Confronting a Naked Emperor

Eulogy for a child of my mind

It is a cold, gray, rainy day today here in Virginia along the base of the Shenandoah National Park. Winter is upon us. Somehow we need to blanket the pregnant mares, as the next few days are going to really get cold, and one should never blanket a wet horse. Yesterday was constant interviews and podcasts from 7:00 AM to 11:00 PM, with hardly a moment to catch a bite to eat or make yet another cup of strong coffee. I am still waiting for my luggage to make it back from Zurich, and the space under the tree remains barren - no time to shop for presents. Am I whining? Well, maybe just a bit. But if you think that traveling about 400,000 commercial air miles in one year is your idea of a good time, then please, by all means, have at it.

The events of the last year stretch out in my consciousness, blurring into a fog of constant travel, discussions, speeches, testimony, presentations, controversy, propaganda, and published attacks from all sides. For me, 2022 launched with the Joe Rogan podcast (#1757) and all of the controversy that event generated, and now the year is ending with a flood of data from all over the world which validates pretty much every single thing (and more!) that I had discussed back then, so long ago it seems a different age. Between Tucker Carlson’s reveal concerning the role of the CIA in the Dallas, TX assassination of President John F. Kennedy and disclosure of the “Twitter Files”, the curtain is drawing to a close on 2022. In my mind, these two disclosures are bookends, the first involving one of my first memories as a five year old child, the second documenting a current profound evil which I have sensed and personally experienced but have been unable to confirm.

Both events have revealed to those able to see that the intelligence and security arms of the US Imperial Administrative State have become enemies of the US Constitution which they were designed and sworn to protect. Step by step, day by day, the country and limited federal government system which our forefathers have bequeathed to us has been transformed into a massive totalitarian security state which strives to rule both the physical world and the inner world of our minds.

Yeats’ “Second Coming” seems most appropriate for summarizing the arc of this most disappointing of years. The cognitive dissonance is almost overwhelming, and yet we must somehow come to terms with the profound widespread loss of integrity which has become a defining characteristic of both US and global governance (not to mention corporate media).

Somehow, we must come to terms with the unfortunate truth that our governments have deployed military-grade propaganda and psychological operations methods (designed for battling foreign adversaries) on their own citizens to shape thought, belief, and reality itself to comport with the interests of the US federal administrative state. The pervasive spying and censorship of the US and other western governments on their own citizens (somehow justified as necessary to “preserve democracy”) has become completely normalized, and few seem willing to even spare a moment to care.

If one confronts the horror of the modern Praetorian guard/”intelligence community” being willing and able to assassinate a US President with impunity, and the decades of subsequent Presidents and CIA directors who have not only been aware of this truth, but have subverted congressional mandates that this truth be disclosed to the American public, then the ground shifts and Yeats’ slouching beast comes into focus. We can now see its form and speak its name: “Leviathan”.

As I look back over the last year, many things weigh on both my mind and soul. The disappointing mid-term elections. The sad truth revealed by Senator Ron Johnson when he speaks of the enormous and seemingly unsurmountable obstacles to holding any “public servants” accountable for their mis-deeds during the COVIDcrisis. The deeper truth that the Washington DC/US Federal and Brussels/EU Governments no longer serve the interests of their citizens, if they ever really have during the 21st century. They have long been captured by financial interests that are invested in a globalist, anti-nationalist “world order”. The profound, pervasive corruption of public health, medicine, and the biomedical scientific research enterprise is just one symptom of the deep and broad rot which is spreading through every aspect of public and private life.

Like with the John F. Kennedy assassination, we avert the eyes of our mind from each of these overwhelming and ever present truths. At a personal level, all the hard work and sacrifice embodied in “my career” has relied on a house of mirrors built upon shifting desert sands. What have I done with my life? What if I had just remained a humble carpenter and farmer, rather than reaching for the skies? The only “real” achievements which withstand the test of time are my marriage and our children. The preservation of shreds of integrity. The fragile legacy of friendships, teaching, and mentoring nurtured and developed over decades.

Then, on a much lower plane, there is this thought-child of my mind, conceived and birthed while I was still a young man. One that both defines me and that I refuse to be defined by. That the natural biological molecule mRNA could be employed to enable a whole new class of medicines (including vaccines). A completely different approach to enable the power of modern molecular biology to be applied for treating and preventing human disease, particularly childhood disease. Before that stroke of inspiration, captured as a moment in history in the form of an invention disclosure, witnessed and countersigned by the Salk Institute post-doc Dr. Mark Kindy, PhD. (and then in multiple patents), “Gene Therapy” was predicated on the idea that pediatric genetic disease could be treated by permanently correcting a “bad gene” by providing a “good gene” to the cells of a patient. At that time, it was “well known” that the only way this might be accomplished was by coopting the biology of viruses, parasites which have evolved to exist at the boundary between live and dead. The most overt example of Richard Dawkins’ “Selfish Gene”. Agents which have evolved to replicate by injecting their genetic material into the cells (and nuclei) of the hosts (bacterial, plant, insect, animal) which they parasitize.

Jill and I had moved to San Diego (midway through my MD training) so that I could chase the dream of becoming a “gene therapist” physician. We brought with us hopes, dreams, an infant son, a parrot from my childhood named “Chiquita”, deep debts from bootstrapping our education, and not much else. As we had progressed through our education, the underlying culture had shifted from a commitment to collective investment in education of worthy youth as the best way to insure continued national prosperity, to disillusionment in the “welfare state” and the belief that the young should bear the costs of their own education rather than rely on handouts from society. Had I known that this shift was coming, I probably would have remained in the trades rather than seeking higher degrees, but once the decision had been made there was no way to go back. Debt had been accumulated, and debt is a monster which demands to be serviced.

Jill has a better memory for such details than I, and tells the story of my returning to student housing while she was bathing our child, and enthusiastically pouring out the brainstorm that “transient gene therapy” using mRNA could enable new types of genetic medicines and vaccines. This was truly revolutionary. Such a simple idea, but one which could bypass so many of the problems inherent in the idea of permanently altering the genome of people’s cells. Synthetic mRNA could be manufactured, purified, formulated with positively charged fats to form self-assembling particles, and these could slip the manufactured mRNA into cells where it would direct the production of either therapeutic proteins or vaccine antigens. And with that idea, our world was turned upside down. Avarice and greed are powerful forces, and big science (as well as Pharma) is infested with unscrupulous seekers of fame and fortune. I was completely unprepared to deal with what would soon come to pass.

It is often observed that time heals all wounds. That which does not kill you makes you stronger. But, like damaged heart muscle, in my experience these things heal by scarring, and never fully recover. And I suspect that this will also be the fate of my brain-child.

During the decades that followed, in the face of the impossible task of getting funding for addressing the toxicities and other problems inherent in the technology, Jill and I abandoned our research into cationic lipid-based mRNA and DNA delivery technology for advancing mucosal and parenteral vaccines and genetic therapies. We pivoted to the use of “naked” polynucleotide delivery by jet injection or use of pulsed electrical fields, but could never obtain significant academic funding, and turned to the commercial sector. Then the planes hit the towers and the Pentagon, and weaponized anthrax spores (“Amerithrax”) were circulated via the US Postal Service. The commercial investors in “Inovio” pulled back, and out of necessity my career pivoted to the brave new world of biodefense. The Vical mRNA and DNA vaccine patents expired. And then suddenly, out of the blue, DARPA/CIA decided to start investing in the mRNA/Cationic Lipid technology. Attending and chairing a vaccine conference in 2018, I was brought to tears by a senior European pharmaceutical scientist who cited my 1988-1991 contributions to the genesis of the technology, the first public acknowledgment of my early work that I had ever heard.

And then the last three years. As mentioned above, avarice and greed are powerful forces, and big science (as well as Pharma) is infested with unscrupulous seekers of fame and fortune. The use of cationic lipid-formulated synthetic mRNA is touted as a different variation on the second coming. Historic norms for insuring safety, purity, consistency, and effectiveness were disregarded in a mad rush to cash in on this “new discovery”. But the intractable safety problems which Jill and I had encountered during the 1990’s had not been resolved, despite the personal assurances provided to me by FDA’s Dr. Peter Marks, a hematologist oncologist with no training or experience in gene therapy or vaccine development. Billions in profit have been minted. And now all the (official) world hails the new Caesar, the triumphant new mRNA technology, savior from the dreaded SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus.

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.
I have come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interrèd with their bones.

But this new Caesar stands naked before those who have the ability to see.

And in the land of the blind, even a one-eyed man can become king.

I am very sorry to say that the time has come to bury that child of my mind. The good which might have been enabled has been hopelessly distorted by the evil that has been done during these last two years. This technology as rushed to market and deployed to billions of people has, in the current embodiment, been proven neither safe nor effective. Furthermore, it has been exploited to advance agendas which have nothing to do with improving human health. I mourn that the good which might have come to pass will be interred with the bones of the evil purposes to which it has been put.

Those who are not among the vaccinology, virology, and molecular biology anointed illuminati will not understand what that potential might have been, only that this toxic evil was forced upon them, their children, their families and their relatives. And they will not forget.

And the world will continue to turn.

I can only hope that those who naively speak of a transhumanism future in which evolution is bypassed and man/god will assume control of “intelligent” design of himself via genetic modification will come to realize the profound hubris and error of both the recent mistakes and the likelihood of future ones.

Hope springs eternal.

Hope (and fear) is apparently what lead Debora Birx, Rochelle Walensky, and so many other government bureaucrat/physician/scientists to bypass reason and experience in the mad rush to jab these products into every soul that they could coerce.

On this rainy, gray winters day, my hope is that somehow we can find a way for experience to triumph over hope when it comes to messing around with the human genome. And that we can pivot from worshiping the golden calf of technology to just appreciating the gifts of children, family, the earth under our feet, and the communities within which we exist. Those who have a hole in their souls can never gain enough power, fame or wealth to fill that hole. For the rest of us, my hope is that we can somehow find a way forward so that they will not be able to “shape” our futures and those of our children, and we can be left alone to just live our lives, and to enjoy the human bonds which enrich our daily existence.

Merry Christmas to all

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