Health
Dr. Peter Hotez predicts rampant spread of diseases once Trump takes office
From LifeSiteNews
Dr. Peter Hotez says it will be ‘dangerous’ if the Senate confirms Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Prominent “vaccine scientist” Dr. Peter Hotez issued an eerie warning during an interview this week, listing a litany of diseases that may begin to spread starting on January 21, President-elect Donald Trump’s first full day in office.
Speaking with Nicole Wallace on MSNBC’s Deadline White House about how supposedly “dangerous” it would be for the country if the Senate confirms Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), Hotez began warning of diseases that will start to spread on January 21 while slamming vaccine skeptics. Hotez has a long history of attacking “anti-vaxxers” who have raised legitimate concerns about COVID and other vaccines.
“We have some big picture stuff coming down the pike starting on January 21. Mr. (Mike) Bloomberg mentioned H5N1 that I’m really worried about,” Hotez said. “It’s all over wild birds on the western part of the United States and going up in the north. It’s getting into the poultry, we’re seeing sporadic human cases, no human-to-human transmission yet, but that could happen. It’s in the cattle, it’s in the milk. And that’s just the beginning.
“We have another major coronavirus likely brewing in Asia; we’ve had Sars in 2002, Sars2, COVID-19 in 2019. And we know these viruses are jumping from bats to people thousands of times a year.”
“But there’s still more; we know that we have a big problem with mosquito-transmitted viruses all along the Gulf Coast. Where I am here in Texas, we’re expecting dengue and possibly Zika virus coming back or Oro Pouche virus, maybe even yellow fever, and there’s more. Then we have this sharp rise in vaccine-preventable diseases going up because, in part, the anti-vaccine activists,” Hotez said.
The scientist then reiterated that we might start to see these outbreaks on January 21 under the new Trump administration.
“All that’s gonna come crashing down on January 21st on the Trump administration. We need a really, really good team to be able to handle this,” Hotez said.
There have been several responses to Hotez’s strange comments, including by cardiologist and leading COVID establishment critic Dr. Peter McCullough, who said during an appearance on Live from Studio 6B on Real America’s Voice that Hotez and “vaccine lobbyists” are pushing an “agenda of fear.”
“To lay it down and say it’s all gonna happen the day Trump takes office, you can tell what the agenda here is. There’s an agenda of fear being pushed by the vaccine lobbyists to constantly keep Americans in fear about the next viral threat so they can hold power and because they know in their minds that the only thing they’ll offer is more vaccines,” McCullough said.
LifeSite reached out to Hotez, asking him to clarify exactly what he meant by his comments, but has yet to receive a response.
However, he did offer a response to the backlash from his statements on X, saying his comments were being misinterpreted by “extremist media.”
“(I) outlined the tough infectious disease challenges the Trump appointees will face and inherit when they begin in January. They twisted it to claim we will launch new viruses at them, as totally ridiculous as that sounds,” Hotez wrote.
Hotez was a major proponent of the COVID vaccines and has slammed vaccine skeptics. In a 2022 World Health Organization (WHO) video about “misinformation” surrounding the COVID vaccine, he called those who had concerns about the vaccine a major killing force.”
Last year, after an appearance by RFK Jr. on Joe Rogan’s podcast in which they discussed his concerns over vaccines, Hotez blasted them for “misinformation” in an X post. His post prompted Rogan to challenge him to debate RFK Jr. on his show. While RFK Jr. agreed to the debate, Hotez never responded.
A B.C. pharmacy scam investigation has led the provincial government to return to a witnessed consumption model for safer supply
More than 60 pharmacies across B.C. are alleged to have participated in a kickback scheme linked to safer supply drugs, according to a provincial report released Feb. 19.
On Feb. 5, the BC Conservatives leaked a report that showed the findings of an internal investigation by the B.C. Ministry of Health. That investigation showed dozens of pharmacies were filling prescriptions patients did not require in order to overbill the government. These safer supply drugs were then diverted onto the black market.
After the report was leaked, the province committed to ending take-home safer supply models, which allow users to take hydromorphone pills home in bottles. Instead, it will require drug users to consume prescribed opioids in a witnessed program, under the oversight of a medical professional.
Gregory Sword, whose 14-year-old daughter Kamilah died in August 2022 after taking a hydromorphone pill that had been diverted from B.C.’s safer supply program, expressed outrage over the report’s findings.
“This is so frustrating to hear that [pharmacies] were making money off this program and causing more drugs [to flood] the street,” Sword told Canadian Affairs on Feb. 20.
The investigation found that pharmacies exploited B.C.’s Frequency of Dispensing policy to maximize billings. To take advantage of dispensing fees, pharmacies incentivized clients to fill prescriptions they did not require by offering them cash or rewards. Some of those clients then sold the drugs on the black market. Pharmacies earned up to $11,000 per patient a year.
“I’m positive that [the B.C. government has] known this for a long time and only made this decision when the public became aware and the scrutiny was high,” said Elenore Sturko, Conservative MLA for Surrey-Cloverdale, who released the leaked report in a statement on Feb. 5.
“As much as I am really disappointed in how long it’s taken for this decision to be made, I am also happy that this has happened,” she said.
The health ministry said it is investigating the implicated pharmacies. Those that are confirmed to have been involved could have their licenses suspended, be referred to law enforcement or become ineligible to participate in PharmaCare, the provincial program that helps residents cover the costs of prescription drugs.
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Witnessed dosing
The leaked report says that “a significant portion of the opioids being freely prescribed by doctors and pharmacists are not being consumed by their intended recipients.” It also says “prescribed alternatives are trafficked provincially, nationally and internationally.”
Critics of the safer supply program say it enables addiction, while supporters say it reduces overdoses.
Sword, Kamilah’s father, is suing the provincial and federal governments, arguing B.C.’s safer supply program made it possible for youth such as his daughter to access drugs.
Madison, Kamilah’s best friend, also became addicted to opioids dispensed through safer supply programs. Madison was just 15 when she first encountered “dillies” — hydromorphone pills dispensed through safer supply, but widely available on the streets. She developed a tolerance that led her to fentanyl.
“I do know for sure that some pharmacies and doctors were aware of the diversion,” Madison’s mother Beth told Canadian Affairs on Feb. 20.
“When I first realized what my daughter was taking and how she was getting it, I phoned the pharmacy and the doctor on the label of the pill bottle to inform them that the patient was selling their hydromorphone,” Beth said.
Masha Krupp, an Ottawa mother who has a son enrolled in a safer supply program, has said the safer supply program in her city is similarly flawed. Canadian Affairs previously reported on this program, which is run by Recovery Care’s Ottawa-based harm reduction clinics.
“I read about the B.C. pharmacy scheme and wasn’t surprised,” Krupp told Canadian Affairs on Feb. 20. Krupp lost a daughter to methadone toxicity while she was in an addiction treatment program at Recovery Care.
“Three years [after starting safer supply], my son is still using fentanyl, crack cocaine and methadone, despite being with Dr. [Charles] Breau and with Recovery Care for over three years,” Krupp testified before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health on Oct. 22, 2024.
Krupp has been vocal about the dangers of dispensing large quantities of opioids without proper oversight, arguing many patients sell their prescriptions to buy stronger street drugs.
“You can’t give addicts 28 pills and say, ‘Oh here you go,’” she said in her testimony. “They sell for three dollars a pop on the street.”
Krupp has also advocated for witnessed consumption of safer supply medications, arguing supervised dosing would prevent diversion and ensure proper oversight of pharmacies.
“I had talked about witnessed dosing for safe supply when I appeared before the parliamentary health committee last October,” she told Canadian Affairs this week.
“I’m grateful that finally … this decision has been made to return to a witness program,” said Sturko, the B.C. MLA.
In 2020, B.C. implemented a witnessed consumption model to ensure safer supply opioids were consumed as prescribed and to reduce diversion. In 2021, the province switched to take-home models. Its stated aim was to expand access, save lives and ease pressure on health-care facilities during the pandemic.
“You’re really fighting against a group of people … working within the bureaucracy of [the B.C. NDP] government … who have been making efforts to work towards the legalization of drugs and, in doing that, have looked only for opportunities to bolster their arguments for their position, instead of examining their approach in a balanced way,” said Sturko.
“These are foreseeable outcomes when you do not put proper safeguards in place and when you completely ignore all indications of negative impacts.”
Sword also believes some drug policies fail to prioritize the safety of vulnerable individuals.
“Greed is the ultimate evil in society and this just proves it,” he said. “We don’t care about these drugs getting into the wrong hands as long as I get my money.”
This article was produced through the Breaking Needles Fellowship Program, which provided a grant to Canadian Affairs, a digital media outlet, to fund journalism exploring addiction and crime in Canada. Articles produced through the Fellowship are co-published by Break The Needle and Canadian Affairs.
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From LifeSiteNews
The memo concludes by defining “female,” “male,” “woman,” “girl,” “man,” “boy,” “mother,” and “father” accordingly, based on observable scientific fact rather than subjective thoughts or feelings of gender dysphoria.
It is the official policy of the United States once more to maintain a biology-based definition of “sex” across all federal agencies, according to a new memo from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS).
The February 19 memo lays out the understanding of sex and related terminology to be used for the purposes of interpreting and abiding by federal rules, regulations, and partnerships.
“There are only two sexes, female and male, because there are only two types of gametes,” it says. “An individual human is either female or male based on whether the person is of the sex characterized by a reproductive system with the biological function of producing eggs (ova) or sperm. The sex of a human, female or male, is determined genetically at conception (fertilization), and is observable before birth.”
Sex, the memo continues, “is unchangeable and determined by objective biology. The use of hormones or surgical interventions do not change a person’s sex because such actions do not change the type of gamete that the person’s reproductive system has the biological function to produce. Rare disorders of sexual development do not constitute a third sex because these disorders do not lead to the production of a third gamete.”
The memo concludes by defining “female,” “male,” “woman,” “girl,” “man,” “boy,” “mother,” and “father” accordingly, based on observable scientific fact rather than subjective thoughts or feelings of gender dysphoria.
“It took many years of effort but we are finally back to science and common sense,” reacted Roger Severino, former director of the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) in the first Trump administration.
It is an article of progressive faith that gender is no more than a matter of self-perception that individuals are free to change at will. But according to modern biology, sex is not a subjective sense of self but an objective scientific reality, established by an individual’s chromosomes from their earliest moments of existence and reflected by hundreds of genetically based characteristics.
Yet for years LGBT activists have worked to promote “gender fluidity,” the idea that sexual identity is separate from biology and discernible only by personal perception, across public education, libraries, health care, and cultural traditions such as beauty contests, school homecomings, and athletic competitions.
Critics say their efforts have yielded a wide array of harms, both to the physical and mental health of gender-confused individuals themselves as well as to the rights, health, and safety of those who disagree, such as girls and women forced to share intimate facilities with males, female athletes forced to compete against biological males with natural physical advantages, and individuals forced to affirm false sexual identities in violation of their consciences, their understanding of scientific fact, and/or their religious beliefs.
Since returning to office, President Donald Trump has taken multiple executive actions to reverse the Biden administration’s transgender policies, including an order that ends all federal support for “transition” procedures on minors, rescinds or amends all of the Biden health bureaucracy’s past endorsements of underage “transitioning,” and calls for a review of the medical literature on the subject, enforcing all existing restrictions on underage “transitioning,” and taking regulatory action to “end” the practice to the greatest extent possible under current law.
Another order prohibits males who claim to be female from competing against actual women in sex-specific athletic programs at schools receiving government funding. A third disqualifies gender-confused individuals from military service and prohibits military health services from conducting “transition” treatments and procedures.
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