Hello everyone.

You all will no doubt be pleased to learn that MD and I flew American Airlines from Los Angeles to Dallas without incident. It was a full flight and took off on time and landed on time. The gate agents were ready, so there was no waiting forever for someone to open the door so we could all disembark. Just wanted to let you know that not all our flights are nightmares.

While on the plane in economy class, we were given something to drink and a snack. The snack was a little Biscoff cookie, which we always wave away. The flight attendants basically threw the cookies down before we could say no. (But we did not eat them!)

I took the opportunity to evaluate the ingredients, and I can tell you definitively that Biscoff cookies are UPF to the core. Take a look.

Commentary on Poll Responses

I received a couple of comments through the poll that triggered in one way or another a couple my pet peeves.

Here is the first:

Many people, including many of the most brilliant scientists of the 20th century who knew and worked with him, considered mathematician and physicist John von Neumann to be the smartest person who ever lived. Or at least the smartest person any of them had ever worked with. Biographical evidence describes von Neumann as being a cranky, curmudgeonly, right wing zealot.

From this info, we can draw one of two conclusions. Given von Neumann’s intellect, we could say that right wing zealotry is the correct political belief. If someone as smart as von Neumann believed that way, then that must be correct.

Or we could say that there is no correlation between brilliance and political beliefs.

Did von Neumann’s politics put his works at “high risk”? I don’t think so.

Here is the second comment:

This one is a shade of the first with a little extra thrown in.

I suspect both of these commenters are lefties. And I would bet that had RFK, who was running for president for a while, ended up having a chance at winning, both of them would have been huge supporters. But he dropped out and joined Trump, which, in their opinion, turned him into a monster. So now everything he says is false.

If these two commenters are truly invested in the low-carb diet, because of its obvious health benefits, why wouldn’t they champion the first Secretary of HHS to actually advocate such a diet? And why wouldn’t they want someone in there who actually takes a stand against Big Pharma and Big Food, both of which are responsible for the terrible health statistics of the American people.

As to RFK performing terribly in the senate hearings I wrote about, a writer for The Atlantic, certainly no right-wing rag, saw it differently. He didn’t like what RFK had to say, but he thought he was effective.

Another of my pet peeves was on display at this same hearing. And it doesn’t just involve politics.

Just take a quick look at 0:15 secs on this video and then look at 0:38 till the end of his statement. The senator taking on RFK is Michael Bennet from Colorado. I didn’t know anything about Michael Bennet, so I looked up his profile on Wikipedia just to get a sense of his knowledge base. Turns out he grew up in a government family, and, other than six years in an investment bank in Denver, he has himself been on the government teat for his entire career.

What he says in the very early part of his engagement with RFK is that the members of the ACIP, all of whom were fired by Kennedy en masse, were highly qualified. In the later segment, Bennet says that Retsev Levi (a member of the ACIP panel Kennedy appointed; and, in my view, the smartest member of said panel) wrote that “evidence is mounting and indisputable that mRNA vaccines caused serious harm, including death, especially among young people. Yes or No? Are you aware he said that?”

Kennedy answered that he was not aware that Retsef had said that, but that he agreed with him.

Bennet then said, “You agree with it? It’s not true.”

Here is where my pet peeve comes in. It takes a person with similar degree of achievement or a lot of study to be able to determine the qualification of another.

You hear from people all the time that such and such a doctor is a great doctor. If these people themselves are not doctors or don’t work in the medical field, how do they know? It takes another doctor to really know whether a doctor is a good one or not.

There was an old doc in Little Rock, now long dead, who had a huge practice. He was totally incompetent, but his patients loved him. He had a great bedside manner. All he did was put elderly people in nursing homes, and if one of them had any kind of problem, he referred them to a doc who was competent. Same thing with the patients he saw in his office. If anyone came in really sick, he referred them out. The entire medical community knew what was going on, but his patients loved him. If you asked them, they would tell you he was God.

The medical community knows who the good doctors are, because they can see through the BS the patients can’t. Those in the legal community know who the good lawyers are. Same for those in the business world. You have to have some level of competence to judge whether or not another is good at what he/she does. You can’t just base it on personality.

In the video above, Bennet says early on that the members of the ACIP that Kennedy fired early on were “highly qualified.” How does he know? He’s not a vaccine expert. He’s not a physician or a PhD. He’s a government drudge.

When he says that Retsev Levi’s statement that mRNA vaccines are injuring young people is not true, how does he know? Levi is vastly more qualified than Bennet to make that statement and back it up with data.

A Big Disappointment

I saw a headline a couple of days ago that Trump and RFK were going to curtail direct to consumer pharmaceutical ads on TV. I was ecstatic. Giving Big Pharma the ability to pay huge amounts to the various networks allows them to control what the networks report. You’ll notice the networks never report anything bad about Big Pharma.

Sadly, I learned that although Kennedy wants to get rid of the ads, his boss Trump doesn’t want to go that far.

According to Forbes,

Basically, it’s all a big nothing-burger.

Trump is having FDA Commissioner Marty Makary enforce stricter standards on the accuracy of direct to consumer drug ads.

Supposedly thousands of letters have been sent to alleged transgressors telling them to make their ads less deceptive. And they are going after social media influencers who recommend pharmaceuticals without full disclosure.

I mean these changes may help a tiny bit, but it is a big win for Big Pharma. If you watch pharmaceutical ads already running, they spend most of the ad time reciting all the problems with the drugs they’re touting. Big Pharma isn’t advertising to get customers; they’re advertising to keep the media from investigating them. It’s basically hush money.

According to Adweek, the pharmaceutical companies spent an astronomical amount of money last year on direct to consumer ads.

The New England Journal of Medicine in 2007 had a different calculation for direct-to-consumer drug ads.

Whether it’s $7.9B or $29.9B, it pays for a lot of protection. I guess the US along with New Zealand will continue to be the only countries where direct to consumer pharmaceutical ads are allowed.

On June 12, 2025 Senator Bernie Sanders and a handful of other Democrats introduced the End Prescription Drug Ads Now Act, which would eliminate pharmaceutical direct-to-consumer advertising. I don’t know how serious these folks are about promoting the bill and getting it through, but if they are sincere, I’m totally behind them.

To the best of my knowledge, the ability for the pharmaceutical industry to do direct-to-consumer ads was initiated and written into the regulations by the FDA in 1999. Since it wasn’t a bill passed by congress, it would appear that President Trump could undo it simply by executive order. Such an order would immediately initiate one or more lawsuits by Big Pharma. I don’ know what the outcome would be, but at least it would probably make it to the Supreme Court, which would be decisive.

It would be much better if Bernie Sanders et al could get an actual bill through Congress, but given the number of congressional folks who are in the pocket of Big Pharm, it would be difficult.

It would be much easier with just a presidential executive order, but, for whatever reason, Trump doesn’t want to touch it. More’s the pity.

Low-Carb vs Mediterranean Diet

I ran across a paper a couple of days ago that compared a low-carb diet to the Mediterranean diet (MD) showing the low-carb diet to be more effective in numerous parameters. What got my interest is that the Mediterranean Diet, with its origin based on work done by Ancel Keys, has developed such a halo effect over the years that no one ever criticizes it.

Over the years, there have been a few other studies, all showing the virtues of the Mediterranean diet to the point the almost everyone believes it is the best diet to prevent heart disease. But is it?

Of course, all those who study it put great faith in all the olive oil consumed on the diet. Is it that which makes it so heart healthy?

Thirty or so years ago, I was invited to give a talk to a foodie convention in Chicago. I gave my talk and then watched the talk after mine. The presenter—whose name I cannot recall—was a chef from Sicily. He said that all the talk of olive oil as part of the Mediterranean diet was kind of bullshit. He said people in Sicily (and other countries considered to be Mediterranean) almost exclusively used lard as as their primary cooking fat, not olive oil. He said the Mediterranean countries sold most of their olive oil instead of using it for cooking. Olive oil was a great cash crop for them, and was considered more valuable than lard on the market, so they all cooked with lard and sold their olive oil.

I’ve always remembered that talk, so I figured all the people blathering about all the olive oil used in the Mediterranean diet were full of it.

Most of the authors of this study are in Italy, which is a Mediterranean country, so I was curious to see if they used lard or olive oil as the main fat in the MD arm of their study. Alas, I don’t think they did, as this is how they defined the MD diet:

The low-carb arm of the study had the subjects limited to 130 g of carb. So, what we end up with is subjects on one arm of the study following a fictional MD, while those on the other are followed a somewhat lower carbohydrate diet, but not what I would call a real low-carbohydrate diet. It’s more low-carb lite than real low-carb.

There were 100 subjects in total with 50 allocated to each group. All were obese and had uncontrolled type 2 diabetes. The researchers ran the subjects through a host of metabolic tests to calculate their individual caloric requirements. Then they cut those by 500 calories. So both groups were on low-calorie diets as well. The study lasted 16 weeks. Trained nutritional counselors called each subject every four weeks for encouragement and to help ensure they were on the dietary regimen.

At the end of the 16 weeks, the subjects on the low-carb lite diet did substantially better than those on the MD diet.

Here is Table 3.

As you can see, if you break out your reading glasses, the basic low-carb lite diet bested the world-famous Mediterranean diet on it’s own home field.

Just think about how much better these results would have been had the researchers used 50 g of carbohydrate a day instead of 130 g.

The power of cutting carbs is pretty phenomenal. It just takes diligence. If you’ve got that, you can pretty much lose as much weight as you want…as long as you stick with it.

Aaron Siri and Vaccines, Amen

I’m about at the end of my rope with the Covid vaccines, Covid death rates, and all the rest, but I’ve learned a ton about vaccines since the onset of Covid. I never was taught anything much about vaccines in medical school, except that they existed and were ‘good’. But, then, I was medical school in the 1970s, before the 1986 bill giving full indemnity to manufacturers of vaccines and the consequent explosion in the number of vaccines given to kids.

I read all kinds of papers showing the Covid vaccines have caused all kinds of deaths. And studies showing they haven’t, that, in fact, they save lives. I don’t really believe this latter bit, since the first Pfizer placebo-controlled trial showed more deaths in the study group than in the placebo group.

MD and I didn’t get the Covid vaccines and neither did any of our immediate family members save one, who got one shot.

I know a lot of people and am in a couple of golf clubs that have a lot of elderly members. As far as I know, no one has died from a vaccine injury. I have one reader of the Arrow who wrote me several years ago telling me her adult son died of a vaccine injury. Other than that one lady, no one I know personally has died from a vaccine injury.

If I had to bet, though, I would bet that vaccines are responsible for a lot of deaths and disability. And I don’t want any of my grandchildren (I have only one who is still of vaccine age) taking them. Nor any of my great grandchildren, of whom I have none as of right now, but have three grandkids of reproductive age, so it won’t be long.

I’ve purchased just about every book on vaccines that has come into print since Covid and read them cover to cover. Sometimes more than once. I thought I’d read it all. But since I heard Aaron Siri was publishing one based on his experience in litigating vaccine injuries, I’ve waited patiently for his book to be available. As soon as it was, I forked over my $16.99 and grabbed a Kindle copy.

As you can see from the purchase date, I’ve just had it for a few days, most of which have been spent in travel, so I haven’t read it through. I planned to finish it, then post about it here. But it is just too good to wait until I can finish it. I still have travel and a few other time gobbling obligations (including writing the Arrow) occupying my time for the next week or so. But this book is simply too good for me not to tell you about it now.

Aaron Siri is an attorney whose practice is primarily vaccine injuries. He is a very smart guy who knows the vaccine business inside and out. A few years ago, he had the opportunity in a case to depose Stanley Plotkin, M.D. the vaccinator-in-chief of the world. All of the people you’ve heard of as vaccine experts learned at the feet of Stanley Plotkin and his book Plotkin’s Vaccines.

When Siri took Plotkin’s deposition, which ran to nine hours, he learned how the whole vaccine cartel works. He calls his book Vaccines, Amen because he and his minions view vaccines as a religion. A religion that make them a lot of money. Millions of dollars, in fact.

I’m going to give you a brief taste of a tiny part of Plotkin’s deposition just so you’ll have a feel for the guy.

But first, let’s look at the Hepatitis B vaccine, a shot given within the first day after birth while mother and child are still in the hospital. Let me preface it by saying that Hepatitis B is a disease that heavy drug users fall victim to. It is unlikely that children born to average American families are going to ever get hepatitis B, yet barring parental refusal, just about every kid gets the jab.

Plotkin, of course, is a major advocate of the hepatitis vaccine. And has made millions from Big Pharma by getting their vaccines approved.

His game plan is to do whatever needs to be done to get the licensing approval for a vaccine. Once the vaccine is approved, the manufacturer has no liability since the 1986 law was passed giving companies immunity against vaccine lawsuits. If the vaccine is approved, it is golden. So companies making vaccines invest a ton of money on Plotkin and his brethren just to get their products approved.

The first part of the deposition Siri had with Plotkin was about the hepatitis B vaccine. Siri poses the following question to the readers of his book, so I will likewise pose it to you:

Here is the exchange.

Siri comes away dumbfounded that Plotkin was not aware that a vaccine licensed for infants was based on a clinical trial with safety monitoring of only five days after injection.

If you are blown away by this, as I was, it is just the tip of the iceberg.

The name of the game is to get the vaccines approved. The manufacturers pay Plotkin and others millions of dollars to get this done.

Once approved, if people end up with adverse events caused by the vaccines, Plotkin and others simply say there are no studies showing causality. Who is going to do the studies showing causality? Certainly not the vaccine makers. The answer is that no one is going to do those studies. So Plotkin and others can simply say there is no proof the vaccines caused these issues.

Grab a copy of Vaccines, Amen. You will never look at vaccines in the same way again.

Odds and Ends

• The lack of curiosity in this story boggles the mind. I can't fathom never having looked closely enough at this notebook to realize its significance and yet have kept it in a box moving it from place to place for 40 years.

• MD and I both grew up hearing this dialect plenty in Missouri and Arkansas. It has strong roots from Scots and Irish and the English spoken in the 18th Century (and before) in the Borders of England and Scotland. You can learn a bit about Appalachian English here if you're a’ mind.

• How WWII flight crews turned turbulence and freezing temperatures into ice cream. Human resilience when life gives you lemons.

• Which American invention would you say was the most important? My guess was the #2 most common answer.

• A deep sea fish is found with teeth on its forehead that it uses for sex. If that isn't a clickbait headline I don't know what is. As a long-time diver, how could I resist? I had to click.

• Signs of life on Mars? It’s enough to make Buck Rogers proud.

• From a distance, so Bette Midler told us in song, the world looks blue and green. And according to this live stream of Earth from the International Space Station, she’s right.

• Interesting new theory on the cause of muscle cramping (especially in athletes). And it’s not electrolytes or hydration. Don’t know if I agree, but it merits consideration.

• From the Dept of Redundancy Department here are some common redundancies you may be erroneously using or (if you are a stickler for correctness) may be cringing every time your hear.

• Archeologists discover two almost life-sized statues carved into the wall of a tomb in Pompeii. Not sure when they were uncovered, but MD and I have wandered the streets of Pompeii probably five or six times in the course of our many years. I would love to see these figures when we have a chance to get back there. Typical of the funerary art of that era of Roman history, their likenesses are distinctly identifiable, not idealized. And it fascinates me to look at them.

• Remembrances of 9/11 - the objects both ordinary and extraordinary that help us reflect on the tragedy 24 years later and beyond.

• What’s the little thing that your waiter will appreciate most? Having been a waiter at one point in my younger life, I’d say a healthy tip, but maybe not.

• The lengths to which grocery stores will go so you’ll buy more. This explains why the milk and eggs are always in the back and the sale wine on the bottom shelf.

• Captivating Facts About Crows. So why do they say it’s an elephant that never forgets?

• The best-selling product Volkswagen makes isn’t a car. It’s a sausage.

Newsletter Recommendations

Video of the Week

Today’s VOTW is a little longer than usual, but it is quite fascinating…at least to me.

I taught myself to play the guitar in my teens, and I got halfway decent at it. Not Billy Strings decent, but decent enough that I could pick out songs and accompany myself and other singers.

When I was in my thirties, I got hooked on violin music, so I decided to take up the violin, which is vastly more difficult to play than the guitar. I hired an instructor and gave it a go. I even bought an old but fabulous-sounding violin. Then our house was burgled, and my violin was stolen. I haven’t played since.

Today’s video is of two excellent violinists talking about Christian Li, a true prodigy. It’s interesting to hear them talk about how this little kid was so much better than either of them, and explaining why. Fascinating stuff.

Time for the poll, so you can grade my performance this week.

That’s about it for this week. Keep in good cheer, and I’ll be back next Thursday.

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This newsletter is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not, nor is it intended to be, a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment and should never be relied upon for specific medical advice.

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