Atheists like Coyne and Dawkins and Harris and Hitchens and Dennett, the anti-intellectual nature of New Atheism and the sheer malignity and fatuousness of what passes for New Atheist thought is becoming increasingly apparent to those who are paying attention to this debate. Many non-theists are cutting ties with New Atheism. The damage that Coyne and other New Atheists are doing to their own atheist cause is incalculable.

Michael Egnor

18 REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD NOT VACCINATE THIS FLU SEASON

This year it is more important that you protect your children and loved ones from the flu vaccines than influenza itself. Here are the reasons:

1. This flu is simply another flu. It is not unusually deadly. In fact, the H1N1 swine flu in circulation is less deadly than many other influenza outbreaks. The first 1000 confirmed swine flu cases in Japan and China produced zero deaths. The Centers for Disease Control alleges 36,000 Americans succumb to the flu each year, but so far, since March through August of 2009 (6 months), the swine flu has been attributed to ~500–600 deaths in the US. The swine flu of 2009 has already swept through the Southern Hemisphere’s flu season without alarm. Only exaggerated reports have been issued by the World Health Organization regarding hospitalizations required during the flu season in South American countries. Getting exposed to influenza and developing natural antibodies confers resistance for future flu outbreaks. Artificially boosting antibodies by exposure to flu viruses in vaccines is more problematic than natural exposure. Americans have been exposed to the H1N1 swine flu throughout the summer of 2009 with far fewer deaths and hospitalizations than commonly attributed to the seasonal flu.

2. Health authorities tacitly admit prior flu vaccination programs were of worthless value. This is the first time both season and pandemic flu vaccines will be administered. Both seasonal flu and swine flu vaccines will require two inoculations. This is because single inoculations have failed to produce sufficient antibodies. Very young children and older frail adults, the high-risk groups in the population, may not produce sufficient antibodies in response to the flu vaccine. This is an admission that prior flu vaccines were virtually useless. The same people who brought you the ineffective vaccines in past years are bringing you this year’s new vaccines. Can you trust them this time?

3. In addition to failure to produce sufficient antibodies, this swine flu vaccine is brought to you by the same people who haven’t been able to adequately produce a seasonal flu vaccine that matches the flu strain in circulation. In recent years flu vaccination has been totally worthless because the strains of the flu in circulation did not match the strain of the virus in the vaccines. Authorities claim the prevalent flu strain in circulation in mid-September ’09 is the H1N1 swine flu, which appears to be milder than past seasonal influenza in circulation. If this data is correct, why receive the season flu shot this year?

4. The vaccines will be produced by no less than four different manufacturers, possibly with different additives (called adjuvants) and manufacturing methods. The two flu inoculations may be derived from a multi-dose vial and in a crisis, and in short supply, it will be diluted to provide more doses and then adjuvants must be added to trigger a stronger immune response. Adjuvants are added to vaccines to boost production of antibodies but may trigger autoimmune reactions. Some adjuvants are mercury (thimerosal), aluminum and squalene. Would you permit your children to be injected with lead? Lead is very harmful to the brain. Then why would you sign a consent form for your kids to be injected with mercury, which is even more brain-toxic than lead? Injecting mercury may fry the brains of American kids.

5. This is the first year mock vaccines have been used to gain FDA approval. Mock vaccines are made to gain approval of the manufacturing method and then the prevalent virus strain in circulation is added just days before it is actually placed into use. Don’t subject your children to experimental vaccines. Yes, these vaccines have been tested on healthy kids and adults, but they are not the same vaccines your children will be given. Those children with asthma, allergies, type I diabetes, etc. are at greater risk for side effects. Children below the age of 2 years do not have a sufficient blood–brain barrier developed and are subject to chronic brain infections that emanate into symptoms that are called autism. Toddlers should not be subjected to injected viruses.

6. Over-vaccination is a common practice now in America. American children are subjected to 29 vaccines by the age of two. This means a little bit of disease is being injected into young children continually during their most formative years! Veterinarians have backed off of repeat vaccination in dogs because of observed side effects.

7. Health officials want to vaccinate women during pregnancy, subjecting the fetal brain to an intentional biological assault. A recent study showed exposure flu viruses among women during pregnancy provoke a similar gene expression pattern in the fetus as that seen in autistic children. This is a tacit admission that vaccines, which inject a little bit of influenza into humans, causes autism.

8. Modern medicine has no explanation for autism, despite its continued rise in prevalence. Yet autism is not reported among Amish children who go unvaccinated. Beware the falsehoods of modern medicine.

9. School kids are likely to receive nasally-administered vaccines (Flu-Mist) that require no needle injection. But this form of live vaccine produces viral shedding which will surely be transmitted to family members. What a way to start an epidemic!

10. This triple reassortment virus appears to be man made. The H1N1 swine flu virus of 2009 coincidentally appeared in Mexico on the same week that President Nicolas Sarkozy of France visited Mexican president Felipe Calderon, to announce that France intends to build a multi-million dollar vaccine plant in Mexico. An article written by Ron Maloney of the Seguin, Texas Gazette-Enterprise newspaper announces a “rehearsal for a pandemic disaster” scheduled for May 2, 2009. The article says: “Guadalupe County emergency management and their counterparts around the country are preparing for just such a scenario…” This means county health authorities across the U.S. had been preparing a rehearsal for mass vaccinations prior to the announced outbreak in Mexico. Virologists admit this part swine flu/part avian flu/part human flu virus must have taken time to develop. But it somehow wasn’t detected by hundreds of flu monitoring stations across the globe. On April 24, 2009 Dr. John Carlo, Dallas County Medical Director, alludes that the H1N1 strain of the Swine flu as possibly being engineered in a laboratory. He says: “This strain of swine influenza that’s been cultured in a laboratory is something that’s not been seen anywhere actually in the United States and the world, so this is actually a new strain of influenza that’s been identified.” (Globe & Mail, Canada)

11. Recall the swine flu scare of 1976. In a politically charged atmosphere where Gerald Ford was seeking election to the Presidency, the swine flu suddenly appeared at a military base. Vaccine was produced and millions of Americans were vaccinated. But the vaccine was worse than the disease, causing hundreds of cases of Guillain Barre syndrome and a few deaths. In a replay of the past, the White House is directly involved in promoting the H1N1 2009 swine flu vaccine. The federal government will use federal funds to pay off schools to administer vaccines, promote vaccination via highway billboards and TV advertisements, and conduct military-style mass inoculations in such rapid fashion that if side effects occur, it will be too late. The masses will have been vaccinated already. Over $9 billion has been allotted by the federal government to develop and deliver an unproven and experimental flu vaccine. Don’t be a guinea pig for the government.

12. Researchers are warning that over-use of the flu vaccine and anti-flu drugs like Tamiflu and Relenza can apply genetic pressure on flu viruses and then they are more likely to mutate into a more deadly strain. US health authorities want 70% of the public to be vaccinated against the flu this ’09 season, which is more than double the vaccination percentage of any prior flu season. This would certainly apply greater genetic pressure for the flu to mutate into a more virulent strain.

13. Most seasonal influenza A (H1N1) virus strains tested from the United States and other countries are now resistant to Tamiflu (oseltamivir). Tamiflu has become a nearly worthless drug against seasonal flu. According to data provided by the Centers for Disease Control, among 1148 seasonal flu samples tested, 1143 (99.6%) were resistant to Tamiflu!

14. As the flu season progresses the federal government may coerce or mandate Americans to undergo vaccination. France has already ordered enough vaccine to inoculate their entire population and has announced that vaccination will be mandatory. The US appears to be waiting to announce mandatory vaccination at a later date when it can scare the public into consenting to the vaccine. The federal government is reported to be hiring people to visit homes of unvaccinated children. This sounds like the Biblical account of Pharaoh attempting to eradicate all the young Israelite baby boys. Must we hide our babies now?

15. Public health authorities have cried wolf every flu season to get the public to line up for flu shots. Health authorities repeatedly publish the bogus 36,000 annual flu-related deaths figure to scare the public into getting flu shots. But that figure is based on the combined deaths from pneumonia in the elderly and the flu. Maybe just 5000–6000 or so flu-related deaths occur annually, mostly among individuals with compromised immune systems, the hospitalized, individuals with autoimmune disease or other health problems. As stated above, the swine flu in full force has only resulted in ~500–600 deaths in the first six months in circulation and it is far more dreaded by public health authorities than the seasonal flu. The Centers for Disease Control issues a purchase order for flu vaccines and then serves as the public relations agency to get the public to pay for the vaccines. Out of a population of 325 million Americans, only 100 million doses of flu vaccine have been administered each year and no epidemic has erupted among the unvaccinated.

16. The news media is irresponsible in stirring up unfounded fear over this coming flu season. Just exactly how ethical is it for newspapers to publish reports that a person has died of the swine flu when supposedly thousands die of the flu annually? In the past the news media hasn’t chosen to publicize each and every flu-related death, but this time it has chosen to frighten the public. Why? Examine the chart below. The chart shows that the late flu season of 2009 peaked in week 23 (early June) and has dissipated considerably.

While every childhood flu-related death should be considered tragic, and the number of flu-related pediatric deaths in 2009 is greater than prior flu seasons as a percentage, in real numbers it is not a significant increase. See chart below:

According to data provided by the Centers for Disease Control, for week 34 ending August 29, 2009, there were 236 hospitalizations and 37 deaths related to the flu. That would represent just 5 hospitalizations and less than one death per State, which is “below the epidemic threshold.”

17. Public health officials are irresponsible in their omission of any ways to strengthen immunity against the flu. No options outside of problematic vaccines and anti-flu drugs are offered, despite the fact there is strong evidence that vitamins C and D activate the immune system and the trace mineral selenium prevents the worst form of the disease where the lungs fill up with fluid and literally drown a flu-infected person. The only plausible explanation as to why the flu season typically peaks in winter months is a deficiency of sunlight-produced vitamin D. Protect your family. Arm your immune system with vitamins and trace minerals.

18. Will we ever learn if the flu vaccine this year is deadly in itself? In 1993 the federal government hid a deadly flu vaccine that killed thousands of nursing home patients. It was the first year that flu shots were paid for by Medicare. The vaccine-related mortality was so large that this set back the life expectancy of Americans for the first time since the 1918 Spanish flu! Mortality reports take a year or two to tabulate and the federal government may choose not to reveal the true mortality rate and whether it was related to the flu or the vaccines. You say this couldn’t happen? It did in 1993!

Bill Sardi

YES, WE CAN – IMMAGINAZIONE AL POTERE

I received this in the mail today.

My first reaction was to laugh, but my second reaction was to shake my head and feel sad:

“Let me get this straight – Obama’s health care plan will be written by a committee whose head says he doesn’t understand it, passed by a Congress that hasn’t read it, and whose members are exempts from it, signed by a president who smokes in secret, funded by a treasury chief who did not pay his taxes, overseen by a surgeon general who is obese, and financed by a country that is broke.”

What could possibly go wrong?

– Richard Russell

 

YES, WE CAN – HUGO LOVING….

Meanwhile, Obama appointed a “diversity czar” to the FCC on July 29.

This new czar, Mark Lloyd, apparently “called for making private broadcasting companies pay licensing fees equal to their total operating costs…”

Which sounds suspiciously like a way to kill off private broadcasting to me. Some of you might remember the advent and eventual death of the Fairness Doctrine – that other Orwellian-monikered initiative to give equal airwave coverage to important issues.

Of course, back in February Obama firmly opposed the reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine, but who needs the Fairness Doctrine when there’s no privately held media?

Doubling the operating costs of privately held radio stations will almost certainly bankrupt a great many of them – leaving the “public’s airwaves” back up for grabs for more state-friendly broadcasters, no doubt.

Mr. Lloyd recently pointed out how much he admires Hugo Chavez, and how he revolutionized Venezuela’s airwaves, giving much more funding and bandwidth to publicly held and state-friendly stations. In the process, over 200 privately held TV and radio stations shuttered their doors.

Chris Wood