government scandal

As a scientist who publishes peer-reviewed research, I strongly support and favor scientific work, the scientific method with reproducibility and falsifiability, and science as problem-solver for human civilization. However, I’m not one of those who raises science to the level of a false god, to be served at all costs, morals and ethics be damned. I also cringe and anger when government gets unethical with science in any way, because that unfairly smears me by association.

Science should help to solve our problems, not cause them, nor make them worse! This is why I oppose such “scientific” endeavors as human experiments that are involuntary, unknowing, misrepresented, or deliberately physically or psychologically damaging (say, Tuskegee syphilis experiments by the United States Public Health Service, Wendell Johnson stuttering-orphan “experiments”, anything involving eugenics, “Little Albert” infant-fear test, 1955 CIA whooping-cough release near Tampa, human radioactivity experiments at the Universities of Rochester and Cincinnati, CIA’s MKULTRA subproject 68, 1950s/60s covered-up toxic, radioactive chemical releases in St. Louis, and many more).

[Have you ever noticed how many of these inhumane “experiments” have been performed or funded by government? Do you still wonder why so many people don’t trust government science? I have to deal with that blowback even in weather science, where harmful ethical problems have been extremely rare.]

Animal testing is a gray area for me, context-dependent, case-by-case. I’m not some PETA extremist who worships worms, roaches and rats. I gladly eat meat and lots of it. I don’t have a problem with most animal experimentation involving mice, insects, fish, etc. However, some are clearly and obviously cruel to anyone with even the most minuscule conscience. Pretty much anything that causes harm to animals that are common human pets definitely crosses my line.

Enter Anthony Fauci’s National Institutes of Health. Some background…

On Fauci’s watch: Chinese gain-of-function experiments on viral bat coronaviruses were backdoor-funded via third party with taxpayer money, after it was banned in the U.S. (for good reason). This provided plausible deniability on direct funding of any sort of corona gain-of-function work in Wuhan, a semantics game Fauci cunningly and misleadingly played in testimony. Four days ago, in a latter to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, DHS admitted to very limited coronavirus GoF money laundering through a third party (EcoHealth Allaince Inc) to Wuhan Institute. Your tax money, folks! I’m highly skeptical this was limited to viruses unrelated to the one now causing so much human devastation, and am confident more will trickle out over many years, until all this smoke reveals the ultimate fire.

This full stream of Glenn Greenwald’s tweets summarizes this NIH/EcoHealth/gain-of-function insanity succinctly. Greenwald is hardly a Q-anon right winger. In fact he quotes a story from Vanity Fair, of all things, that damns Fauci badly. [Vanity Fair? Also hardly a right-wing rag — in fact, quite the opposite! Yes, it’s fair to ask why that outfit investigated this, instead of supposed journalistic titans turned woke-cult mouthpieces like NY Times or Washington Post.] I agree with Greenwald that Rand Paul is owed an apology he’ll never receive, from Fauci and NIH.

Greenwald ignores Red Commie China too much in his statements — they obviously know everything about everything happening in that country through their deep, pervasive, Orwellian surveillance state — most certainly at the Wuhan lab, and all of EcoHealth’s involvement. They knew all too well about how the pandemic began (and aren’t telling nor permitting full outside investigation) — then incompetently responded to the disease emergence, leading to its worldwide spread. Not to mention cooking their own books with low fatalities and case numbers. The CCP is very much culpable here *also*, even as Greenwald hyperfocuses on encouragement and financial support via the U.S. bureaucracy, NIH. So, back to NIH and Fauci…

Bottom line: Fauci either didn’t know about the EcoHealth GoF work, and should have (malfeasance, incompetent leadership), or did know (per the 2018 grant report Greenwald notes) and is lying. Either way, he needs to go. But wait, there’s more!

Do you like beagle puppies? Stop now if you wish not to know of recent “experiments” on them that you and I unknowingly funded, that if any of us did in our own homes, rightfully would land us in jail and labeled as psychopaths. I hate stories like this, and almost never share them. However, this is a rare exception, because you are paying for this every week out of your salary, and should at least have the option to know about it. NIH funded the needless medical torture of beagle puppies.

From another bipartisan House report: “NIAID spent $1.68 million in taxpayer funds on drug tests involving 44 beagle puppies. The dogs were all between six and eight months old. The commissioned tests involved injecting and force-feeding the puppies an experimental drug for several weeks, before killing and dissecting them. Of particular concern is the fact that the invoice to NIAID included a line item for ‘cordectomy.’ As you are likely aware, a cordectomy, also known as ‘devocalization,’ involves slitting a dog’s vocal cords in order to prevent them from barking, howling, or crying. This cruel procedure — which is opposed with rare exceptions by the American Veterinary Medical Association, the American Animal Hospital Association, and others – seems to have been performed so that experimenters would not have to listen to the pained cries of the beagle puppies. This is a reprehensible misuse of taxpayer funds.”

NIAID is a unit of the NIH, directed by Fauci. This cruelty in the name of science was done on his watch. He is responsible.

I find it ironic, and somewhat pathetic, that Fauci is likely to face far more heat for this than for other ways he has misled (covered up) and/or outright lied. If truly “the buck stops here”, his removal from NIH is long past due.

My parent’s generation had its Nixon. Now my children’s have theirs, even if many of them still are in denial about it.

Presidential administrations, both Republican (e.g., Harding, Nixon) and Democrat (Clinton, Obama) have been soiled to the point of grievous damage or even premature ending by scandals of their own doing, arising ultimately from the hubris of power. Some of those scandals boil up from below, should be relatively minor if contained at the source…but instead get hushed, covered up or minimized as unimportant in order to further one’s own aims, or for appearances sake (re-election, maintaining a legacy).

The ongoing IRS and Benghazi scandals epitomize this. Even if the president didn’t know what was happening (a technically plausible idea but one of increasing unbelievability), the culture he set led to scandals such as this, as well as Fast and Furious, which placed tons of guns into the hands of Mexican criminals by knowledge of those involved.

As with most politicians of either party, the person at the top seldom knows everything about everything. In reality, it’s impossible. So what happens? You as the head honcho can choose to fill your administration and advisory board (cabinet and otherwise) with some ratio of:
1) Field-tested experts with deep understanding and experience of the areas they lead, and who are not afraid to tell you what you don’t want to hear sometimes, because they are steeped in reality instead of ivory-tower academic theory, or
2) an ultimately, corporately destructive combination of sycophants resulting from
a. ambitious, compliant yes-men and yes-women, regardless of “experience”, who tow the company line and do what they’re told, and
b. ivory-tower academics with no real-world experience whose theories line up perfectly with your ideals, making them de-facto yes-men (and yes-women), and who reinforced your visions of Utopia through the perceived power of the letters “PhD”, which is one of the few privileges that you as man-in-charge don’t have.

This president clearly went hard for option 2(a and b) and constructed his administration accordingly, with only token exceptions for appearance’s sake or continuity (Robert Gates as holdover Defense Secretary, a wise choice which unfortunately didn’t last).

It’s easier to deal with underlings who tell you what you want to hear…until the sh_t hits the fan because somebody down there did something very politically inexpedient and it threatens either your re-election chances (if first term) or legacy (if second term). Remember–with most politicians, and especially these, it’s all about appearances! At some point, and we don’t know when yet because of the lack of promise transparency, the president does learn of the systemic rot spreading through his administration. Then what?

Well, if the great majority of popular media (except for one cable channel with a website and a well-known headline aggregator) is in bed with your administration, acting as willingly facile sock puppets, no problem…the sh_t only gradually hits the fan, if at all, and you can systematically marginalize and dismiss those who raise uncomfortable questions as fringe lunatics and conspiracy theorists. Again, it’s all about appearances…make the nuisances disappear, or stick dunce caps on them and send them to the hidden corner by portraying them as whacked-out irrelevancies. Then when the heat gets even hotter, to the point a few rogue reporters employed by your media-conglomerate bedfellows start getting uncomfortably suspicious, throw some agency underlings and such reporters under the bus and portray the higher-ups as the ignorant innocents. [“The buck stops here”? How quaintly Trumanesque!] Meanwhile, spin that spin and talk that double talk!

This strategy works great for maintaining image, as long as noble whistle-blowers are kept under control, lower-tier alternative media (who are doing some authentic investigative journalism) are kept marginalized in the public eye, and until some of those big-media sock puppets come to life and realize they’re being played too. That seems to be starting to happen, barely, as manifest in the arising (what took so long?) of at least subtly damning reporting in otherwise at-command outlets like CNN, ABC and New Yorker.

Even then, the typically Democrat-sympathetic media mouthpieces shunt what should be major national headlines at the top of the main page down the site, somewhere in smaller font than the latest sordid local crimes or celebrity ordeals, relegating nationally enormous implications to secondary or tertiary status out of editorially protective habit. After all, the willingly manipulated don’t always realize instantly that they’re being used more than they bargained for. It takes time…but the flames in Obama’s kitchen of scandal are starting to get too hot even for some of the media.

If you think we’ve learned all there is to know, that more ugly events aren’t going to come to light, that more scandal isn’t around the corner, that existing scandal doesn’t go deeper than what you’re being told now, then you’re still living in Utopian dreamland. Whistle-blowers will continue to emerge. Damning documents will continue to be leaked; after all, this bunch is good at leaks. New hotspots of corruption easily can come to light.

Then, at some point, the bulk of We the People begin to realize that some of what was condescendingly dismissed by the Administration’s minions as “conspiracy theories” turns out to be true! Ruh-roh, Scooby Doo…there goes what little trust in governmental higher office that was left.

None of this had to happen if he who rode to office on a mantra of truth and transparency had lived up to that ideal to its fullest literal extent. Alas, he was and remains a lawyer and pure politician, one with no prior executive, economic or military experience. We the People thereby reap the seeds we sowed by electing, as suckers for a good sales pitch and out of collective societal guilt, a smiling face bearing ideological gifts and tantalizingly vague promises of “hope and change”, delivered as a semi-messianic message that turned out as false prophecy, backed by wretchedly inadequate qualifications for the job other than a striking level of TelePrompTer-aided eloquence.

Guess what, grasshopper: roughly 53% of America has been played for fools. Now we all pay the price for that twice-made choice of style over substance, and will do so for years after this administration, septically sick with scandal, has whimpered to a pathetic close.

I don’t celebrate this; it’s bad for the nation. I actually don’t want any presidency to go down this way. But given the apparent periodicity of these ordeals, perhaps it’s a necessary level of cleansing that we all have to go through every couple of generations or so, governmental illnesses we suffer in order to recharge our national immune system’s healing powers and set us back on a better path. I wish I knew why.

Ethics in Science: Fauci Must Go

Downfall of an American Emperor