The Infectious Myth

Infectious Myth – End of Year Thoughts – 12.29.15

In Episode 83 David closes out 2015 on a positive note, talking about heroism and kindness, continuing on the subjects of vaccination, medical corruption, and the environment, and ending with discussions of terrorism, eavesdropping and justice (or injustice).

Links to articles used in this episode can be found at: http://theinfectiousmyth.com/PRN-TIM/83.php

Infectious Myth – War Peace and Lesser Concerns – 12.08.15

In Episode 82 David discusses the causes of violence around the world, particularly gun violence in the United States. He also addresses political correctness, in the form of campus protests, good and bad, and also the notion of “Cultural Appropriation”. And speaking of politically correct, he addresses science that is politically correct, but perhaps not scientifically correct.

Sources used in this monologue can be found at: http://theinfectiousmyth.com/PRN-TIM/82.php

Infectious Myth – Medea Benjamin on Peace and the Cycle of Violence – 12.01.15

In Episode 81 David talks with Medea Benjamin, founder of Code Pink, and a well-known peace and anti-war activist, about the violence that infects the world today. Starting with the recent spate of violent incidents in Paris, Beirut, Mali, Colorado Springs and elsewhere, David and Medea discuss the financial motivations for war, the blowback and unintended consequences that occur, how destruction of governments, as in Iraq and Libya, helps produce organizations like ISIS. They discuss the fear of many Americans about the possibility that a jihadist could be hiding amongst refugees, while tolerating 30,000 gun deaths a year. How fear is manipulated to get taxpayers to support more funding for more wars, avoiding the discussion of how wars created the incidents that produced the fear in the first place. How fear is used to justify more widespread communications monitoring and censorship, and bigger budgets for intelligence agencies that continue to be unable to stop these attacks (often claiming insufficient budge). The jihadists benefit from our fear, and from attacks on Islamic countries that kill civilians, such as the recent Russian bombing of a busy market, bombings of wedding parties, and the recent US and Saudi bombings of hospitals.

For more reading on this subject, and some of the sources David used, see http://theinfectiousmyth.com/PRN-TIM/81.html

You can find out more about Medea Benjamin’s work with Code Pink at: http://www.codepink.org

Infectious Myth – News Roundup – 11.17.15

In Episode 80 David updates us on vaccine problems, the problematic military malaria medication mefloquine (Lariam), the (in)justice system, Facilitated Communications and sexual assault. He discusses a case of a sports star who appears to have gone unpunished for a vicious assault, while another star was convicted in the public eye before the evidence point out it was a false allegation of rape. Colorado high school students drop their pants for each other. Who is a victim, who is a pedophile, and who is just a teenager exploring their sexuality? Yale students go into a tizzy when a professor says they are adults. Mizzu students fire their president, and then try to fire the press. And Amherst students want their president to apologize for all the wrongs in world history.

For a list of resources for further exploration of these stories see http://theinfectiousmyth.com/PRN-TIM/80.html

Infectious Myth – Addiction is not a Disease – 11.10.15

In episode 79 David talks with Marc Lewis who has unique experience in the area of drug addiction, as both a former addict, and today a neuroscientist and professor of developmental psychology at Radboud University in Holland. He described his personal voyage into and out of addiction in his 2011 book, “Memoirs of an Addicted Brain”. His recently published book, “The Biology of Desire: Why Addiction is Not a Disease” is titled to illustrate his conclusion that addiction is desire gone wrong, and that the addict gets trapped into a vicious cycle of desire, use, disappointment, repeat. David observes that loneliness, separation and isolation are a common factor at the start of many addiction stories, and that drugs only worsen this (as does imprisonment, the other common approach to drug addiction).

For more information on Marc Lewis, see his Wikipedia page at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_David_Lewis

Infectious Myth – Life for Drugs – 10.27.15

In Episode 78 David the over-criminalization of drugs in the United States with Amy Povah. It is not just that recreational drugs are criminalized, but the sentences are sometimes absurd. Amy received a 24 year sentence in the 1990s largely because she refused to infiltrate her ex-husband’s ecstasy manufacturing operation. Her sentence was so egregious it was covered by Glamour magazine and the television show, “60 Minutes”, and her sentence was eventually commuted by President Clinton after she had served 9 years. She started helping some of the women she was in jail with, and eventually broadened the scope of her organization to other women, and then to men who also commonly received these lengthy sentences. One of her most shocking observations is that a single witness can produce a conviction, even if the witness has a motivation to lie, to receive a lesser sentence for themselves, and even if the victim of the false testimony is not a bit player in the conspiracy, but an innocent pawn. Amy describes several shockingly unjust convictions and talks about how the war of drugs is finally starting to wane, but there are still of millions of Americans in jail for non-violent drug convictions, and even if marijuana is legalized, people serving life for small quantities of marijuana won’t necessarily be released.

Amy runs the Can Do foundation (http://www.candoclemency.com) and is making the film called Four Twenty.

Other useful resources are:

• Life for Pot: http://www.lifeforpot.com  
• Law Enforcement Against Prohibition: http://www.leap.cc
• Cut 50: http://www.cut50.org
• November coalition: http://november.org

Infectious Myth – Feedback and News – 10.27.15

In Episode 77 David reads some feedback and comments on recent news, on a wide variety of subjects, with links, where they are available:

• Some negative feedback was received from two people who are opposed to abortion, and one of these people felt that it was generally men who were getting abused in family court, not children or mothers.
• An article in the Washington Post indicates that there may be more guns that people in the USA. http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/10/05/guns-in-the-united-states-one-for-every-man-woman-and-child-and-then-some/
• A woman has an ex-husband loaded with weapons, and is worried about her daughter’s safety, when she visits, and also worries that he might come after her. But the police refuse to investigate.http://gunvictimsaction.org/news/convicted-domestic-abuser-amassing-an-arsenal-lets-wait-until-something-happens-say-police/
• Police in the US are upset with laws that force them to sell guns that they seize: http://money.cnn.com/gallery/news/2015/10/21/police-chief-guns/index.html

Infectious Myth – Chris Shaw on Dangers of Aluminum Too – 10.20.15

In Episode 75 David discusses the toxicity of Aluminum with Professor Chris Shaw, following on from the interview with Chris Exley in episode 71. Dr. Shaw started examining a degenerative neurological illness on Guam that his research indicated was caused by a combination of phytosterols in cycads and aluminum, and then went on to study Gulf War Syndrome, which he believed was at least partly due to the exposure to aluminum in over 20 vaccines given to soldiers in a short time. In 2013 he co-authored a paper that claimed a strong correlation between increased exposure to aluminum in vaccines and Autism Spectrum Disorder. But his major area of study is not epidemiology, but studies with mice, which have shown that injection of aluminum causes degeneration of the nervous system.

Chris also comments on the absolutism prevalent in mainstream discussions of vaccine safety, including the time when the Canadian public broadcaster, CBC, went after him, trying to get his management to criticize his research, something they refused to do, insisting that peer review of his grant applications and publications was sufficient, a major victory for academic and scientific freedom.

Infectious Myth – Judicial Abuse of Children – 10.13.15

David discusses judicial abuse of children in custody battles with the sisters Hope and Elizabeth Loudon. Just a few years ago, when they were 14 and refused to spend time with their father, they were put in handcuffs and spent several days locked in a juvenile detention facility before the judge backed down and eventually gave full custody to the mother. Many other situations do not end nearly as well. The sisters wrote an article in the Washington Post describing a situation in which three children claimed their father was abusive, but this led to them being sent to juvenile detention. An international outcry ended up changing this to a summer camp. But afterwards, rather than giving custody to the mother, even partial custody, the judge awarded full custody to the father.

The Loudons’ experience has led them to become activists and to try to assist with similar cases, of which they believe there are thousands every year in the United States, as described in their Op-Ed in the Washington Post:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/08/03/we-were-sent-to-juvenile-detention-for-refusing-to-live-with-our-father/

A good source for general information and scholarly articles regarding court licensed abuse is:

http://www.thelizlibrary.org/

Hope Loudon’s Huffington Post Website:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hope-loudon/

Critique of so-called Parental Alienation Syndrome: https://stopabusecampaign.com/f-a-q/faq-parental-alienation-syndrome-pas/

About ‘Court Crimes’: http://www.centerforjudicialexcellence.org

For more resources, please contact David.Crowe@theinfectiousmyth.com

Infectious Myth – The Mysterious Acceptance of Bad Science as the cause of AIDS – 10.06.15

In episode 73 David tackles four weighty issues. A different take on Planned Parenthood. The Roseburg/Umpqua mass shooting. The complex issue of sexual consent. And finally, the original four Robert Gallo papers that cemented the HIV=AIDS theory in one fell swoop. Oh, and don’t forget the US government press conference that preceded their publication by a few weeks.