From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Adam Pack

A consulting giant that helped fuel the United States’ deadly opioid epidemic agreed to pay a massive settlement to avoid criminal prosecution, according to court papers filed Friday.

McKinsey & Company, an international management consulting firm that advised Purdue Pharma to “turbocharge”  sales of Oxycontin during the height of the opioid crisis, entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the Department of Justice (DOJ) that will require the firm to pay a $650 million settlement over five years.

A former senior McKinsey employee also pleaded guilty to an obstruction of justice charge for destroying records detailing the consulting giant’s work for Purdue.

The McKinsey settlement is the latest in a string of lawsuits seeking accountability from corporations and consulting firms for contributing to the opioid crisis.

The epidemic, created in part from the work of Purdue and McKinsey to market OxyContin to millions of Americans, has taken more than 500,000 lives and left a trail of devastation in its wake, particularly in parts of rural America.

“McKinsey schemed with Purdue Pharma to ‘turbocharge’ OxyContin sales during a raging opioid epidemic — an epidemic that continues to decimate families and communities across the nation,” U.S. Attorney Joshua Levy for the District of Massachusetts, who sued McKinsey alongside an attorney for the Western District of Virginia over the firm’s consulting work for Purdue, wrote following the settlement. “Consulting firms like McKinsey should get the message: if the advice you give to companies in boardrooms and PowerPoint presentations aids and abets criminal activity, we will come after you and we will expose the truth.”

“We are deeply sorry for our past client service to Purdue Pharma and the actions of a former partner who deleted documents related to his work for that client,” the consulting firm wrote in a statement following the settlement. “We should have appreciated the harm opioids were causing in our society and we should not have undertaken sales and marketing work for Purdue Pharma. This terrible public health crisis and our past work for opioid manufacturers will always be a source of profound regret for our firm.”

Ontario pediatrician Dr. Kulvinder Kaur Gill

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Elon Musk has said he would help Dr. Kulvinder Kaur Gill financially in her fight against the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario.

Ontario pediatrician Dr. Kulvinder Kaur Gill, who is embroiled in a legal battle with a medical regulator for her anti-COVID jab and mandate views on social media, is looking to take her case to Canada’s Supreme Court with financial help from Elon Musk and a leading freedom-fighting lawyer.

Libertas Law, which is representing Gill, said in a press release sent to LifeSiteNews on Monday the canceled doctor “filed an application for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada” her case against the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO).

“The growing overreach of regulators into monitoring the speech of professionals on social media has become a matter of national concern to the public, which loses the benefit of hearing a variety of opinions when professionals’ speech is chilled out of fear of punishment,” Libertas Law attorney Lisa Bildy said. “We hope that the Supreme Court of Canada will use Dr. Gill’s case to restore the historic role of the courts as guardians of the constitution.”

The application follows Gill’s unsuccessful judicial review of the “cautions-in-person ordered against her in 2021” by a CPSO committee concerning her Twitter comments in August 2020 that criticized multiple levels of governments COVID mandates and policies.

The orders against Gill were made despite her “providing the College with ample evidence in 2020 to support her position against catastrophic lockdowns,” Libertas Law noted.

Musk, the billionaire Tesla and X owner, pledged in March to back Gill financially.

The application to Canada’s highest court comes after her application for leave to appeal to the Ontario Court of Appeal (ONCA) “was denied” on October 3.

“The infringement of Dr. Gill’s freedom of expression and conscience, guaranteed under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, was barely mentioned by the committee when it issued the orders for cautions in-person (which Dr. Gill has not yet received),” Libertas stated in its press release.

Libertas noted that a brief comment about the committee having “no interest in shutting down free speech” was made “before proceeding to do exactly that.”

According to Libertas, the CPSO had placed on its website in 2020 a warning to doctors to provide “an opinion that does not align with information coming from public health or government.”

“Yet the Divisional Court declined to quash the orders, finding that the committee was sufficiently alert to the Charter infringement of Dr. Gill’s speech, such that its decisions were within the range of reasonable outcomes,” the legal firm said.

Last May, LifeSiteNews reported that Gill had vowed to fight with appeals with the help of her Musk-backed legal team after she lost a court battle.

One of Gill’s “controversial” posts she made in 2020 read, “If you have not yet figured out that we don’t need a vaccine, you are not paying attention. #FactsNotFear.”

The Divisional Court decision against Gill dated May 7 concluded, “When the College chose to draw the line at those tweets which it found contained misinformation, it did so in a way which reasonably balanced Dr. Gill’s free speech rights with her professional responsibilities.”

“In other words, its response was proportionate,” the ruling stated.

In Monday’s press release, Libertas Law noted that due to an unrelated recent court ruling relating to Charter Rights, Gill will argue the same reasonings to fight her censorship in her appeal to the Supreme Court.

Canceled doc’s legal battles against medical regulator ongoing for months

Gill’s court challenge against the CPSO began earlier this year, with Bildy writing at the time that the “decisions were neither reasonable nor justified and they failed to engage with the central issues for which Dr. Gill was being cautioned.”

She argued that Gill had a “reasonable scientific basis” for her posts, noting that the previous decision made against Gill targeted her for opposing the mainstream COVID narrative.

Gill is a specialist practicing in the Toronto area and has extensive experience and training in “pediatrics, and allergy and clinical immunology, including scientific research in microbiology, virology and vaccinology.”

Last September, disciplinary proceedings against her were withdrawn by the CPSO. However, Gill was ordered last year to pay $1 million in legal costs after her libel suit was struck down.

The CPSO began disciplinary investigations against Gill in August 2020.

COVID vaccine mandates, which came from provincial governments with the support of the federal government, split Canadian society. The mRNA shots have been linked to a multitude of negative and often severe side effects in children.

In an interview with LifeSiteNews at its annual general meeting in July 2023 near Toronto, canceled doctors Mary O’Connor, Mark Trozzi, Chris Shoemaker, and Byram Bridle were asked to state their messages to the medical community regarding how they have had to fight censure because they have opinions contrary to the COVID mainstream narrative.