Rules of engagement

Nasal spray, Baobab, and a book

PREAMBLE

WARFIGHTING (Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 1)

One of my readers, who is also a beloved patient, has a mantra of sorts which I have heard him repeat many times. The most recent variation went like this: “I was a Marine for twenty years, did five tours of duty, and I’m scared to go to Disney World.” This time my response was that when the rules of engagement have changed, it takes a different strategy than we have used before. Defending our country on foreign soil is a different proposition than defending our body, mind and spirit from an enemy both domestic and internal. I’m confident that he can and will adapt, and win, but as I wrote in my last post, Sister Calista Roy defined health as quintessentially, our capacity to adapt to changing circumstances. Below, I have introduced a tool which I have found essential in keeping infectious organisms and harm from shedding at bay. I announce an upcoming live discussion re: a wondrous fruit with myriad health promoting properties. And I set the stage for an upcoming book discussion on the topic of vaccine science and myth.

USMC Afghanistan campaign ribbon

ENOVID

In the last month, the Leading Edge Clinic has seen an uptick in messages, calls and acute visits with patients who have developed an acute illness. Sometimes it is Covid, and sometimes it’s the cold-du-jour. When I ask patients if I have previously told them about Enovid nasal spray, I am dismayed to hear that either I haven’t or they don’t remember. This short post is intended to rectify that omission and spread the word.

The FLCCC Alliance early treatment protocol for Covid has suggested use of a dilute povidone-iodine nasal spray from the start. I’m a delicate flower, and although the povidone-iodine is cheap and demonstrates good clinical effect, I have found it to be irritating to my sinuses. There is a pre-made product, available in many drug stores these days, called Xlear, which uses Xylitol and grapefruit seed extract. Depending on the source, the cost is $10-14. Dr Been has discussed his positive experience with Xlear, and I have many patients who have used it to avoid getting sick.

My personal go-to nasal spray for prophylaxis of infection from any organism or shedding has become Enovid. A knowledgeable holistic pediatric neurologist in NYC named Dr Sharon Herzfeld introduced me to Enovid back in the Fall of 2022. At the time she said that if this product had been widely available at the beginning of the pandemic, it would have protected millions of people from illness. Because it is pricier, I was a slow adopter. It costs $37/bottle when purchased in quantities of >= eight units. This can ship from Tel Aviv and takes about five days to arrive. It is also available from Amazon under the name Symo Kane (curses upon Jeff Bazos for censoring Dr Marik), costs for $64.50 for one unit, or $95 for a two-pack.

When I finally started using Enovid more than a year ago, I was duly impressed. I found that not only did it help me avoid becoming ill when I was around coughing, sneezing, throat-clearing, snot-nosed sickies, but it also appeared to blunt the effects of shedding. More than two dozen patients have reported similar experiences, with special note given to its protection around shedding. Why that would be, I really don’t know. The mechanism of action for Enovid which kills microorganisms in the nose and nasopharyngeal region is stimulation of nitric oxide production in the sinuses.

Here is the package insert. The active ingredients include Sodium chloride, Citric acid, HPMC, Sodium nitrite, and Benzalkonium Chloride. Other names for the product include NORS, NONS, and Sanotize. Enovid may be applied 2-3 times over the course of the day (two sprays per nostril each time), or up to 6 times a day following a suspected exposure to contagious organisms. Below is an image of the product. I don’t have any financial interest in the product or it’s distributors.

BAOBAB

Jeff Tezak, CEO of Tiiga in front of a Baobab tree

In February 2024, when I wrote about the healing powers of Baobab in All along the watchtower, there was an enormous response from readers. I received an email and then had several conversations afterwards with Jeff Tezak, the CEO of a small company called Tiiga, which markets Baobab grown and harvested by small communities in Africa. During the interim, we have exchanged emails to share clinical insights and academic studies which expand our understanding of the healthy benefits and clinical applications of Baobab. Most recently, Tiiga has reformulated their Baobab powder blends to make them more accessible to the palate and ingredients criteria of health conscious consumers. This week I reconnected with Jeff and invited him to join me in a live conversation about Baobab, with an opportunity for readers to ask questions and share their own experiences. We hope to talk about the healing effect of Baobab upon the microbiome, blocking spike entry into cells, lowering cholesterol, managing insulin sensitivity, and more. Please join us on Thursday October 24th from 5:30-7:00pm EST. I’ll post the link on my Substack homepage at the start of that week. I have no financial interest in Tiiga or its distributors.

TURTLES ALL THE WAY DOWN

I’m getting to the end of Turtles All the Way Down: Vaccine Science and Myth, edited by Zoey O’Toole and Mary Holland, J.D. The Children’s Health Defense published suggested questions for book discussion, which I think are a useful starting point. The questions are as follows:

Questions for Discussion

1. The authors of “Turtles All the Way Down” made a very unusual decision when they wrote the book: They chose to publish anonymously. Their reasons were twofold: to protect themselves and their families, and to keep the focus of attention on the content of the book. (The English version came out in July of 2022, has sold nearly 40,000 copies, and currently has 528 ratings on Amazon with an average of 4.9 stars out of 5—and it just got its first critical review. Well-known vaccine apologist Dorit Rubinstein Reiss wrote a guest blog for Skeptical Raptor that was published on May 7, 2023. Reiss is a law professor at UC Hastings. To her credit, Reiss actually addressed some of the material in the first chapter of the book. Unfortunately, she made so many errors it’s not clear she read the chapter closely, much less the book.) How successful do you think the anonymity strategy has been so far? Do you see any disadvantages to that strategy?

2. The authors made a conscious decision to choose only mainstream sources that are not associated with vaccine critics and thus cannot be dismissed as “anti-vax.” They also chose to make only the arguments that they could prove in that manner. What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages of that approach?

3. The first chapter of the book analyzes the vaccines on the childhood schedule and makes one crucial point: No vaccine that the CDC recommends for children under two has ever been tested in a randomized clinical trial against a true placebo before it was approved. Every product has been tested against one or more other vaccines, or in the case of some new vaccines, the “vaccine sans antigen.” Yet a randomized clinical trial with a true placebo control is the only way to get a true safety profile of a new vaccine. Thus, we don’t have a true estimate of the risks of any one vaccine, much less the schedule as a whole. Do you think the current way of doing vaccine clinical trials is acceptable? If so, why?

4. Dorit Reiss makes the argument that true placebo controls are not necessary; new vaccines are compared to older vaccines and “the book is wrong to suggest that decades of data collected on these vaccines are not good evidence about them, evidence that would make conducting a clinical trial depriving children of these vaccines unethical.” But Reiss’s argument is based on assumption, not data, and it turns out to be very dangerous to make such assumptions. A Danish research team used data from the Bandim Health Project in Guinea-Bissau, Africa, to analyze the effect the introduction of vaccines had on child mortality. They found — to their horror — the counter-intuitive result that children vaccinated with DTP vaccines, especially girls, died at much higher rates than children who did not receive the vaccine. The vaccine, itself, killed more children than diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus combined. The analysis was performed in myriad ways in subsequent papers, and the results always showed much higher death rates for the vaccinated children. Knowing this, what would you do to fix the vaccine program if you were in charge?

5. The book makes it clear that vaccine adverse event reporting is “deficient by design.” Reporting is passive, meaning adverse events are not solicited, and voluntary, meaning that medical personnel are not required to report adverse events that they witness. This means that chronic underreporting is a serious issue. Do you consider this a problem? Why or why not? And what would you do to fix adverse event reporting if you could?

6. “Turtles” contrasts vaccine adverse event reporting with infectious disease reporting. Many countries, certainly including the United States, have had robust infectious disease reporting for decades. Reports are solicited and mandatory for a number of diseases. For the most part, these counts are assumed to be pretty accurate. Why do you think countries like the United States do a much better job gathering data on infectious disease than they do gathering data on adverse effects of fighting such disease?

7. In 2013 the Institute of Medicine issued a report that confirmed that parents were right, no studies had been published by the CDC or NIH comparing health outcomes in children who were completely unvaccinated with health outcomes in children who were vaccinated according to the CDC schedule. Yet the IOM said such studies should not be done, citing numerous reasons, none of which were valid. Can you think of any other reason for this recommendation from the IOM than a desire to hide high rates of injury and illness? Do you think if vaccines were truly as safe as we are told that the CDC would refrain from performing the one type of study could best demonstrate that?

8. “Turtles All the Way Down” analyzes the history of infectious disease mortality and the studies that have looked at that history in depth. These studies demonstrate unequivocally that the vast majority of the precipitous decline in infectious disease mortality occurred before there were either effective vaccines or modern antibiotics available. Did you find that surprising? If so, why do you think you had a different impression about that? Do you think knowing that fact alone would make people much less eager to vaccinate themselves or their children?

9. Herd immunity is the cited justification for vaccine mandates. The book analyzes the capacity for all the vaccines recommended for infants and toddlers to generate herd immunity, and it turns out that only five vaccines have a relevant capacity to generate herd immunity. Did you find that surprising? Why or why not? How does this change your perception regarding vaccine mandates?

10. As children we’re taught that Jonas Salk single-handedly vanquished the deadly scourge of polio with his miracle vaccine. “Turtles All the Way Down” does a deep historical dive and comes up with 19 “mysteries” that don’t fit that narrative. Did that chapter change your mind about the history of polio? If so, what did you find the most convincing or puzzling fact to be? Do you think that pesticides had something to do with the epidemic waves of paralysis that hit during the summers, particularly in the post-World War II years?

11. It is well known in public health circles that the last few cases of an infectious disease require sharply increased investment to prevent. That has certainly been the case for measles in the United States. There hasn’t been a year with more than 1,274 cases since 1992, yet the CDC has waged two very expensive campaigns in the last decade — in 2015 and 2019 — trying to get that number to zero. A) Do you think it’s possible to get that number to zero and keep it there? Why or why not? B) If you think it is possible, do you think that getting to zero cases of measles is worth the increased cost, reduced medical choice, and increased injury that it would take to get there?

Starting on July 13, 2023, Dr Frank Han, who is a pediatric cardiologist in Illinois, began posting the first of ten installments debunking the narrative of Turtles All the Way Down. His series was published on a website called Science Based Medicine (SBM). SBM is entirely owned and operated by the New England Skeptical Society, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting science and critical thinking. The NESS reports that it does not have any corporate or government sponsorship. It is entirely funded by individual donations. It has also been sharply critical of the FLCCC, IVM, and adjunctive cancer care. I post these links in the spirit of intellectual openness and inquiry. From my real-life clinical experience, I understand that many of the objections which Dr Han raises are flawed, but would rather have those arguments and criticisms out in the open where they can be evaluated and addressed. I’m not afraid of the truth, or the journey to the truth, and neither should you be afraid.